He had walked the earth as Nostradamus, Uther Pendragon, Count Cagliostro and Rodrigo Borgia. He could open a tin of sardines with his teeth, strike a Swan Vesta on his chin, rope steers, drive a steam locomotive and hum all the works of Gilbert & Sullivan without becoming confused or breaking down in tears. He died, penniless, at a Hastings boarding house, in his ninetieth year. His name was Hugo Artemis Solon Saturnicus Reginald Arthur Rune, and he was never bored. Hailed as the 'guru's guru', Rune penned more than eight million words of genius including his greatest work, The Book of Ultimate Truths. But vital chapters of The Book were suppressed, chapters which could have changed the whole course of human history. Now, seventeen-year-old Cornelius Murphy, together with his best friend Tuppe, sets out on an epic quest. Their mission - recover the missing chapters. Re-publish The Book of Ultimate Truths. And save the world.

Hugo Rune returns. And just in time, for the evil fairies of Brentford are planning to conquer the world. To publicise his mission, Hugo plans to kidnap the Queen while she addresses the world before a gig by the greatest rock band on earth, Gandhi's Hairdryer.

If your taste is for a tender romance, taut with passion and desire, love and betrayal, then this raging stonker of a novel, bursting out of its leather pants with sex, scandal, murder, mystery, suspense, drama action, adventure and Mad Car Disease, probably won't be for you. Sorry. Norman's definitely dead. His dad fell out of the sky and flattened him. And as Norman didn't want any regular full-time employment before he died, he certainly doesn't want any now. Especially not here at the Universal Reincarnation Company. There are far too many filing cabinets and far too much paperwork. Not that it's the company's fault. The blame really lies with God. If He hadn't decided to close down Hell, then Heaven wouldn't have got too overcrowded and there would have been no need to build the extension. And until the extension is finished, the URC will just have to keep on recycling all those souls in the big queue. But there's something very wrong, at the URC. Someone, it seems, has learned how to beat the system. Someone is preincarnating. Being reborn again and again on their original birthdate. And Just imagine if you could do that. You'd be The Most Amazing Man Who Ever Lived. Or you'd be the very Devil himself.