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5.1 – Professor Bernice Summerfield and the Big Hunt (Novel)
Professor Bernice Summerfield is enjoying a break. A break from work, a break from the rebuilding
of the Braxiatel Collection and a break from Jason, Adrian and even her beloved Peter.
She feels she's entitled to a bit of downtime. So, why won't anyone leave her alone? Before long, she's being sent
off after an old space artefact only to crashland on a planet apparently devoid of life.
Devoid of life, that is, except for the robotic animals, big game hunters and ruthless corporate administrators of
the type she's learned to know and mistrust. Benny realises that to survive she
must join in on what might be the most dangerous 'game' she's ever played...
5.2 – Professor Bernice Summerfield and the Grel Escape (Audio) (59' 11")
Young children can be difficult. Tantrums, toy-throwing, not wanting to go to bed, whisking their
mothers on dangerous journeys throughout all of time and space. Jason wants Benny's
son Peter to have a normal childhood. Peter has other plans. And unfortunately, Peter also has Benny and Jason's Time Rings.
And knows how to use them. Even more unfortunately, the fact-obsessed, tentacle-faced Grel have built a time machine, and
they're after Peter. So Benny finds herself on the run, landing in frightening
festivals and deadly deserts, facing ridiculously inaccurate robot doubles and hideously accented tourists, in what can only
be described as a sort of chase.
5.3 – Professor Bernice Summerfield and the Bone of Contention (Audio) (72' 23")
It's good to get away from the joys of motherhood once in a while. So when the Perloran government
call upon Bernice Summerfield to recover a state treasure, she readily obliges. Trouble is, the previous Perloran government
traded the artefact away to the Galyari, and to the Galyari, a deal is a deal. So when Benny arrives on the Clutch to ask
if the Perlorans can have their Bone back, she soon realises she has her work cut out for her. Work that's complicated significantly
by a frightened young Galyari who latches onto her, as if to prove that when it comes to the joys of motherhood, there is
no escape. And the growing pains of this particular youngster are set to prove very painful indeed.
5.4 – Professor Bernice Summerfield “A Life Worth Living” (Short Story Collection)
The war is over. The Braxiatel Collection is back to normal. Better than that, people are all making
more of an effort — to rebuild, to get on, to re-establish the Collection at the forefront of academic excellence. Benny
and Jason are back together. Life is good. It's not going to last, is it? Soon Benny is up to her eyeballs in strange deaths, sinister cults, peculiar love
affairs and a Collection full of people who haven't yet stopped fighting. Spend
a whole year with Benny!
5.5 – Professor Bernice Summerfield and the Relics of Jegg-Sau (Audio) (66' 45")
The colonists knew the risks about Jegg-Sau. With a flimsy atmosphere, no mineral wealth and exhausted
soil, only the strongest and most determined could hope to make a home there. But with nowhere else to go, they went ahead,
allegedly funded by a stock of valuable relics and art treasures stolen from Earth.
But the colony failed. Jegg-Sau was deserted once more, a home only to carrion and rusted dreams. But Bernice Summerfield
believes the relics remained, and she's come a long, long way in search of them. What she'll find is that others have reached
Jegg-Sau before her. She'll find herself cat's-paw in a dark outpost of frailty and obsession.
And she'll find the robots.
5.6 – Professor Bernice Summerfield “A Life in Pieces” (3 Novellas)
Benny is on holiday. Dealing with sand, sea and sunshine. Oh, and intrusive reality TV camera crews... Adrian and Bev are on a secret mission, trying to be subtle and undercover. Yeah,
that'll work... Irving Braxiatel is on Earth, helping an old friend solve a political
problem with his usual tact and diplomacy... And linking all of these little
sojourns is one Jason Peter Kane. He's on trial for his life, accused of stealing the legendary Purpura Pawn — and somehow
everyone else has to try and find a way to help him. But is someone out to stop them doing so, no matter what the cost?
5.7 – Professor Bernice Summerfield and the Masquerade of Death (Audio) (72' 45")
Good evening, Ladies and Gentlemen, and welcome to another in our exciting series of adventures
with the witty, irreverent and courageous heroine, Professor Bernice Summerfield. In tonight's story our daring adventuress
and her sidekick, Adrian, find themselves imprisoned in a crumbling palace in the Prison Season of Spring, replete with an
imperious queen and prissy but rather sweet AI gaoler. How did they arrive? And
why doesn't anyone know who the famous Bernice Summerfield is? Before too long there is murder as there always is
and Benny is accused. Who might possibly be setting her up for a fall? Could it be The Player a mysterious figure of
rhyme and chaos? And why is everybody so obsessed with his plays? Benny may find that her only way out of this prison is to
play along with the fiction. But is there someone behind the scenes manipulating her strings? Could she end up a mere costume'
in someone's disturbing game of dress-ups? After all her adventures, could this be the final episode?
5.8 – Professor Bernice Summerfield and the Silver Lining (Audio) (32' 21")
Benny Summerfield, archaeologist, adventurer and all-round trouble-magnet is asked to investigate
the remains of an ancient civilisation. AS she digs deeper into the mystery, Benny discovers that Tysir IV is not quite as
dead as she'd been told...
6.1 – Professor Bernice Summerfield and the Heart's Desire (Audio) (56' 56")
Christmas is a time for family, for feeling a bit sick after you've stuffed your face full of food
and for forcing a smile at the musical socks that Braxiatel thought would amuse you. It's not a time for zipping halfway across
the galaxy with the wafer-thin hope that you can save your home from being destroyed by a previously uncharted pulsar that's
heading your way. And that's pulsing a message in Morse Code. Deciphering the message leads Bernice Summerfield to Marlowe's World, a place where death is irrelevant
even though it lies at every corner, where the wildlife is just sooo cute – but lethal – and, most important of
all, where you must be very, very careful what you wish for...
6.2 – Professor Bernice Summerfield and Tree of Life (Novel)
What's the most famous archaeologist in the sector to do when she receives an uninformative message
from a woman she hardly remembers on a planet she's never heard of? Go and investigate,
of course! But the unending, unyielding jungle on Tollip's World doesn't make
it easy. Nor does the paranoia around the research team's mysterious discoveries there. Before long, Benny's under attack
from humans, long-dead aliens and unpleasant fungal infections. What happened
on Tollip's World 8,000 years ago? What's the origin of the electrical discharges beneath the surface of the planet? Why is
there a greenhouse in the middle of a jungle? And what are the Trees of Life? Could
the secrets of Tollip's World mean the extinction of humanity?
6.3 – Professor Bernice Summerfield and the Kingdom of the Blind (Audio) (68' 13")
Jason Kane thought things had been going so well with ex-wife Bernice Summerfield, until she went
sleepwalking, stole Brax's shuttle (causing Jason grievous bodily harm in the process), and then abandoned her on-off lover
to the mercy of a horde of mute and unfriendly aliens. Although Benny - waking
to find herself marooned on a strange planet dressed only in her nightie, with strange voices in her head and a bunch of one-eyed
monsters threatening to cut out her tongue - would probably argue that her day was even worse, thank you very much. But Benny does seem to have stumbled across the last resting place of a legendary civilisation, so it's
not all bad. Well, assuming she and Jason can survive - intact - long enough to tell anyone about it…
6.4 – Professor Bernice Summerfield and the Lost Museum (Audio) (68' 13")
January 2606. Trib City is at war with itself. The old dictatorship has been crushed, but the population
have turned on each other. The army cannot stop the fighting, nor the ever-mounting casualties. They can merely clean up the
mess. In the midst of all this, Professor Bernice Summerfield and her ex-husband
Jason Kane try to assess the damage done to the Trib Museum. The building
has been used as a bulwark, and one of the most important collections in the galaxy lies strewn about the floor. Prized relics
are missing, and even the kids on the street seem to know more about who took them than the museum's director. Benny and Jason struggle to find answers amid the farrago, but all they can unearth are more questions. In a city where no one speaks the same language, in a city with no shared identity
but the horrors of its recent past, in a city where nothing can ever be simple, everyone has something to hide.
6.5 – Professor Bernice Summerfield “Parallel Lives” (3 Novellas)
The Collection has lost one of its own. Someone who made a mistake once, and has never been forgiven
for it. Someone whose hard work and need to make amends has been taken for granted. Someone who doesn’t fit in. Clarissa Jones has been head of administration at the Braxiatel Collection for many
years. Enough time to really know her way around the place – its security, its weaknesses, its secrets. Knowledge, in
fact, of great value to any of the neighbouring powers. So it’s bad news
for everyone when she disappears. The Collection has lost one of its own. Unless
Clarissa has taken others with her.
6.6 – Professor Bernice Summerfield “Something Changed” (Short Story Collection)
Everybody dies. There's a fresh grave on planetoid
KS-159, but only Bernice Summerfield seems to have noticed. Her friends on the Braxiatel Collection are too busy with their
own affairs to see how distraught she is, how keenly she feels this loss. There's
no time to grieve. Life must carry on, different and strange as it may be. Benny has a son and a bloke to look after, and
a feud with Bev Tarrant to keep up. And she's also got dumped with a new assignment, babysitting some daft experiment. Doggles claims his "history machine" will change everything. And the worst thing is
that he's right.
6.7 – Professor Bernice Summerfield and the Goddess Quandary (Audio)
Legend has it that the mighty warlord Aldèbrath will return to defeat the enemy of Imogenella.
Should the need ever arise. When the monks of Etheria stumble across what they claim is Aldèbrath's last resting place it
looks like the legend might come true. If nothing else the monk's could make some cash from tourism - perhaps even enough
to repair the monastery roof. All they need is a certain profess of archaeology to verify their claim. Simple. You think? Bernice soon finds herself trapped in a
race against death on an unstable planetoid where there's more to the tomb than meets the eye. Mind you, the monks aren't
all they appear either - oh, and Benny's old friend Keri wants in on the audience share.
6.8 - Professor Bernice Summerfield and the Crystal of Cantus (Audio)
Fabled crystals from long-dead civilisations. Jason Kane blundering into situations out of his control.
Entombed Cybermen waking from a century-long sleep. It’s all in a day’s work for Professor Bernice Summerfield.
Armed with her endless supply of witty quips and penchant for alcoholic beverages, she’ll find the Crystal, rescue Jason, destroy the Cybermen and be home in time for supper. Except, this time, it’s different. This time, as the saying goes, it’s personal. And, after this adventure, things will never be the same again.
7.1 – The Tartarus Gate (Audio)
Benny is missing, having not returned from a dig. Kidnapped expertly. Removed from time and space
completely. Jason, of course, uses every means at his disposal to find her. But resources are limited: the Braxiatel Collection
has its own far more urgent problems. Then he receives information on her possible
whereabouts, from a benevolent religious order known as the CroSSScape. Why is
Benny on the planet Cerebus Iera, a planet on the cliff-edge of the universe? A planet that is known to be violent, dangerous,
and uninhabitable. A planet rumoured to have links to the Tartarus Gate, the mythical gateway to hell.
7.2 – The Timeless Passages (Audio)
For years the great Labyrinth of Kerykeion has been home to one of the largest libraries of human
incunabula in the galaxy. Here, otherwise lost volumes are all carefully preserved.
From tomorrow, it's under new management. Professor Bernice Summerfield
is sent to acquire some of the rarest books for the Braxiatel Collection before the new corporate owners bulldoze their way
in. She's hoping for a quiet time searching the archives. Some chance. Soon she's
investigating a horrible murder, and is caught up in a last-ditch scheme to save the entire library. There's a vicious, insane
killer cyborg on Benny's heels. And then ancient subterranean powers begin to stir…
7.3 – The Worst Thing in the World (Audio)
The Drome was set up with the best - or at least the most blatantly venal - of intentions. A self-contained
planetoid-community, wired with microcams, designed to pump out product to the GalNet media-stream twenty-six hours a Galactic
Standard Day. But now the Medium is rotting minds and turning them to murder.
The machine is turning out brain-dead zombies, setting them to stumble through the twists and turns of some inhuman and unguessable
plan - and Professor Bernice Summerfield, and her ex-husband Jason, are caught in the middle of it! Now Benny finds herself in a desperate fight for her life. A fight so desperate that she will be forced
to do something she has never done before, a horror that she never imagined she could bring herself to commit. The worst thing
in the world.
7.4 – The Summer of Love (Audio)
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It
was the hottest summer on record and the last summer before the war. It was the
one time Bernice Summerfield had a use for her otherwise useless boyfriend. But Jason Kane is away on the far side of the
galaxy. The Braxiatel Collection has always been an odd place to live. A perfect
replica of the Palace of Versailles, stuck on a smallish planetoid, hanging in a much disputed sort of space. The weather's
all over the place, the neighbours gathering armaments… And now everyone's
shagging like rabbits. Everyone except for Bernice.
Collected Works (Short Stories)
"It might be your name on the deeds, but you don't
belong here anymore. This is our home, our collection."
The Braxiatel Collection. It's a museum, art gallery, and academic institute. A home for renowned
archaeologists, runaway art thieves, and galactic waifs and strays. It's been a private playground and the battlefield in
the fight against tyranny. And now things are changing again. With the Collection's
founder missing, it's up to those left behind to make this place their own. Amidst
the chaos of visitors from the far future, dark secrets, old friends and new enemies, Bernice Summerfield must do whatever's
necessary to keep the doors open and her family safe. Yet through it all, there's
one truth she cannot escape. Braxiatel is gone. And nature abhors a vacuum.
7.5 – The Oracle of Delphi (Audio)
430 BCE. Greece is in turmoil: Athens is at war with the Spartans, the Athenian women possessed
by a horrifying cult... and then Bernice Summerfield strolls into town. Benny's
on a desperate mission to save the Braxiatel Collection, millennia in the future. But she's only gone and lost her husband
- last seen skinny-dipping somewhere near Delphi. She needs help, and it comes
in the shape of a talkative bloke called Socrates. Together they must find Jason,
survive the fate awaiting Athens and ensure that the future is saved. But divine powers are at work in Ancient Greece. Powers
the archaeological record neglected to mention... The Oracle will see you now.
Old Friends (3 Novellas)
Late 2562. Bernice Summerfield is 22 and enroute to the ruin of Earth. She's young, she's single,
she's just got an MA in archaeology. There's a life of adventure in front of her. And
then she meets the half-human, half-lemur Ivo, whose life she'll completely knock sideways.
Late 2606. Professor Bernice Summerfield is... well she looks nearly 40, but it's difficult to tell what with all the
time travel. She's on her way to a funeral, and to meet up with people she's not seen since her 20s. Ex-husband / current-beau Jason is keen to go with her. Benny never talks about that period of her life
- what she did to keep out of the war, where she travelled, how she survived, or who it was broke her heart. She's run through all time and space to avoid this reunion. But the best-selling author of Down Among The
Dead Men must finally uncover her own past.
7.6 – The Empire State (Audio)
A remarkable city once stood on a desert moon between six colony worlds: an entire city contained within
a single vast tower. In honour of another great feat of architecture from an earlier age, the human pioneers who built the
city christened it the Empire State. The phrase 'once stood' would seem to imply
that the city isn't there any more, and until yesterday it wasn't, having been destroyed almost a century ago. Indeed, Bernice
Summerfield has reluctantly left behind a Braxiatel Collection in turmoil and launched an expedition to excavate the site
of the Empire State, and noted archaeologists like her rarely concern themselves with things that haven't been broken, ruined
or lost. Yet now the Empire State has reappeared as if the last century never
happened, and the members of Bernice's expedition have been scattered throughout the city. One member in particular proves
difficult to track down, which is awkward as Bernice believes that she may hold the key to what's happening at the Empire
State - and the means to save the Braxiatel Collection.
8.1 –
The Tub Full of Cats (Audio Play)
Negotiations have failed and the Braxiatel Collection now sits within a warzone. Bernice and Maggie are racing back to the Collection with something that may just help bring an end to all the fighting
- or at least protect their home. That something is a man, Maggie's
father and the would-be killer of Bernice's own husband. His name: Irving Braxiatel. But the Collection is on the far side of the Mim blockade, and there's no possible way they can get through.
They'll just have to do something impossible…
8.2 –
The Judas Gift (Audio Play)
The Braxiatel Collection.
Once it was a home, a haven, one of the 800 Wonders of the Universe. Not any more. Draconia and the Mim are at war and
the Collection is caught in the crossfire. Its future hangs in the balance as Bernice tries to fathom the motives of a new
Draconian ambassador. Director Bev Tarrant must use every trick she knows if the Collection is to survive. She's been
a smuggler, a killer and a thief, but all that's behind her now. Isn't it? Beware your sins will find you out. Especially
when you accept the Judas Gift. They'll just have to do something impossible...
The Two Jasons
(Novel)
"Oh bloody hell,'
she snapped. 'Listen: me no wantee good time jig-jig all same, okay?" When Bernice Summefield first met Jason Kane, she failed to spot his many fine qualities and assets.
Over the course of many subsequent adventures, including marriage and divorce, she continued not to see them… 'You're not Jason,' she said. 'Who the hell are you?' When Bernice Summerfield first met Jason Kane 2, he was disguised as
a critic of the work of Jason Kane. Benny saw through his false moustache and literary pretensions, and had him and his other
clones expelled into space, there to make their own fortunes. One Jason Kane was, she felt, rather more than enough. Now something
is astir in the universe, a plot that threatens Benny and all she holds dear. If she stands any chance at all, she needs all
the Jason Kanes she can get…
8.3 –
Freedom of Information (Audio Play)
They're saying it
isn't a war. The Draconians have taken over the Braxiatel Collection, but they claim they come in peace. Insurrectionary
acts are easily being quelled - but the Draconian's new head of state on the Collection is troubled by a missing academic.
Is Bernice Summerfield one of the revolutionaries, undermining the peaceful campaign? Where is she hiding, and who is protecting
her? And if she's nowhere to be found, why does he keep hearing her voice? Meanwhile, an unlikely peacebroker
struggles to cut a deal on the Mim Sphere. But how can Hass, the Collection's gardener, convince the Mim to back down when
they think he's one of the enemy?
Nobody's Children
(3 Novellas)
The war is meant
to be over. The Draconian Empire has won the day, and the Mim have lost pretty much everything.
That includes the borogoves of Proxima Longissima, the Mim's beloved children. The Draconians claim the borogoves are foundlings,
abused and neglected by their parents. In the Empire they will be protected and provided for. Fearing that his species
faces extinction, one of the last surviving Mim begs Bernice Summerfield to come and see for herself. Benny just wants
to do right by her own son, Peter, and the brother or sister who may follow him. But soon the borogoves are, rather unexpectedly,
her godchildren, and Benny becomes their best hope for a future peace. As if dead oceans and burning deserts weren't hostile
enough, Benny must enter the labyrinthine corridors of diplomacy - where right and wrong are questions of perspective, and
even her own loved ones are not wholly innocent...
8.4 –
The End of the World (Audio Play)
"So for a long time
– years now, really – I've had this growing suspicion that everything was, well, everything was just wrong…"
Jason Kane – author, adventurer, hero and inveterately polysyllabic hyperbolist. Now join him on his most exciting adventure
yet! He's going to Hell and back on an impossible quest to stop a man with the powers of a god. Along the way there's
monsters and explosions and unseemly contretemps in the odd posh restaurant. The battle will be hard and require every last
iota of Jason's famous cunning. What can possibly go wrong?
8.5 –
The Final Amendment (Audio Play)
Forget the war and
death and boring stuff like that with another trip to the Braxiatel Collection!
"A welcome return
of an old favourite!" – Earth Empire News
"A moving parable
on what it is to be human in these ever-changing times." – BFM
"Glorious, crukking
filth! Hooray!" – Moonmaker
"Something of a
curate's egg." – Fandomania
Joined by friends
old and new, Jason Kane returns for his 15th series! Will Benny find out about him and Bev? Or about him and Adrian? What
is the mysterious connection between Joseph and Doggles? Will Brax ever reveal his sinister plans? And just who the hell is
Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart?
8.6 –
Wake (Audio Play)
"What else could
you have done?"
"Taken more note
of the warnings, I guess. We saw a future Peter once, and he'd become a killer. Ms Jones told me I was doing a lousy job as
a mother, and when I didn't listen she stole him from me. Then there was how he was on Montevadros. Even the Oracle of flipping
Delphi warned me to be on the look out. And if I'd spent less time knocking about with monsters and magic artefacts, and more
time here with him… This is where you're meant to tell me that I mustn't blame myself."
"You mustn't blame
yourself."
"Yeah thanks. I
feel so much better now."
9.1 - Beyond the Sea (Audio Play)
A new phase in the never-dull life of Bernice Summerfield
opens as she arrives on the human colony world of Maximediras, with her son Peter in tow, to begin work on a much-needed freelance
assignment. Relics from a hitherto unknown civilisation have been discovered on the sea bed and Bernice has been hired by
the planet's tourist board to travel out on one of their cruises and undertake a survey. Bernice is suspicious of her
employer's motives from the start, but becomes more uneasy as time goes on. Is she being taken advantage of? Is her reputation
starting to cause trouble for her? More seriously, she starts to realise that she's travelling on a cruise ship with an unusually
high suicide rate. What is causing this? Or who...?
9.2 - The Adolecence of Time (Audio Play)
Earth is still suffering the after-effects of the
asteroid (or something) which collided with the planet many years ago: the dust cloud which blots out the sun shows no sign
of settling and the dinosaurs are doomed. Above the cloud, colonies of winged reptiles – more intelligent than any we
know of – are fighting to survive. A strange creature calling itself Summerfield appears in their midst: is it destined
to save them?
9.3 - The Adventure of the Diogenes Damsel (Audio
Play)
Diverted to Victorian London by persons or powers
unknown, twenty seventh century archaeologist, adventureress and inadvertent absent mother Bernice Summerfield finds herself
beset with problems of a kind that those unused to time-travel could barely even imagine. What are the plans of the
mysterious Lord Straxus? Who is Ludvig Cooray and what has the number seven to do with all this? Can Bernice acquire the help
of Mycroft Holmes, the cleverest man of the age, and more importantly how is she going to get home?
9.4 - The Diet of Worms (Audio Play)
The Depository is a vast store of the literary remains of Earth’s
cultural greats: Charles Darwin, Martin Luther, Wilkie Collins, Barbara Cartland. Benny’s heard that there’s
a job going, and thinks that it might offer just the kind of stable environment that her son requires. It has friendly bars,
a reliable atmosphere shield, a fantastic patisserie run by a robot called Mrs Tishpishti - and no history of alien invasion.
But you know where you are with an alien invasion. Or you do, at least, if you’re Bernice Summerfield. And even she
has never encountered a monster whose main objective is to tell her that she doesn’t look very good in trousers.
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