Search Results for: powers

In the late 1930’s as the threat of war is building in Germany, twelve year old Julia arrives to spend the summer with her famous playwright father, only to find herself alone with Trudl, her Austrian stepmother. With Trudl preoccupied by the plight of her fellow countrymen in Europe, Julia retreats into the scary Gothic novels left behind by her older siblings, and becomes haunted by dreams of Joshua Harken, the notorious alchemist who built the 17th century house, and then disappeared, accused of murder. Even after she joins forces with local boy Tim Bellyap to investigate the stories of Joshua’s ghost, she is afraid to tell anybody about the terrifying voices coming unbidden from somewhere inside her chest…

In a compelling exploration of loneliness and adolescent insecurities, peopled by ghosts from the old house, this is the powerful story of Julia’s awakening from her nightmare world.

Also published as Voices, and set in Joan Aiken’s own supposedly haunted childhood home, Jeake’s House in Rye, Sussex, this Y.A. ghost story draws on some of her own childhood memories to create an unusual thriller.

“When reduced to its essence, Julia’s story may not be so very different from that of Aiken’s Wolves Chronicles heroine Dido Twite: each girl must cope with a distant, unreliable father and learn to survive in a world peopled with self-absorbed adults. It is the exploration of these issues, even more than the fine storytelling, which makes this novel so compelling” Publisher’s Weekly
“Joan Aiken is the godsend to children who are at the age when they read as if there were no tomorrow” Washington Post

“An entertaining read, for readers who like to read suspenseful ghost stories with a hint of real menace. The ghostly elements of this story are nicely mirrored by the historical menace of the times, as Julia ruminates on the dangers of Hitler, whom she sees as a sort of spider, spreading his web out over Europe” Goodreads reviewer

“What does a cockatrice enjoy most for dinner? Anyone it can find.”

So the alarmed inhabitants of England discover when a plague of monsters–known as cockatrices–invade their country and begin gobbling them up. They must be stopped! A plucky band of survivors dubbed the Cockatrice Corps–including youngsters Dakin and Sauna–decide to fight back. But how?

A rollicking adventure filled with breathtaking twists and turns, The Cockatrice Boys is Joan Aiken at her comic best.

But there is also a powerful message in her only full length Sci- Fi (or even Cli-Fi!) YA novel as Joan Aiken imagines the result of human folly, in an earlier version of global warming, with the hole created in the ozone layer becoming a channel for evil to arrive on earth as an invasion of monstrous creatures.

Joan Aiken believed in the power of the imagination, and using stories to prepare us for our future.
In The Cockatrice Boys she wrote:

“People need stories…to remind them that reality is not only what we can see or smell or touch. Reality is in as many layers as the globe we live on itself, going inwards to a central core of red-hot mystery, and outwards to unguessable space. People’s minds need detaching, every now and then, from the plain necessities of daily life. People need to be reminded of these other dimensions above us and below us. Stories do that.”

“Besides being a daringly original, funny, scary, and morally instructive book, it also contains one of the strongest statements of the purpose of fantasy stories and fairy tales . . . This book was excellent, I highly recommend it . . . buy it now!” Mugglenet.com


“Readers will be reminded of Alice in Wonderland . . . and the movie trilogy Star Wars” School Library Journal

“This one is a real page-turner – as usual for Aiken – and sometimes really quite sinister, with a lot of gallows humour. It’s suitable for all adults and most children… just as creepy as anything by M.R. James” Amazon Reviewer

“Like all Aiken’s best work, there is a deeply scary, nightmare thread running through this book, which makes it thrilling and involving for older readers and adults …but the monsters are especially entertaining – drawn from Lewis Carroll, ancient mythology, and even Monty Python, they are scary and funny at the same time. A brilliant book” Amazon Reviewer

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

“LAMB HOUSE is in Rye, an ancient town of East Sussex, England. It is very much a real place, even a famous one, yet The Haunting of Lamb House is as elusive to review as it must have been to write. It is safe to say that no one but Joan Aiken could have written it, not only because she was born in Rye and has the town in her bones as it were, but also because she has the power — shown in her other books — of evoking strange, often eerie events of the past and making other times, places and people vividly alive. This book goes further: She has taken the real history of Lamb House and interwoven happenings that are purely imaginary, working so skillfully that even those who have lived there can hardly tell which is which!”

So wrote novelist Rumer Godden, who also lived in Lamb House. She went on:

“For those who do not sense such things, The Haunting of Lamb House is a most skillful and intriguing interweaving of fact and fiction; to those who do, it is a memorable evocation. In either case it is a little masterpiece.”

Lamb House in Joan Aiken’s birth town of Rye in Sussex is said to be haunted. This is her story of what might have happened to cause the haunting: using the imagined diary of an earlier Mayor of Rye, Toby Lamb, whose father built the handsome Georgian house, and later episodes that might have occurred during the occupancy of two of its famous literary tenants – Henry James and E.F. Benson.

Joan Aiken was born in another haunted house owned by her father Conrad Aiken: Jeake’s House, just around the corner in Mermaid Street, Rye, which she also wrote about in Return to Harken House.

“Joan Aiken has written a clever book, kindling a whole world of feeling out of small macabre details, presenting to the senses a series of apprehensions of reality which seem to touch a completeness beyond themselves. An impressive achievement; I shivered as I admired” Robert Nye, The Guardian

“Joan Aiken’s artful web of truth and fancy is divided into three histories of haunting – the first employs Aiken’s considerable skill in a vivid evocative rendering of the old town of Rye when the house was built…followed by the twenty years of Henry James’ residence. The end is worth waiting for…where E.F.Benson encounters hideous apparitions and even an exorcism in the last enthralling twenty pages” Miranda Seymour, T.L.S.

“Aiken has conjured up a deliciously scary ghost story…her mastery of style serves her well in the creation of three separate voices. Those familiar with Henry James’s writing especially The Turn of The Screwwill derive special enjoyment from this novel, but there are shivers enough for any reader willing to acknowledge the possibility of ghosts and the reality of evil” U.S. Library Journal

“In three interlocking ghost stories this veteran British novelist places a fictional haunting within the history of a real house, and displays a masterly way with several contrasting narrative styles, sympathetically evoking some ghostly presences…the wayward spirit of the house and the growing number of literary presences which gradually take possession” Publisher’s Weekly

In DAYMAKER, Zanne discovered her powers and the opposing forces of the Covenant and the Daymaker.

Nothing comes easily. With her fledgling magic training, Zanne has discovered that the history of Inland is more complex than she could have ever imagined, and its story contains horrors that could not be imagined.

On her journey, Zanne meets a young girl, Rat. Does this girl’s childlike curiosity bely a darker secret? Can Zanne restore Inland to its former glory?

Book two of the DAYMAKER series, by award-winning author Gwyneth Jones writing as Ann Halam, continues Zanne’s story and quest to find the truth behind her home. Perfect for fans of EARTHSEA, SHANNARA and THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA.

Ten-year-old Zanne has lived on her parents’ farm in Garth her whole life, following the seasons as regularly as the years.

Everything changes when raiders come to their village, and Zanne uses her powers to save her family. Zanne’s mother – Keeper of the Covenant, binding life to their country – sends her to Covenant school. Zanne needs to be trained, and to put her powers to use for the good of Inland.

But there is a stronger force present than even Zanne realises. The call of the Daymaker, the legendary power from the time of the machines, pulls against the Covenant, and Zanne finds herself on a quest to discover its origins, and the truth of Inland’s history…

The first book in the DAYMAKER trilogy, this book by award-winning author Gwyneth Jones, writing as Ann Halam, is perfect for fans of Ursula Le Guin’s EARTHSEA trilogy.

A collection of science fiction short stories from the master author of THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS and THE MIDWICH CUCKOOS.

In 1941, Roy Sabre’s girlfriend Betty mysteriously disappears.

Ten years later he has constructed a time-machine and his first trip is to go back to find her.

But his arrival is observed and his machine attacked and damaged as it departs – instead of returning to 1951, it travels to the far future where mankind has disappeared and the Earth is under the control of machines controlled by insects.

Roy finds that several other time-travellers, due to damage and malfunction, have been cast forward to the same time . . .

Stories included:
– “Wanderers of Time”
– “Derelict of Space”
– “Child of Power”
– “The Last Lunarians”
– “The Puff-ball Menace”

When Meg Frazer’s actress mother is killed in a Hollywood accident, nineteen-year-old Meg finds it hard to adapt to life in Britain with her cold, distant father . . . and at night she is haunted by a strange dream of a face which she is sure has something to do with her past.

Meg follows a clue from the past to a remote Cornish Village. There she becomes involved in a nightmare web of terror and suspense . . . She meets a young man called Toby, who is different from her staid fiancé, but how is he wrapped up in the secrets she is unravelling?

First written as a short suspense story in the 1960’s, this YA romantic thriller went on to win an Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Joan Aiken in 1972

“A cunning thriller romance, with the ever popular suspense and terror… good holiday reading for the not so bookish” Elaine Moss, Times

“Young, beautiful, talented, engaged to a handsome and successful stockbroker, she should have been content to stay in London. But irresistibly Meg was drawn back to Penlaggen…back into a forgotten past… And waiting for her was a man who exercised a strange and fearful power over her…and a secret that led her ever closer to danger” Fiction Database

“The suspense is wonderfully sustained and leads to a terrifying climax, and there is even a satisfying love story” Publisher’s Weekly

“A dream has haunted nineteen-year-old Meg for ten years, ever since her mother’s death. Now engaged and determined to exorcise the dream before her marriage, Meg drives to the remote Cornwall village of Penleggen where the author’s gift for direful scene and gripping incident takes control…the physical danger mounts as Meg’s psychological mystery is solved and a literate thriller gathers momentum” Kirkus review

The planet Elysium should be a paradise.

Like Earth before the Age of Waste, it is both beautiful and bountiful, inhabited by peaceful aboriginals and human colonists. But in its chief city, Port of Plenty, the first colonists have kept the superior technology sent from Earth for themselves, governing the outlying settlements with an iron fist.

As unrest grows, two unlikely allies, Richard Florey, an employee of the city’s university, and Miguel Lucas, a settler who has ‘gone dingo’, are caught up in a revolution that could awaken the alien aboriginals and change the balance of power on Elysium forever . . .

‘Murder on Christmas day’ is the newspaper headline no one wanted to read…

A true classic from the golden age of crime fiction.

‘Brilliant’ PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

When a small-town schoolteacher is discovered dead, beheaded, and tied to a T-shaped cross on December 25th, Ellery Queen is intrigued enough to take a closer look. But when he arrives, Queen is met with too few clues and too little evidence to produce a satisfactory verdict, even for a master sleuth such as himself, and so returns home, defeated.

But when an identical murder occurs – followed by several more – Queen discovers a horrific connection to a strange cult. This is a disturbing puzzle unlike anything he’s encountered before, and it will take all of his powers of deduction to uncover the killer.

A murderous, charismatic theatre owner . . . and a deadly new role…

‘Suspense enough to spare’ NEW YORK TIMES

‘A fantastic recommendation for readers who enjoy classic Hitchcockian thrillers’ BOOKLIST


When Rosaleen Wright was found hanging, a note beside her body, the police are sure it is suicide. But her best friend Jane cannot believe it. Rosaleen was full of vitality and wit – and the note had no signature. Instead, Jane suspects Rosaleen’s boss, New York theatre impresario Luther Grandison.

Grandison is rich, powerful and charismatic, but Rosaleen’s letters to Jane show a completely different man. One who is duplicitous, greedy – and dangerous. A man who would kill to protect his secrets.

Jane is determined to find out the truth – and takes the ultimate risk when she gets a job with Grandison’s company, and finds herself up against one of Broadway’s deadliest actors in a desperate play for the truth.

A group of strangers are forced to take shelter in a remote house – and then the murders begin…

‘A new Ellery Queen book has always been something to look forward to’ Agatha Christie

‘Ellery Queen is the American detective novel’ Anthony Boucher

When Ellery Queen and his father take shelter from wildfires in an isolated manor, they don’t expect their detective skills to be required. But the next morning a body is discovered. The suspects include a society beauty, a highly secretive valet, and a pair of conjoined twins.

When another murder follows, and the only clue is a torn playing card, Queen must use all his powers of deduction to unpick a web of alibis, motives and evidence, before the killer strikes again.

A dark tale of the destructive power of love and obsession from ‘The supreme master of suspense’ NEW YORK TIMES

‘The father of the modern suspense story’ LA TIMES

When Louis Durand first meets his bride-to-be after a months-long courtship by mail, he’s shocked that she doesn’t match the photographs sent with her correspondence. But Durand has not exactly been truthful, either, concealing the details of his wealth. Mostly, he feels fortunate she is so much more beautiful than he expected.

Soon after they marry, however, he becomes increasingly convinced that the woman in his life is not the same woman with whom he exchanged letters – and then she suddenly disappears with his fortune.

Alone and desperate, Louis becomes obsessed with finding Julia and bringing her to justice – but it is only when he finally tracks her down that the nightmare truly begins…

When scientist Jim Marshal disappears from work, leaving only a mysterious letter saying that his research assistant Deidre will know what has happened, Deidre and Jim’s distraught wife Beryl try to find where he has gone.

Their search flings them across space and into the power of sinister aliens – a beam that can transport them to another planet. These powerful aliens have collected people from Earth, and are studying them, putting them through strange experiments. Is it just scientific curiosity, or are there darker designs behind it? And, stranded on an alien planet, is there anything Deidre, Beryl and Jim can do?

GAMMA PRODUCT 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!

A companion novel to DIVINE ENDURANCE, Gwyneth Jones’ FLOWERDUST follows the charismatic rebel leader Derveet.

In a futuristic Malaysia, the matriarchy is being threatened by foreign technologies on great offshore ships. A political rebel, Derveet watches as a powerful drug known as Flowerdust spreads through the country’s refugee camps. It threatens to spark the revolution that Derveet wants, but far too early.

As she works to stop the spread of the drug and calm tensions, Derveet finds herself uncovering the mysterious Rulers, and their secret machinations. They stretch far further than Derveet could ever have imagine…

As the sole survivor of a massacre, Bibi was only saved from a life as a concubine when Lady Nef, the General’s wife, intervened, earning Bibi’s undying loyalty.

When a diplomatic mission turns sour, Bibi is imprisoned with her saviour, and through her learns of the greatest treasure imaginable: an uninhabited, unspoiled, perfect planet. When Lady Nef dies and bequeaths Bibi her rank and power, Bibi steals Spirit, an instantaneous-transit space pod, and runs with nothing other than a set of coordinates.

Twenty years after Lady Nef’s capture, the Princess of Bois Dormant debuts in capital Speranza and dazzles high society. No-one could imagine this diamond of the Diaspora had an ulterior motive, forged in the darkness of a prison cell. But revenge isn’t simple when more than one person pulled a trigger. Bibi must decide what’s more important – personal vendettas, or uncovering a conspiracy that reaches far beyond just her.

A twisty tale of murder, betrayal, and revenge served ice cold, the sequel to Gwyneth Jones’ critically acclaimed Aleutians Trilogy, set in the same universe, is an epic story of intergalatic high society and the complex webs it weaves.

You can find more information about Spirit at http://www.gwynethjones.uk/SPIRIT.htm

Chosen Among The Beautiful – Cho, for short – has been alone her whole life. Orphaned, she was raised by machines, with her cat, Divine Endurance, for company.

When an earthquake destroys her isolated shelter, Cho leaves to find her long lost brother, cat in tow. She finds herself in a land torn apart by warring gangs, clans and princes, revolutionaries and outcasts, all under the thumb of the distance Rulers, reduced to petty in-fighting to try and gain any power at all.

Divine Endurance seeks out the Rulers; Cho instead finds Derveet, a rebel leader. She finds love.

Can there be a future for them in this brutal world? What does Cho really know about humanity after being separated from it all her life? What does she even know about herself?

Set several years after RAINBOW BRIDGE, England is ruled by a foreign power. Heidi has been her parents’ carer for many years, but when her mother apparently murders her father she is sent to work as an Indentured Teen in a remote coastal village.

As she explores her new home and its mysteries, Heidi is convinced of her mother’s innocence, and is determined to prove it. What secrets does the village hold? Are the other teenagers friends or foes? What creature creeps through the attics at night, and what power do the Carron-Knowells hold over the rest of the village’s inhabitants?

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

Recovering from the events of CASTLES MADE OF SAND, the leaders of the Rock-n-Roll Reich travel across the Atlantic. The USA has not suffered from the technological losses which transformed the UK, so the Triumvirate find themselves in a glossy Hollywood where actors are virtual, cars are intelligent, and they aren’t worshipped as they are back home. Ax, Sage and Fi are trying to cope with their recent losses, and reflect on where their relationship now stands.

Meanwhile, there are groups of magic users trying to gain power through human sacrifice, threatening the stability of society. When Fiorinda goes missing, the worst is feared…



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

A millennium from now, global warming has gone into retreat as the Sun’s dynamics convulse. The great ice returns, driving humankind back to its primitive origins. Here, bands of brutal warriors wage war in the bitter cold. Xaraf Firebridge, powerful young son of a barbarian chieftain, enrages his sire by adopting the pacifistic doctrine of an outland mystic, Darkbloom. Before he can break his vow and slay his father, he is drawn into a temporal wormline and flung a further million years into the Earth of the Failing Sun.

Clever and determined, Xaraf wanders landscapes haunted by prospects of doom and overseen by a trio of godlike Powers. Since childhood he has dreamed of a beautiful young woman. His fate, he sees, is to rescue her from captivity–and perhaps save the whole world, now moved into the outer solar system and lit by a string of tiny orbiting suns.

He has yet to meet his true foe, the dragon whose history stands opposed to humankind’s. But which will prove to be this world’s mythic Galahad?

This unique novel represents a collaboration between two greats of science fantasy writing, published for the first time on the SF Gateway.

Between 1956 and 1962, John Brunner wrote three novellas that blurred the boundaries between science fiction and fantasy. Following Brunner’s untimely death, Damien Broderick was given permission to develop these works into a full-length novel, expanding on the ideas and concepts that had captured his imagination when he first read them. The result is a story that blends the technological with the magical, and travels to different worlds and undiscovered parts of our own.

Weaving together ideas from No Other Gods But Me, The Kingdom of the world and Father of Lies, Broderick takes us from the modern day Earth, across dimensions and into battle with cults, dragons, ogres and people with psychokinetic powers. This is a fantastic read for both fans of Brunner’s original works and readers looking to be swept away on a new adventure.

The New Las Vegas Sunfield. One of the enormous solar farms that supplies energy to the United States. At more than fifty miles long and two miles wide, it generates an electromagnetic field so volatile that ordinary machinery and electronic devices can’t get near it. The only security that can protect it are descendants of the cowboys from the Old West. Grizzled men on horseback who patrol the desert in the scorching heat.
They are the Outriders.
While the sun is bright, the power from the Sunfield doesn’t come free. Franklin Dreg, the iron-fisted Mayor of New Las Vegas, demands complete deference in exchange for access. But someone doesn’t want to play ball – energy has been siphoned out of the grid under cover of darkness, on a giant scale. This isn’t a case of someone wanting free power, but the beginnings of a potential threat against the whole of society, bringing down the entire grid.
As the pressure mounts and cracks begin to appear in the political landscape, the Outriders must find the Drainers and stop them, before its too late.

For the first time Morrey, Serge and Tony make a space expedition without Chris, who has become Deputy Director of U.N.E.X.A.. Their dedtination is Pluto, which since its discovery in 1930 has always been thought the most distant of the planets. Now, however, the powerful instruments of the Lunar Observatory have detected a change in its orbit which suggests the existence of another planet beyond it. The task of Morrey and his crew is to learn more about this mysterious Planet X and also to try out a new form of propulsion which will send their ship through space faster than ever before.

The launching is a complete success, but as the crew are approaching Pluto they make a terrible discovery about their ship…

When a desk clerk welcomes a group of tourists into his mysterious and crumbling hotel, the last thing he ever expected was that one girl on the tour might hold the power to unravel the hidden mystery that lies in its walls.

The Grand Hotel is a horror novel by esteemed author Scott Kenemore ( Zen of Zombie, Zombie, Ohio) that takes the reader on a thrilling ride that interconnects a series of stories narrated by the desk clerk of the Grand Hotel. While it is not known whether or not the desk clerk is actually the devil reincarnated, it is strange that many of the people who come for a tour of the hotel never leave.

As the narrator takes you deeper and deeper into the heart of the hotel, he starts wondering if all the secrets that have been hiding for so long may soon start to show themselves. While he is quite ready for this experience, the real question is if the rest of the world is.

Kenemore’s incredible style and originality carry The Grand Hotel to places most people only see in their nightmares. And while we don’t know what secrets lie in the Grand Hotel, all we know is that the person who holds the secret puts fear into the narrator himself-a thought which will terrify everyone.