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The stories of Mary Shelley, H. G. Wells, and Jules Verne paved the way for modern science fiction, fantasy and horror. Classic Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories is a wonderful collection of excerpts and short stories from some of the genre’s greatest writers. This is the perfect introduction for new SFF readers, and a must-have on the shelf of any stalwart fan. You can have the works of the greats all in one place.

Included in this comprehensive collection are famous writers spanning multiple centuries, from the big names to lesser-known authors who helped forge the path of SFF. Revisit your favourites and discover someone new!


Classic Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories offers not only a window into the beginning of the genre, but also to the influences on today’s entrants into the canon.

In the aftermath of World War II, 8-year-old Luellen Enright is orphaned and shipped to San Francisco and the care of a covetous aunt, over-friendly uncle, and adolescent male cousins.
Her only friend is a neighbor boy-the sickly and eccentric “Chickweed”, who writes in his “Book of Dreams” and makes home movies. Lulu suffers indignities and all manner of abuse, is finally accused of murder, and sent to juvenile detention.
Years later Lulu sets out to reclaim what was taken from her-a priceless Sung vase left by her missionary father, baldly stolen by her aunt.
One of four Jack Vance mystery novels which never found a mainstream publisher, The View from Chickweed’s Window tells in delicate detail the misery of a defenseless child in the hands of unpleasant adults, and cruel older children. In typical style Vance gives us a robust heroine who, rather than crushed by hardship-is instead motivated strongly to restore justice, with a focus on result over scruple!

A collection of the trend-setting stories from “the Dean of Science Fiction” which opened and explored such topics as first contact with aliens, the Internet, transfers among parallel universes, and many more.

“The best of [these stories] are remarkable inventions, providing a window on to science fiction’s first Golden Age that demonstrates exactly what made it golden” – Kirkus Review

The aim of Laurie Paton and his colleagues was a goal which no other scientists had ever attained – the creation of a living entity by means of synthetic biological structure. But, working on their isolated island base, they unleashed a force for which they had never bargained, and against which they found themselves powerless. They created, not the entity they aimed at, but a window in Time, and, unexpectedly, a channel through which the Forces of Darkness assailed them.

One night Ed Smith thought he was having a waking nightmare when he saw a monstrous face at his window, but in the morning his neighbors were missing. The people who later turned up were not quite right, and gradually Smith realized they not only weren’t his neighbors, but weren’t even human – they were the creatures he had seen . . .

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.

Dr John West, Cambridge don and private investigator, was present at the trial of an odd duck, R. A. Adcock, who was being most uncooperative in answering questions about a bank robbery. At length, Adcock had made a dash for it from the courtroom – through a glass window, and what should have been a three storey drop to the street. But suddenly, Adcock wasn’t there, and at once a swarm of bees came into the courtroom.

Thus begins The Molecule Men, which takes many fascinating and terrifying turns to its chilling conclusion.

In the second story, the Monster of Loch Ness, Tom Cochrane, an independent scientist, determines to find out why the waters of Loch Ness are inexplicably warming up. What was it that caused the waters of the loch to pour up into the air like the worst rainstorm any of the observers had ever seen? What was at the bottom of the loch?
These two short novels by a celebrated father and son team will hold the interest of the science fiction fan from page one on.

A young artist is searching for the truth about her past – but does she really want to know…?

With an introduction by A J Finn, bestselling author of THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW

Superb classic crime from ‘the mistress of day-lit terror!’ NEW YORK TIMES

‘Psychologically rich, intricately plotted and full of dark surprises’ Megan Abbott

When Amanda Garth was born, a nearly-disastrous mix-up caused the hospital to briefly hand her over to the prestigious Garrison family instead of to her birth parents. The error was quickly fixed, Amanda was never told, and the secret was forgotten for twenty-three years … until her aunt thoughtlessly revealed it in casual conversation.

But what if the real accident was Amanda being returned to the wrong parents? After all, she seems much more like the painter Tobias Garrison. Amanda is determined to discover the truth within her aunt’s bizarre anecdote, but soon is trapped in a web of lies, suspicions and deadly secrets …

Behind the ominous walls of Jamaica Court, Anthea Vine rules as a provincial Queen Elizabeth, imperious and wealthy, vain and pathetic.

But Anthea holds chained to her in financial dependence five discontented souls, all with a motive for murder. Her tentacles reach beyond her three wards and draw into their clutches her secretary, Sally Morgan, and the sardonically charming local doctor.

Anthea’s charms prove fatal to none but her. For, while people set their watches by the light in her bedroom window, Florence Pye reads death in the cards. Her prophecy comes true, silently, violently in the depths of the night.

What Miss Pye has not foreseen, though, is that she will be first to find the body . . .

She lost her memory – will she lose her life?

Superb crime fiction from ‘A star in our galaxy of crime writers’ FINANCIAL TIMES

‘The mistress of unease’ DAILY TELEGRAPH

Mrs Anderson is starting to forget where she has put things, what she has bought, or even eaten. Living alone in a rambling mansion, she is isolated from the town.

But Mrs Anderson has a visitor. A young man comes every night, through the dining room window. He helps himself to food and money, and has even made himself comfortable in the attic. A young man who enjoys power, he might take over the whole house and make it his. It’s a place where no one will think to look for him, where no one will find him – no matter what he’s done.

‘The best American police procedural of the year’ Anthony Boucher

Sergeant Ivor Maddox and the Wilcox Street precinct do not have time to rest on their laurels. Currently there is a curious wave of shoplifting among teenagers, an elderly pensioner has been shot dead from the window of a passing car, a six-month-old baby has disappeared from his pram and a pregnant fifteen-year-old has died of an overdose of an unusual drug – a terrible accident or murder?

Lydia Grey, an American returning to London after many years, is woken by footsteps in the night. There is someone in her room – of that she is sure. But that is also impossible. There is only one door and it is bolted shut. The windows are eight floors up, and are locked against the winter night.

As the noise recedes she switches on her bedside lamp. No one is there. Was it a dream? An illusion of a half-awakened state? Or is someone out to get her?

Short-tempered Enid Marley had a foolproof system for answering queries from the many fans of her advice column in You magazine, but she had no sense at all when it came to solving her own problems.

When her latest husband strays, she decides to get his attention with a fake suicide attempt, but her plan misfires horribly. While she’s teetering on the window ledge outside her office waiting to be noticed, hands reach out for her, causing her to lose her balance. She survives, thanks to a well-placed awning and an unfortunate passer-by, leaving everyone to wonder: did she fall, or was she pushed?

‘Incomparable Pamela Branch’ Carolyn G Hart

An escaped convict, a mysterious deserted house, and murder in the Lake District..
Classic crime from one of the greats of the Detection Club

The shades of night were falling fast when Arthur Crook drove the old Superb over the Lakeland Fells and into the valley, to stop at a mysterious house where, though a light burned in an upper window, no one answered the bell.

Here opens a double murder mystery in which Crook acts in the defence of a young prisoner on the run, whose guilt appears evident.

‘The usual gusto, racy prose, good plotting and up-to-the-minute social observation’ Sunday Times

Forget The Girl on the Train – meet the woman who watches from her window, and finds herself caught up in murder…
Classic crime from one of the greats of the Detection Club


‘Watching, fascinated and horrified, he saw thin fingers creep around the edge of the black curtain. Someone from inside was tugging to loosen it . . .’

Miss Janet Martin, a 74-year-old spinster, enjoys her daily habit of watching passers-by from her window. When she strikes up a friendship with one of them – the golden-haired Pamela – she has no inkling that the innocence of her fading years is about to be turned upside down.

The little old lady becomes inextricably involved in the child’s fate, and when she calls in private eye Arthur Crook to help, a plot of abduction, fraud and murder unfolds . . .

It started as a routine tail – shadowing an oily hustler who’d been courting a well-healed matron. But the assignment soon led Donald Lam to a sleazy hotel room with a sexy barfly.

And now she’s left him high and dry with a pair of corpses dumped in his lap. Suddenly he’s the cops’ prime suspect. And it’ll take some fancy footwork to sidestep the law – and the real killer, who intends to leave Bertha Cool partnerless.

Graham Shipley has come to the Cotswolds to take up a new teaching appointment and to make a fresh start after the break-up of his marriage. He is made welcome by the head of the school and by his new neighbour in Upper Benbury, crime writer Melissa Craig.

But shortly after his arrival a young girl is found drowned. Foul play is suspected and when Graham’s past threatens to catch up with him, he turns to Melissa for help. She soon discovers that this is not a simple case of murder – there are other, more complex and sinister influences at work in the village.

‘Astute characterisation and good local colour . . . engaging and sensitive’ Oxford Times

When Sergeant Brian O’Malley’s prostitute lover pushes him from a window, his friends in the police cover up the details and give him a hero’s funeral.

His eldest son is encouraged to join the boys in the force, but as he rises through the ranks he realises that all favours must be repaid, whatever the repercussions . . .

‘Rough and tough and authentic’ New York Times
‘This riveting blockbuster has everything’ Publishers Weekly

Dick Darwent brooded in a dark cell of Newgate Prison – waiting to be hanged. Lady Caroline Ross, rich, cold and beautiful, prepared a champagne breakfast to celebrate her marriage. How were the fates of these two people intertwined? And how were their lives changed by a shot through a bathroom window, a riot at the opera, a pistol duel at dawn, and a mysterious coachman whose cloak was stained with graveyard mold?

The scene is a fashionable French seaside resort; the witness, Eve Neill, is looking out of her window in the early hours of the morning when she sees the battered body of her prospective father-in-law in the room opposite.

By Eve’s side is her ex-husband, who has attempted to force his unwelcome attentions on her. How can Eve tell the police what she saw when disclosing whom she was with might jeopardise her own impending marriage?

Suspicion falls on casual thieves, on the family and on various acquaintances, but the complicated ‘locked-room’ case is eventually solved by Dr Dermot Kinross, a detective who becomes emotionally involved …

Two petrol bombs thrown on the Cakewalk promenade, a sports reporter and his bike rammed off a cliff, a policeman thrown through a plate-glass display window in the city centre and left to die. All this is ‘a quiet summer weekend’ in the dockland city of Canton and its Art Deco resort town of Ocean Beach.

Chief Inspector Sam Hoskins links the investigation of these crimes, but political chicanery hampers him on both sides: on the left is ambitious young Eve Ricard riding to national fame and fortune on ‘women’s issues, media bias, and insensitive policing’; to the right is the monstrously corrupt councillor and aged razor-boy Carmel Cooney, with his girls and clubs and rackets …

‘Strong on city life and the interplay between policemen and local politics’ Independent

Even for a redhead, Helen Dester was wild – she’d driven one guy to drink and made another jump out of a top-floor window.

Glyn Nash realises that to tangle with her will be dangerous. But he has no option if he wants a share of the $750,000 insurance money Helen stands to gain if her husband dies accidentally – or even if he is murdered.

‘A fine craftsman’ Ellery Queen

The man in the yellow robe had put the ancient curse of the Nine Times Nine on Wolfe Harrigan. And when Matt Duncan looked up from the croquet lawn that afternoon, he saw the man in the yellow robe in Wolfe Harrigan’s study.

When Matt got there, all the doors and windows were locked from the inside. But when the door was broken down, there was no man in a yellow robe in the room, and Wolfe Harrigan lay murdered on the floor. But at the time of the murder the man in the yellow robe was nowhere near the room.

Who better to explain this miracle than Sister Ursula, a nun, whose childhood ambition was to become a policewoman?

Drug dealer Ralph Ember stumbles on a ghastly surprise when he and sidekick Beau Derek arrive at the house of yachtsman Barney Coss, his bulk supplier. Barney and his two women have been savagely murdered and the murderers, three drug rivals from London, are still in the house.

Beau dies quickly at their hands, and although they let Ralph go, he’s a marked man. But when Melanie, Beau’s alluring, ruthless widow, learns what has happened, she is bent on revenge and wants Ralph as her partner all the way.

‘Bill James is a frontrunner among those who have turned the police procedural on its head’ Sunday Times