Search Results for: empties

The seventh book in the New York Times bestselling Longmire series, featuring Sheriff Walt Longmire.

Raynaud Shade, an adopted Crow Indian and one of the country’s most dangerous sociopaths, has just confessed to murdering a boy twenty years ago and burying him deep within the Bighorn Mountains. Absaroka County Sherriff Walt Longmire must escort Shade through a snowstorm to the site, but the mission turns personal when Walt learns whom the dead boy’s family is.

Guided only by Indian mysticism and a battered paperback of Dante’s Inferno, Walt braves the icy hell of the Cloud Peak Wilderness Area, cheating death to ensure that justice – both civil and spiritual – is served.

First there was Della, the woman who wanted . . . love? She did not – could not – know, for where love should have been was emptiness.

Then came the Poet, who wanted only to please, but did not know how. His every effort was rejected – but he could not stop trying.

Rogers was the completion, the part above all other parts that made the whole.

And then there was Archer – and the thing in his brain . . .

“How can you drink tea from an empty cup?”

That ancient Zen riddle holds the key to a baffling mystery; a young man found with his throat slashed while locked alone in a virtual reality parlor.

The secret of this enigmatic death lies in an apocalyptic cyberspace shadow-world where nothing is certain, and even one’s own identity can change in an instant.

Secretly and in stealth four puny humans set out to invade the heartland of Evil – the so-called Empty Lands, filled with every evil creature from the darkest of mankind’s myths.

Harcourt went reluctantly to rescue his long-lost and almost forgotten fiancée. The Knurley Man, who was somewhat other than quite human, went to find the death that would be kinder than the future he foresaw. The abbot sought to recapture a fabulous prism in which the soul of a saint had been trapped. And the girl Yolanda was seeking the answer to a mystery and a question she did not know.

But already their coming and their purpose was known. The denizens of the Empty Lands were girding for war.

And behind all the Evil lay the most ancient of dark Powers, waiting patiently for the humans whose souls should set it free.

In The Dragon on the Border, Sir James, the Dragon Knight, faces his most terrifying challenge – the Hollow Men, spirits of the dead in empty suits of armour. Their weapons are all too real, and a slain Hollow Man can be resurrected within two days. As long as one of their unholy number endures, no Hollow Man can ever truly die. It’s a battle that could test any dragon. Not to mention a knight. Or an American. Or all three in one!

A millionaire’s sage-green Rolls Royce has been discovered, empty, beside a graveyard, and a little later the murdered body of the millionaire is discovered inside the graveyard – above ground.

The hunt for the murderer is complicated by the behaviour of the dead man’s family, including his pretty second wife. And the members of a very different family, seemingly far less respectable, appear to be connected to this complex case.

But Inspector Martineau and the Granchester police have handled difficult cases before …

Deepwood Grange is no longer what it was in the thirties: the beautiful old house has been converted into luxury apartments, and the original family is long gone. But on a rare visit to her godmother, solicitor Rosa Epton finds herself quite entertained by the eccentric residents of the other flats. Until, that is, one of them turns up dead in the chimney of an empty apartment, and her godmother becomes a prime suspect.

Then her godmother disappears, and Rosa’s involvement becomes even more personal …

Ainslie meets Mary Allison in an ancient Highland graveyard. It is a tantalising meeting that raises more questions than it answers. Later encounters with Mary and with other local people gradually involve him in a mystery that, as a newcomer to the glen, he is not equipped to solve.

While the mystery deepens, Ainslie is employed for the winter by one of the local lairds to cull the surplus hinds from the red deer herds. Against the backdrop of the harsh and empty world of the Highlands, this strange and necessary rite will have an explosive climax.

A prominent American diplomat falls over a cliff to his death. The death is accepted as an accident, but could it have been suicide – or even murder? His widow finds a locked drawer in his desk and in it a file with a woman’s name on it – but the file is empty.

Circumstances lead her to an elderly man bearing the same name, but he has a stroke and can neither speak nor write. And then she sees the car headlights coming at her, fast, at night, through an impenetrable mist …

In the royal palace of conquered Luscany, Princess Nette chafes at the bonds that confine her to a life of empty ceremony. Meanwhile, in a less salubrious quarter, Serin Guille’s father scents success in his search for the secret of immortality. Then a gypsy blade flashes at the ice fair. An imperial emissary lies bleeding by the frozen river, and the uneasy peace is shattered.

The Eschalan overlords will not rest until they have revenge. Serin saw it happen, saw the blow fall. Now she can never go home . . .

Nineteen light years from Earth, on Sigma Draconis, an international space team stumbles upon the first evidence of another highly advanced civilization in the universe.

Tragically, however, the Draconians are extinct and have been for a hundred thousand years. What mysterious disaster destroyed man’s nearest neighbour in the colossal emptiness of space? And will the same fate befall Earth?

The answers, as Earth degenerates into squabbles, paranoia and self-destruction, are vital. But how to begin the almost insuperable task of cracking the enigma of a long-buried and utterly alien culture?

The free humans lived underground, secretive, like rats. Above, the world was a fearsome place for them – the open sky a terror, the night so black, and the striding machines from space so laser-flame deadly.

Esther dared the open; she saw the sky; she saw the Enemy. And she was taken – captive – to the vast alien empty city. Surrounded by marvels of a science not born on earth, Esther did not know what they wanted of her. There was mystery in the city, dread in the heavens, and magic in the handsome alien man who came to her.

It was largely chance that took Dougal Macneil to the empty racetrack that morning, but when he inadvertently sees – and photographs – something he shouldn’t he is soon under threat from a seemingly omnipotent force.

Colonel Weber, head of police of the tiny Central American country of Montoro, is sheltering a former Nazi whose name is high on Israel’s most-wanted list. And on the face of it he holds all the cards: control of the police force, the trust of government officials – and Macneil’s wife, whom he is holding in ‘protective custody’. But Macneil is not an adversary to be underestimated . . .

Jerry Jamison wants out: out of a sloppy marriage, a dull job and the empty suburban rat race. Once Jerry had a beautiful bride and a good salary at her old man’s successful business – that was before his wife turned into a lush. Before the business started to go to pieces. And before the lazy afternoon when Vince Biskay, an old army buddy, rings his doorbell and makes an intriguing proposition. Vince promises to bring excitement into Jerry’s life – and money – but this is a plan that leaves only death and destruction in its wake.

By the author of Rogue Male, one of the classic thrillers of the twentieth century: a bestseller that redefined its genre Guardian

Geoffrey Household returns to the rural England of Rogue Male and Watcher in the Shadows, with the savage hunting of his two heroes from the estuaries of South Devon to the empty Marlborough Downs.

The novel reveals at last the fate of Alwyn Rory, the security officer who was believed to have taken a bribe to allow a naval spy to escape and to have defected to Russia rather than face trial. Both Rory and his new ally, Adrian Gurney, by whom the story is told, are on the run and may be killed with impunity, as they do not exist …

A rose-red city, half as old as time. Once it had been king city of a mighty empire and the center of the ancient faith – Gateway to the Gods, the old epics name it. Now it was dead, empty, deserted, only a dim ghost of its vanished splendor. Such was Ilionis. Lost city of Mars. A somber ruin, cold and lonely. But Ilionis was not forgotten. The old city held a valuable treasure. A treasure that brought Earthmen Ivo Tengren and scientist Keresny on a strange and difficult journey to the city’s gates. A journey that was now ended. Ilionis had been found. The treasure was close by. And now an even stranger journey was about to begin.

A nice young man is helping little old ladies with their groceries . . . then stealing their Social Security; an enormous ‘ape man’ with a face like King Kong is robbing liquor stores; ‘Jack the Stripper’ is leaving gas-station registers empty . . . and the attendants naked; a pretty Hispanic woman is killed and ethnic tensions are ready to explode; a little girl is mutilated; a cop is fatally shot.

Between the weather and the crime wave, Lieutenant Luis Mendoza – the family-man cop – finds shelter at home, knowing that even violence on the streets of Los Angeles eases up . . . eventually.

‘A Luis Mendoza mystery means superlative suspense’ Los Angeles Timesc

To leave the earth in a vessel designed to ride the emptiness of outer space would certainly demand of its crew the very highest qualities of courage and determination. But if the journey was to be a one-way trip with the objective of establishing an offshoot of humanity on a distant world, then every mortal quality would have to be considerably strengthened. Such was the project launched by Doctor Helenus Smith. He selected his crew with apparently small regard for the obvious essentials, his motivations for doing so kept close to his chest. The trouble began when a nameless world interposed itself on their course, appearing from nowhere, and upon which they were unexpectedly forced to land . . .

In the shadowed swamps far from Prince Phaedran’s fabulous city of Quamarr, a sorcerer tests the fabric of the universe. At his command something stirs in the emptiness beyond the stars. It is incalculably evil, immeasurably old. It is summoned by the promise of fresh human souls…

Meanwhile in a 20th Century film studio, Red Cordell takes another cheap part in another cheap swords and sorcery movie. A beautiful neglected sword he finds in Props is his only satisfaction.

But in Quamarr, the enchantress Aurilia is in mortal danger. When she calls on the sword of Corodel, Red finds himself at her side, fighting for her life in a land of waking dreams…

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…

When Robert Wolff found a strange horn in an empty house he held the key to a different universe. To blow that horn would open up a door through space-time and permit entry to a cosmos whose dimensions and laws were not those known by our starry galaxy.

For that other universe was a place of tiers, world upon world piled upon each other like the landings of a sky-piercing mountain. The one to blow that horn would ascend those steps, from creation to creation, until he would come face to face with the being whose brain-child it was. But what if that maker of universes was a madman? Or an imposter? Or a super-criminal hiding from the wrath of his own superiors…?

Spinrad examines one of his most compelling obsessions – the possible “futures” of America.
Street Meat: In New York City, streeties, zonies and subway cannibals are locked in a nighmarish scrabble for rat meat, sex – and survival.
The Lost Continent: group of African tourists visit the ruins of Space Age America – a surreal landscape of abandoned skyscrapers, empty streets and dead, rusted machinery.
World War Last: The hashish-smoking Sheik of Koram has a plan to trick America and Russia into war.
La Vie Continue: In Paris exiled science-fiction author Norman Spinrad ignores a lucrative – but dangerous – bidding war between the KGB and the CIA for the film rights to his story “Riding the Torch”.

Rodro’s men were pushing past, were blundering with reeking weapons into the room to kill and take the princess away.



Lai half stretched up from the princess’s restraining arms. The room was empty of other life apart from Sir Fezius and the two knights now lifting their swords, ready to cut down Lai.



A popping noise sounded like a drum bursting.



A man appeared in the middle of the room.



One moment he was not there; the next he stood there, holding a bulky stick in his arm, peering about with a white face. He said something that sounded like “Skeet.”



The next instant the room resounded with an avalanche roar and a hellfire blast of scorching flame.

A mothballed space fleet, the great ships were silent and shut down. Each up to fourteen kilometres long, they had been circling Jupiter in their hundreds for nearly a millennium.
To the little band of fugitives, they were both their hope for the future and a terrible reminder of the past. Once they had been the slave ships of their time, transporting whole populations of unwilling humans to the star colonies at the behest of the Master System.
Now, reactivated, one might not only help them escape the Master System but take them in search of the five gold rings that were the key to its control and their freedom.
Cautiously, nervously, their craft edged towards the huge empty hull that loomed in the sky before them…