Paul Magrs Books in Order

When an escaped convict abducts Mark Kelly’s daughter at Christmas, his eccentric family sets out through the snow to recover her. Their pursuit brings old relationships and possible magic into the lives of the Phoenix Court residents.

Sixteen-year-old Penny and her glamorous mother Liz move into Phoenix Court, where new friendships set off a chain of unusual events. Witchcraft, romantic entanglements and a surprising Goth-night revelation turn the housing estate into a place of transformation.

These stories follow people pursuing desires through journeys abroad, imagined adventures and encounters close to home. Movement beyond familiar limits offers different possibilities for discovery, as characters look for the experiences and connections they want.

After a Phoenix Court party, young gay man Andy discovers he is pregnant and escapes to Edinburgh. Meanwhile, Liz lies unconscious in the snow and Penny seeks love as their community’s strange events move toward an extraordinary birth.

Over twenty-five years, a family’s life is shaped by secrets, betrayal and violent death. Questions about inherited evil and misplaced blame emerge as a child’s act of murder exposes the psychological tensions beneath their relationships.

After Eurovision disappointment in 1981, pop group Things Fall Apart keeps pursuing fame and becomes a major act. Shared ambition and romance bind its members together, but constant closeness and the pressures of success gradually expose damaging fractures.

In northeast England in 1980, ten-year-old David believes he has secret powers while navigating shifting family relationships. Smart and sensitive, he finds himself more interested in an older boy nearby than in the girls others expect him to like.

A week among an ordinary Norwich community expands into a surreal tangle of secret identities, disasters and unexpected encounters. Literary figures enter conversations and city streets as the residents explore the shifting boundaries between friendship, desire and everyday reality.

Washed-up ventriloquist Frank insists that his teenage son Jason continue the family act. His old puppet Tolstoy has ambitions of television fame and revenge, leaving Jason struggling against a controlling performer with a sinister life of his own.

An ageless former horror star returns to Manchester to join a provocative television soap as her income dwindles. Her leading man fears she wants his soul, while the bargain she made with the devil as a child casts a dangerous shadow.

Seeking a quiet retirement, Brenda opens a guest house in Whitby and befriends neighboring shopkeeper Effie. Supernatural disturbances keep drawing them into investigations, while Brenda’s unusual scars and hidden past suggest she belongs among the town’s mysteries.

Poison-pen letters unsettle Whitby as Brenda and Effie investigate the mysteries gathering around them. A stranger’s knowledge of Brenda’s past and disturbing events outside her bedroom force her to face more than the town’s supernatural troubles.

Sisters Helen and Eunice keep failing television talent auditions: one has the voice, the other the appearance producers want. Their mother’s new boyfriend devises a scheme to combine their strengths, presenting them to a singing competition as conjoined twins.

Brenda’s old adversary Mr Danby returns through a late-night radio show, drawing Effie into trouble. Meanwhile, an unexpected romance forces Brenda to confront her unusual origins as the friends journey beyond familiar Whitby to face new dangers.

After his parents die, sixteen-year-old Simon moves into his grandparents’ stifling bungalow and retreats into reading. A discovery shared with his grandmother leads to an unusual bookshop, where new friendships produce consequences that unsettle all involved.

Penny leaves domestic troubles behind for Whitby, hoping the seaside town will offer a fresh start. Her search for a new identity leads toward something far more dangerous, as mysterious events suggest a gateway to hell.

Starting secondary school in the 1980s, David clings to Doctor Who and the friendship built around it. When his neighbor Robert turns toward girls, music and exercise, David must decide how to grow without losing what matters to him.

As Brenda prepares for Christmas, mysterious neck bites and Effie’s changed behavior threaten Whitby. A newcomer investigating an Edwardian novelist’s strange worlds uncovers discoveries that may help Brenda rescue her friend before the consequences become permanent.

An undead woman discovered in a Manhattan gallery becomes a museum sensation, while a book of spells arrives from London. Its vampire-tainted magic unleashes a spreading infestation, leaving the revived Scottish Bride and her new friends to confront it.

When a window cleaner disappears, his child insists the Ninnies took him. His wife believes he simply abandoned the family, leaving their child caught between an extraordinary explanation and a mother determined to dismiss it.

Holidaying in Paris, Brenda and Effie receive a warning that returning to Whitby could unleash worldwide disaster. Their duties as the town’s supernatural guardians draw them home anyway, where secrets from their pasts threaten everything they cherish.

A battered stray cat finds a home with Magrs and his partner Jeremy in Manchester. Told through Fester’s imagined voice, the true story follows seven years of companionship and the everyday changes through which two men become a family.

Lora’s family struggles to survive as third-generation settlers on Mars, where disappearances accompany rumors of strange dancers. When her father and grandmother vanish, the survivors cross the desert seeking safety and discover the alluring dangers of the City Inside.

After her detective employer retires, Mrs Danby boards a luxury liner and befriends a supposedly retired vampire hunter. A professor’s stories of an underwater city draw them into a sprawling adventure involving sea monsters, dangerous inventions and threats to the world.

Suspicious of the City Inside’s rulers, Lora joins an expedition across Mars to find a survivor of the old Earth starships. A crash and disturbing revelations about her missing family send her into a new rescue mission.

Working as a housemaid in a northern university town in the 1930s, Brenda encounters writers whose stories summon creatures from other dimensions. Fictional counterparts of Tolkien and Lewis join her in battling demons and investigating the resulting mysteries.

Magrs revisits the Christmas television of his own lifetime, seeking memorable discoveries among familiar reruns and seasonal specials. Personal responses guide a journey through festive viewing, exploring what makes particular programs linger beyond their original broadcast.

After her mother dies, Wendy leaves Blackpool for Edinburgh and joins an eccentric circle of relatives and acquaintances. Searching for romance in the 1990s, she encounters death cults, doubles and a city where everyone seems to be writing about everyone else.

Lora is caught between the Ancient Heart of Mars and the City Inside’s Hybrids, each claiming to protect humanity. With her family entangled in the conflict, she must confront the planet’s fate and consider whether to leave it forever.

Combining personal recollection with reflections on writing, Magrs considers how ordinary experience becomes creative material. Memory, childhood, relationships and loss offer starting points for readers seeking to understand their ideas and develop a writing life.

Brenda and Effie face vampires, mummies and haunted cats in another collection of Whitby adventures. Their investigations reach from the Christmas Hotel to Brenda’s origins with Baron Frankenstein, bringing familiar allies and unexpected literary visitors into their supernatural world.

Fourteen Christmas stories travel from Venice and Paris to Whitby and Mars. A Goblin King’s invisible mask and new seasonal adventures for Brenda, Effie and Iris Wildthyme bring magical encounters to familiar festivities and unexpected places.

Dodie inherits responsibility for a south Manchester café while her energetic mother plans its reinvention. New employee Ian joins their circle, and a summer of romances, library protests and unexpected adventures prompts each to reconsider where they belong.

Rejected for being different from the cows around him, Mooncalf ventures into the wilderness hoping to find his own kind. Dragons, witches and surprising allies turn that search for belonging into an adventure where appearances rarely reveal who can be trusted.

Marking twenty-five years since his first publications, Magrs gathers stories from across his career alongside previously obscure pieces and new work. The collection draws together the queer northern magical realism that has shaped his varied fiction.

Panda, Cat and Teddy offer a less comforting version of inspirational animal wisdom as friendship collides with selfishness and hidden malice. Illustrated conversations turn familiar messages about kindness and perseverance into jokes about the difficulties of getting along.

The Doctor returns to a disillusioned Robin Hood and helps reunite his scattered companions. King John summons a shape-shifting alien adversary, forcing the travelers and outlaws to confront a threat that could overwhelm the kingdom.

Beatrix leaves London for a quieter countryside life, hoping to paint animals and cultivate kindness. The wildlife emerging from isolation proves irritable and socially inept, turning her pastoral dream into a comic struggle with modern grievances.

At the British Museum, the Doctor and Jo Grant discover a device that opens a path into Greek myth. Entering its world to confront a sinister controlling influence sends them among gods, dragons and the dangers of the underworld.

A visit to Oxford turns strange when Lewis Carroll appears and garden-party guests become animals. Trapped in a distorted Wonderland and separated from their TARDIS, the Doctor and companions must decipher clues to escape an unknown cosmic enemy.

A planned holiday takes the Doctor and his companions to Whitby, where a production of Dracula coincides with mysterious deaths. When Ian disappears, the travelers must investigate a vampire threat in a town already steeped in legend.

At the end of the universe, a storyteller gathers listeners around a campfire for tales of the Doctor. Twenty-four folktales and fables reinterpret adventures through unusual perspectives, drawing together companions, monsters and unlikely figures from across time and space.