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The free humans lived underground, secretive, like rats. Above, the world was a fearsome place for them – the open sky a terror, the night so black, and the striding machines from space so laser-flame deadly.

Esther dared the open; she saw the sky; she saw the Enemy. And she was taken – captive – to the vast alien empty city. Surrounded by marvels of a science not born on earth, Esther did not know what they wanted of her. There was mystery in the city, dread in the heavens, and magic in the handsome alien man who came to her.

When police are called to a house in Chelsea following a complaint of a noisy party, all seems to be quiet – but a short while later, flames are seen coming from the house In the main bedroom, the fire brigade find the body of Mrs Diana Barton, who has been stabbed to death.

DCI Harry Brock and DS Dave Poole discover that, far from being the reserved housewife she seemed, Diana was a fun-loving woman who made certain that the party developed into something closer to an orgy.

But Diana Barton’s murder is not the only killing, and soon the complex enquiry stretches as far as Australia . . .

Far from his adopted home, the Golden City of Shondakor, Koja, self-exiled insectoid of the Yathoon Horde, has blundered into the savage land he had renounced, accompanied only by little Taran, ward of Prince Jandar. Lost in the treacherous scarlet plains, the two are hurled to separate, unnamable fates – Taran forsaken in shackles, along with the lovely Princess Xara, while the renegade Koja is locked on a perilous course of vengeance for the evils done to his clan. All destinies collide at the Great Yathoon Games in the hidden valley of Sargol – the impenetrable citadel girdled by a seething mote of flames.

Little did Zarkon dream that on a tiny south sea paradise loomed an evil force that would challenge even his mighty powers and the courage and skills of the Omega men.

Then with shattering suddenness Zarkon and his team were thrown into the path of the hideous flaming figure that rose from the mouth of a living volcano to bring scorching death and boiling terror to mankind!

There was only one way for Zarkon to combat this satanic spectre from inner space. He had to descend into the monster’s lair, and in that fiery inferno deep in the bowels of the Earth, Zarkon and his followers plunged into their most hair-raising adventure!

I saw her, hanging in the sky like a flake of the moon. A woman, her face masked by a black shireen, her body by a black shift, but her white arms spread, and her white, white, bone-white hair blowing all around her like a flame composed of smoke. Recognition was immediate. It was my mother. I shouted at her. It was crystal clear to me, what he had meant for me, my father, Vazkor, what she had robbed me of. And I drew from my belt my hunting knife and threw it at her heart.

On several settled worlds of the Earth Confederation, towns had been utterly destroyed by attacking alien vessels – exploded into flaming ruin, and fleeing people reduced to smears of blood and bone.

And so they sent for Captain Kurt Varl, the only man to have fought an alien ship and destroyed it – the only survivor from his crew of thirty souls. And now he would have to lead another ship and crew into battle, knowing that as well as the alien raiders he faced the things that lurked in limbo, existing in four dimensions and capable of transforming humans into things of screaming horror…

Inside the furnace was a seething pool of molten metal, bubbling with a heat great enough to destroy a man’s body so completely it would be impossible to trace. And Gerald Norris had disappeared without a trace!

In London, Julie Crocker was hunting for her brother amongst the demi-monde of unsuccessful artists. He too had disappeared, leaving no trace except an indifferent painting in a Soho restaurant.

Against the backdrop of the power and heat of the steelworks and the overcrowded bars of Soho, private detective John Bryant sets about investigating both mysteries. Mysteries that can only be solved in the consuming flames of yet another fire.

Tarzan had renounced his right to the woman he loved, and civilisation held no pleasure for him. After a brief and harrowing period among men, he turned back to the African jungle where he had grown to manhood. It was there he first heard of Opar, the city of gold, left over from fabled Atlantis. It was a city of hideous men – and of beautiful, savage women, over whom reigned La, high priestess of the Flaming God. Its altars were stained with the blood of many sacrifices. Unheeding of the dangers, Tarzan led a band of savage warriors toward the ancient crypts and the more ancient evil of Opar.

The Mars Probe has crashed.

A triumph of Soviet technology, the first two-way interplanetary probe performed brilliantly until the final stage of its return. Then something went wrong: rather than following its programmed course to a soft landing in its country of origin, the probe crashed in the Peruvian Andes.
Now a weird infection beyond the understanding of medical science has wiped out an entire village – except for one man, who, alone and undiscovered by medics, survives. He has awakened to find himself become his own ancestor, and a god. Suddenly the flames of an Indian revolution are spreading South America; he is the Martian Inca.

Tarzan had been betrayed. Drugged and helpless, he was delivered into the hands of the dreadful priests of Opar, last bastion of ancient Atlantis. La, High Priestess of the Flaming God, had saved him once again, driven by her hopeless love for the ape-man. But now she was betrayed and threatened by her people. To save her, Tarzan fled with her into the legendary Valley of Diamonds, while Jad-bal-ja, his faithful golden lion, followed. Ahead lay a land where savage gorillas ruled over servile men. And behind, Estaban Miranda – who looked exactly like Tarzan – plotted further treachery.

Rodro’s men were pushing past, were blundering with reeking weapons into the room to kill and take the princess away.



Lai half stretched up from the princess’s restraining arms. The room was empty of other life apart from Sir Fezius and the two knights now lifting their swords, ready to cut down Lai.



A popping noise sounded like a drum bursting.



A man appeared in the middle of the room.



One moment he was not there; the next he stood there, holding a bulky stick in his arm, peering about with a white face. He said something that sounded like “Skeet.”



The next instant the room resounded with an avalanche roar and a hellfire blast of scorching flame.

In the forgotten city of Opar, the bloodied sacrificial altar of the Flaming God stood above vaults piled high with the gold destined for fabled, lost Atlantis. There La, the beautiful high priestess, still dreamed of Tarzan, who had escaped her knife before. Around her, the hideous priests vowed that he should never escape again. For now Tarzan was returning, and they were waiting for him. Tarzan planned to avoid La and the priests. But he could not avoid the earthquake that struck him down in the vaults and left him without memory of his wife or home – only with what memory he had had as a child among the savage apes who reared him.

In the beginning was World War III…

Out of the flames was born a new civilization, a new humanity dedicated to one world rather than to many nations, to once peace rather than many wars. Never again on Planet Earth would one group of humans “defend” themselves against another group equally convinced that all their actions were “defensive”. Never again on Planet Earth.

But cycles repeat themselves endlessly; Earth is only the beginning of the human story. Next comes planet against planet, and then the stars themselves. Through it all the impersonal forces of historical necessity will tend to force that story into the pathways of tyranny, stasis, and war. And in the end they must prevail. But ever will humankind win free once more…

CAPTAIN FUTURE FACES FIERY SOLAR DEATH

It was ten o’clock, solar time, when disaster struck. At exactly the same moment, gravium mines on Mercury, Mars and Saturn were totally destroyed by an unidentified army. Without gravium – the life-blood of interplanetary civilization – the system would perish.

Meanwhile, Captain Future struggled on the floor of a moving space craft, his arms and legs bound by steel ropes. He did not know why he’d been captured – only that the system was in grave danger – that he was needed…

As Captain Future was plunged through space, towards a deadly orb of flaming gases – the raging inferno of the sun – he planned his daring escape. It was to be the most dangerous gamble of his life.

The four novellas in Quatrain are set in worlds of Archangel, Heart of Gold, Summers at Castle Auburn, and Mystic and Rider. “Flight” follows a former angel-seeker who used to be in love with the Archangel Raphael and now is determined to keep her beautiful niece from making her same mistakes. “Blood” is the story of a fierce young gulden man who comes to the city to seek his mother, whom he hasn’t seen since he was a boy and she ran away from his abusive father. In “Gold,” a crown princess escapes the hazards of war by hiding among the fairylike aliora, where she encounters an altogether different sort of danger. And in “Flame,” the mystic Senneth uses her magic to save a little girl, an act that wins her new friends but puts her own life at risk.

Expressway to an Uncharted Sphere

“Theyre about!” the woman whispered, and Crane abruptly saw a strange light shining through the heavy black curtains that shrouded the house. He crossed to the window and before anyone could stop him he drew the curtain back.

At first he did not understand what he saw: a round gleaming, colour-running orb stared unwinkingly back into his face. It was an eye. An immense sad eye staring at him through the chink of the curtains, an eye surrounded by a living whorl of flame that he had last seen engulfing poor Barney in the parking lot.

At least three others had disappeared into the strange world from which those aliens had come, and a girl had been driven insane by them. And before Crane’s quest to unravel the secret of the Map Country was complete, the fate of two worlds would hang in the balance.

The lowland girl seemed to contain fire. Her hair stirred, flickered, gushed upward, blowing flame in a wind that did now blow.

A tower of light shot up the sky, beginning where the girl stood. For half a second there was only light, then it took form.

The form it took was Anackire.

She towered, she soared. Her flesh was a white mountain. Her snake’s tail a river of fire in spate. Her golden head touched the apex of the sky, and there the serpents of her hair snapped like lightnings. Her eyes were twin suns. The eight arms, outheld as the two arms of the girl had been, rested weightlessly on the air, the long fingers subtly moving…

The girl standing before the well, unblasted by the entity she had released, seemed only quiescent. At last one could see that her face, as it had always been, was the face of Anackire…

The grand conflict for control of the continent of Derlavai rages on, in a battle with all the drama and terror of the Second World War-only the bullets are beams of magical fire, the tanks and submarines are great lumbering beasts, and the fighters and bombers are dragons raining fire upon their targets.

Yet hope may be dawning at last. The terrible onslaught of the conquering forces of Algarve-who power their battle magics with the life energy of their murdered victims-begins to founder as it runs into Habbakuk: a sorcerous ship of ice used by embattled nations of Lagoas and Kuusamo to ferry their deadly dragons across the seas to strike at the very heart of Algarvian power.

But though the tide has begun to turn, the conflict is far from over. The widely disdained Kaunians still struggle desperately to escape as the Algarvians kill them by the thousands-for life energy, but also simply for the crime of being Kaunian. And as the deaths of innocent civilians on both sides continue to feed the flames of war, those who have struggled to survive and preserve their freedom have only their passions to see them through. . . .

Tarzan, Mighty Hunter, Mighty Fighter! Tarzan the Invincible, embroiled in a thrilling Red plot for the domination of savage Africa. Here, in his own grim jungle and in the wild wastes of mysterious Abyssinia, he meets high adventure-with cruel, relentless, unscrupulous enemies.

Here, swinging through the giant forests with Tarzan, you will meet new friends and old. Zora Drinov, the beautiful Russian conspirator, will puzzle you to the last. You will like Wayne Colt, the American, and you will think that you know all about him, but you won’t. Little Nkima, the tiny monkey, comes again to thwart the enemies of Tarzan; and you will meet La, High Priestess of the Flaming God, and Tantor, the elephant, and Numa, the lion; the Great Apes, the Waziri and all the myriad life that makes the teeming jungle beloved of Tarzan.

And when you have turned the last page you will say that this is one of the greatest Tarzan stories that Edgar Rice Burroughs ever wrote.

First, you feel uncomfortably hot. But it’s no use turning up the air conditioning or reaching for a long, cool drink. Whatever you do, the temperature inside you keeps rising. And rising. Soon you’re in agony beyond your wildest nightmares as your whole body is engulfed in searing, unbearable heat. You go mad briefly with the pain. Then, with luck, you black out. If your luck holds, you’re dead soon after. Very dead. But your involuntary cremation continues. Your blood boils in your veins for a few seconds – before it bursts them. As your tortured corpse dries out from the horror-heat inside it, your skin blisters, pops, bursts – and then flares into scorching flame fueled by your own melding body-fat. Clouds of choking, greasy smoke join the searing blaze consuming what’s left of you. You have become your own funeral pyre…

When Cassidy Walker stumbles into the middle of the highway, bloodied and bruised, Bard college in flames behind her, and manages to flag down a ride, she thinks the worst is over. Arriving in the nearby town of Red Hook, Cassidy tries to call her parents but the phone lines are down – no radio or television signals are being received either. The town, it seems, is cut off from the rest of the world. But that’s not the strangest thing. Not by a long shot. Nobody in Red Hook has even heard of Bard College. Furthermore, they claim that Cassidy is not a music student, but a hand at the local stable. And she has lived in a house she can’t remember, with people she barely knows, for over a year.


The world is fracturing. Cassidy just knows it – just as she knows that she is responsible. As Cassidy undertakes the ultimate road trip, through bubbles of reality, she will find that everything she thinks she knows about herself is wrong. Is she losing her mind or is the world a far more complex place than she thought?