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Another superbly crafted Middle Eastern adventure by the author of the classic Rogue Male

They called the organisation World Opposition. Its aim was a world where the State no longer existed and where the individual controlled their own destiny.

Their headquarters were called Kasr-el-Sittat – meaning fortress of the holy women – and their leader was the strange and beautiful Elisa Cantemir. For her, no method was too ruthless, no human life too valuable, compared with the aims of the organisation.

Only one man knew their real aims and opposed them. And he was desperately in love with Elisa Cantemir.

A superb thriller, romance and spy novel from ‘The best in his field since Buchan’ Observer

Arabesque is a love story that takes us to the colourful crossroads of the Middle East at the height of World War II

Armande Herne – half English, half French and impassively beautiful – is sitting out the war in Beirut with no visible means of support. The rumour is she’s a spy. But, as conflict between British and French, Jew and Arab whirl around her, it is a British security sergeant who finds her. Soon they are embroiled in a plot, rich with adventure and intrigue.

BOOK ONE OF THE PERILOUS QUEST FOR LYONESSE

In the year of Our Lord 1403, as England smoulders with suppressed rebellion, young Simon Branthwaite sets sail across the Atlantic in search of the lost realm of Lyonesse. His quest will take him to Rockall, a land wreathed in legend; a land of weird beasts and wondrous happenings, of great beauties and terrible dangers.

And there begin adventures stranger than the wildest of Simon’s imaginings; adventures that will change the course of his life and reshape that land for ever…

Princes of Sandastre is the first in Anthony Swithin’s fantastical Lyonesse sequence, edited by Mark Sebanc.

Caught in a freak storm, John Webster takes shelter in an old barn with weird symbols carved in the doors. The landowner offers him a place to stay and John, on leave from University, takes him up on the offer.

But it turns out the barn has more history than he first suspected. A portal back in time, to be precise. He meets the beautiful Johanna, who is being tracked by the Witch Finder General. Modern science says that witches aren’t real… but then, neither are portals back in time, so what can John believe?

John finds himself torn between the past and the present, caught in a web of magic, mystery, suspicion and witchhunts.

A gripping retelling of the myth of Perseus by award-winning author Gwyneth Jones, writing as Ann Halam.

Perseus, the God-Touched son of Zeus, lives in luxury on the island of Serifos. But trouble is brewing in the world – Gods and mortals are bringing discord closer to his home shores.

When a beautiful stranger, a fugitive from another disaster zone, arrives on the island, Perseus is smitten. But Andromeda isn’t all she seems. She must die to save her people, and a stunning, world-changing discovery will die with her, unless Perseus abandons everything to confront the Medusa quest.

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?

A COMIC SCIENCE FICTION MASTERPIECE!
In the spirit of Monty Python, Arthur Schopenhauer and Douglas Adams, Striped Holes is science fiction with a sense of humor.
Sopwith Hammil might be the nation’s top chat-show host but his peace of mind is shattered when a time traveling bureaucrat lands on his couch. To save his life and the human race (They’re turning the Sun off!), Sopwith must find a wife inside three hours. Turns out it’s not that easy, Soppy.
Meanwhile, popular astrologer and certified lifesaver O’Flaherty Gribble, a favorite guest on Sopwith’s show, has discovered the Callisto Effect and how to build striped holes. And in a future that makes Nineteen Eighty-Four look like Brave New World or vice versa, beautiful Hsia Shan-Yun is about to have her brain scrubbed for knitting one of those striped holes, with frightful consequences. But luckily, O’Flaherty finds himself seated on a plane next to God. Tighten your belt, it’s that kind of novel.

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?

Trillions were hard, bright, tiny things which suddenly arrived – millions and millions and millions of them – one windy day in a village called Harbourtown.

No one could explain them, much less why they had suddenly arrived. Were they a blessing, as their beauty suggested, or a deadly, inexplicable threat? A boy with a microscope was just as likely to come up with the answer as all the acknowledged experts in any known kind of science, so somehow it seemed natural for two ‘ordinary’ boys, Scott and Bem, to join forces with an ex-spaceman against the frightening efforts of the ruthless General Harman to destroy the Trillions, no matter what the cost.

Charlatans or Prophets? At best, the tiny Kandarian Air Fleet would fight until its last ship was blown into infinity. At worst, it would be annihilated without a chance. To young Captain Bors, either course was unthinkable.

The ruthless Dictator of Mekin had already subjugated twenty-two helpless planets. Now he wanted Kandar’s unconditional surrender, or his vastly superior forces would blast it out of existence.

It took a lot of guts, and the hope that is frequently born of despair, for a military man like Bors to throw in his lot with Talents, Incorporated, an untried, unscientific organization. Through peculiar gifts of extra-sensory perception, its personnel could, their leader insisted, out-think and out-guess even the most deadly dictator in the history of mankind. Could it? It just might.

And it just might not. . . . But there was absolutely nothing to lose, and a free world (and a beautiful girl) to win. Captain Bors made his decision, and the loaded die was cast!

In the Well-Built City, Master Drachton Below’s power is absolute, and he will not hesitate to use it. His primary method of control is through his physiognomists, who are trained to read a person’s face and body, perceiving that person’s past and secrets-and even events yet to come. These seers are the judges and jury. Now Drachton has found something that could extend his reign for eternity: a fruit that bestows immortality. To investigate its whereabouts, Below sends cold, collected physiognomist Cley to the remote mining town of Anamasobia. One at a time Cley interrogates the townspeople, performing his usual fact finding without issue. That is, until he meets the beautiful and bright Arla, who harbors a secret that could potentially turn Cley’s world upside down-and topple the Well-Built City itself.

A Kafkaesque journey into the unknown, The Physiognomy is an award-winning trip through a land where the line between reality and imagination is constantly blurred.

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…

The battle has been fought and won, and all have been transformed by the struggle. Imago of Lockwood has become Lord Mayor of the City Imperishable, though at a price beyond his wildest imagination. Bijaz the Dwarf has been imbued with a godlike power and a responsibility he scarcely understands. And Jason the Factor, resurrected from death at the hands of his sister, the Tokhari sandwalker Kalliope, has become the sula ma-jieni na-dia, the fabled Dead Man of Winter. When a beautiful mountebank arrives in the City Imperishable, offering to lead an expedition to uncover the lost tomb of the Imperator Terminus, she stirs up the mob with promises of treasure and imperial power… but what will her quest unleash? Political intrigue, adventure, and all-out war await the principles and inhabitants of the City Imperishable. Through it all, the City may endure, but none will remain untouched by the Madness of Flowers…

In another sparkling and slightly askew adventure in the mode of Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams and Jack Vance, Fools Errant’s Filidor Vesh sashays once more through the penultimate age, finding that love is a many splintered thing.
The dandified Archon’s apprentice is literally bowled over by beautiful Emmlyn Podarke — she knocks him flat and steals his credentials, daring him to pursue her to a remote and mostly forgotten corner of Old Earth. Now Filidor must cope with philosophical pirates, prophet-seeking aliens, light-fingered mummers, and a tiny, bothersome voice in his left ear. Meanwhile, the Archon may or may not have been kidnaped, and somebody’s digging up a mysterious ancient artefact buried on the Podarke family farm.

Praise for Matthew Hughes:

“Matthew Hughes does Jack Vance better than anyone except Jack himself” – George R.R. Martin
“Heir apparent to Jack Vance” – Booklist
“Hughes’s boldness is admirable”- New York Review of Science Fiction
“Hughes effortlessly renders fantastic worlds and beings believable”- Publishers Weekly
“A towering talent”- Robert J. Sawyer
“A treasure” – David Gerrold

As the beautiful illusionist Flame succumbs to the dark spell that taints her soul, the physician Kelwyn Gilfeather discovers that the only way to cure her may be to destroy all magic and change the Isles of Glory forever.

Kelder had always dreamed of a life more exciting than what waited for him on the family farm. So when a fortune-teller predicted a glorious future, that he’d roam free and unfettered and be a champion of the lost and forlorn, he immediately set out on the fabled Great Highway to Shan in search of adventure.

But once he was on the road, life was hardly as exciting as he’d hoped – until he met Irith. She was the most beautiful girl, and the only girl with wings, Kelder had ever seen. They teamed up to see the world, and then Kelder found adventures aplenty: there were bandits and demons, and there were curses to lift, wizards to seek spells from, orphans to champion, and legendary cities to visit. For the young and carefree, life on the Great Highway was filled with fun, action, and magic.

But Kelder began to wonder about his beautiful companion. Irith certainly had seen a lot of the world for one so young – and everyone along the highway seemed to know her . . .

Soon, discovering Irith’s secrets became Kelder’s greatest adventure of all . . .

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 . . .

Sweetly are the secrets told
wrapt in crystal,
limned in gold . . .

On a planet of barren beauty near the edge of the civilized galaxy, two religions are practiced. Both sects worship the same goddess – the Triumphantes in joy and splendour, the Fideles in solemnity and selflessness. As different as day and night, sun and shadow, joy and grief, the two sects are now bound together in death . . .

A serial killer is stalking the priestesses, killing first a Triumphante, then a Fidele, in turn. Six women are now dead, and the planetary authorities are at a loss. Enter Interfed Agent Cowen Drake. A cunning professional, he must immerse himself in an unfamiliar world of stark spirituality to catch the killer. A world that will trap him between opulence and sacrifice, between duty and desire and between two extraordinary women – one who could become the killer’s ultimate victim . . .

The four novellas in Quatrain are set in worlds of Archangel, Heart of Gold, Summers at Castle Auburn, and Mystic and Rider. “Flight” follows a former angel-seeker who used to be in love with the Archangel Raphael and now is determined to keep her beautiful niece from making her same mistakes. “Blood” is the story of a fierce young gulden man who comes to the city to seek his mother, whom he hasn’t seen since he was a boy and she ran away from his abusive father. In “Gold,” a crown princess escapes the hazards of war by hiding among the fairylike aliora, where she encounters an altogether different sort of danger. And in “Flame,” the mystic Senneth uses her magic to save a little girl, an act that wins her new friends but puts her own life at risk.

Deep in the Tower of the Moon, among the Hills of Arniak, dwelt the beautiful and sensuous Tara. And with Chanthu the Sorcerer, Zarlic the metal man, and Khaldur the great golden cat as her tutors, she grew wise and swift, skilled and strong.

Tara was raised to be a fighting woman, not some man’s pampered pet and plaything. For she had pledged herself a War Maid, a virgin swordswoman sworn to the Moon.

She would journey to Twilight to search for the secret of her birth and the sword of her dream. Her life would be the long road and the open sky, the flash of naked steel and the hot spurt of fresh gore!

It was rarer and more beautiful and more precious than any piece of mineral, and its dark glory outshone the lights of the heavens. The Gods had wrought it in the Country of the Immortals, and no other thing like it had ever been upon the earth.

No emperor could hold the Throne without the Black Star. And now it was missing.

The evil Green-Robed One who had usurped the Throne would use his darkest powers to reclaim it – and the young warrior fleeing across the embattled land with his beautiful lady to save this treasure of all the world would know the torments of the damned…

Destined to fulfill an ancient prophecy, the warrior Sargon strode through the gates of Chalsadon – the last refuge of a once-proud empire. Only Sargon, a Barbarian and an Outsider, could stem the slaughter. Only he could wield the deadly golden maul, covered with the dust of centuries. Only he was fated to test the necromancy of Shadrazar, the beautiful Black Lord of Chaos. But Sargon was mortal . . .

Come with us out of this dull, workaday world to Terra Magica, the land beyond World’s Edge, where knights ride out on wonder quests, where beautiful princesses wait for rescue from sea serpents, where sky-high giants seek human morsels for their cookpots, and where a king may seek a champion to set aside his realm’s enchantment.Here again is Kesrick, knight of Dragonrouge, in combat against villainy. At his side stand a Scythian princess and a lost nobleman of Tartary. Here be wizards of good and wizards of evil; here be mighty giants and witches of utter meanness. Here be high fantasy from the golden pen of the Grand Master himself, Lin Carter!

Come with us out of this dull, workaday world to Terra Magica, tha land beyond World’s Edge, where knights ride out on wonder quests, where beautiful princesses wait for rescue from sea serpents, where sky-high giants seek human morsels for their cookpots, and where a king may seek a champion to set aside his realm’s enchantment.Here again is Kesrick, knight of Dragonrouge, in combat against villainy. At his side stand a Scythian princess and a lost nobleman of Tartary. Here be wizards of good and wizards of evil; here be mighty giants and witches of utter meanness. Here be high fantasy from the golden pen of the Grand Master himself, Lin Carter!