Steven Bronowski

When a young journalist dies in violent circumstances, her brother soon learns, by way of the mysterious Stefan Crosscoe, that his sister has succumbed to the werewolf curse.

A rich, bored gourmand who has tasted all there is of exotic meals, even human flesh, gets a tip-off from a rich midget. The midget had tasted everything out of this world, and even something not of this world. In other words, a ghost. The gourmand becomes very interested…

Over the course of four decades, the personal lives of a quartet of Newcastle friends—Nicky, Geordie, Mary, and Tosker—intertwine with various political machinations, often for the worse: slum housing projects, police corruption, the rise of Thatcherism, political sleaze, and specific events like the 1984 Miners' Strike.