Search Results for: little-people

“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

To VENTUR the Subs were a nuisance.

They were fed and housed under the stern but loving care of the great machine systems. They were housed in space-saving underground accommodation, designed to protect the surface of their planet, and perfectly functional if not luxurious. Their culture was respected, some even had employment. In reality, VENTUR saved them, and their planet, from their own thoughtless harm.

But some refuse to be appropriately grateful. Some refuse to know their place…

Visiting the homeworld, ALIC hoped to find a little old-fashioned excitement on the “Subcontinent”. A retired games creator, however, ALIC can’t resist when Millie invites her to play a game that is wholly unique. One from which she struggles to escape, as her life becomes entwined with the people around her as they strive for revolution.

First published in 1986, ESCAPE PLANS was lauded as an original feminist cyberpunk novel, one which pulls no punches in its exploration of humanity’s relationships with computers, and our own flaws and follies.

Pinnacle City is many things to many people. To some it is a glittering metropolis, a symbol of prosperity watched over by the all-star superhero team, the Pinnacle City Guardians. Beyond the glitz and glamour, there is another city, one still feeling the physical and economic damage of the superhero-villain battles of generations past. The lower class, immigrants, criminals, aliens, sorcerers, and non-humans alike call this city home, looking to make a living, which is becoming increasingly difficult as the two sides of the city seem prepared to boil over into a violent conflict.
Private investigator Eddie Enriquez, born with the ability to read the histories of objects by touch, still bears the scars of his time as a youthful minion for a low-level supervillain, followed by stints in prison and the military. Though now trying to live a straight-and-narrow life, he supports a drinking problem and painkiller addiction by using his powers to track down insurance cheats. When a mysterious woman enters his office asking him to investigate the death of prominent non-human rights activist Quentin Julian, a crime the police and heroes are ignoring, he takes the case in the hopes of doing something good.
Superhero Kimberly Kline has just hit it big, graduating from her team of young heroes to the Pinnacle City Guardians with the new codename of Solar Flare. With good looks, powers that include flight, energy manipulation, superhuman strength, durability, and speed, as well as a good family name, the sky is the limit for her. Upbeat, optimistic, and perhaps a little naïve from the upper-crust life she was raised in, she hopes to make her family, and the world, proud by being the greatest superhero she can be . . . but things aren’t always as they seem.

Earth zero to Earth fifteen – which was the real one?

What the inhabitants of Greater America didn’t realize was that theirs was the only inhabited landmass, apart from one island in the Philippines. They still talked about foreign countries, though they would forget little by little, but the countries were only in their imaginations, mysterious and romantic places where nobody actually went..

That was the way it was on E-3, one of the fifteen alternate Earths that had been discovered through the subspace experiments.

Professor Faustaff knew that these alternate earths were somehow recent creations, and that they were under attack from the strange eroding raids of the mysterious bands known as the D-Squads. But there were tens of millions of people on those Earths who were entitled to life and protection-and unless Faustaff and his men could crack the mystery of these worlds’ creation and the more urgent problem of their impending destruction, it would mean not only the end of these parallel planets, but just possibly the blanking out of all civilization in the universe.

Among the less-traveled mountains and plains of Central Europe, a little east of Austria perhaps and north of Slovenia, lies the old kingdom of Orsinia. A land of forests and quiet farmlands and towns, with its capital city Krasnoy on the broad Molsen River, Orsinia has always found itself, like all the countries of Europe, subject to forces beyond its borders. Yet, cast as they are in the shadow of tyrannies both Western and Eastern, the lives and dreams of its free people are no less important than the great arguments of Europe’s emperors and dictators.

Here then are those lives: in tales of romance and blood-lust, hope and fear, freedom and tyranny, passion and despair. Tales of love, of life and of death. This is Orsinia and these are her stories.

Kemlo and his friend Krillie, who have set out from Satellite Belt K on a Space trip, find themselves off course and eventually land upon a planet about which very little is known except that odd things happen there, so that it has become known as the Crazy Planet.

The people upon it, whose language is laughter, are friendly; but others, from Earth, are also marooned upon it, and they are very far from friendly, not only to the laughing People but to Kemlo and Krillie too. Their wicked plans, however, are foiled by Kemlo, who is later responsible for helping his new friends against a mass attack of the murderous wood beasts…

The chartered Zarathustra Company had it all their way. Their charter was for a Class III uninhabited planet, which Zarathustra was, and it meant they owned the planet lock stock and barrel. They exploited it, developed it and reaped the huge profits from it without interference from the Colonial Government. Then Jack Holloway, a sunstone prospector, appeared on the scene with his family of Fuzzies and the passionate conviction that they were not cute animals but little people.

Returning to the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge after a spell at the nuclear research labs of CERN in Geneva, Professor Isaac Newton is plunged into the centre of a baffling mystery. One of his research students, Mike Howarth, has picked up strange signals on his satellite telemetry equipment, signals that appear to emanate from a passing comet. Not long after he has passed the vital data into Isaac Newton’s hands, Howarth is found dead. Soon after that, it becomes clear that some people in very high places – including the Kremlin and the White House – are more than a little interested in the remarkable events taking place at the Cavendish. But with the arrival of that most majestic of all celestial bodies, Comet Halley, a third and infinitely more powerful superpower enters the scene. And the Comet’s extraordinary intentions – not to mention its devastating methods of communicating them to Earth – promise a new dawn for humanity.

A frontier world on the back end of nowhere is the sort of place people go to get lost. And some of those people have secrets worth hiding, secrets that can change the future-assuming there is one. . .

André Deschênes is a hired assassin, but he wants to be so much more. If only he can find a teacher who will forgive his murderous past-and train him to manipulate odds and control probability. It’s called the art of conjuring, and it’s André’s only route to freedom. For the world he lives on is run by the ruthless Charter Trade Company, and his floating city, Novo Haven, is little more than a company town where humans and aliens alike either work for one tyrannical family-or are destroyed by it. But beneath Novo Haven’s murky waters, within its tangled bayous, reedy banks, and back alleys, revolution is stirring. And one more death may be all it takes to shift the balance . . .

On a Hollywood studio lot, a dancing bear – a Gypsy in a fur suit – does a little sly pickpocketing. In San Francisco, Daniel Kearny Associates are waging a campaign to repossess twenty-seven classic cars from people who are creatively determined to keep them. And in a fortress in the Big Sur wilderness, a rich man vows to steal a collectors’ item. Soon the bear, DKA and the millionaire entangle in a twisted plot of betrayal and murder.

When the dancing bear is killed, the police start searching for his beautiful wife, Yana. But Yana is eluding everyone – DKA included – and working a grift of her own.

Meanwhile a helicopter is headed for Big Sur, carrying the greatest scam of all.

On the surface, they seem like three very different people: Danny Bronson, a cunning ex-con struggling to go straight; his brother, Lee, a former Gridiron star turned college professor; and Johnny Keefler, a crooked parole officer who lives for revenge. But they all grew up in the same corner of town, a grim little slum known as ‘The Sink’, where life is cheap and might makes right.

And a story that’s just as dark unfolds when their paths cross as men – at the intersection of brutal violence, illicit liaisons, a ‘foolproof’ scam and the intoxicating allure of cold, hard cash.

In the second century AD, a Greek nobleman is travelling and living abroad in Germany while carrying on an affair with a military man’s wife. When discovered, he takes an emergency business trip to save his life and packs amongst his belongings certain items that lead the people he encounters to think him a Norse God, a fortuitous point of view which he does little to dispel. Forced to keep up the pretence of being a god while staying one step ahead of his lover’s jealous husband, Photinus must juggle the severity of his situation with the enjoyment of being a God.

A cold war among the stars was growing hotter by the minute. As Pag and Cathrodyne struggled for domination, a hot war threatened which would rend and annihilate whole planetary systems. The two master races would have consumed one another long ago, but for one single factor:

Waystation. It was a stupendous synthetic world, famed throughout this galaxy. For Waystation was controlled by a neutral people, and until the greater powers could seize this strategic wonder planet and ferret out its secrets, they were doomed to fretful inactivity.

But as a Cathrodyne vessel drew near to Waystation, the all-important balance of power stood in sudden peril. The ship in itself was routine. But on board was a stranger, a man of undiscovered race, who spoke too little, and, it appeared, knew too much…

Most people think witches are old and ugly – but ANITA isn’t.

ANITA doesn’t cackle and hiss as she works dark curses, either. Oh, she casts witch’s spells and incantations, but not the usual kind.

ANITA’s main interest is boys, just like any other girl her age. And she doesn’t really need things like love potions – not with her face and figure.

But ANITA is a witch, and she’s young and a little reckless. Which means she sometimes makes mistakes (usually with boys), and when she does… all Hell might break loose….

What if history had taken a different path, made a detour, and deviated just a little bit from the road it chose? Here, Harry Turtledove explores such “what ifs” in twenty alternate-history stories ranging from ancient times to the far, far-different future.

Persia has conquered Greece; Athens is in ruins. Yet even under Persia’s rule, the power of the people can never be completely broken…

A werewolf boy tears through Cologne’s medieval streets in search of sanctuary from the angry mob. But who will shelter a creature so hated and feared?

A student from the far-off future sets off on a field trip to study Genghis Khan – and finds him in the twentieth century?

And many more!

When the Survey Service first came to Bilbeis IV, it found a planet inhabited by humanoid aliens just on the verge of civilization. Then compassion overcame common sense, and David Ware did the one thing the Service prohibited – he interfered. Just a little.
But when the Survey Service returned 1,500 years later, it discovered just what David Ware’s meddling had done.
The bureaucrats of the Survey Service could not afford to allow just a breach of Noninteference to be publicized. So they set out to cover it up. Reports were destroyed, files erased, and people eliminated. For the future of the Survey Service was at stake – and so was the future of Bilbeis IV.

It meant little to Robert Fairlie, a serious and dedicated young philologist, that the United States and Soviet Russia were at odds about the Moon. He had little interest in the first rocket landings or the bases that the two nations had established there. And he neither knew nor cared why the Americans would not agree to mutual inspections of these bases.

Yet the Americans had reason enough: and quite unexpectedly, because of his specialised knowledge of languages, he found himself sharing the burden of an incredible secret. For what the American base had yielded was astounding evidence that space had already been conquered many centuries before by a people who had once spanned the stars. There had been machines and destructive weapons beyond the comprehension of present-day scientists which, if knowledge of them fell into the wrong hands, could plunge the world into unutterable chaos.

Fairlie’s trip to the closely-guarded rocket base in New Mexico turned out to be only the first step on a fantastic journey amid the unexplored stars to the home-world of the space-conquerors of long ago.

It was a journey into the appalling reality of stellar space still haunted by the past cosmic struggle whose scale in space and time dwarfed the rivalries of tiny Earth’s quarreling nations.

Makstarn was ugly, an outcast in the midst of the beautiful people of his tribe. Where they were tall and slender, he was short and squat. Where they were golden, touched with the beauty of the dawn, he was black and hairy . . . and hated by those of his own generation. It little mattered that the Elders respected him for what he was . . . and for what his father, Max Quest, had been; the young were all that mattered.

And their hatred drove him at last from the tribe, and on an impossible journey in search of the memory of his father . . . and in search of his own manhood.

In the twenty-first-century Kingdom of Versailles, the roads are terrible and Paris is a dirty little town. Serfdom and slavery are both common, and no one thinks that’s wrong. Why should they? Most people spend their lives doing backbreaking farm work anyway.

But teenaged Khadija, daughter of a prosperous family of Moorish business travellers, is unfazed. That’s because Khadija is really Annette Klein from twenty-first-century California. Now it’s time for Annette and her family to return to California for the start of another school year, so they begin a journey to the hidden crosstime portal in Marseilles.

As they cross the Pyrenees, bandits attack. When Annette/Khadija comes to, she’s a captive in a caravan of slaves being taken to the markets in the south. Worse, her purchasers take her to an unofficial crosstime portal, a thing hitherto unknown . . . leaving open the question of whether Crosstime Traffic will ever be able to recover her!

Asia, vast continent of ancient civilizations and mysterious peoples, has many corners little known to the rest of the world. One such was the jungle-hidden heart of exotic Cambodia, where Gordon King, a daring American explorer, stumbled upon the thousand-year secret kingdom of THE LAND OF HIDDEN MEN.



Edgar Rice Burroughs, whose Tarzan tales have enthralled millions, has written a novel of another such jungle hero that is as exciting, as adventure-packed and as imaginative as his best. The dangers Gordon King faced, his rescue of a jungle princess, and his combat against the perils of the lost city of Pnom Dhek are first-rate Burroughs to the last exciting line.

Allyn Vage was once a beautiful woman, but due to an accident – which may have been a murder attempt – she was now a hopeless cripple, burned and disfigured and without the senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. When they brought her to Jome Knard, that noted physician had no choice but to employ a certain apparently miraculous device, incomprehensible even to him, to keep her immobile body alive and to restore and regulate her sensory perception.

This strange machine had been imported from a seemingly primitive people on the world of Akkilmar. They had allowed it to be exported, but there was something about it they couldn’t – or wouldn’t – explain.

Little did either the doctor or his patient realize that between them they had now become the lever that could topple a world!



(First publshed 1961)

Code word – “onion bagel”

That little phrase would put FBI agent Tony Hawkin in touch with the Israeli commando unit at Cohn’s Fancy Bakery in London, should he ever need help. And Tony needed help like he needed air to breathe!

The trouble was, he wasn’t cut out for the FBI. He couldn’t shoot straight, and had a tendency to panic when things went wrong. But somehow he’d got himself handcuffed to a case containing two million dollars, bundled aboard a hijacked DC-10 and whisked off to darkest Scotland, where he found himself hotly pursued by a lot of people who wanted to get their hands on the money – and around his throat. People like the hijackers. And a bunch of fanatical Scots patriots. And some Cuban thugs led by a mad Colonel. And the police.

Tom Hawkin was lost and terrified in an apparently crazy country. Which was why he yelled Onion Bagel at the first opportunity…

A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A TROUBLED MAN

The world of Chimeras is very like our own. But for one difference. In Christopher Evans’ evocatively portrayed land, some people have an incredible gift. They can create dazzling works of art from the nothingness of the space before them. Moving statues of incandescent gold shimmer into life, literally out of the air. The very best artists conjure wonderful pageants of soldiers glorious in battle or rich Lords helping the common man. They bring a little magic into the drudgery of the peasants’ lives – and re-write history into the bargain.

Chimeras tells the story of Vendavo, the greatest artist of them all. He’s the man sought after by Jormalu, the new leader of the ruthless Hierarchy, to produce images, statues and public performances in his honour. Vendavo agrees – it is prestigious work.

But there are rumblings of discontent in the land and rumours of revolution. If it succeeds, Vendavo might be compromised.

The star Mira was unpredictably variable. Sometimes it was blazing, brilliant and hot. Other times it was oddly dim, cool, shedding little warmth on its many planets. Gresth Gkae, leader of the Mirans, was seeking a better star, one to which his people could migrate. That star had to be steady, reliable, with a good planetary system. And in his astronomical searching, he found Sol. With hundreds of ships, each larger than whole Terrestrial spaceports, and traveling faster than the speed of light, the Mirans set out to move in to Solar regions and take over.

And on Earth there was nothing which would be capable of beating off this incredible armada – until Buck Kendall stumbled upon . . .

The Ultimate Weapon . . .