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When the Order of Planetary Engineers sent Hall Davenant to Ganymede for a terraforming survey, they knew that the job on the airless, frigid Jovian moon would be tough. Changing it to resemble Earth – with fertile land, water and good air – was the biggest and most important planet conversion job ever attempted by the Engineers. But they hadn’t counted on the already too Earthlike behaviour of the Ganymede colonists, who had never altered the ancient Earth-born habits of intrigue, bigotry and double-dyed treachery!

A choice collection of seven short stories by one of America’s foremost storytellers and the author of the best-selling Travis McGee series.

Featuring ‘Dear Old Friend’, ‘The Annex’, Quarrel’, ‘Double Hannenframis’, ‘The Random Noise of Love’, The Willow Pool and ‘Woodchuck’, this collection displays MacDonald at his classic best. Starring a cast of immoral broads, hedonistic thrill-seekers, naïve victims and profligate playboys, these seven short stories showcase the writing that propelled John D MacDonald to success.

When Meg Jeacock let out the furnished cottage next to her house she did not care that her new tenant had certain rather sinister characteristics – he’d paid three months’ rent in advance. But Meg’s husband Marcus sensed he was a crook.
And when the stranger shows an inexplicable interest in Shandon Priory, the big house nearby, whose elderly owner has recently died, it becomes clear that there is trouble brewing – which, when it comes, takes the form of double murder . . .

Keith Devery, burdened with a criminal record, arrives in Wicksteed, a prosperous little town on the Pacific coast. He is looking for any job that will provide eating money. It is when he meets Beth Marshall – whose husband, a local drunk, is to inherit $1,000,000 – that he realises there’s a way to get back in the big league.

Together they ruthlessly plot the perfect murder, but Keith soon finds himself at the centre of a double-bluff. Beth has plans of her own once the money is hers …

Perry Mason orders a double serving of trouble the night he and Della Street dine at an intimate restaurant after a hard day at law. In the middle of their steaks a waitress flees the premises in terror, leaving the puzzled proprietor holding her mink coat.

Why a humble working girl abandons such a pricey wrap is only the first question in a cop-killer case that traps Mason’s client with both an impossible story and the murder weapon, makes Perry himself a prime suspect, and blazes a gunpowder trail that leads straight to the heart of the police department itself.

A manuscript is found: filled with small, precise writing and smelling of pit-water, it tells the story of an old recluse and his strange home – and its even stranger, jade-green double, seen by the recluse on an otherworldly plain where gigantic gods and monsters roam.

Soon his more earthly home is no less terrible than his bizarre vision, as swine-like creatures boil from a cavern beneath the ground and besiege it. But a still greater horror will face the recluse – more inexorable, merciless and awful than any creature that can be fought or killed.

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 . . .

If you ever need my help, I’ll be there. But by the time he arrived, she had already disappeared…
Classic crime from one of the greats of the Detection Club


Arthur Crook and Miss Pinnegar meet by accident and take to each other on sight, parting with mutual appreciation and an invitation by the detective to call on him professionally should she ever need help – unlikely as that may be.

But when Miss Pinnegar receives a visit, it threatens to shake her life to the very foundations. She sends Crook an SOS and he comes at the double, but by then Miss Pinnegar has already disappeared . . .

“ZNIDD SUDDABIT!”So the Ulleran challenge begins, with the rantings of a prophet and a seemingly incidental street riot. Only when a dose of poison lands in the governor-general’s whiskey does it become clear that the “geeks” have had it up to their double-lidded eyeballs with the imperialist Terran Federation’s Chartered Uller Company. Then, overnight, war is everywhere.
How it will end is in the (merely) two Terran hands of the new governor-general, a man shrewd enough to know that “it is easier to banish a habit of thought than a piece of knowledge.” The problem is, the particular piece of knowledge he needs hasn’t been used in 450 years. . . .

Across the galaxies, against wrongdoers and rogues! Only Retief – the indomitable champion of the underdog and 27th-century diplomacy – can seal the peace between the battling earthlings and the lobster-like aliens known as the Haterakans. In constant peril, the daring spacewarrior must join a pirate band, cross the fatal boundaries of the Terran Defense League, and take on his arch rivals Foulbrood and Bloodblister. Facing certain torture, double-dealing, and ruthless espionage, he passes within inches of death. But he must emerge victorious – or the Hatracks will waste no time in executing their berserk plan to raise earthlings as a food supply!

An escaped convict, a mysterious deserted house, and murder in the Lake District..
Classic crime from one of the greats of the Detection Club

The shades of night were falling fast when Arthur Crook drove the old Superb over the Lakeland Fells and into the valley, to stop at a mysterious house where, though a light burned in an upper window, no one answered the bell.

Here opens a double murder mystery in which Crook acts in the defence of a young prisoner on the run, whose guilt appears evident.

‘The usual gusto, racy prose, good plotting and up-to-the-minute social observation’ Sunday Times

Set more than four thousand years in the future, Summertide introduces a galaxy widely populated by humans and a variety of intelligent aliens, all of whom live in the shadow of the vanished race known only as the Builders. Nothing is known about the Builders, but the gigantic artifacts they have left behind – many of them still hardly understood – dominate the areas of space in which they are found. One such is the double-planet system of Opal and Quake – the former covered in water, the latter in desert – connected by a Builder device called the Umbilical. It is to this system that a variety of humans and aliens come, ostensibly to witness Summertide – the annual tidal wave which sweeps across Opal.

Kainui is one of a pair of double planets circling a pair of binary stars. Mike Hoani has come there to study the languarge of the colonists. But Kainui is an ocean planet, covered in water 1700 miles deep, with no solid ground anywhere. The population is scattered in cities on floating artificial islands with no fixed locations. The atmosphere isn’t breathable, and lightning, water-spouts, and tsunamis are constant. Out on the great planetary ocean, self-sufficiency is crucial, and far from any floating city, on a small working-family ship, anything can happen. Mike’s academic research turns into an exotic nautical adventure unlike anything he could have imagined.

Spring fever has hit Luis Mendoza, both on the job and at home. But it hasn’t erased the LAPD’s endless caseload of bizarre crimes and difficult cases.

‘Dapper Dan’, the rapist and murderer whose dashing looks and easy charm give him the perfect ploy to trap his pretty victims; a stickup artist who has found a foolproof weapon: a ferocious Doberman; a gruesome double homicide-suicide with a weird twist; a senator’s ‘natural’ death that suddenly doesn’t appear so natural – all add up to a month of murder most strange, and Mendoza knows it’s time to finally clean house.

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

When empires hung on the turn of a card…

Cheyne Scarne was a gambler – a lucky one. What he didn’t know about randomatics wasn’t worth knowing. He had brains to get right to the heart of the Grand Wheel – the syndicate that controlled all illegal activity in the planets under human control.

But what Scarne had staked to get that far was chickenfeed compared to what he would risk to get into the real big time – the massive intergalactic combine that dwarfed the empires of mere men.

For Scarne, double-crossing at every deal, had laid his life on the line to win a game where no one knew the value of the cards and the rules changed with every trick!

Drug barons Ralph Ember and Mansel Shale have co-existed peaceably for years, tolerated by Assistant Chief Constable Desmond Iles as a way of keeping violence off the streets. But times are changing.

In a downward spiral of paranoia and panic, Ember fears Shale has a plan to kill him and take over his firm – after all, one of his people has already been gunned down and nobody’s taken the rap for it. Shale is about to remarry and has asked Ember to be best man. Iles and Detective Chief Constable Colin Harpur, alert to their potentially deadly double game, know that they have to act fast to avoid out-and-out carnage.

‘Dazzles . . . a modern morality play of epic scope’ Publishers Weekly

By the CWA Gold Dagger award-winning author of Other Paths to Glory

When ex-Major Ed Parker of the US Army is pushed over a cliff at Pointe du Hoc following the D-Day anniversary, a crisis is sparked off in British Intelligence. The cream of the Secret Service gather: Dr Audley, Oliver St John Latimer, Commander Cable, Dr Paul Mitchell. But none will take on the case.

Why is the investigation left to inexperienced Elizabeth Loftus? Is there any truth in the old rumour that Parker was a KGB double agent?

Elizabeth must ponder these and many other questions as she prises the lid off a can of worms forty years old – and suspicion begins to fall on her most respected colleagues.

The sixth title in the popular Harpur and Iles series.

‘Planner’ Preston, a lifetime of successful robberies behind him, is organising a heist against a wages van, ill-guarded and with a predictable route. After hiring the necessary manpower and allowing for every contingency, Planner sets a date. Then one of his team learns that the route has lengthened and the guard has been doubled. Against his instincts, but goaded by the young recruits who think he has become timid in his old age, Planner agrees to go ahead – even though he knows the risks.

Harpur and Iles always suspect Preston is planning something and view even a visit to the dentist as cause for speculation. Now, the increase in activity surrounding Planner’s associates begins to turn their detective antennae firmly in his direction.

Johnny Parent was driven by a furious anger – anger against the cocky aliens from outer space and anger against the company which had hired him to build the space drive which would lift the quarantine against Earth.

It was a tough problem – made tougher by the company’s double-dealing. And Johnny didn’t relish the thought of cracking it with a whip on his back and a knife at his throat.

Then he stumbled upon an eccentric young playboy, his pretty but ambitious secretary and weird little alien with colossal strength. Together they plotted the piratical flight into space which would earn Earth its due place in the Universe.

But they had to hurry – because the company’s strong men were right behind them – and the sola time clock was running out!

By the CWA Gold Dagger award-winning author of Other Paths to Glory

David Roche, a young double agent, is assigned to recruit British Intelligence Chief Dr David Audley into Soviet service. It isn’t long before Roche begins to doubt the information he has been given . . . and it isn’t long before he sees how he might use than information to free himself of his obligations to both sides.

Roche joins Audley and two friends at an ancient tower in the French countryside, and also meets with Lady Alexandra Champeney-Perowne – who shows him why it is so vital that he get out.

And out he goes, in an exciting denouement involving the KGB, British Intelligence and – out of the blue – a team of Algerian terrorists.

Winner of seven Nebula and eleven Hugo awards, Connie Willis is one of the most acclaimed and imaginative authors of our time. Her startling and powerful works have redefined the boundaries of contemporary science fiction.

Here in one volume are twelve of her greatest stories, including double award-winner “Fire Watch”, set in the universe of Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog, in which a time-travelling student learns one of history’s hardest lessons. In “A Letter from the Clearys”, a routine message from distant friends shatters the fragile world of a beleaguered family. In “The Sidon in the Mirror”, a mutant with the unconscious urge to become other people finds himself becoming both killer and victim.

Disturbing, revealing and provocative, this remarkable collection of short fiction brings together some of the best work of an incomparable writer whose ability to amaze, confound and enlighten never fails.

IN THE “DOC” SMITH TRADITION

The planet was fine for big game hunters. And it was the tradition there that one must have a trophy before one could call oneself truly a man.

If that were all, it would hardly interest Cap Kennedy because his trophies consisted of planets saved for Terra and missions accomplished. But there was something on Eriadne which was not just a hunt trophy – something which required the presence of Kennedy and his men to check on. One of these things was a fragment of Zheltyana construction which outdated all civilisation.

But the hunt proved to be a double one – Kennedy against an unslayable monster and a lost world of monsters against Kennedy. And if he lost, it would be Terra itself that would be a trophy on some alien’s hunting lodge wall.

SPAWN OF LABAN is one of the best – a real edge-of-the-seat science fiction chiller in the tradition of Edward E. Smith and Edmond Hamilton

Link Denham needs a job. Any job.

When he’s offered the position of navigator on board the leaky, rickety Glamorgan, he takes it without asking too many questions. The destination? A planet that has barely been contacted in two hundred years, in a dystopic system, isolated from the rest of the galaxy.

What he thought would be a simple job quickly turns into something far more complicated, as he finds himself embroiled in a complex web of treachery, double-crossing and alien politics. And what of this infamous machine the natives have, which can replicate anything put inside . . . ?

Murray Leinster was a prolific figure in pulp fiction, writing short stories and novels across many genres. The Duplicators is a science fiction romp in his characteristic style, and a wonderful example of 1960s pulp science fiction.

‘For fans of classic hard-boiled whodunits, this is a time machine back to an exuberant era of snappy patter, stakeouts, and double-crosses’ LA Times

‘Kingpin among the mystery writers’ New York Times

Muriell Gilman left her father at the breakfast table while she cooked seconds of sausage and eggs. When she returned, he had disappeared.
She searched the house from cellar to attic. Then she went out to the workshop . . . there, scattered on the floor, were hundred-dollar bills, an overturned chair, and a spreading, crimson stain. That’s when she telephoned Perry Mason.

Perry Mason has so many questions: why did she call him? Why didn’t she want her step-sister to talk to him? And why was Gillman’s wife being blackmailed – by a female private investigator . . . ?