Search Results for: gathering-of-stars,-a

Sixteen humans have come together on Damien, a distant world where once, dreams were stolen and atrocities took place. They have gathered to view the last rising of a manmade nova, the testament to a war none can forget.

Soon, time will warp and masks will fall. Soon, violence will erupt anew – along with treachery, horror, murder, release and love.

Soon, some will find justice . . . and others, judgement. Soon.

Now, sixteen humans have gathered – to await the light of the Murdered Star.

Anu, red giant companion-star to Bel and Ea, was relentlessly approaching Ishtar – scorching the land, forcing the barbarians of the North ever southward away from the Inferno. Fire Time was fast confronting the planet; civil war broke out as the Tassui led their forces against the army of the Gathering in a desperate struggle for survival.

The Gathering anxiously awaited help from the human colony in Primavera. Jill Conway and other colonists like her hoped to save the civilisation of Ishtar and they relied on the Navy of the Federation of Earth to do so. But now the Federation was engaged in its own was, an interstellar war that seemingly had no end. And no end meant no help of Ishtar…

On his return to Geneva, Brian Innes must meet Audrey Page and find a way to prevent her from joining the strangely temperamental group of people gathered around film star Eve Eden at the Villa Rosalind. With characteristic stubbornness, if not trusting naivety, she refuses to be detained and is immediately encircled by terror, while the jaws of a murder trap swing closed.

Fortunately, Dr Gideon Fell is on hand, and when the murderer strikes with an invisible weapon, Fell accepts the challenge with brilliance and wit.

In the beginning…

… there was Egan Drake, the genius who dreamed of spreading mankind among the galaxies.

Then came Megan, who took on her brother’s mantle and made his imaginings real. She gathered around her the finest in their fields – biology and astronautics, computer science and fusion propulsion – and fired them with her vision.

And finally was born The Project: a thousand tiny spacecraft crawling like electromechanical wombs towards the stars, each bearing the genetic seeds for a future colony of man.

And some fell on stony ground, and some fell on fertile ground and some…

The Earth’s population was more than eight billion. One day they were there, the next they were gone – all except the guests at a family birthday party, a small tribe of American Indians, and, of course, the robots. Technology disintegrated, the Indians went back to nature, and the rest developed new and extraordinary powers. As for the robots, some went to live with the remnants of humanity, others gathered in their own community and commenced work on the Project, work which was baffling in all its fantastic electronic complexity. Then one day a traveller returned from the stars – and the idyllic existence of the last of Earth’s humans was threatened.

The vast federation of outworld states that formed the Terran Empire smarted under the unjust, evil influence of the Emperor Jrun. Daily, his tax-gatherers swooped down on the member planets, wringing the people dry of money and goods.

But away from the decadent shell that Jrun had built up, out among the lonely suns of the Edge, a new power was growing. It had fallen on Kelda, the young star-king of Zandyr to form the union known as the Cosmic Echelon. A fleet of ships that dared to match the armed might of Imperial Terra.

The ultimate weapon belonged to Jrun, a battleship which no power could withstand, and a force that could shatter the bodies of men.

Here, you can follow Kelda and his warrior princess, Irrena, through the star-strewn wastes of Space; across the Dark Gap in which the empty wrecks of once proud vessels floated forever, manned by crews long-dead.

And realise as Jrun did, that there are two kinds of laws. Those made by Man himself, which can be broken – and the laws of the Universe, which are inviolate.

A bank holiday – memorable for murder…

‘Few authors are better than Margaret Yorke in generating a real sense of fear’ SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

‘A star in our galaxy of crime writers’ FINANCIAL TIMES

It’s August Bank Holiday, and the great Bramsbourne Fete and Flower Show. But this one is going to be particularly memorable.

Everyone takes part in the preparations, and families gather from far and near. Brigadier and Mrs Trent welcome their daughter Susan, her husband and two children, and their daughter-in-law Elizabeth. Only their son Victor is absent, a sorrow they silently agree not to mention.

Into this carefree scene comes a man on the run. His efforts to evade the tightening police net affect, one after another, everyone in the village. But Brigadier Trent and his wife, and the war-disabled vicar, are more concerned than anyone …

Award-winning author Michael Moorcock continuously astonishes readers and critics alike with each new literary offering. Revered for his eloquent, lyrical prose, his work is a testament to the emotional power of words. Fabulous Harbors is the second of a three-book set, and is a bridge between the novels Blood and The War Amongst the Angels. Comprised of 11 interlocking tales, Fabulous Harbors takes the reader by the hand and guides him into and through Moorcock’s spectacular expanding multiverse – a luminously realized, richly layered world of fantastic invention and lovingly drawn characters.

Here, in the comfort and peace of Sporting Club Square – an obscure and perhaps magical corner of London that seems oddly immune to the normal effects of time – Begg family patriarch Sir Sexton and various family members and friends gather to swap memories, anecdotes and dreams. Come, sit by the fire and listen to the continuing exploits of the brave Sam Oakenhurst, the mysterious and seductive Rose von Bek, old friend and adventure Jerry Cornelius and Elric, the brooding albino prince of ruins, among others.

Haunting and compelling, Fabulous Harbors is an extraordinary achievement from a true star in the literary firmament.

In a distant future, on an Earth populated by a scant few hundred thousand humans, the Atkins’s Thomas performs without question the duties for which he was genetically bred. Called “Soldier” by one and all, he is a man of honor and ability, responsible for keeping the peace, for maintaining the status quo . . . and, most important, for guarding the great Book House on the hill – a vast repository of Last Culture knowledge presided over by Libary, Soldier’s mentor, the most senior of the mystic Celibate scholars.

Such is Thomas’s life in the serene, semi-primitive world without nations and cities and governments – until the night the starship comes home. Having fled a dangerously overcrowded Earth years before the Collapse and the Twilight that followed, for seven centuries the men and women of the space-going vessel Search have been combing the galaxy for inhabitable planets – their aging processes dramatically slowed by the relative magic of light speed travel and cryogenic sleep. And now, lonely and frustrated, the weary voyagers have returned to a homeworld unrecognizably altered by the relentless tides of time – a world that does not want them back.

A bitter welcome awaits the Searchers, as old Libary gathers Earth’s Ordinands and Elders together to tap the terrifying power of the collective unconscious – in preparation of the Carnival night when they will sweep the helpless intruders back to their lonely sky in the name of Holy Science. And it is Soldier who stands in the middle, silent and alone – bound by duty to evict the homesick star-travelers . . . yet cursed by a preordained genetic destiny that has decreed their eviction will mean Soldier’s death.