David Quantick

"David Quantick is one of the best kept secrets in the world of writing. He's smart, funny and unique. You should let yourself in on the secret." - Neil Gaiman From Emmy-Award winning author David Quantick, Night Train is a science-fiction horror story like no other. A woman wakes up, frightened and alone. The room shaking and jumping like it's alive. The noise is terrifying. Where is she? Stumbling through a door, she realizes she is on a train carriage. A carriage full of the dead. A personal hell unfolding in an apocalyptic future. This is NIGHT TRAIN. A terrifying ride set on a driverless locomotive, heading for a collision somewhere in the endless night. How did the woman get here? Who is she? And who are the dead? As our heroine makes her way through the train trying to find out what happened to her, she meets a former strongman, a trained killer, and a collection of strange and terrifying creatures. Each step takes her closer to finding out the secret of the Night Train.

Night Train

"David Quantick is one of the best kept secrets in the world of writing. He's smart, funny and unique. You should let yourself in on the secret." – Neil Gaiman It is March 1979 in DeKalb Illinois. Todd Milstead is a wannabe writer, a serial adulterer, and a jerk, only tolerated by his friends because he throws the best parties with the best booze. During one particular party, Todd is showing off his perfect recall, quoting poetry and literature word for word plucked from his eidetic memory. When he begins quoting from a book no one else seems to know, a novel called All My Colors, Todd is incredulous. He can quote it from cover to cover and yet it doesn’t seem to exist. With a looming divorce and mounting financial worries, Todd finally tries to write a novel, with the vague idea of making money from his talent. The only problem is he can’t write. But the book – All My Colors – is there in his head. Todd makes a decision: he will “write” this book that nobody but him can remember. After all, if nobody’s heard of it, how can he get into trouble? As the dire consequences of his actions come home to both Todd and his long-suffering friends, it becomes clear that there is a high – and painful – price to pay for his crime. "A morality tale, a comedy, a horror story rolled into one. All My Colors has it all." – The Sun "Really rich, funny, unsettling and just very alive. A brilliant premise executed with total confidence and authority." – John Niven, author of Kill Your Friends

All My Colors

Jacky is a translator. He is a bit of an eccentric. And he can't quite understand why the enigmatic and beautiful girl at the bar wants to talk to him. Even more perplexing is the tatty-looking book she carries with her but won't let him touch. Written in an untranslatable language - even for him - it contains, quite impossibly, what seem to be photographs of her murder. When she disappears hours later and the book comes into his custody, the suspicion falls on him. Accused of her murder, Jacky must find a way to decipher the untranslatable book she has left behind. Racing through Paris in pursuit of the truth and the missing girl, he must track her down with nothing but an unwavering determination and the assistance of the world's most annoying man. The Mule is a wholly original, comical thriller filled with eccentric characters, sporadic violence and other peculiarities. Weaving a tale of intrigue, betrayal and romance, this is the bizarre story of the world's most enigmatic book.

The Mule

How To Be A Writer is a collection of interviews with famous writers, performers and industry insiders that takes the reader through a writer’s day, from getting up to giving in. And, along the way, asks: When do you get ideas? When should you write? How do you deal with your money? Who do you have lunch with? And how do you keep going? Featuring JON RONSON, EMMA DONOGHUE, DENNIS KELLY, CAITLIN MORAN, JASON HAZELEY, JOEL MORRIS, SUZANNE MOORE, CATHERINE ROSENTHAL, MARK ELLEN, JOHN PANTON, JO UNWIN, MARTYN WAITES, MARK BILLINGHAM, ISZI LAWRENCE David Quantick is an Emmy-winning television writer and the author of the best-selling writing manual How To Write Everything. He has written for television in the USA (Veep) and the UK (The Thick Of It, Brass Eye, Harry Hill’s TV Burp), and is also a radio broadcaster (The Blagger’s Guide, 52 First Impressions), author (The Mule, Sparks) and a journalist who’s written for over 50 different publications, from the Daily Telegraph to The Dandy.

How to Be a Writer

How To Write Everything is the ultimate writer's handbook. It tells you about every aspect of writing, from having an idea to getting the idea out into the world and getting paid for it, too. It covers everything from journalism to screen-writing, from speeches to sketches, from sitcoms to novels. With thirty years' experience as an award-winning script-writer, journalist, author and broadcaster David Quantick is ideally suited, as a writer, to write this definitive writer's guide to writing... everything. David Quantick is part of the writing team for HBO's multi-award winning show Veep. He has recently won the 2015 Emmy Awards for Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series.

How to Write Everything

From the Emmy Award-winning writer of Avenue 5, Veep and The Thick of It comes a funny, violent and thought-provoking horror story like nothing you’ve seen before.

Ricky Smart is a nobody, a Miami Beach paparazzo who scrapes a living snapping celebs. One day Ricky wakes up and realises there’s something wrong with his hand. It’s not his hand. In fact, it’s someone else’s hand. How does he know it’s not his? Because it looks different, feels different and – perhaps the biggest clue – has a four-letter word tattooed across the knuckles.
 
But hey, it's still a hand, and it works just fine, so that's ok. Except a week later, his other hand changes. And a few days after that, Ricky gets a new arm…
 
Ricky is losing his mind as well as his body parts, but he has to pay rent and those seedy photos aren't going to take themselves. The world needs candid shots of pop sensation and local girl Scala Jaq, almost as much as Ricky's bank account does. Yet Scala has a secret of her own, a secret that leads them to an unlikely partnership, the strangest support group ever, and revelations that threaten existence as they know it.
 
It's up to the celebrity and her tormentor to work out what to do with a world of misfits, explosions, and other people's bad tattoos. Because when you've looked for redemption in all the right places, you might need to try the wrong ones.

Ricky's Hand

TWO COPS, AND ONE'S A ROBOT, ONLY THEY DON'T KNOW WHICH! BAFTA winner and writer on HBO's award winning Veep, DAVID QUANTICK teams up with THE BULLETPROOF COFFIN's SHAKY KANE on this migraine-inducing Pop Art Cop-Buddy one-shot set in a near-future Los Angeles. WARNING: Contains oversized patrol cars and perilous situations.

That's Because You're A Robot

Following the phenomenal success of Grumpy Old Men, the quintessential grumpy old man, David Quantick, has taken a well-deserved holiday. But no matter where you go, there is always something to moan about.

Grumpy Old Men on Holiday (Text Only)

Following the phenomenal success of ‘Grumpy Old Men’, and ‘Grumpy Old Men on Holiday’, the guru of grump, David Quantick, takes a stand for miserable slobs everywhere against the self-help motivational mafia and keep-fit claptrap. The ultimate in stress-relief for the 21st-Century Grouch.

Grumpy Old Men: New Year, Same Old Crap

At last! A comprehensive, handy guide for the misery-guts in your life. Are you an irritable, crabby, cantankerous, malcontented old grump? Well relax, because you're not alone. Grumpy Old Men is an annotated, cross-referenced and fully illustrated manual for malcontents everywhere: the comprehensive Gripes of Wrath.

Grumpy Old Men: A Manual for the British Malcontent

'Best quiz book ever' HARRY HILL 'Quantick is the Captain Beefheart of quizzing' MARK BILLINGHAM 'The antidote to every deathly dull pub quiz you've ever been to. This is how a quiz book should be written - where having fun is the most important outcome' GARY WIGGLESWORTH, author of The Book Lover's Quiz Book Distinctive, unusual, difficult, but spectacularly entertaining, this quiz book is to other pub quizzes what Trivial Pursuit was to Ludo, what The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy is like to the Rhyl phone directory, and what the Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost is like compared to a kid's scooter. Loads better. David Quantick works regularly with Armando Iannucci, including on the new HBO series, Avenue 5. He won an Emmy as part of the writing team on Veep, a BAFTA for Harry Hill's TV Burp and a Writers' Guild Award for The Thick of It. For over fifteen years, David has also hosted his own very popular quizzes at festivals, events, pubs, clubs, cinemas and in tents: the quizzes range is broad and the questions are tricky. They're not about statistics, there's no sport, the picture rounds are conceptual, and there's sometimes a round called 'Martin Amis Character or Blur Song'. Each quiz is funny and entertaining even if you don't know the answers. The quizzes are informative and opinionated. In some ways, they're like stand-up with questions. This is a book based on David's excellent live quizzes, described by many people as 'quite difficult'. But they are quizzes. Quite difficult quizzes that tax the brain and make it go in directions it didn't know it could. That's not to say the questions are fiendishly scientific and packed with questions about dates and the periodic table. They're about books and music, movies and actors, strange events and interesting quotes. You don't leave a Quantick quiz knowing how many times Spurs have won the League, but you may know how many Shirleys have sung a Bond theme or how George V made the front page of The Times. The effectiveness of David's quizzes is down to their unusual variety and almost stream-of-consciousness leaps and bounds of factual imagination. There's not even much point in cheating, because the answers often require mental agility as well as just knowing where Calais is (it's in France, but it wasn't always, even when it was). David's quiz book includes twenty-five main quizzes, four Christmas quizzes and four specialist quizzes, so thirty-three quizzes in total. Entertaining in its own right, this is also a conceptual yet very practical guide to staging excellent quizzes of your own.

Quantick's Quite Difficult Quiz Book

Mark Billingham

Martyn Waites

Stav Sherez

We can all name the classic rock and pop albums of the last fifty years. But what about the great lost albums? The albums that fell behind the back of the musical sofa? The albums that, in a very real sense, have been completely made up by the authors of this book? It took a bestselling crime writer or three to hunt down these fifty lost classics, and an award-winning TV comedy scriptwriter to buy them a pint and make them write it. From the 60s to the 00s, with track listings and full histories, Great Lost Albums reveals the recordings that - just perhaps - never existed, but really should have done. Albums include: · Bob Dylan's legendary collaboration with Liberace · Joy Division's 'musical theatre' period · Coldplay's IKEA Sessions, including 'Conscious Uncoupling (See Leaflet for Details)' and 'In my Place (There's a Lovely HEMNES Shelving System)' · The Who's magisterial, abandoned rock opera 'Bingo Wizard' · Kraftwerk's hastily deleted Christmas album, featuring the melancholic classic 'I Wish to Return this Item' ...and many, many more.

Great Lost Albums

'Go West' is a novel about Charlie Bread, self-styled antiques whisperer and forgery hunter. When Charlie is sent on the trail of a mysterious document that may have been written by the inventor of 'Peter Pan', his life becomes a road movie full of pursuit and intrigue, soundtracked by old John Peel shows, the beautiful Penelope, and a game of high road hide-and-seek all across the West Country. In a world where nothing is what it seems, Bread has to find out the truth - before the truth finds him out.

Go West

'Best quiz book ever' HARRY HILL 'A Quantick quiz is always an unmissable occasion. Funny and fantastical, brilliant, brain-bending and unutterably bonkers. Quantick is the Captain Beefheart of quizzing' MARK BILLINGHAM Distinctive, unusual, difficult, but spectacularly entertaining, this quiz book is to other pub quizzes what Trivial Pursuit was to Ludo, what TheHitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy is like to the Rhyl phone directory, and what the Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost is like compared to a kid's scooter. Loads better. David Quantick works regularly with Armando Iannucci, including on the new HBO series, Avenue 5. He won an Emmy as part of the writing team on Veep, a BAFTA for Harry Hill's TV Burp and a Writers' Guild Award for The Thick of It. For over fifteen years, David has also hosted his own very popular quizzes at festivals, events, pubs, clubs, cinemas and in tents: the quizzes range is broad and the questions are tricky. They're not about statistics, there's no sport, the picture rounds are conceptual, and there's sometimes a round called 'Martin Amis Character or Blur Song'. Each quiz is funny and entertaining even if you don't know the answers. The quizzes are informative and opinionated. In some ways, they're like stand-up with questions. This is a book based on David's excellent live quizzes. David Quantick is a novelist (All My Colours, Night Train), broadcaster (Radio 2's The Blagger's Guide, Front Row, Loose Ends), music journalist (NME, Q, Uncut) and comedy writer, who hosts quizzes in his spare time. For years, David's quizzes have attracted paying customers who like to be enraged and entertained by quizzes described by many people as 'quite difficult'. But they are quizzes. Quite difficult quizzes that tax the brain and make it go in directions it didn't know it could. That's not to say the questions are fiendishly scientific and packed with questions about dates and the periodic table. They're about books and music, movies and actors, strange events and interesting quotes. You don't leave a Quantick quiz knowing how many times Spurs have won the League, but you may know how many Shirleys have sung a Bond theme or how George V made the front page of The Times. The effectiveness of David's quizzes is down to their unusual variety and almost stream-of-consciousness leaps and bounds of factual imagination. There's not even much point in cheating, because the answers often require mental agility as well as just knowing where Calais is (it's in France, but it wasn't always, even when it was). David's quiz book includes twenty-five main quizzes, four Christmas quizzes and four specialist quizzes, so thirty-three quizzes in total. Entertaining in its own right, this is also a conceptual yet very practical guide to staging excellent quizzes of your own.

Jacky is a translator. He’s a bit of an eccentric. And he can’t quite understand why the alluring and beautiful girl at the bar wants to talk to him. Even more perplexing is the tattered book she carries with her but won’t let him touch. Written in an indecipherable language—even for him—it contains, quite impossibly, what appear to be photographs of her own murder. When she disappears hours later and the book comes into his possession, suspicion falls on him. Pursued by the police and armed with nothing but the book she has left behind, an unwavering determination, and the assistance of the world’s most annoying man, Jacky must race through Paris to solve the mystery and find the missing girl. A wholly original, comical tale of intrigue, betrayal and romance, this is the curious story of the world’s most enigmatic book.

John Grant

Bev Vincent

Lavie Tidhar

Eric Brown

Martin Edwards

Jared Cade

Michael Bracken

L. C. Tyler

O'Neil De Noux

Sandra Murphy

Amy Myers

Rhys Hughes

Deryn Lake

Jane Finnis

Keith Brooke

Ashley Lister

Paul Charles

Christine Poulson

This anthology draws together some of the best new stories of mystery and murder—compiled by the Anthony Award–winning crime fiction editor. This anthology collects the most original stories of murder by some of mystery fiction's most inventive talents from the United States and United Kingdom. With innovative new takes on locked-room mysteries and impossible crimes, these short stories are full of vexing conundrums and reality-defying puzzles. A murder has been committed—but how could it have happened? Curated by Maxim Jakubowski, one of the crime genre’s most renowned editors, this volume features never-before-seen stories by acclaimed authors—including British Science Fiction Award–winner Eric Brown, Derringer Award–winner O'Neil de Noux, and multiple CWA Dagger Award–winners and nominees.

The Best New Original Stories of the Genre

The Book of Extraordinary Impossible Crimes and Puzzling Deaths

Most books about the Beatles reveal the big picture first and ask questions afterward. This book reverses that approach. It takes a fresh and often funny look at the magnificent and sometimes idiotic career path of the Beatles through the prism of one vital album -- a record considered by many (including John Lennon) to be the one on which they reached their peak as songwriters. It focuses not just on the intimate recording details and creative process, but on the politics, music, and culture of the era, as well as the band's individual development amid increasing dissolution. In crisp and witty prose, the inside stories behind the making and release of the album are revealed: how the White Album got its look and name; why it included the most experimental track the Beatles ever recorded; how it inspired the bloody massacres of Charles Manson and his 'family'; why Ringo Starr walked out on the sessions and who replaced him; the actual identities of 'Dear Prudence', 'Sexy Sadie', 'Martha My Dear', 'Julia' and 'Bungalow Bill'; on which song Yoko sang lead; which song is about Eric Clapton's teeth;

The Making of The Beatles' White Album

Revolution

So your husband/boyfriend/partner (delete as necessary) has just tipped over 35/40/45/50 (delete as necessary) and you can see that he's not quite as keen on Emmerdale as he once was. He's started to dress with his jeans hoiked too high like his hero Jeremy Clarkson and he's bought a home gym - the one recommended by George Clooney. Then there are those Harley Davison brochures delivered in brown envelopes. You've noticed he's started pulling in his beer gut when he's talks to his teenage secretary. And why have his grey sideburns turned that browny black? That's a sure sign of hair dye. And then you stumble into the bathroom in the morning and he's got his hands in a jar of your face cream. LADIES BEWARE! That dangerous age has arrived. It's the male menopause. The mid-life crisis. The time when suddenly you find your partner has put a whole Scalextrix track in your attic without you noticing. He's bought an electric guitar and insists on playing 'Smoke On The Water 'to the cat at all hours. It that time when no matter what you say they suddenly don't mind making a fools of themselves. They come home almost every week with a new enthusiasm. Dangerous Men don't just cook - they COOK. With truffles, that cost £210 for one the size of a wrinkled scrotum, and have to be from the right region of France. And they must be served with a side order of blowfish, because you saw that in a James Bond DVD that came free with the Mail on Sunday.

David Quantick

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