David Ian Groves
Author of The Digital Apocalypse
Books
Children’s
From the day of her birth, Daisy Dikdocks has ‘Pinkitis’—a condition which spells out a life as Naughty in Pink. With her clever mind and expressive face, she is a challenge to all those in authority, including her mum, never quite disobeying but finding ways to create mayhem wherever she goes. Her special friends love her naughty attitude and her ability to think up funny pranks and clever tricks that she performs on their teachers. Her mischief at school and outside makes life exciting and fun for all of them when Daisy is around. Her school principal, Sister Thelma, believes that Daisy is leader of a gang that is causing all the trouble at school. She is resolved to outwit Daisy, discover the gang and stop all the nonsense with the threat of a single large bottle marked ‘SLIME’ on her desk. But will she be able to link Daisy to the havoc at the school? Or will Daisy be able to outwit her principal and preserve her gang of special friends?
The story of Daisy Dikdocks continues.
Daisy Dikdocks and her best friend Murray are off to Australia to stay with her Aunt Suzanne and Uncle David in Canberra. Their farewell with the members of their gang involves an exchange of gifts which results in railway and airport dramas that even reach the TV News.
Daisy and Murray enjoy their Qantas flight from Singapore without Daisy’s mum, but cannot resist playing pranks on their fellow passengers while always appearing so innocent. In Australia, they cause mischief wherever they go: in their hotel, in the koala enclosure at the zoo, on the golf course, at Parliament House, and in Aunt Suzanne’s and Uncle David’s house, but their clever detective work also catches a burglar in the act.
To their surprise, when they have to attend school before going home to England, Sister Thelma, the Principal at their school in Brighton, has come to their Canberra school as a temporary replacement for the principal while she is away. Daisy enlists the help of some schoolgirls to play clever tricks and pranks at school and outwit Sister Thelma again, this time in Australia.
Although she has caused lots of mischief, her Uncle David loves the new fun in his life and will miss her badly when she goes home.
Cerebral Thrillers
In 2023, a series of extraordinary events, with unclear religious terrorist connotations, unfold at iconic USA locations. US President Caitlin Custer forms a team from the new Bureau of Anti-Terrorism (BAT) to identify and apprehend the instigators. As even more serious incidents hit across the USA, the resultant media frenzy centers on the predictions of an evangelical preacher that a series of biblical plagues will punish an increasingly Godless nation. This initiates panic as the population starts to believe that the plagues have descended. The BAT team are baffled by the lack of forensic evidence and a clear motive for the ‘plagues’ and cannot identify the instigators. As they investigate, the action swings across the globe with assistance from an unexpected quarter. The key question remains: Will the perpetrators be identified and apprehended in time to thwart the threat to national security and to ensure continued support for Caitlin Custer’s presidency?
The plot for ‘The Digital Apocalypse’ was conceived after reading ‘Heaven and Earth’ written by Ian Plimer. Winston Frobisher, a social historian, experiences triumphs and tragedies as he navigates through an increasingly digital world of unprecedented social and technological change that challenges his basic principles of love and life. Adam Lampton, influenced by his experiences with aid workers in Africa, commits to a course of direct action to slow the advance of famine, pollution and habitat destruction that threatens the future of a voracious, rapidly growing human population. Individually, their lives are thrown upside down by the unpredictable conjunction of man-induced and natural phenomena that threatens the planet. Will one or both emerge to influence the future?
It is spring 1988. The Chinese Government is hungry for mineral resources to provide infrastructure to an awakening industrial global giant, and for gold that will help fund it. Professor Qiu sets his postgraduates, Liang and Xinhua, to the task of developing a small exploration team to discover new gold deposits in mountainous Oilin Province near the Korean border. Their literature research leads them to a with an ancient Head of the Dragon gold mine. On arrival at the local village, they find that the mine-tunnel entrance on the hillside was sealed by an earthquake-induced landslide 500 years earlier, that also buried half the village with many casualties. The superstitious villagers have never uncovered the landslide and reopened the mine because they hear strange sounds emanating from the hillside that they have renamed Magic White Mountain.
By studying the geology, Liang and Xinhua believe they could discover a Tail of the Dragon gold mine, but first they must explore and map the old mine. They open the tunnel and enter the mine, never in their wildest dreams imagining what they will encounter”and how their experiences will forever change their lives and fulfil their pre-ordained destinies.
Order Destiny on Magic White Mountain
The Sequel to The Plagues’ Protocol
A rumour re-emerges about the fabled King Solomon’s mines, a legend about fabulously rich gold mines in Africa, immortalized in novels and movies. James Buchanan, an exploration geologist in Tanzania, who has already solved the mystery of the ‘plagues’ in America, thus helping US President Caitlin Custer to prevent a national disaster, sets out to investigate.
James soon realizes from his research on gold mines in the Middle East and North Africa that there were no major gold deposits that could have been King Solomon’s Mines during his lifetime. James works on the assumption that the legends refer to King Solomon’s Gold, a golden treasure hidden somewhere in Africa. Using his geological logic, he progressively eliminates the possibilities, but discovering the real location is more difficult and hazardous. Can he do it alone, or will he have to call in a favour from President Custer to seek her political help?
The Final Episode of the James Buchanan Trilogy
Headlines are made when a gold discovery that is claimed to be Lasseter’s legendary lost reef is made by the international company Krennerite Gold Corp. This is the most fabled lost gold reef in Australia’s long mining and exploration history, purported to have been discovered more than a century before. James Buchanan, a world-famous exploration geologist is intrigued because the region of the rediscovery is not known as a gold-bearing district but is frustrated in his efforts to access the discovery site to test his scepticism. Unexpectedly, James is approached by the Chinese Chairman of the Board of Krennerite, who is concerned about the veracity of the discovery and the damage to his reputation if any fraud is uncovered. He and James devise a plan which involves James and the Chairman’s daughter Pearl posing as tourists in the Central Australian region near Alice Springs and Ayer’s Rock to remotely investigate the discovery site using a drone. How will they handle their contrasting western and Chinese cultures in the wild and dangerous Australian outback? Will conflict or romance evolve from their interaction? Will the reported discovery really represent Lasseter’s long-lost gold reef or are there more sinister motives and activities at play? Will rapidly evolving and challenging events played out in the Australian outback, in Western Australia, and China make positive or negative changes to the lives of those involved? Only time will tell!
David Ian Groves 