Search Results for: The Islanders

When Davey and his family moved to the city from the island of Muckle Burra off the coast of Scotland, they left his grandmother behind. But now his parents are dead-after a car accident that left Davey confined to a wheelchair-and Gran has moved in to take care of him and his sister, Lu-Lyn. But Lu-Lyn believes that both she and Gran are “Ridders” who have strange, dark powers and must return to the island… or has a dangerous force already followed them here?

Davey must embark on a terrifying journey that will reveal the true secret of his grandmother’s rare gift-and the limitless power of his own potential.

Joan Aiken mixes myth and magic in this mysterious short novel inspired by the Munch painting, The Scream.

“An eerie story from this bestselling children’s author: ‘Superbly chilling…this is one of her best” Independent on Sunday

“A tense, exciting and disturbing new story from Joan Aiken, whose magical, fantastic and supernatural books for children are among the best ever written” World of Books

“A prolific and much-beloved children’s author, Joan Aiken is perhaps best known for her classic “Gothic” adventures, chief among them The Wolves of Willoughby Chase and Midnight is a Place. The Scream, which features Edvard Munch’s famous painting of the same name, was written later in the author’s career, and makes for an agreeable “shivery” read” LibraryThing

“Joan Aiken, one of the most brilliant children’s writers of her generation, delivers a dark and potent reading experience in this short, disturbing story. After their parents’ fatal accident, David and his sister live with their grandmother, a fearsome woman who possesses the power of the Evil Eye. Gran’s mysterious links to the old legends and magic of a remote Scottish island seem destined to lead to another tragedy” Amazon Review

“Joan Aiken is just ridiculously talented in terms of the scope of her writing and this is truly demonstrated by her ability to create a chilling and compelling narrative in such a short book” Goodreads Review

A gripping retelling of the myth of Perseus by award-winning author Gwyneth Jones, writing as Ann Halam.

Perseus, the God-Touched son of Zeus, lives in luxury on the island of Serifos. But trouble is brewing in the world – Gods and mortals are bringing discord closer to his home shores.

When a beautiful stranger, a fugitive from another disaster zone, arrives on the island, Perseus is smitten. But Andromeda isn’t all she seems. She must die to save her people, and a stunning, world-changing discovery will die with her, unless Perseus abandons everything to confront the Medusa quest.

Taylor Walker seems like any ordinary 14-year-old . . . if you overlook the fact that she lives on the island of Borneo, on a primate reserve run by her parents, and knows how to survive in the jungle.

Tay isn’t just like everyone else. But she is like one other person. She’s exactly like one other person. Tay is a clone, one of only five in the world, and her clone mother is Pam Taylor, a brilliant scientist.

When rebels attack her home, Tay escapes with her younger brother and Uncle, an exceptionally intelligent orangutan. As they flee for their lives, Tay must look within to find her strength: Pam’s DNA, tempered by Taylor’s extraordinary life.

She’s not alone, and she might be a clone, but she’s also unique.

Diana and Jane had their glamorous European road trip all planned out: shopping in Paris, then down along the Spanish coast for sun and sea.

A strange road takes them through twists and turns until they black out. When they wake, they’re on a strange island, with no way off and no sign of how they got there. This strange bubble out of time has no seasons, no day or night, and is populated by a small collection of people. They are cared for – or ruled over – by the mysterious ‘Master’.

They’re in paradise. But they’re not allowed to leave…

OMINOUS FOLLY is one of Denis Hughes’ works under his many pseudonyms. It has been out of print in the UK for decades and is now available for the first time as an eBook!

Welcome to the Tomorrow Factory.

On your left, post-human hedonists on a distant space station bring diseases back in fashion, two scavengers find a super-powered parasite under the waves of Sunk Seattle, and a terminally-ill chemist orchestrates an asteroid prison break.

On your right, an alien optometrist spins illusions for irradiated survivors of the apocalypse, a high-tech grifter meets his match in near-future Thailand, and two teens use a blackmarket personality mod to get into the year’s wickedest, wildest party.

This collection of published and original fiction by award-winning writer Rich Larson will bring you from a Bujumbura cyberpunk junkyard to the icy depths of Europa, from the slick streets of future-noir Chicago to a tropical island of sapient robots. You’ll explore a mysterious ghost ship in deep space, meet an android learning to dream, and fend off predatory alien fungi on a combat mission gone wrong.

Twenty-three futures, ranging from grimy cyberpunk to far-flung space opera, are waiting to blow you away.

So step inside the Tomorrow Factory, and mind your head.

WINNER OF THE 2018 BRAM STOKER AWARD FOR BEST ANTHOLOGY

It’s only water, so why should we fear large bodies of it, such as the sea or the ocean? However, when you’re all alone, you realize how scary a place it can be.

Stranded on a desert island, a young man yearns for objects from his past. A local from a small coastal town in England is found dead as the tide goes out. A Norwegian whaling ship is stranded in the Arctic, its crew threatened by mysterious forces. In the nineteenth century, a ship drifts in becalmed waters in the Indian Ocean, those on it haunted by their evil deeds. A surfer turned diver discovers there are things worse than drowning under the sea. Something from the sea is creating monsters on land.

In Devil and the Deep, award-winning editor Ellen Datlow shares an original anthology of horror that covers the depths of the deep blue sea. Whether its tales of murderous pirates who stalk the waters in search of treasure and blood, creatures that haunt the depths below?ones we’ve only seen in our nightmares, or storms that can swallow you whole, the open water can be a dangerous and terrifying place.

With stories from New York Times-bestsellers and award-winning authors such as Seanan McGuire, Christopher Golden, Stephen Graham Jones, and more, Devil and the Deep guarantees you’ll think twice before going back into the water.

There are new residents in the Long Island Sound . . . and they have a taste for flesh.

The first time the creatures tasted human blood, their savagery went undetected.

Thus begins Mount Misery, a terrific horror tale by writer Angelo Peluso. Located on the Long Island Sound, random attacks by unknown creatures are terrorizing local residents. The question: Who is going to do something about it?

Marine biologist Katie DiNardo and ichthyologist Nick Tanner have seen the damage caused by their mystery creatures but are at a complete loss as to the attacking species. All they know is that they need to get to the bottom of this . . . and fast. While they continue to do their research, people are dropping like flies, and if they don’t figure out what’s going on, there’s no saying what this destructive species will do next.

In a similar style to Jaws, Mount Misery is a spectacular suspense novel that grips you from the first page and doesn’t let its teeth out! Fans of horror will rejoice with Mount Misery, and readers will enjoy the throwback style that made this genre what it is today.

A young scientist with ties to a family fortune survives a murder attempt while working in Tahiti. He discovers the identity of the assailant, but not the motive. For this, he must follow the would-be murderer aboard an island-hopping passenger/cargo schooner bound for the Marquesas…

Lying off the coast of Monterey, Bird Island is favored with tranquil beaches, coves and rocky hills. The island is home to a finishing school for girls, and a picturesque old hotel-in desperate need of repair. The hotel owner must sell plots of the island to finance renovation and enlargement.
The buyers are an odd bunch: a whale hunter, an amateur photographer of artistic nudes, a fugitive from justice, a young poet who composes rhymes for greeting cards, and an explorer, accompanied by his pet baboon.
Everything goes wrong, to the extent that even Rexie, the cheese-loving hotel cat is affected! So much for tranquility, on Bird Island…
First published as Isle of Peril, Bird Isle mixes intrigue with humor, inspired by the great P.G. Wodehouse.

BOOK TWO OF THE PERILOUS QUEST FOR LYONESSE

It is time for Simon Branthwaite to leave Sandarro, the city where he has lingered since reaching the fabled island of Roackall. Bidding a farewell to his new-found love, Princess Ilven, he sets out with Prince Avran to continue his quest for the lost realm of Lyonesse, heading toward the Stoney Mountains where many an adventure awaits them…

The Lords of Stoney Mountain is the second in Anthony Swithin’s fantastical Lyonesse sequence, edited by Mark Sebanc.

OF WISHING RINGS, OGRES AND OTHER MAGICAL THINGS

Callipygia the Amazon and her stalwart knight Mandricardo had had more than enough. All they really wanted to do was avoid the perils, both swordlike and sorcerous, of the many fabled lands of Terra Magica and win their way back home to Tartary to settle down in wedded bliss.

But a realm of roving monsters and wild enchantments is not so easily traveled through unscathed, and when Callipygia and Mandricardo find themselves trapped on a spell-run flying island from which no one has ever escaped, it signals the start of a madcap romp of magic and menace that will lead them into far-distant kingdoms and dangers undreamed…

His name was Jose Gasparilla, and he was the self-proclaimed King of Pirates. He terrorized the waters around Florida, demanding tribute from every merchant ship he encountered. Riches flowed into his tiny island kingdom . . . and yet he longed for a life he could never have, for he had left his beloved Isabel behind in Spain. One day he would return to claim her for his bride, he knew, and she had vowed to wait for him.

When he captures a ship and discovers Isabel and her elderly husband aboard, he strikes a deal with the man who stole his bride. For Jose Gasparilla, it means a chance to regain the lost years of his life . . . to live his childhood again and pick a new path, in the Land Without Shadows…

Archmage Planir and the wizards of Hadrumal have demonstrated their devastating powers and the corsair threat is no more. The mainland rulers’ relief is overshadowed with fear of one day facing such a threat to their own dominion. Will Tormalin’s Emperor make an alliance with Solura’s wizards, who so openly covet Hadrumals secrets? Will he seek out that other mysterious magic, Artifice, to counter Planir’s magecraft? How will the aloof Aetheric adepts of the mountains answer such an appeal? With many of the Wizard Council disputing Planir’s chosen course, he must look beyond the island city for allies. To Suthyfer, the controversial haven for mageborn far away in the Eastern Ocean. To Caladhria, where Corrain, Baron Halferan and Lady Zurenne believe they have finally won respite from all their trials. But absence of strife is hardly peace. The lull before winter’s storms descend from the distant northern peaks will be a short one.

Captain Corrain is hailed as a hero but he knows all such praise would turn to anger if certain people knew what had really happened. The wizard who supposedly saved him and his comrades has merely claimed the island of the corsair’s for his own. No one knows what this enigmatic newcomer intends to do next. Corrain has good reason to fear the worst, as he confides in Lady Zurenne of Halferan. He knows he can trust her now that still more perilous secrets bind the two of them together. This disastrous turn of events cannot be concealed from Hadrumal’s powerful mages. The Chief Mage Planir’s leadership is now openly questioned. Surely he will enforce his authority by crushing this upstart? But the Aldabreshin warlords act first. The warlords are watching the ominous skies as a once in a lifetime conjunction of the stars approaches. Will the warlords be content to drive this solitary wizard out of the Archipelago or has the time come for them to destroy all magic?

The Archmage rules the island of wizards and has banned the use of magecraft in warfare, but there are corsairs raiding the Caladhrian Coast, enslaving villagers and devastating trade. Barons and merchants beg for magical aid, but all help has been refused so far. Lady Zurenne’s husband has been murdered by the corsairs, and a man she doesn’t even know stands watch over her and her daughters. Corrain, former captain and now slave to the corsairs, knows that Zurenne’s guardian is a rogue wizard. If Corrain can only escape, he’ll see justice done. Unless the Archmage’s magewoman, Jilseth, catches the renegade first…

There was nothing on the island big enough to kill a man, yet each new day brought with it another bloody death, another mysterious disappearance.

The first hint of something wrong at the outpost was the plane. It crazily circled the little island, its cargo-bay doors open, its radio dead. It seemed to hang in the air for a moment and then it dived downward, levelled and dipped again. It made a belly landing on the runway with its wheels still retracted.

There was a singular, dead silence and then a shot rang out.

The crew of two and the seven passengers had vanished, the cargo was strewn about and the fuel tanks had been emptied. And the pilot, after landing, had blown his brains out…

Mixing the mundane with the metaphysical, the pairings of the everyday and the extraordinary in this collection of short fiction yield supernatural results-a young musician perceives another world while drinking coffee, a fairy chronicles his busy life in a sandcastle during the changing tide, a demonic 16th-century chess set shows up in a New Jersey bar, and Charon, the boatman of hell, takes a few days vacation. Storylines both conventional and outlandish reveal humdrum routines as menacing, or imaginary worlds as perfectly familiar. Allusions to authors such as Edgar Allan Poe and Jules Verne reinforce the fantasy tradition in these tales, while understated humor and moments of sadness add a quirky unpredictability. Also included is the previously unpublished novella, “Botch Town,” a coming-of-age story about a boy on Long Island whose family and friends live ordinary lives under threats both real and imagined. Each story is followed by a brief afterword that details its genesis.

In New York’s Long Island, in the unpredictable decade of the 1960s, a young boy laments the approaching close of summer and the advent of sixth grade. Growing up in a household with an overworked father whom he rarely sees, an alcoholic mother who paints wonderful canvases that are never displayed, an older brother who serves as both tormentor and protector, and a younger sister who inhabits her own secret world, the boy takes his amusements where he can find them. Some of his free time is spent in the basement of the family’s modest home, where he and his brother, Jim, have created Botch Town, a detailed cardboard replica of their community, complete with clay figurines representing friends and neighbors. And so the time passes with a not-always-reassuring sameness-until the night a prowler is reported stalking the neighborhood.

Appointing themselves ad hoc investigators, the brothers set out to aid the police-while their little sister, Mary, smokes cigarettes, speaks in other voices, inhabits alternate personas . . . and, unbeknownst to her older siblings, moves around the inanimate residents of Botch Town. But ensuing events add a shadowy cast to the boys’ night games: disappearances, deaths, and spectral sightings capped off by the arrival of a sinister man in a long white car trawling the neighborhood after dark. Strangest of all is the inescapable fact that every one of these troubling occurrences seems to correspond directly to the changes little Mary has made to the miniature town in the basement.

The small Hebridean island of Alsaig is facing a crisis. It is famous for its only export, a particularly fine malt whisky, upon which most of the islanders depend for their livelihood. But the distillery is threatened with a takeover by an American firm, which would not only make many of the workforce redundant but also adulterate the product.

But owner Alisdair Matheson is refusing to sell, despite threats of sabotage and an attempt on his life. The situation is complicated further by an actual murder on the island, which the locals believe to have been committed by American Mike MacDonald. Tension mounts as storms lash the island, isolating it from the outside world and locking the killer in with the islanders.

Morgan the Raider got his name from the famous pirate of old, as he stands convicted of stealing $40 million. He is good at getting himself out of jail, too; he has already escaped custody once.

Now he is offered the chance of a reduced sentence – but at risk of his life. For he must get into an escape-proof prison on a Caribbean island, a torture fortress known as the Rose Castle, in order to find and set free an important scientist. A CIA agent, Kim Stacy, is assigned the job of accompanying him – and keeping an eye on him at the same time.

But did Morgan really steal the money? And just who are the prisoners being held in the island fortress?

Honolulu: Port of Call is a unique collection of short stories of the Hawaiian islands brought together by Joe Gores: thirteen tales by legendary writers including Jack London, Herman Melville, W. Somerset Maugham, Robert Louis Stevenson, Joseph Conrad and Joe Gores himself.

Yet these are tales chosen to entertain, rather than literary gems. They paint a picture of a Hawaii before the high-rise buildings went up; an era of missionaries and merchants, sailors and whalers, of the drama of East meeting West before, finally, urbanisation and the tourist buck killed off the Polynesian way of life almost completely.

Gores brings us a flavour of that lost way of life; a breath of the romance that still draws Western visitors to the islands in search of the exotic and, perhaps, of an innocence long lost.

It’s 1943, and down-on-his-luck American expat Philip Stark is on the Caribbean island of Santa Teresa. The prewar destination playground is deserted now except for diplomats and oil refinery workers.

When a local correspondent dies, Stark sees a chance to make some money. Having worked for the same company in the past, he is hired to replace the dead man. But Stark doesn’t think his predecessor died by accident. As he looks into the mystery, he encounters a rival correspondent, an enigmatic police officer and the mistress of the dead man – all of whom had a stake in seeing him dead.

When Dr Basil Willing rents a small shack for a vacation on Long Island he becomes embroiled with his landlady, Claudia Bethune. Claudia wants to learn the secrets of her relatives and friends, so she steals a truth serum and holds a dinner party for her nearest and dearest.

In the early morning hours, as Dr Willing returns to his cottage, he sees what he thinks is a fire and investigates. He finds Claudia near death at the table and hears footsteps fading up the stairs. Someone didn’t want Claudia to learn the truth about them, and soon Dr Willing finds himself a suspect in murder.

Antonia Winfield sensed someone was following her. She’d seen a man in a brown suit. He was even behind her in the travel agents where she’d booked her holiday abroad. But perhaps she’d just imagined things.

This year she was going on a restful, comfortable trip to a lovely Greek island – but that’s not the way things turned out. Mrs Winfield’s niece was going on the trip with her, and the two ladies soon had a third companion: the man in the brown suit . . .