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A childhood haven becomes a house of death.

‘Rinehart’s literary distinction lies in the combination of love, humour and murder that she wove into her tales … She helped the mystery story grow up’ New York Times


Sunset House has been Marcia’s summer home for her entire life. Both of her parents died there, and she and her brother spent their youth exploring its rambling hallways and seaside grounds.

They love the old house, but Marcia’s sister-in-law has never taken to it. Juliette loathes the sea, and soon comes to loathe her husband, filing for divorce – and demanding alimony that could only be paid by the sale of Sunset House. A few days later Juliette disappears. And a week after that, her body is discovered.

Marcia must work quickly to keep her beloved childhood home from being forever spoiled. Whilst somewhere in Sunset House a murderer plans the next move…

Kerron and his business associates, Chang and Forrest, were three of the richest men on Earth. Now old and approaching the end of their days, they were desperate to prolong their lives. And there was one man who seemed to possess the secret of immortality-the mysterious Brett, a tall adventurer who had apparently lived for centuries.

So the three men paid a fortune to the one man they believed could help them, But Brett had a dark secret, and he in turn made a bargain with them, They had to accompany him on the strangest and most dangerous journey ever undertaken – to the very centre of the Galaxy – beyond the Wall!

For Poilar Crookleg, the Pilgrimage to Kosa Saag has been a lifelong dream. Each year twenty men and twenty women attempt to reach the Summit, converse with the gods, and return with new knowledge. A few Pilgrims return as madmen. Most are never seen again.

Poilar and his childhood friend Traiben are determined to survive the terrifying journey not as madmen but as teachers of wisdom. Traversing mysterious Kingdoms and blasted landscapes, braving ghosts and monstrous apparitions, they will arrive at the secret of the gods themselves – a secret that will shatter centuries of belief and change their world forever.

The Mathematics of Magic was probably the greatest discovery of the ages – at least Professor Harold Shea thought so. With the proper equations, he could instantly transport himself back in time to all the wondrous lands of ancient legend.

But slips in time were a hazard, and Shea’s magic did not always work – at least, not quite as he expected . . .

The Wall of Serpents is the third in L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt’s much-loved Compleat Enchanter series.

A young married couple moves into a San Francisco aprtment formerly owned by the silent star Marian Marsh. Her ghost still inhabits the place and takes over the wife’s body, goes to Hollywood, and tries to re-enter films. The couple meets a film buff, living in Vilma Banky’s old home, and he has prints of all the lost films including the complete Greed.

Behind the walls of Terra lay a secret no man could be allowed to learn. But Kickaha – the Earth-born adventurer of the tiered worlds – had to uncover that secret, or watch his home world destroyed.

Kickaha was returning to Earth from the World of Tiers, the many-levelled universe of the god-like Lords, that he had entered many years ago as Paul Janus Finnegan. Now he had returned to a world he no longer knew, to find it ruled by Red Orc, a Lord jealous of his personal domain and hostile to intruders. Yet Kickaha had to stay alive in order to defeat the deadly enemy that threatened Earth and the other worlds of tiers – the ‘Beller’, the malignant creature that was the mind-essence of a rebel Lord.

A secret US navy research project is founded to investigate the existence of paranormal powers, bringing together a variety of men and women who have shown indications of telepathic ability. As a result of the experiment they make mental contact with the Tyrenni, strange alien beings resembling winged squids who dwell in the upper atmosphere of their tempestuous world.

The aliens’ world, Tyree, is being threatened by a huge being, the Destroyer, which is moving inexorably towards them, obliterating whole solar systems in its path. When the Tyrenni realise that it threatens to exterminate life on Tyree, they are forced into the decision – contrary to all their moral beliefs – to take over the bodies of their human contacts in order to preserve their race.

Before the Glory of Greece, Crete ruled the known world – and kept it enslaved by black magic! The evil of Minos held sway, protected by three unconquerable walls. First is the fleet that they call the wooden wall. Then there is a giant of living brass – he is the second wall. Then there is another barrier about the power of Minos, the Wall of Wizardry. Theseus, the tall Achean, the man they called Captain Firebrand, vowed to scale and destroy all three, and to rid the world of the evil yoke of Crete. But Minos had other defences besides the walls, and many ways to attack as well . . .

Trapped behind walls of towering ice, First City was a prison from which no one ever escaped. The Trysts ruled with an iron fist: violent death was a common sight on the streets.

Morag MacKenzie was a mind-prostitute who gave erotic thought stimulation, without giving her body. Those who yearned for other escapes visited the Timesmiths, within those hands time could be moulded like clay as they spun dream-visions. But morag has her own dreams, of a world outside the ice walls, a world of space and freedom, and she is determined to find it.

The Glory that was – or the Glory that wasn’t?

Knut Bulnes had considered Vasil IX, World Emperor of the 27th century, to be a harmless eccentric until Imperial decree completely sealed off Greece behind a force wall and people of Greek descent suddenly began disappearing from the rest of the world – including the wife of Bulnes’s friend Wiyem Flin.

Bulnes reluctantly agreed to help Flin find his wife, and the two managed to get inside the force wall only to find themselves in the Classical Greece of Socrates and Euripides – and the target of a man-hunt not only by the soldiers of Perikles, but also by the unpleasant characters with machine guns.

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

First published in 1958 under the pseudonym David Osborne, Invisible Barriers is an expansion of the short story “And the Walls Came Tumbling Down” (1957), which was published under the author’s own name.

An intense human quietness was upon the laboratory. Annexed though it was to the rambling reaches of the Research Council Building, wherein experimental analyses from atomic power to weed-killer were taking place twenty-four hours a day, no external sounds penetrated the proofed, heavily-insulated walls…

One Winter in Eden contains the following tales:

“One Winter in Eden”
“Seasons of Belief”
“Cold War Orphans”
“The Yukio Mishima Cultural Association of Kudzu Valley, Georgia”
“Out of the Mouths of Olympus”
“Patriots”
“Collaborating”
“Within the Walls of Tyre”
“The Monkey’s Bride”
“Vernalfest Morning”
“Saving Face”
“The Quickening”

The hero of this romance is named Golden Walter, son of Bartholomew Golden, a great merchant in the town of Langton on Holm. Tired of his mundane life, Walter sets out on a sea voyage, anxious to see and learn more of the outside world, eventually winning for himself the kingdom of Stark-Wall and the love of a beautiful maiden.

In two words, IM POSSIBLE

First, late-model cars began driving themselves away – with nobody at the wheel…

Then, valuables began vanishing from locked rooms…

It was a new kind of crime. And Malone, the Government’s expert on “impossibilities,” was afraid it was a new kind of criminal…one who could disappear at will, walk through walls, and thumb his nose at the police.

And Malone was dead right…

They were six ill-assorted players of the strangest game ever devised. Set on a strange planet, they knew neither its rules or its aim. There was the giant blue cube, the ruined city, the singing tower, the roaring wall of Chaos – all deadly dangerous, all part of the challenge that the unwilling travellers must confront. But what was it all for – and would they survive to find out?

Bjorn and Frytha share a bond, both orphans and survivors of Norman attacks on their homes in the Lake country. Growing up together in Jarl Buthar’s Norse stronghold, they become fast friends, with Bjorn dreaming of becoming a harper like his father.

As they come of age within this secret fortress, they hear word of the Norman attacks beyond their walls, drawing ever closer to the safety of their home.

Can they help protect their adoptive home and family, or will they lose everything all over again?

The Penheniot Experimental Research Village was a top-secret community with an elaborate defence system to keep away prying eyes. Inside the walls men rushed ahead with practical experiments to develop a means of time travel, while outside the everyday world fell victim to more and more plagues, strikes and rioting.

The world was on the brink of chaos. Could the small band of scientists and chrononauts at Penheniot Village find a safe method of escape into the future before the violence and death outside destroyed them too?

All his life Manvar has had a dream. One day, he will escape the harshly primitive, blizzard-torn lands of the north. He will follow the paths of the Ancients and see for himself the fabled lands of the south: lands without ice and snow and perpetual night; lands of warmth and light, where life is easy and comfortable within walled cities of incredible beauty. Manvar follows his dream, but finds it hollow. Life in the wondrous city of Delphos is not the paradise it seemed.

Three travellers find six very different worlds await their choice – if they have the courage to leave Eden…
On awakening in an idyllic tropical paradise, Rex is disoriented and possibly afflicted with amnesia. He knows his name, but the particulars are curiously missing. He spends his first week exploring, and discovers that his Eden-like paradise is surrounded by a huge unscalable wall 50 miles in circumference. Furthermore, there are six gateways at roughly equal intervals, but there is no way to climb up there and see where they go…

Three guests at Martin Clarke’s weekend party swore they saw the pistol lifted from the wall, levelled and shot. Yet no hand held it. It couldn’t have happened … but there was a dead body on the floor to prove that it had.

For the victim, it was far too late for a doctor. To unmask the clever murderer, however, a house visit by Dr Gideon Fell is just what the doctor ordered. But the killer still somehow avoids taking his medicine – until Fell vows to prescribe his own remedy for bringing the murderer to justice.

Florence in the year 1518 is riven by scientific and sociological change caused b the wonderful devices of the Great Engineer, Leonardo da Vinci. Now he is old and lives as a recluse working behind the walls of his castle. The Raphaelites, artists and anti-technologists led by Raphael of Urbino, call for his excommunication.
Pasquale di Cione fiesole, an apprentice painter witnesses an assassination attempt on Raphael at a Cathedral service. The weapon falls into his hands, and he is soon on the run from engineers and artists, desperate to prove his innocence.

Agent or traitor? Killer or victim? Kurte Menke is a refugee from the East … or is he?

Once they had been friends – long ago in Berlin before the wall was built. Now, for fifteen years, their friendship has totalled a card at Christmas. But, a late-night phone call brings Charles Ashmore, a respectable London solicitor, and Kurte Menke, an East German defector, together again.

Is it just chance that Kurt’s reappearance coincides with the trial of an English spy – a trial that Charles is defending? And who sends the mysterious attackers to Charles’s cottage? Is it the Germans, the British, or somebody else?