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Search Results for: turning-on

Showing 1-24 of 400 results for turning-on

A Dangerous Magic

A Dangerous Magic

Contributors

D G Compton, Frances Lynch

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£4.99
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Digital (deliver electronic)
A new life – but will it bring happiness?

Wonderfully compelling historical romance – perfect for fans of BRIDGERTON

Bridie Tantallon is setting out on a new life – one that she hopes will bring opportunities and, if she is lucky, happiness. It is the turn of the century, and she is setting out from London to Edinburgh to help her great aunt complete her memoirs.

An orphan, Bridie’s life has not been easy, but could this be just what she needs? So she is not deterred by her aunt’s pretended dipsomania, the various half-hearted attempts made on her life, or even her growing love for Lady Otranta’s long-suffering heir, Andrew. Otranta’s memoirs, detailing her rise from a music hall magician’s assistant to a confidante of Queen Victoria, are interwoven with the more recent tale of Bridie’s adventures.
Devil on the Road

Devil on the Road

Contributors

Robert Westall

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£2.99
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ebook
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.
The Cockatrice Boys

The Cockatrice Boys

Contributors

Joan Aiken

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£7.99
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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 Haunting of Lamb House

The Haunting of Lamb House

Contributors

Joan Aiken

Price and format

Price
£7.99
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ebook
“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
The Powerhouse

The Powerhouse

Contributors

Gwyneth Jones, Ann Halam

Price and format

Price
£2.99
Format
ebook
Robs Hayward is a loner, a nobody. But when she plays the piano, she shines.

Cool kids Maddy and Jef ask her to join their band and she is giddy. They’re cool! They’re two years older than her! It’s a dream come true! Except for the part where their rehearsal space gets turned into a car park. Determined not to lose the first chance at being cool she’s ever had, Robs suggests the mysterious, derelict industrial building. The one in the Wild Park.

The one she’s afraid is haunted.

But the Council have repurposed it, and they share the space with the slightly eccentric Artist in Residence, and actually, everything is fine! Except for Maddy becoming obsessed with the murder mystery linked to the building.

And a seance is suggested.

And the ghost of a child that Robs sees out of the corner of her eye promises something more supernatural at play . . .

The Powerhouse is another chilling teen ghost story by award-winning author Gwyneth Jones, writing as Ann Halam. You can find more information on the writing Gwyneth did as Ann Halam on her website:http://www.gwynethjones.uk/HALAM.htm
Seven Tales and a Fable

Seven Tales and a Fable

Contributors

Gwyneth Jones

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Price
£2.99
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ebook
WINNER OF TWO WORLD FANTASY AWARDS

A magical apple tree in the mountains. A hopeless king with no people to rule. A woman who loves a god. An unsettling princess.

This collection of wonderous fairy tales from award-winning author Gwyneth Jones takes traditional tropes and spins them in the way only she can. Darkness hides in the mundane as much as the magical, and the morals may not be what you’re expecting. Enchanting and chilling in alternate turns, each story will weave a spell and draw you in deep . . .

You can find more information on the writing Gwyneth did as Ann Halam on her website:http://www.gwynethjones.uk/HALAM.htm
The Fine and Handsome Captain

The Fine and Handsome Captain

Contributors

D G Compton, Frances Lynch

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£4.99
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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.
Shifting Sands

Shifting Sands

Contributors

Rosemary Sutcliff

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£4.99
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ebook

On prehistoric Orkney, the village of Skara Brae has been built among the dunes, nestled in the sand. Ruled by the tyrannical Long Axe, the villagers watch the weather and the sands, in fear of their home being buried.

Blue Feather is twelve when Long Axe declares that he wants her as his third wife. Her father is unsure, but cannot argue with the chief – when Blue Feather turns 14, she will marry Long Axe. At first she is delighted, but in the years following she becomes closer with a young warrior, Singing Dog, and doubt begins to creep in.

As Long Axe’s rule becomes more volatile, and the weather more threatening, will the village stay safe? Or do they need a new chief to help them through the storms?
The Changeling

The Changeling

Contributors

Rosemary Sutcliff

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£4.99
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ebook
Tethra is not like the other children in his village. Fourteen years ago, he was left on the banks of a river, swapped by the Hill Folk for a human woman’s child, replacing the seventh son of Conan. Murna chose to raise him as her own, despite the dire warnings of their village leader.

Raising a child of the Hill Folk will bring disaster upon the Epidii people.

The dark days have arrived, bringing a poor harvest, a winter of plagues, and unsuccessful hunts. The Old One once again rallies the clan to cast Tethra out, this time with support turning against Tethra and Conan.

To spare his father, Tethra runs away, and stumbles across some members of the Hill Folk, his own people, who take him in.

As Tethra lives among them, however, he must decide if he is truly one of them, as his blood suggests, or if instead his real place is with the Epidii.
The Duplicators

The Duplicators

Contributors

Murray Leinster

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£4.99
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ebook
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.
A Puzzle For Fools

A Puzzle For Fools

Contributors

Patrick Quentin

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£7.99
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ebook
A series of horrifying murders rips through a sanatorium – and only the patients can stop the killings.

‘Baffling crimes, brilliant writing’ SATURDAY REVIEW

‘Quentin is a craftsman of the first class’ TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

Peter Duluth turned to drink after his wife’s untimely death; now, two years later and desperate to dry out, he enters a sanitorium, hoping to turn his life around. But he doesn’t quite get the calm relaxation he expected. Strange, malevolent occurrences plague the hospital – and Peter hears his own voice crying out the warning ‘There will be murder.’

With a murderer is on the loose, and the staff every bit as erratic as the idiosyncratic patients, everyone is a suspect – including Peter, who is desperate to clear his name before the killer strikes again.
The Cat Saw Murder

The Cat Saw Murder

Contributors

Dolores Hitchens

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£7.99
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ebook
One woman drugged, another murdered – and a cat is the only witness. If you like Miss Marple, you’ll love this!

Terrific classic crime – with a new introduction by Joyce Carol Oates.

‘You will never regret having made the acquaintance of Miss Rachel Murdock’ NEW YORK TIMES

When Rachel Murdock and her sister Jennifer receive a call for help from their favourite niece, Lilly, they quickly hop on a train to see her – but not before collecting their prized cat Samantha in a picnic basket and bringing her along for the ride. Samantha, it turns out, is an heiress, the inheritor of a fortune left by a wealthy relative, and so the attempt on the cat’s life, made right after they arrive, comes as a shock. The cat survives, but Lilly, murdered soon thereafter, is not so lucky.

By the time the police arrive, the clues are already falling into place, with gambling debts just being the tip of a brutal killing spree iceberg. With the authorities distracted by lurid details, it’s up to Rachel and her furry friend to uncover the truth.
Death from a Top Hat

Death from a Top Hat

Contributors

Clayton Rawson

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£7.99
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ebook
A magician turned detective is caught up in the most baffling locked-room murder mystery…

‘One of the all-time greatest impossible murder mysteries’ Publishers Weekly starred review

‘Dazzling’ Saturday Review

‘A cornerstone of detective fiction’ New York Times


Master magician The Great Merlini has hung up his top hat and white gloves, and now spends his days running a magic shop in New York and his nights moonlighting as a consultant for the NYPD. When the crimes seem impossible, it is his magician’s mind they need.

So when two occultists are discovered dead in locked rooms, one spread out on a pentagram, both appearing to have been murdered under similar circumstances, Merlini is immediately called in. The list of suspects includes an escape artist, a professional medium, and a ventriloquist – and it is only too clear that this is a world Merlini knows rather too well…
The Puzzle of the Happy Hooligan

The Puzzle of the Happy Hooligan

Contributors

Stuart Palmer

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£7.99
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ebook
It’s murder on a film set…

‘Will keep you laughing and guessing from the first page to the last’ NEW YORK TIMES

Hildegarde Withers is just your average school teacher but with above-average skills in the art of deduction. She often finds herself investigating crimes led only by her own meddlesome curiosity, though her friends on the NYPD don’t mind when she solves their cases for them. After plans for a grand tour of Europe are interrupted by Germany’s invasion of Poland, Miss Withers heads to Los Angeles instead, where her vacation finds her working as a technical advisor on the set of a film adaptation of the Lizzie Borden story.

But the producer’s plans for an epic retelling of the historical killer’s murder-spree are derailed when a screenwriter turns up dead…
A Taste For Honey

A Taste For Honey

Contributors

H F Heard

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£7.99
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ebook
Mycroft has turned detective…

A masterclass of classic crime – ‘A triumph of ingenuity and horrific simplicity’ Boris Karloff

‘A very clever thriller’ Raymond Chandler


In an English country village, a recluse and a beekeeper team up to catch a cunning villain.

Far from the noise of Victorian London, Sydney Silchester’s two passions are privacy and honey. But when his honey supplier is found stung to death by her hive, the search for a new beekeeper takes Sydney to Mr. Mycroft, a brilliant man who has retired to Sussex to take up precisely this occupation, and who shares many traits with the great detective, Sherlock Holmes.

Mycroft, himself no stranger to crime-solving, immediately senses the bloody hand of murder. But what villain would have the mad intelligence to train an army of killer bees? And will Mycroft risk his own life to find the killer?
Ominous Folly

Ominous Folly

Contributors

Denis Hughes, Ray Barry

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£3.99
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ebook
Diana and Jane had their glamorous European road trip all planned out: shopping in Paris, then down along the Spanish coast for sun and sea.

A strange road takes them through twists and turns until they black out. When they wake, they’re on a strange island, with no way off and no sign of how they got there. This strange bubble out of time has no seasons, no day or night, and is populated by a small collection of people. They are cared for – or ruled over – by the mysterious ‘Master’.

They’re in paradise. But they’re not allowed to leave…

OMINOUS FOLLY is one of Denis Hughes’ works under his many pseudonyms. It has been out of print in the UK for decades and is now available for the first time as an eBook!
Spirit

Spirit

Contributors

Gwyneth Jones

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£4.99
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ebook
As the sole survivor of a massacre, Bibi was only saved from a life as a concubine when Lady Nef, the General’s wife, intervened, earning Bibi’s undying loyalty.

When a diplomatic mission turns sour, Bibi is imprisoned with her saviour, and through her learns of the greatest treasure imaginable: an uninhabited, unspoiled, perfect planet. When Lady Nef dies and bequeaths Bibi her rank and power, Bibi steals Spirit, an instantaneous-transit space pod, and runs with nothing other than a set of coordinates.

Twenty years after Lady Nef’s capture, the Princess of Bois Dormant debuts in capital Speranza and dazzles high society. No-one could imagine this diamond of the Diaspora had an ulterior motive, forged in the darkness of a prison cell. But revenge isn’t simple when more than one person pulled a trigger. Bibi must decide what’s more important – personal vendettas, or uncovering a conspiracy that reaches far beyond just her.

A twisty tale of murder, betrayal, and revenge served ice cold, the sequel to Gwyneth Jones’ critically acclaimed Aleutians Trilogy, set in the same universe, is an epic story of intergalatic high society and the complex webs it weaves.

You can find more information about Spirit at http://www.gwynethjones.uk/SPIRIT.htm
The Last Disaster

The Last Disaster

Contributors

Hugh Walters

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£4.99
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ebook
The astronomers at the International Symposium were faced with an alarming discovery. An unexpectedly early solar eclipse had caused the Moon’s orbit to contract. Evidence from a hurried investigation all pointed in one direction: the Moon was drawing nearer to Earth, and in five years the two would collide and both would be destroyed.

What were the astronomers to do? They knew that once the news became public there would be a world-wide panic, and they turned for advice to Billy Gillanders, the head of the United Nations Exploration Agency. Gillanders and his deputy, Chris Godfrey, had one faint hope to offer, and it lay in the experiments of an eccentric retired professor…
Mission to Mercury

Mission to Mercury

Contributors

Hugh Walters

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£4.99
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ebook
The four intrepid astronauts, headed by Chris Godfrey, look forward with enthusiasm to their trip to Mercury until the new crew member turns out to be a girl! Gail Patrick is being sent along to test mental telepathy as a means of communication. Her twin sister, Gill, will remain in the control room on earth to receive and send messages into space.
Journey to Jupiter

Journey to Jupiter

Contributors

Hugh Walters

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£4.99
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ebook
Chris and his friends are setting off on the first trip ever to be made to the planet Jupiter. One thing puzzles them – they have been given no details of the time the flight will take. But as the space ship continues on its journey they are told that they will travel at higher speeds than have ever been achieved before. The effects of the tremendous speed turn out to be much more serious than expected…
Exploded View

Exploded View

Contributors

Sam McPheeters

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£4.99
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ebook
It’s 2050, and LAPD Detective Terri Pastuzka has drawn the short straw with her first assignment of the new decade. Someone has executed one of the city’s countless immigrants, and no one (besides the usual besieged advocacy groups) seems to much care. Even Terri herself is already looking ahead to her next case before an unexpected development reveals there’s far more to this corpse than meets the eye.

And a lot already meets the eye. In a city immersed in augmented reality, the LAPD have their own superior network of high-tech eyewear-PanOpts, the ultimate panopticon-allowing Terri instant access to files and suspects and literal insertion into the crime scene using security footage captured from every angle the day the murder occurred. What started as a single homicide turns into a string of unsolved murders that tie together in frightening ways, leading Terri down a rabbit hole through Los Angeles’s conflicting realities-augmented and virtual, fantastically rumored and harrowingly true-towards an impossible conclusion.

Exploded View is the story of a city frozen in crisis, haunted by hardship and overwhelmed by refugees, where technology gives everyday citizens the power to digitally reshape news in real time, and where hard video evidence is impotent against the sheer, unrelenting power of belief. After all, when anyone can forge their own version of the truth, what use is any other reality?
The Sons of Sora

The Sons of Sora

Contributors

Paul Tassi

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£4.99
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ebook
Set sixteen years after the events of The Exiled Earthborn, this explosive conclusion of the Earthborn trilogy tells the story of two brothers, the sons of Lucas and Asha, tasked with surviving the Xalan war to ensure the continued existence of the human race.

Noah, an orphan from Earth’s last days who, as a child, was smuggled to safety across the stars, is now nearly a man and a leader to the young enclave of Earthborn who reside on Sora. When the tranquility of their settlement is shattered by a shocking assassination attempt, Noah turns to his combative younger brother Erik, Lucas and Asha’s only child by blood, for aid. Their journey takes them to the remnants of a dead planet, an outlaw-infested space station, and back to Sora, whose inhabitants are bracing for a final showdown with the bloodthirsty Xalans.

They find themselves facing a new evil: the omnipotent Archon, who is somehow controlling the whole of the Xalan horde, and his bloodthirsty lieutenant, the Black Corsair, who has an unmatched taste for brutality. The Archon, so-called God of the Shadows, has unearthed knowledge that could wipe both Sorans and humans alike from the face of existence. The descendants of the Earthborn must uncover the true nature of the Archon and the Xalans before he burns everything they know and love to ashes.
The Exiled Earthborn

The Exiled Earthborn

Contributors

Paul Tassi

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£4.99
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ebook
In this thrilling second book of the Earthborn trilogy, Lucas and Asha have survived the decimation of Earth at the hands of the invading Xalans and seek safe haven with their enemy’s true foes, the Sorans. They find a lush planet inhabited by a civilization far more advanced than their own, waging a seemingly endless war against a constantly evolving enemy.

The Sorans call the pair of them the “Earthborn” and they’re welcomed as heroes, almost as gods. To an audience of billions, they swear an oath to avenge their fallen planet by aiding the Sorans in their war against Xala. But soon Lucas and Asha find Sora just as dangerous as apocalyptic Earth when they’re targeted by the Fourth Order, a rebel collective who decries them as false prophets and harbingers of further bloodshed.

Their friend and turncoat Xalan scientist Alpha believes he’s located someone who can help them turn the tide of the war for good, stranded on a conquered colony planet. But landing on the new world, Lucas and Asha find themselves hunted by a violent, mysterious beast, known only as the Desecrator, let loose by the Xalans.

Escaping Earth was only the beginning. As Lucas and Asha quickly learn, the universe has worlds and creatures far more dangerous than anything their home planet could have offered, and their continued survival hinges on gaining new allies they never could have imagined.
Skinner Luce

Skinner Luce

Contributors

Patricia Ward

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£4.99
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ebook
All around us, under most of humanity’s very noses, lurks a dangerous alien race. The Nafikh inhabit human bodies while visiting Earth, and an underground system designed to disguise and protect them from being discovered allows them to indulge their wildest and often violent urges. The circumstances of these brutal visits require the sacrifice of servs.

Servs are aliens themselves, created by the Nafikh to attend to their every need. Physically indistinguishable from humans, they are destined to live in pain, their very livelihood regulated by the Source, a powerful force of energy inside each of them that burns like a white-hot fire under the stress of their servitude.

Lucy is a serv who arrived a baby, and by chance was adopted by humans. She’s an outcast among outcasts, dwelling in both worlds but belonging to neither. For years she has been walking a tightrope, balancing between the horrors of her serv existence and the ordinary human life she desperately longs to maintain, her family unaware of her darkest secrets.

But when the body of a serv child turns up and Lucy is implicated in the gruesome death, the worlds she’s tried so hard to keep separate collide. Hounded by the police, targeted in the dog-eat-dog world of servs, she’ll find herself fighting to protect her family and the life she’s made for herself. Skinner Luce is Lucy’s story.
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