Towards the end of the eighteenth century, a group of learned men in the English Midlands, the Lunar Society, works to bring science and reason to the world. In America, the colonists are starting to break away from Britain in the War of Independence. In France, relations between the King and the people are worsening, which will eventually result in the bloodshed of the Revolution.And in a farmhouse not far from Birmingham, a young girl hears a frightening prophecy about her future from one who comes from the other side of the sky,Orphan Jane Machin, exiled from her native Staffordshire as a child on account of the uncanny events of which she appears to be the focus, and living a lonely life in Zürich, sets out on a journey to discover her true nature. On the way she discovers strange affinities: with Otto, mesmerist, conjuror and alchemist, and with Thomas FitzAlan, former soldier in the American War and English secret agent. Travelling through Switzerland, Germany, and Belgium, she arrives in Revolutionary France at the height of the Terror.As she discovers her hidden powers and her control over creatures she had previously regarded as fabulous, the desire for revenge against the being who calls himself her father builds inside her. She returns to England to join forces with a secretive group who are determined to see the end of the malignant forces of chaos who come from the other side of the sky and appear ready to take over our world.On the Other Side of the Sky brings together real historical figures such as Doctor Erasmus Darwin, Josiah Wedgwood, and Benjamin Franklin, and a background of eighteenth century Europe with a spellbinding alternative paranormal reality with its roots in traditional folklore, alchemy and the Rosicrucian tradition, and Kabbala. Hugh Ashton was born in the UK in 1956, and after graduation from university worked in the technology industry around Cambridge (the first personal computer he used was Sir Clive Sinclair's personal TRS-80) until 1988, when a long-standing interest in the country took him to Japan.There he worked for a Japanese company producing documentation for electronic instruments and high-end professional audio equipment, helped to set up the infrastructure for Japan's first public Internet service provider, worked for major international finance houses, and worked on various writing projects, including interviewing figures in the business and scientific fields, and creating advertorial reports for Japanese corporations to be reprinted in international business magazines.Along the way, he met and married Yoshiko, and also gained certificates in tea ceremony and iaidō (the art of drawing a sword quickly).In 2008, he wrote and self-published his first published novel, Beneath Gray Skies, an alternative history in which the American Civil War was never fought, and the independent Confederacy forms an alliance with the German National Socialist party. This was followed by At the Sharpe End, a techno-financial-thriller set in Japan at the time of the Lehman's crash, and Red Wheels Turning, which re-introduced Brian Finch-Malloy, the hero of Beneath Gray Skies, referred to by one reviewer as "a 1920s James Bond".In 2012, Inknbeans Press of California published his first collection of Sherlock Holmes adventures, Tales from the Deed Box of John H. Watson M.D., which was swiftly followed by many other volumes of Holmes' adventures, hailed by Sherlockians round the world as being true to the style and the spirit of the originals by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Inknbeans also published Tales of Old Japanese and other books by Ashton, including the Sherlock Ferret series of detective adventures for children. He and Yoshiko returned to the UK in 2016 for family reasons, where they now live in the Midlands cathedral city of Lichfield.In December 2017, Inknbeans Press ceased to be, following the sudden death of the proprietor, chief editor and leading light. Since that time, Ashton has reclaimed th
