Search Results for: one-tree,-the

Thomas Covenant and Linden Avery flee from the Land, and embark with the Giants on a desperate search for the One Tree, the powerful life-force whose branches alone can re-make the Staff of Law.

They leave the Sunbane-ravaged shores they know for a new world where awesome creatures attack them at sea and strangely powerful new races both welcome and threaten them on Land – while Lord Foul sends his Ravers to harry Covenant and all who help him.

Before them lies the prize that can vanquish the Sunbane – or wreak the devastation that Lord Foul seeks . . .

Police officer Dora Henry is investigating the bizarre murders of three geneticists. Meanwhile, strange things are happening everywhere she turns. Weeds are becoming trees; trees are becoming forests. Overnight a city is being transformed into a wild and verdant place.

And, strangest of all, Dora can somehow communicate with the rampaging flora.

A potential civilization-ending catastrophe is in the making. The nearer Dora gets to a murderer – and to the truth – the more seemingly desperate events begin to entwine. And the answers she seeks today to the salvation of humankind may lie in a far distant future . . . one which is suddenly much closer than anyone imagines.

Tortured Intellectual

Kirk Salazar, devout intellectual, had quite been looking forward to his field research on Sunga. He aimed to discover how the stump-tailed, semiarboreal kusis lived without being injured within the venom tree forest. A fascinating topic!

His thesis would have progressed splendidly, save for one thing. A certain lack of financing necessitated that he travel through Sunga with a tour group. Much against his will, he soon became embroiled with a conglomeration of characters even more peculiar than Sunga’s natural wonders.

First there were the hard-core tourists, always pushing and complaining, desperate to glimpse the rare, birdlike zutas. Worse the Cantemir – a man lewd, rude and dangerous – who had struck a deal with the native Chief to destroy the whole Sunga forest for lumber! But most formidable was Alexis Ritter. She was the high priestess of a Sunga cult dedicated to chastity. But she sure seemed to have a use in mind for Salazar’s body!

Doggedly Salazar pursued his research through ambushes, sex, and even attempted murder. A determined intellectual does not give up easily – even if he has to go to extremes to defend his thesis!

“The Tree ruled the horizons, shouldered aside the clouds, and wore thunder and lightning like a wreath of tinsels. It was the soul of life, trampling and vanquishing the inert, and Joe understood how it had come to be worshipped by the first marvelling settlers on Kyril.” Joe Smith is roaming the galaxy in search of the man who has stolen his love’s heart. During his travels he becomes involved with a power struggle taking part between two worlds – one religious, the other cultural – over possession of a developing, but potentially lucrative, third.

The world called Indigo turned upside down for Magdala Cled one unexpected morning. From being that world’s only genetic misfit, the shunned outcast of an otherwise ideal society, she became the focus of attention for mighty forces. Once they had installed her in the midst of the Electric Forest, with its weird trees and its super-luxurious private home, Magdala awoke to the potentials which were opening up all about her. And to realize also the peril that now seemed poised above Indigo…which only she, the hated one, could possible circumvent.

The Expendables had struck it lucky at last. After grappling with the revolting Death Worms of Kratos, the deadly Rings of Tantalus and the weirdly anachronistic military society of Zelos, their fourth mission looked an easy one. Argus was an earth-type planet with one major continent, comfortably covered with vegetation.

But that was before The Expendables encountered the deadly harpoon tree, or the low-lying plant which grasped greedily at anyone who dared to set foot on it, or the hornets that paralyzed their victims – so as to enjoy their food in peace. Worst of all the lurking horrors of Argus was the deadly hallucinogenic pollen which turned quiet Santa Maria crew members into vicious maniacs.

Earthman Roy Crawford is framed for murder on the planet Velliran. He has two choices. He must escape from the planet within three days or go to prison for life.

But the only spaceship leaving the planet within three days belongs to the Exploration Corps. This is a group of scientists which investigates new planets. They are about to leave for World Seven on the Star System Z-16. With help from his friends, the dazed Crawford finds himself in the ship. The scientists, of course, think he is one of them.

But World Seven is no escape for Roy. It is a planet of death. The team of scientists find themselves in a world where even the trees are killers. And one more killer is on the spaceship – the real murderer who framed Crawford!

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

There’s no holiday from crime at the Los Angeles Police Department, not even at Christmas. Among a string of bizarre cases, there’s the very mysterious killing of Lila Askell, the young devout Mormon who was on her way home for Christmas but is found strangled and thrown out of a car.

As the Christmas trees are being decorated and the presents wrapped, Lieutenant Luis Mendoza has one of his toughest cases on his hands…

The enchanting islands in the Indian Ocean beckon irresistibly, though Copper Randal soon discovers that paradise has a darker side, and a sense of foreboding hangs in the hot stillness among the mango trees and coconut palms. But neither she nor her friend Valerie, stepdaughter of the Islands’ Chief Commissioner, anticipate the sinister climax to their hurricane-struck picnic.

And when one of their party is presumed drowned and another is mysteriously murdered, Copper and her friends, stormbound and marooned on tiny Ross Island with no links to police or doctor, must turn detective to save their own lives …

After bitter defeat on the Isle of the One Tree, Thomas Covenant, Linden Avery and the Giants of the Search take ship again. Across the frozen oceans they return to the Land, now perilously close to destruction from the ravages of the Sunbane. Drawn inexorably towards the caverns deep below Mount Thunder, Covenant and Linden Avery prepare to meet their bitterest foe. Even the white gold they carry may not serve against Lord Foul’s powers. For once the wild magic is released, the Arch of Times will crack, and Lord Foul’s conquest of the Land will be assured . . .

The case started with a corpse. Nobody knew who he was. Next, a man named John Burke disappeared. But D.A. Doug Selby could not find his body.

Then Mrs Burke swore that the corpse and her missing husband were one and the same man. This should have solved both mysteries. All it did was run the D.A. up two different trees. Sure, the faces of the dead man and John Burke were exactly the same. The only trouble was that their fingerprints were different!

Impossible? That’s what Doug Selby thought too – until the killer struck again …

The tale tells that in times long past there was a dwelling of men beside a great wood. Before it lay a plain, not very great, but which was, as it were, an isle in the sea of woodland, since even when you stood on the flat ground, you could see trees everywhere in the offing, though as for hills, you could scarce say that there were any; only swellings-up of the earth here and there, like the upheavings of the water that one sees at whiles going on amidst the eddies of a swift but deep stream.

The tale of the House of the Wolfings in its struggles against the legionaries of Rome then advancing into Northern Germany.

Cephapples can seriously damage your health…

A cephapple is a dreambean – a programmed hallucination. Quinjinn is a reviewer of cephapples. When he is persuaded to sample one particular dream, it is so real that he cannot get it out of his mind, and so hideous that he cannot remember its climax. Horrified when his young daughter is exposed to it as well, Quinjinn resolves to find the tree on which this cephapple grew, and to destroy it before it can poison any other minds.

His interstellar quest becomes a bizarre journey through a cold and alien galaxy and exotic distant planets – and into the deepest recesses of his own mind.

It’s just a fantasy role-playing game. Until the game becomes reality . . .

Friday night is games night. But one special Friday, Paul and his four friends are transported into the heart of their own game, to the strange, bleak land of Xhandarre . . .

Where reality vanishes, and the five players assume new and exciting identities – with new and exciting power.

Where hostile tree dwellers, predatory birds, and flesh-eating werewolves lash out from darkened shadows.

And where the evil sorcerer Avron Kromar holds the key to freedom.

Can Paul and his friends survive their strange, new world? Can they escape its treacherous dangers? And if they can escape, do they really want to return to reality?




(First published in 1985 as by Christopher Carpenter)

Today, tomorrow, always…the white-haired girl from the marsh is running for her life down a derelict highway
In a future world polluted to the point of dissolution, the trees are dead, the sky is yellow, and no birds sing. Everyone and everything is tinged with madness. For Eva Belmort there seems no role except to become some man’s plaything and drudge.
Then, one day, arrives the stranger with the gun – with blue eyes and hair as white as her own. Roaming the tortured landscape in his wagon, Steel is a seller of death…but for Eva he provides hope of escape from Foulmarsh.
Urged on by a power of love and hate impossible to fathom, Eva’s travels now take her to distant towns and villages full of danger and surprises – and arouse in her strong passions she cannot harness…