Perfect for fans of Alex Rider and Artemis Fowl, Simon Fox's latest action- packed thriller is ideal for readers too young for Jack Reacher or Line of Duty. Archie Blake thought his policeman father teaching him how to pick locks and open safes was just a bit of fun.
Joseph F Jacobs Book order






- 2023
- 2023
- 2022
A thrilling, unputdownable debut, with extraordinary twists and incredible action, from an incredible new voice in children's fiction. I can steal time. The most I can take at the moment is fifteen seconds, which is not a lot.
- 2022
String Follow
- 368 pages
- 13 hours of reading
A darkly comic suburban Gothic about a malevolent force that targets a group of Ohio misfits, harnessing their angst for its sinister designs. "A work of evil genius that put me in a literal trance and didn't relinquish me until the final page. I loved every insidious second.” —Mona Awad, author of Bunny Something strange is happening to the teens in Adena, Ohio. A mysterious force is seeking inroads: vulnerabilities to exploit, friendships to hijack, untapped rage to harness toward its own ends. Who will serve it best? Claire is abrasive and aimless, embarrassed by her privilege. Weak-willed David entertains fantasies of cultish orgies, while Tyler covertly takes up residence in his basement. Greg wages war on the voices in his head, while his sister Beth quietly, furiously unravels. And at the center is the empathetic, naive Sarah. The force wants her most of all. But will she be the key to its success or its destruction? Eerie, hypnotic, and shot through with dark comedy, String Follow is a razor-sharp suburban gothic that exposes the sweating, bleeding truth of how kids become adults in twenty-first-century America. Simon Jacobs blends the startlingly original and the uncannily familiar, revealing the dark chaos that lurks beneath the surface of Midwestern suburbia.
- 2021
Hong Kong Beat
- 248 pages
- 9 hours of reading
Sex, drugs, gambling, ghosts, drinking, rugby, overseas adventures – and even some police work. Hong Kong on the edge of empire was a place teeming with triads, smugglers, Chinese immigrants and Vietnamese refugees. Simon's memoir of his time in the Hong Kong police force – from the 1970s until after the 1997 handover – is a fast-paced tale of his exploits. From the murky back streets of Kowloon to the open seas in the Marine division, his shocking and hilarious tales offer an alternative look back at what life was really like on the Hong Kong beat.
- 2020
A fascinating and revelatory look at how our bodies learn unconsciously and how understanding this can transform our lives.
- 2020
Language extinction on an enormous scale has been occurring for over a century and has sped up dramatically in the last two decades. This book revolves around travels through the world's most linguistically diverse regions, taking a comparative approach to the contemporary status of minority languages in the post-web world. Despite multiple threats, it finds grounds for optimism, suggesting that a natural evolution sees all countries at some point on a trajectory from conflict to from seeing minority languages as a threat to the power of the centre, through to acceptance, and finally celebrating them as an indicator of internal diversity and cultural vibrancy. The author discusses ways in which fragile languages can be protected without resorting to exclusivity, hostility, or the othering of those seen as threatening to that culture. The work is underpinned by Wales, with reflections on its place in the modern world and the status and significance of the Welsh language. This is partly as an exemplar of the previously cited evolution, but also a case study of how a language can thrive in relation to the global dominance of English.
- 2018
Jesus, the Essenes, and Christian Origins
- 238 pages
- 9 hours of reading
By bringing this holistic analysis of the evidence to bear, Joseph adds a powerful and insightful voice to the decades-long debate surrounding the Essenes and Christianity.--Bruce Chilton, Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Religion, Bard College
- 2017
Paternalism in Early Victorian England
- 350 pages
- 13 hours of reading
First published in 1979. This book studies the social outlook which historians today call paternalism. It was an ideology which informed social attitudes at all levels of society and expressed itself in countless ways. In this work, David Roberts provides a comprehensive examination of the revival, amplification, and transformation of the ideals of paternalism as a social remedy in the Early Victorian Period. This title will be of interest to students of history.
- 2017
Kings of the Sea
- 288 pages
- 11 hours of reading
A major new reassessment of the Stuart kings roles in the development of the Royal Navy