Search Results for: nightmare

For the beautiful young woman Ash, life has always been arquebuses and artillery, swords and armour and the true horrors of hand-to-hand combat. War is her job. She has fought her way to the command of a mercenary company, and on her unlikely shoulders lies the destiny of a Europe threatened by the depredations of an Infidel army more terrible than any nightmare.

Winner of the BSFA Award for best novel, 2000

A vanishing corpse; a mistrustful policeman; a celebrated archaeologist and TV personality involved in the macabre rites of a primitive religious sect – these are just some of the dark ingredients of a novel whose every page is vibrant with menace.

P. M. Hubbard has a disturbing talent for evoking terror in the most unlikely settings: in this case, a sleepy English village is shown to conceal a pit of horror, a terrifying nightmare world that destroys all who would uncover its secrets.

‘We have an agent in East Germany whom we wish to get out …’

There was nothing unusual about these words to the urbane British Intelligence chief who spoke them. He might have been discussing the weather. But to Martin Ainsworth it was the beginning of a nightmare journey from Munich to Istanbul.

They had picked Martin for the job. They had planned everything. They had made it all very simple. But they hadn’t counted on everything going wrong …

Roberta Fenn was every man’s dream – a clinging climber with photogenic features and a phenomenal body. She had what it took to get what she wanted, and she wanted a lot.

But one thing she wasn’t looking for was an early grave, and that was where she was heading – unless the redoubtable Bertha Cool and the inimitable Donald Lam jumped in, guessed right, and moved fast to save this bedevilled dream girl from a nightmare of blackmail, double cross and murder.

Though they live fulfilling, independent lives in three different countries, Olivia Segal, Jamie Arias and Annie Aldrich Thomas remain bound to each other by a past tragedy – and by their pact always to be there for each other at times of great need.

In a London vault lies a story waiting to be read; a tale of evil more than fifty years old, a link with the past and a present danger more terrifying than anything the friends could have dreamed up in their wildest nightmares.

When a team of scientists starts to investigate the flora and fauna of the distant planet of Xica, it soon becomes apparent that this is a unique opportunity to study alien life forms. The planet offers a rich and varied eco-system and each of the scientists recognises what this could mean for their individual reputations.
And then, their dreams come true – they establish first contact with a humanoid civilization.
But this is a planet where nature breaks all the rules, where logic falls apart, and where nothing is as it seems. And their dreams turn into a nightmare.

THE DREAD RETURNS

Jon Meriweather, plucked from his own world to a place where animals walk, talk and cast spells, is pitted once more against a deadly foe. Now he and his strange fellowship must embark on a journey from which none has survived.

His way lies down the treacherous river that winds through the subterranean lair of Massaurath, Mother of Nightmares, across Helldrink through a tunnel of cold flame to the centre of the Earth…

Jerry Stevens, an out-of-work bit-part movie actor, is offered a job at a thousand dollars a day to impersonate John Merrill Ferguson, one of the richest and most powerful men in the world.

Ferguson needs to finish a secret deal but hungry journalists are continually watching every move he makes. In order to complete it, Ferguson needs a ‘stand-in’. For Stevens, the money is beyond his wildest dreams.

But from the moment Steven’s steps into Ferguson’s shoes, he is thrown into a nightmare of intrigue, murder and stark terror.

This stunning collection showcases 11 of Haldeman’s best stories. They range through time and space from planets beyond our wildest dreams to a nightmare future Earth all too close to home.

Lindsay and the Red City Blues: A story of revenge – with a heart-stopping twist in the tail.

Blood Brothers: A ‘Thieves World’ story.

You Can Never Go Back: A self-contained story from the original version of ‘The Forever War’, never before published in book form.

And ten more sharp and startling visions of tomorrow.

A small cube of black rock has been unearthed in a 3500-year-old Mycenaean tomb. An incomprehensible object in an impossible place; its age, its purpose, and its origins are unknown. Its discovery has unleashed a global storm of intrigue, theft andespionage, and is pushing nations to the brink of war. Its substance has scientists baffled. And the miracle it contains does not belong on this Earth.

It is mystery and madness — an enigma with no equal in recordedhistory. It is mankind’s greatest discovery … and worst nightmare. It may have already obliterated a world. Ours is next.

The RIM STAR seemed to be an ordinary enough spaceship bound for the planet Handel on a routine mission. Then young Braden, a merchant-space officer, discovered that there was something all wrong about the RIM STAR . . . The captain was wrong, the crew mutinous, and there was even something going on with the passengers. The ship was in deadly danger . . .

For centuries space travelers had dreaded a place they called the Other Side of Nowhere – a place in the universe where up was down, where right was wrong, and where all direction was lost . . .

To save the RIM STAR Braden had to bring the ship to that place of nightmare. . .

A priceless da Vinci painting, supposedly destroyed during World War II, miraculously appeared in Mexico. The Agency sent art expert Tony Hawkin to find out what the hell was going on down there.

But what started as a holiday jaunt, soon became a deadly mad escapade that was as hilarious as it was deadly. In a nightmare comedy of errors, professional agents from Israel, Italy, and Germany, closed in on poor, bumbling Hawkin.

it was a death trap for the timid art investigator and only an illogical amateur could home to survive the murderously inept MEXICAN CONNECTION.

The Cyclan was the greatest concentration of intelligence in a thousand worlds – and yet Earl Dumarest continued to elude it. For too long.

Bochner was the greatest hunter of a hundred worlds – a man more than wise to the wiles of beasts and men. And now he was on the trail of the most dangerous and most challenging quarry of his career: Earl Dumarest.

While Dumarest searched for lost Terra, the Cyclan and Bochner searched for him. Of all the nightmare worlds of the universe, the hunt this time was to lead to the Quillian Sector.
The Quillian Sector: the place where space goes mad…



(First published 1978)

At first he though it was all part of some crazy nightmare. But it wasn’t.

Russell Graheme, M.P. was one of a handful of passengers flying from Stockholm to London. One moment flying peacefully in the sky, the next lying in an un-Earthly green coffin.

Grahame was the first to emerge from this strange resting place. But for him, as well as for the others, it had been only the ecliptical experience. Soon all were to find themselves lost in a bizarre world of Mediaeval knights, Stone Age warriors and gremlins, caught unalterably in the weirdest cocoon of Time.

A mind-shaking glimpse into the future of the earth: a brilliantly imagined, horrifyingly plausible glimpse into a world where the social elite, the Uppers, live in absolute luxury, boosting themselves with ‘Joy Juice’.



The ‘Joy Juice’ is the vital life fluid extracted from the workers, the second class citizens whose life is a constant search for and movement from one trip, one hallucination to the next. It is only when the workers are tripping that the Uppers can extract the ‘Joy Juice’.



But what happens when the good trips turn into bad ones? When pleasant dreams become nightmares?

THE DEMONS HAD TO STOP JOHN BRAVAIS

His secret assignment was simply – to save mankind from the savage dog-like ‘things’ that used their hands like men. Yet an unknown number of apparently ‘human’ beings were against him too.

First transformed by surgery into a superman, John Bravais probes ever more deeply into the secret nightmare world of the ‘things’. At last, when only his mind remains – trapped in a vast robot war machine on the moon – only by an immense act of will-power can he give humanity a future.

It was a sight he had seen once before in reality, and a thousand times since in nightmare. A planet surrounded by a glowing, pulsating, golden nimbus of lethal radiation…

Co ninuing his search for the evil Galactic Warlord, Keill Randor, the Last Legionary, joins a rebellion on the Cluster and meets a powerful mutant who may be part of Deathwing, the Warlord’s deadly army.

Keill and Glr, his alien friend, must fight this enemy and escape the lethal forces ranged against them. But can they also save the planet Veynaa from total annihilation?

Sergeant Verity’s adversaries in the underworld are as busy as ever, this time taking advantage of the Brighton Races to dupe the populace, and, more seriously, to steal the beautiful Shah Jehan clasp. Everyone knows that the glistening jewel is priceless, but only the likes of Sealskin Kite and Old Mole know its true worth.

Down from Paddington Green with his family and his old accomplice Miss Jolly, Verity thinks he has crime at bay in Brighton. But the easy time he had anticipated soon turns into a nightmare of false alarms, public disgrace and, worst of all, personal disaster.

‘A touch of Margaret Millar . . . worth watching’ Sunday Telegraph

San Francisco artist Roxanne Gautier’s startling paintings of male prostitutes has sent shock waves throughout the art world – and in her personal life. When Taylor Adams, her favourite model, commits suicide – or so it appears – her husband is frightened she may be connected with the death and asks ex-policeman Kevin Bryce to investigate.
Taylor’s fellow prostitutes, including the beautiful and dangerous Angel, and the revealing pages of Roxanne’s diary take Bryce into a psychosexual nightmare world of corruption, blackmail and moral decay.

Howson was a runt. Twisted, ugly, crippled. The kind of guy people just didn’t want to know.

But when he took a deep breath, braced himself and projected his thoughts thousands of miles into space, they were all over him. Howson’s telepathic powers were like nothing they’d ever known before . . . and he became the greatest curative telepathist in the world.

But when they put him to work chasing people’s nightmares deep down inside their minds, could they be expected to cope with what the runt found in there? More importantly, could Howson?


First published in 1964.

As a child, Rook had been taken in by the bards of Luly, and raised as one of their own. Of his past he knew nothing – except faint memories of fire and death that he’d do anything to forget. But nightmares, and a new threat to the island that had become his own, would not let him escape the dreaded fate of his true family. Haunted by the music of the bards, he left the only home he knew to wander the land of the power-hungry basilisk who had destroyed his family. And perhaps, finally, to find a future in the fulfillment of his forgotten destiny.

It is 1936 – the year of the Abdication Crisis – and gangland capo Sonny Tarrant’s money-laundering operation is being threatened by three small-time thieves thinking big.

Would-be gangsters Sandboy, McGouran and Gillis have carried out a violent raid on the premises of furrier Pelly Pender. But Pender insists to the police that no attack took place, for he knows the trio will face a different justice in which the law plays no part. And Sandboy soon finds himself caught in a nightmare world in which Tarrant manipulates his victims with the deftness of a flick-knife.

His last hope is Yvonne Manders, once the stage-dancer ‘Lady Blue’ . . .

WINNER OF THE DRACULA SOCIETY’S CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT AWARD

There’s a deserted house on Roman Road.

They say it has a dreadful secret.

Is that why Andrei can’t stay away from it?

Something stalks his family at night, and the threat looms of the father he has never known. Andrei wants to be ordinary, but he’s living a nightmare.

Writing as Ann Halam, award-winning author Gwyneth Jones delivers a story of the creatures that haunt the darkness, and the monsters that don’t stay there . . .


You can find out more about Gwyneth’s writing as Ann Halam here: http://www.gwynethjones.uk/HALAM.htm

A missing wife, a husband suspected – and only the incorrigible private investigator can save them both.
Classic crime from one of the greats of the Detection Club

On the day that Emily Tate vanished, Inspector Marston met her husband, Stephen Tate, on the tow-path of the River Pyle. The unassuming Stephen was on the brink of a nightmare episode that was to make his unhappy marriage, his clandestine love affair and his disappointed hopes seem positively joyous by comparison.

The determination of the girl he loved was the only thing that could save him from the web of circumstances in which he was enmeshed. She sent for Detective Arthur Crook.