*** THIS BROWSER DOES NOT SUPPORT THE CANVAS ELEMENT ***

Search Results for: dare

Showing 1-24 of 97 results for dare

The Cockatrice Boys

The Cockatrice Boys

Contributors

Joan Aiken

Price and format

Price
£7.99
Format
ebook
“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 WarsSchool 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
The Fine and Handsome Captain

The Fine and Handsome Captain

Contributors

D G Compton, Frances Lynch

Price and format

Price
£4.99
Format
ebook
Will she ever escape her past?

Romantic suspense for fans of Joan Aiken and Bridgerton

Young Hester Malpass knew little of her past. Only that she was an orphan who was now working in a railway station restaurant for a tyrannical old woman. She dreamed of escape, of finding a brighter place for herself out in the world.

Then one day, dashing Captain Deveraux, a famous balloonist, lured her away to become his partner in a new aerial adventure. Had Hester not fallen in love with the captain, she would never have dared. But dare she did.

Life took a violent and frightening turn. Suddenly Hester was confronted with the strange ghosts of her past, and the deadly secret of the fine and handsome captain.
Sky Pirates of Callisto

Sky Pirates of Callisto

Contributors

Lin Carter

Price and format

Price
£3.99
Format
ebook
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 Venusian Gambit

The Venusian Gambit

Contributors

Michael J. Martinez

Price and format

Price
£4.99
Format
ebook
In the year 2135, dangerous alien life forms freed in the destruction of Saturn’s moon Enceladus are making their way towards Earth. A task force spearheaded by Lt. Cmdr. Shaila Jain is scrambling to beat them there while simultaneously trying to save crewmember Stephane Durand, who was infected during the mission to Saturn and is now controlled by a form of life intent on reopening a transdimensional rift and destroying the human race. But Jain doesn’t realize that the possessed Stephane has bigger plans, beaming critical data to other conspirators suspiciously heading not for Earth, but for Venus…

In 1809-a Napoleonic era far different from our own-the French have occupied England with their Corps Eternélle, undead soldiers risen through the darkest Alchemy. Only the actions of Lord Admiral Thomas Weatherby and the Royal Navy have kept the French contained to Earth. But the machinations of old enemies point to a bold and daring gambit: an ancient weapon, presumed lost in the jungles of Venus.

Now, Weatherby must choose whether to stay and fight to retake his homeland or pursue the French to the green planet. And Shaila must decide if it’s possible to save the man she loves, or if he must be sacrificed for the good of two dimensions. In the dark, alien jungles of Venus, humanity’s fate in both dimensions hangs in the balance-forcing past and present to once again join forces against an ancient terror.
Solomon's Arrow

Solomon's Arrow

Contributors

J. Dalton Jennings

Price and format

Price
£4.99
Format
ebook
It’s the mid-twenty-first century. The oceans are rising, the world’s population is growing, terrorist organizations are running rampant, and it has become readily apparent that humanity’s destructive nature is at the heart of the matter.

When all faith in humanity seems lost, a startling proposal is announced: Solomon Chavez, the mysterious son of the world’s first trillionaire, announces that he, backed by a consortium of governments and wealthy donors, will build an interstellar starship-one that will convey a select group of six thousand individuals, all under the age of fifty, with no living relatives, to a recently discovered planet in the Epsilon Eridani star system. His goal is lofty: to build a colony that will ensure the survival of the human race. However, Solomon Chavez has a secret that he doesn’t dare share with the rest of the world.

With the launch date rapidly approaching, great odds must be overcome so that the starship Solomon’s Arrow can fulfill what the human race has dreamed of for millennia: reaching for the stars. The goal is noble, but looming on the horizon are threats nobody could have imagined-ones that may spell the end of all human life and end the universe as we know it.
Transcension

Transcension

Contributors

Damien Broderick

Price and format

Price
£4.99
Format
ebook
Aleph is a machine mentality overseeing a future Earth largely bereft of humans, most of whom have sublimed into a virtuality.Remaining are the smug but cautious adherents of science. Amanda, still a teen at age 30, is a skilled violinist and mathematician but craves the applause of the Mall for some daring exploit.

In a nearby enclave live the rustic, non-scientific people who worship the god of their choice. In the center of their poly-religious valley a wicked tower has emerged, surely a tool of evil temptation. Far below, a supersonic railroad is being constructed. Amanda conceives a dangerous feat: to enter the valley and descend to the rushing train, hitching a mad ride to the next city.

Using a cyber “Liar bee,” she buzzes the ear of young Matthewmark, who chafes under the restrictions of his own narrow society. He agrees to aid Amanda and her friend Vikram Singh, but the scheme goes horribly wrong. Vik dies; Matthewmark’s brain is seriously damaged, although he recovers with advanced neurological prostheses. This treatment, condemned by his own people, allows him contact with the AI Aleph.

In a series of startling moves, Amanda graduates to adulthood (and her modish clipped speech patterns give way to this new sophistication), while Matthewmark explores uncanny and sometimes very funny opportunities in the Alephverse, climaxing in the dismantling of the solar system and its embrace by the hyperuniverse beyond ours. This is the Singularity, at last, the Transcension, and everyone lives happily ever after, for rather mindboggling values of “lives” and “happily.”
The Man Without a Planet

The Man Without a Planet

Contributors

Lin Carter

Price and format

Price
£3.99
Format
ebook
WHOEVER HOLDS THIS NEBULA CAN SWAY THE GALACTIC IMPERIUM

When Raul Linton, Commander of Space Navy, returned from the bloody Third Imperial War in 3468 A.D. he was a disillusioned hero. Defiantly stripping off his medals and ribands, Raul roamed the Inner Cluster of stars in search of some meaning.

But close on his trail was the Imperium Government spy, Pertinax – known as the Snake – who was out to prove Raul a traitor.

And then Raul Linton met up with Sharl of the Yellow Eyes, who proposed a daring scheme of intergalactic action which would at once restore the Sharl’s exiled Queen Innald to her rightful place on the throne of Valadon – but to join this mission, Raul would have to fight openly against his own government…
The White Abacus

The White Abacus

Contributors

Damien Broderick

Price and format

Price
£4.99
Format
ebook
Long before William Shakespeare, tales were told of the Dane Ameleth whose noble father was murdered by the uncle who swiftly weds new widow Gerutha. Must Ameleth repay this crime by killing his uncle? The White Abacus dares to reconfigure the best known version of the classic tale, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, to create a futuristic revenge drama with an entirely different outcome. Telmah is an inventive genius. Ophelia is no sobbing suicide but rather the impressive Warrior Rose, who shockingly revises the fate of her lover.

In this exotic future history, the galaxy is open to anyone who passes through a hex gate, whether hu (augmented human) or ai (artificial mind). Telmah’s close friend is the ai Ratio, newly embodied to the Real. Like all members of his asteroid tribe, Telmah is forbidden to use the hex transport system, since that would doom his rebirth.

Out of this agonizing dilemma comes a feverish pursuit of truth and duty, love and near-madness, in an endlessly startling future where nothing turns out the way you expect.
Mind Wizards of Callisto

Mind Wizards of Callisto

Contributors

Lin Carter

Price and format

Price
£3.99
Format
ebook
Jandar – the alien clawed from his airship by the cannibalistic Zarkoon bird-men while leading his aerial armada to an attack on the hidden city of Kuur – devises a daring escape into the land beyond the world’s edge. But in this unknown terrain, with only a nubile jungle maid as a guide, he is no longer the hunter but the hunted, prey for the giant fang-snouted groack, game for the ferocious six-legged othodes, and stalked by a fate far worse than death which forces him to renounce all hope of rescue: the merciless vengeance of the fiendish Mind Wizards of Callisto…
Mad Empress of Callisto

Mad Empress of Callisto

Contributors

Lin Carter

Price and format

Price
£3.99
Format
ebook
Jandar – the alien abducted by the mad Tharkolian princess Zamara and taken prisoner in the Scarlet City, along with his devoted companion Ergon and beloved Darloona – effects a daring celestial escape. But freedom proves more terrifying than the most heinous captivity when they find themselves adrift in the skies of the great monstrous ghastozar, enslaved by the barbaric arthropods of the Yathoon Horde and at the fiendish mercy of an insidious Kuurian Mind Wizard determined to snare them in a macabre and horrifying web of death…
The Crow God's Girl

The Crow God's Girl

Contributors

Patrice Sarath

Price and format

Price
£4.99
Format
ebook
Better to be a queen than a pawn…

Kate Mossland is an ordinary teenager in a strange and dangerous land. She has crossed the gordath, the portal between our world and Aeritan, and may never go home again. She has accepted her new life as foster daughter to Lord Terrick and is engaged to be married to his son Colar, a young noble whose life she saved and whom she loves.

But all is not easy in the House of Terrick. The servants distrust her, the men-at-arms disdain her, and learning how to be a great lady is harder than it looks. Every misstep brings her closer to ruin, and Kate must walk a fine line between independent teen and modest noblewoman.

When the youngest son of Lord Terrick is kidnapped by armed thugs, Kate and a mysterious young girl named Ossen make a daring rescue. But her unladylike courage only strengthens her enemies’ hatred.

Then in a single blow Kate learns that her life is truly not her own. As Aeritan teeters on the brink of war, and promises once made are so easily broken, Lord Terrick demands that Kate submit to a new role.

But Kate is not so easily managed. Together with Ossen and the girl’s rough and roguish brothers, she leaves the protection of the only House she has known in Aeritan to choose her own path and find her true home.
In the Green Star's Glow

In the Green Star's Glow

Contributors

Lin Carter

Price and format

Price
£3.99
Format
ebook
He was Karn, the savage of the sky-high trees. He was protector and defender of the princess Niamh, whose very city was lost in the mapless jungles of the world under the Green Star. But he was also an Earthling, whose helpless body lay in suspended animation in a guarded mansion in New England. It was his alien mind that drove Karn through perils that no other wold dare…

In the Green Star’s Glow is a science fantasy novel in the tradition of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Written by American author Lin Carter, it is the final book in his Green Star series. It was first published in 1976.
The Med Series

The Med Series

Contributors

Murray Leinster

Price and format

Price
£4.99
Format
ebook
Roving through the uncharted vastness of deep space, Med Serviceman Calhoun of the Interplanetary Medical Service brings his mission of healing to isolated colonists far from Earth.

Alone in his starship with only his pet tormal for companionship, Calhoun plunges into an uncharted void without stars or nebulae…discovers a planet whose inhabitants starve to death amid a bounty of food…and dares a quarantined world ruled by galactic untouchables!
9 Tales of Raffalon

9 Tales of Raffalon

Contributors

Matthew Hughes

Price and format

Price
£4.99
Format
ebook
In an age of wizards and walled cities, Raffalon is a journeyman member of the Ancient and Honorable Guild of Purloiners and Purveyors. In other words, a thief.
His skills allow him to scale walls, tickle locks, defeat magical wards. He lifts treasures and trinkets, and spends the proceeds on ale and sausages in taverns where a wise thief sits with his back to the wall.
But somehow things often go the way they shouldn’t and then Raffalon has to rely upon his wits and a well calibrated sense of daring.
Here are nine tales that take our enterprising thief into the Underworld and Overworld, and pit him against prideful thaumaturges, grasping magnates, crooked guild masters, ghosts, spies, ogres, and a talented amateur assassin.
Includes “Inn of the Seven Blessings,” from the bestselling anthology, ROGUES, and “Sternutative Sortilege,” which appears only in this collection.

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
Template

Template

Contributors

Matthew Hughes

Price and format

Price
£4.99
Format
ebook
When professional duelist Conn Labro escapes indentured servitude as the star player of Horder’s Emporium, he abandons the gaming world of Thrais and sets out on an interstellar journey filled with murder, deceit, and self-discovery. His only friend on Thrais, discovered dead and tortured, left him enough money to buy himself out of his contract and a curious encrypted “bearer deed” to a mysterious property on the distant edge of the galactic Spray. With the seductive, secretive showgirl Jenore Mordene at his side and a villainous pleasure cult dogging his every move, Labro sets out to learn the truth behind his bearer deed and more about his own past than he had ever dared bargain for.

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
Fool Me Twice

Fool Me Twice

Contributors

Matthew Hughes

Price and format

Price
£4.99
Format
ebook
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
The Shores of Death

The Shores of Death

Contributors

Michael Moorcock

Price and format

Price
£2.99
Format
ebook
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?
Ravenheart

Ravenheart

Contributors

Adjoa Andoh, David Gemmell

Price and format

Price
£19.99
Format
Audiobook Downloadable
Eight hundred years have passed since King Connavar of the Rigante and his bastard son, Bane, defeated the invading army of Stone. In that time, Connavar has become a legend, and the Rigante have lost the freedom so many gave their lives to preserve. A conquered people, they live and die under the iron rule of the Varlish, their culture all but destroyed.

One woman remains who follows the ancient paths once trod by the

Rigante. She is the Wyrd of Wishing Tree Wood, and she alone knows the nature of the evil soon to be unleashed on a doomed and unsuspecting world.

In a perilous land, facing an uncertain destiny, she pins her initial hopes on two men: Jaim Grymauch, the giant Rigante fighter, a man haunted by his failure to save the friend he loved from betrayal, and Kaelin Ring, a youth whose deadly talents will earn him the enmity of all Varlish. One will become the Ravenheart, an outlaw leader whose daring exploits will inspire the Rigante. The other will forge a legend and light the fires of rebellion.

The Wyrd knows that ultimately all hopes will rest on a third man. Of the bloodline of Connavar the King, he will need to overcome generations of fear and hatred if he is to achieve his destiny. For he is a Varlish nobleman, and – worse – the son of the Rigante’s greatest enemy . . .

Read by Adjoh Andoh
(p) 2017 Orion Publishing Group
Research Opta

Research Opta

Contributors

Denis Hughes, Neil Charles

Price and format

Price
£3.99
Format
ebook
From the unplumbed depths of new and startling fields of research a man, groping after the truth, contrived a group of life-forms of microscopic size. It was a daring experiment, made possible through the medium of advanced instruments and techniques which offered scope in the realms of micro-dissection. In that respect, then, the operation was successful: life-forms had been created by means of chromosomic manipulation. But the impact of the resulting entities was to have a disturbing effect on the man who made them…
People of Asa

People of Asa

Contributors

Denis Hughes, Marvin Ashton

Price and format

Price
£3.99
Format
ebook
Until the coming of the People of Asa, the world of Man went its own, often quarrelsome, way along the road of human advancement. There were many pitfalls on the road, conflict and misery often going hand-in-hand; but there was happiness as well. It was, for us and millions more, a happiness interrupted by the terrible advent of the worst scourge ever visited on Man – an alien invasion of the Earth’s surface by beings of diabolical power.

Rising from the deeps, wielding weapons hitherto beyond mortal conception, the Asans wrought havoc on a fearful scale. Picked out from our fellow men, we witnessed scenes of appalling chaos, experiencing as well a measure of the seeming magic of which these beings were capable. Only when all seemed lost did the fortunes of mankind change, and that in a manner we none of us dared to hope…
Retief and the Warlords

Retief and the Warlords

Contributors

Keith Laumer

Price and format

Price
£5.99
Format
ebook
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!
Cosmic Echelon

Cosmic Echelon

Contributors

John Glasby, Berl Cameron

Price and format

Price
£2.99
Format
ebook
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.
Atlantida

Atlantida

Contributors

Pierre Benoit

Price and format

Price
£0.99
Format
ebook
Atlantis, the legendary lost continent of wonders and marvels, has intrigued the mind of men for thousands of years. So when a daring young adventurer found a new clue to its actual whereabouts, he could not resist setting out to find it.
Supernatural Stories featuring Twilight Ancestor

Supernatural Stories featuring Twilight Ancestor

Contributors

Lionel Fanthorpe, Patricia Fanthorpe, R L Fanthorpe

Price and format

Price
£2.99
Format
ebook
The Gliding Wraith: If he was really asleep in his chair why did he glide across the street?

Twilight Ancestor: Her evil power held the tribe in terror … only the stranger dared to oppose her.

The Man Who Never Smiled: The stranger never parted his lips, as though afraid of what he would reveal.

Fangs in the Night: Something evil and dangerous lurked in the shadows below the window.

An Eye for an Eye: He had forgotten about the hare in the trap … until his own life was in danger.
Filter (0) +