Search Results for: dark-as-day

Tethra is not like the other children in his village. Fourteen years ago, he was left on the banks of a river, swapped by the Hill Folk for a human woman’s child, replacing the seventh son of Conan. Murna chose to raise him as her own, despite the dire warnings of their village leader.

Raising a child of the Hill Folk will bring disaster upon the Epidii people.

The dark days have arrived, bringing a poor harvest, a winter of plagues, and unsuccessful hunts. The Old One once again rallies the clan to cast Tethra out, this time with support turning against Tethra and Conan.

To spare his father, Tethra runs away, and stumbles across some members of the Hill Folk, his own people, who take him in.

As Tethra lives among them, however, he must decide if he is truly one of them, as his blood suggests, or if instead his real place is with the Epidii.

A young artist is searching for the truth about her past – but does she really want to know…?

With an introduction by A J Finn, bestselling author of THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW

Superb classic crime from ‘the mistress of day-lit terror!’ NEW YORK TIMES

‘Psychologically rich, intricately plotted and full of dark surprises’ Megan Abbott

When Amanda Garth was born, a nearly-disastrous mix-up caused the hospital to briefly hand her over to the prestigious Garrison family instead of to her birth parents. The error was quickly fixed, Amanda was never told, and the secret was forgotten for twenty-three years … until her aunt thoughtlessly revealed it in casual conversation.

But what if the real accident was Amanda being returned to the wrong parents? After all, she seems much more like the painter Tobias Garrison. Amanda is determined to discover the truth within her aunt’s bizarre anecdote, but soon is trapped in a web of lies, suspicions and deadly secrets …

After two hundred years colonising earth, the Aleutians prepare to return to space, leaving behind humanity and an earth that have been shaped by their presence, their care, and their cruelty.

In the dying days of Aleutian rule, Catherine has altered her body to appear more alien, and soaks herself in the decadence of their culture. Misha idolises the Aleutians, and begins a love affair with Catherine, both desperate to forget their humanity and embrace the alien.

What will be left for the humans when the Aleutians leave? What will the Aleutians take with them from their time on earth? Could humanity have changed them as much as they changed it?

Dark, violent, political and emotional, PHOENIX CAFÉ is the third book in Gwyneth Jones’ critically acclaimed Aleutians Trilogy.

Jonathan Dark was a normal human on Earth, but suddenly found himself on another world – Callisto. Taking the name Jandar, he works with the natives of Shondakar to free them from the Black Legion and the nefarious Zanadarian Sky Pirates who prowl the heavens of Callisto.

When the heir to Shondakar, Princess Darloona is kidnapped by the fleeing Prince Thuton, Jandar must infiltrate Zanadar to rescue her. What follows is a daring story of adventure, betrayal, uprising and escape, and Jandar has to think fast and fight smart to save the day.

The Sky Pirates of Callisto is the third book in Lin Carter’s epic space opera Callisto series.

The concert draws to a close for the rulers of rock, Fiorinda, Ax and Sage, as they face the darkness spreading across the world despite their best efforts.

They’ve fought against collapsed economies, environmental meltdowns, energy crises, dark magic cults, and the complexities and struggles of their relationship. They’ve explored alternate states of being, embraced parenthood, raged against the machine, and then taken over running it. But has this been enough? Or was Earth and humanity always doomed to fall apart? Will this modern-day Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot see a brighter tomorrow?

This is book five in Gwyneth Jones’ critically-acclaimed BOLD AS LOVE series.

Lucy Sinclair’s debut will be a parade of everything opulent Edwardian London society has to offer. Most importantly, it will be nothing like her older sister’s dangerous experience-especially if her overprotective brother-in-law, Lord Thornewood, has his way. As if screening her dance partners isn’t enough, Thornewood insists that his brother, James, train Lucy in self-defense. She wouldn’t mind so much if her treacherous mind didn’t continue to replay the kiss they once shared.

But awkward defense lessons are the least of her problems. Her arcana, a magical talent that allows her to mentally enter any scene that she draws, grows stronger by the day. Again and again Lucy is compelled to draw a portal to her mother’s realm of Sylvania-and with each stroke of her pen, she risks attracting the attention of the Order of the Eternal Sun, the sinister brotherhood that steals the power of Sylvani blood for their own dark ends.

When a bold new suitor arrives from India, Lucy can’t help but be intrigued-though her family questions his mysterious past. But as Lucy’s own suspicions grow, and the threat of the Order looms larger, Lucy will have to learn to harness her unpredictable power or risk falling under the Order’s shadow forever.

Who will stop the planetary marauders?

For 6000 years the great Carina Empire ruled the galaxy – but slowly, under the remorseless erosion of centuries, the Empire faded as its Imperial bloodline ran out in weaklings who paid tribute to the wild, untamed Barbarians of the Rim. Finally came the day when the Barbarian legions struck at Carina itself, destroying in a single day and night the mightiest empire in galactic history.

In the ages that followed, the rest of the empire decayed, its individual suns and worlds losing contact, isolated Star-Kings fighting to hold their own cultures together . . . and failing. Ironically, only the Barbarians themselves remained the only coordinated power among the Near Stars. Their fleets drifted the star-trails, looting and destroying everything in their way.

One world alone stood against the dark night of savagery that was engulfing the galaxy – Parlion, the planet of the Star Magicians. And at last came the final battle for civilization in the stars.

The mortal kingdoms are caught up in a shared catastrophe, cursed with sterility by the magic of the dark elves. Still, what elves have caused they may perhaps put right.

Humanity’s last hope hinges on a magical talisman-the Pica Stone. One of only nine solid objects ever created by magic, the Pica Stone was shattered in the days of the last Wizards. But when Captain, oldest of the elves, joins with his fellow light elves to work a spell to draw together all the scattered pieces of this legendary gem, eight shards remain missing, lost on worlds throughout the planes of existence.

The elves spell-shift a party of questers to each of these worlds to find the shards. Among the chosen are the Renshai warrior Kevral, her husband Ra-khir the knight, and Tae, a newly made prince and former thief. Each world offers unique challenges, but with the extinction of the human race as the price of failure, there can be no turning back….

A dark love story, and a disturbing tale of a divided soul.
In the days leading to the fall of the Soviet empire, a young woman with a deadly secret slips unnoticed into the West. And when Alina Petrovna first appears in Three Oaks Bay it’s clear that her frail, luminous beauty is likely to cause some ripples in the surface calm of the peaceful resort town.
For Pete McCarthy, the boatyard worker who gives her shelter, she’s an enigma. A complex, well-meaning young woman with a difficult past. Someone whose mystery deepens as the season gets under way, and the deaths by drowning begin…

With Earth teetering on the brink of extinction, only one man dares to defy the legacy of the Spaceraiders – Clovis Marca, the twilight man.

Long ago Earth, now fixed on her axis, with eternal day on one side, eternal night on the other and a ribbon of twilight in between, was ravaged by galactic raiders. Earthlings recovered, grew stronger. But now, unable to reproduce, the last humans are frenzied with final decadence. And fear.

Only Clovis Marca, the last man born on Earth, dares to brave infected space to seek the impossible solution. His dark quest leads him to face Orlando Sharvis, the scientist whose insane experiments on his own mind and body might just save the human race… but would that race then be more, or less, human?

In the culture of the galaxy, the Star-Pilots of the starships that link the cosmos together have become the great heroes of the day. Grainger, who has become a legend in his own lifetime, is drafted to fly the prototype (the Hooded Swan) of a new ship that could revolutionize space travel. The members of the ultra-ascetic Church of the Exclusive Reward have colonized a number of marginal worlds to exclude themselves from galactic society. On Rhapsody, church members lead a completely subterranean existence. Even closed societies have their rebels, however, so when a major scientific discovery emerges from the caves of the dark planet, everything there falls apart. If Grainger can secure a share in the coming bonanza, he could buy back his freedom from Titus Charlot. Before he can do that, however, he has to find some way of just staying alive . . .

When Zaan, the ruler of the dying world of Ginya, set his sights on Earth as a place where his race could prosper and be safe from extinction, conquest was assured. The people of Earth were decadent and sunk in idle complacency and peace and technological advancement came to the world when the Ginyan race became Earth’s overlords. Only a small group of human beings saw far enough ahead to exile themselves on dark Zoaster with a view to freeing the world from alien rule in the future, hoping to build up an army of synthetic supermen who would one day sweep the Ginyan race from the face of the Earth. They did not count on the weird elementals that dwelt on Zoaster, spirits of evil and darkness . . .

The night watchman at Hallams, the long-established Bond Street jewellers, is found dead with his head battered in, and a number of display cases have been rifled. Chief Inspector Burr picks up the trail, with the young Inspector Poole as his assistant.

But before long, the crime at Hallams is overshadowed by a mystery which stirs Scotland Yard into a frenzy of activity. Even the great Superintendent Fraser is aroused from his customary Olympian calm; but it is the detailed work of young Poole which eventually solves the double problem, links mystery to mystery and brings the clear light of day . . .

Sixteen-year-old Annie Ember lives in grinding poverty in the city…until one day in a mysterious shop she discovers a tiny and ancient ivory elephant. The subsequent murder of her sister’s husband leaves Annie homeless, and she is found employment in a country house far away.

Sir Hampton Smolte returned from India with a great fortune – and also a dark obsession with that conquered land. His mansion is fanciful and extraordinary, like a raja’s palace set down in green English parkland.

Annie becomes a scullery maid in this strange place full of stuffed animals, eccentric servants and the even more peculiar Smolte family. Soon she catches the eye of the handsome Rupert and gradually succumbs to his advances…till one night she learns in disgust and horror just what his lovemaking entails.

Annie’s helpless fury then transforms this dream-house into a whirlwind of panic and the impossible…legging in all the avenging power of the jungle, and unlocking Hampton Smolte’s darkest secrets.

Hesta Web, with her hot red hair and her tough, guarded coldness, is trapped with a mother who hates her and a father who is mostly away earning money on an oil rig. When Hesta discovers that her mother and her mother’s lover have had rampant sex in Hesta’s bed, she absconds with her friend Janey to the seaside.

It is the last day of the season, sun bright and sea sparkling. The bars and shops are open, the funfair spins round with shrieks and shouts. As night falls, the illuminations go on. But when Janey catches the last train to London, Hesta stays behind. She falls in with the gothic-looking, unpleasantly attractive Skilt and his subject colony of junkies and beggars. In a rotting hotel on the front, among the broken marble balustrades, the mouse-eaten rooms and the bonfire in the ballroom, Hesta takes up her new life. She hears drugged legends told beside the fire, the rumours of ghosts and the strangeness of the sea.

For now the season has ended, the seaside is deserted, the illuminations are switched off, this place is very strange. Does Skilt know its secret? Should Hesta be wary of the blond man who watches her from the pier? And what happens when the lights go out?

It’s dark.

Grand Master Ursula K. LeGuin has been recognised for almost fifty years as one of the most important writers in the SF field – and is likewise feted beyond the confines of the genre. The Wind’s Twelve Quarters was her first collection and it brings together some of finest short fiction, including the Hugo Award-winning ‘The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas’, the Nebula Award-winning ‘The Day Before the Revolution’, and the Hugo-nominated ‘Winter’s King’, which gave readers their first glimpse of the world later made famous in her Hugo- and Nebula-winning masterpiece The Left Hand of Darkness.

In this, the second book of the epic trilogy begun in The Forging of the Shadows, the once-glorious city of Thrull has become a place of death and despair. Seven years before, Lord Faran Groton, High Priest of the God of Darkness, overthrew Thrull and set loose his army of vampires to plague the city, waiting for the day the sun would rise no more…But the God of Light has his champions as well. A motley trio of survivors searches for the three ancient artifacts which can defeat the darkness. Traveling far beyond their own lands, they will encounter nightmares and disasters before facing their most dangerous enemies — the Dark-born Nations of the Night!

The dense forests and forbidding jungles of Africa harbour innumerable uncanny mysteries, dangers and horrors.

Among these, often reported though little known, is a secret society of Leopard Men. By day and night they are the terror of the vast domain they frequent. Their orgies, their rites, their ruthless power form the basis of this series of adventures, of which Tarzan of the Apes is the central figure.

Adding to the suspense, an absorbing detail of interest is the mysterious quest of a beautiful American girl braving the dangers of the Dark Continent alone; while nonetheless interesting are two luckless and poverty-stricken white ivory poachers, whose trails cross those of both the Lord of the Jungle and the lone girl – trails that lead three of them to the forbidden precincts of the Holy of Holies of the Leopard Men, where no white man has ever been and returned alive.

The anatomy of fear is the unknown. The essence of terror is contained in the phrase “What if?” Suppose the dead should return? Are there invisible phychic entities hovering on the fringe of the physical world? Can the power of evil manifest itself in tangible form and launch world shattering violence against humanity?

The most gripping fear lies within the human mind. Lana Davis was a normal, healthy, sane young woman to all outward appearances but the Unknown was laying siege to her mind. By day her work kept the worst of the Terror at bay, but at night it returned. Time passed and Fear grew greater…Fear was embodied in a mysterious effigy which stood beside her bed . . . Fear lurked in a weird voice on the telephone.

Lana Davis ran screaming into the night – unable to face Fear any longer. The stranger who found her apparently knew more about her problems than she did; Lana found herself involved in a macabre new environment where Fear had expelled reality leaving the stranger as the only link with the world she had once known. Dark supernatural powers contended with insanity for Lana’s very soul, as she hovered on the brink of unreality and annihilation.

Kane. The Mystic Swordsman becomes the living link with the awesome power of a vanished superrace.

In the dark swamp where toadmen croak and cower, slumbers a secret relic of the days when creatures from the stars ruled the Earth. In the booty captured in a savage raid, Kane discovers a ring, a bloodstone, which is key to the power that lies buried, inactive but not dead, within the forest.

Now Kane, whose bloody sword has slashed and killed for the glory of other rulers, can scheme to rule the Earth – himself!

Brinton couldn’t believe the inscription when he read it in the cold white moonlight. He was looking at his own grave. He tried to read the date but the light wasn’t strong enough to be certain. He returned to the graveyard by daylight… but the grave had gone.
He left the town in horror, but the grave followed him. He was drawn to burial grounds like iron to a magnet. It was always the same. By Moonlight he saw the grave, but never the date. By day he saw nothing. One night he saw the month. Then they day; at last he saw the year. He knew he was due to die in one week. What could he do? Can a man forestall his fate? Can a mortal outwit the dark designs of destiny? Was it all in his mind? Perhaps Roger Brinton was mad? The asylum is warmer than the grave. The day before he was due to die he saw the grave again… The earth was newly turned… it was waiting for him!

Kerron and his business associates, Chang and Forrest, were three of the richest men on Earth. Now old and approaching the end of their days, they were desperate to prolong their lives. And there was one man who seemed to possess the secret of immortality-the mysterious Brett, a tall adventurer who had apparently lived for centuries.

So the three men paid a fortune to the one man they believed could help them, But Brett had a dark secret, and he in turn made a bargain with them, They had to accompany him on the strangest and most dangerous journey ever undertaken – to the very centre of the Galaxy – beyond the Wall!

Best known for his Hugo Award-winning classic A Case of Conscience, Blish was one of the first serious SF writers to involve themselves with tie-in novels, writing eleven Star Trek adaptations as well as the first original adult Star Trek novel, Spock Must Die. This omnibus contains three of his long out-of-print works: Black Easter, The Day After Judgement and The Seedling Stars.
BLACK EASTER: A gripping story about primal evil: a sinister intermingling of power, politics, modern theology, the dark forces of necromancy, and what proves, all too terribly, not to be superstition.

THE DAY AFTER JUDGEMENT: Develops and extends the characters from BLACK EASTER. It suggests that God may not be dead, or that demons may not be inherently self-destructive, as something appears to be restraining the actions of the demons upon Earth.

THE SEEDLING STARS: You didn’t make an Adapted Man with just a wave of the wand. It involved an elaborate constellation of techniques, known collectively as pantropy, that changed the human pattern in a man’s shape and chemistry before he was born. And the pantropists didn’t stop there. Education, thoughts, ancestors and the world itself were changed, because the Adapted Men were produced to live and thrive in the alien environments found only in space. They were crucial to a daring plan to colonize the universe.

The Solar System is finally recovering from the Great War – a war that devastated the planets and nearly wiped out the human race – and the population of the outer moons, orbiting Jupiter and Saturn, is growing.

On one of those moons, Alex Ligon, scion of a great interplanetary trading family has developed a wonderfully accurate new population model and cannot wait until the newly reconstituted “Seine”, the interlinked network of computers that spans the planets and moons and asteroids, comes back online. But when it does, and he extends his perfect model a century into the future, it predicts the complete destruction of the human race.

On another moon, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence goes on, undaunted by generations of failure. And to her amazement, Millie Wu, a young genius newly recruited to the project, has found a signal… a signal that is coming from outside the solar system.

And in his new retreat on a minor moon of Saturn, the cranky genius Rustum Battachariya is still collecting weapons from the Great War. He thinks he may have stumbled on an unexpected new one…but he’ll need to disarm it before it destroys the Sun.