A MALVERN Mystery is the latest volume from the pen of local writer Lionel Butcher.

The book is a collection of short stories, many set in places which will be familiar to Malvern people.

But even though the tales feature well-known names such as Madresfield, the Lyttelton Well and Priory Park, Mr Butcher's stories are not quite set in the everyday world we inhabit.

They are mostly the kind of stories of strangeness which get called "science fiction" but the author is not very happy with that term.

"My work is a blend of romance, philosophy and religion. If I say I write mostly science fiction, you will immediately get the wrong idea, for there are no all-teeth-and-stomach aliens in my fantasy worlds," he says.

"There is an alien mind program, which may or may not be good, but the extraterrestrials themselves are extinct.

"The five full-length novels which comprise my Centaurus Saga concern the exploits of a group of people who, disillusioned with the materialistic society of Earth, seek Utopia elsewhere. Naturally, they find what they are not expecting."

Mr Butcher's writing life began after he'd taken early retirement from a 30-year teaching career, and following the end of his marriage and of his religious faith.

"One day I sat down to write a story and discovered, much to my surprise, that after 94,000 words, I had a beginning."

His short stories have been heard on BBC Radio Gloucestershire and at the Cheltenham Festival of Literature.

He describes himself as an avid reader since the age of nine, when he came across the stories of H G Wells.

"My favourite story is one in which all the characters are nice people, but they still face difficulties, either through human weakness or through some external factor."

Mr Butcher's work is self-published (though the novel Centaurus Triangle came out on Marionette Books) and A Malvern Mystery is available at Beacon Books, Malvern, and Ledbury Books and Maps, price £7.95.