Search Results for: ring

Dark family secrets can be murder . . .
‘Joan Aiken’s triumph with this genre is that she does it so much better than others’ New York Times Book Review

Married to an ambitious but feckless architect and living in the pretentious show home they can ill afford, Jane is forced to return to work, leaving her children in the care of a less than reassuring childminder. As the weeks pass, her disintegrating marriage and the discovery of her husband’s secrets lead Jane into a battle to save both herself and her children from an explosive summer of hatred, jealousy – and murder.

This claustrophobic thriller, based on events from the author’s own life and her struggles as a young widow, marries the desperate ring of truth with all the added horror of Joan Aiken’s gothic imagination.

‘My favourite American crime-writer’ New York Herald Tribune

Famous LAPD husband and wife sleuths Sergeant Ivor and Detective Sue Maddox return again, this time juggling half a dozen investigations at once. Balancing solving the cases of an enterprising team of daytime burglars, a scandalous sex ring and suspicious-seeming fatal accidents, they are stretched to the limit when a grandmother and her two-year-old granddaughter are discovered murdered . . .

She distrusted him at first, not least because she knew his words were lies. “Call me Grey,” he said, but that was not his name. Fear gripped her like a hand.

No one but the priestess could look upon the relics: the Ring, the Jewel and the Bone. It was for the bone that this grey stranger had come. He was like a thief, but she realized with a sinking heart that he was armed with as much magic as herself, and maybe more.

Captain Future meets Captain Future…

The two men stood facing each other.

One man was tall and impressive. His red hair, his self-assured manner, the global ring he wore on his finger, left no question in the minds of viewers that he was the man he said he was – the man known the Solar System over as Captain Future.

The other man was tall too, but fierce looking, with a wild black beard and a scarred face. They called him Blackbeard and believed he was a space pirate, although the main claimed he didn’t remember who he was. Not even he suspected that he might be the real Captain Future…

Jerry Jamison wants out: out of a sloppy marriage, a dull job and the empty suburban rat race. Once Jerry had a beautiful bride and a good salary at her old man’s successful business – that was before his wife turned into a lush. Before the business started to go to pieces. And before the lazy afternoon when Vince Biskay, an old army buddy, rings his doorbell and makes an intriguing proposition. Vince promises to bring excitement into Jerry’s life – and money – but this is a plan that leaves only death and destruction in its wake.

Kane. The Mystic Swordsman becomes the living link with the awesome power of a vanished superrace.

In the dark swamp where toadmen croak and cower, slumbers a secret relic of the days when creatures from the stars ruled the Earth. In the booty captured in a savage raid, Kane discovers a ring, a bloodstone, which is key to the power that lies buried, inactive but not dead, within the forest.

Now Kane, whose bloody sword has slashed and killed for the glory of other rulers, can scheme to rule the Earth – himself!

A mission to help refugees – but someone has murder in mind…
Classic crime from one of the greats of the Detection Club

It is at a local watering hole, the Duck and Daisy, that lawyer-detective Arthur Crook happens upon a party of men and women calling themselves the Peace Brigadiers. Their mission is to aid refugees from Europe.

But it isn’t long before Crook suspects one of them is using the premises for criminal ends. And when murder strikes Crook becomes entangled in a treacherous plot . . .

An ordinary day – which turns to blackmail and murder.
Classic crime from one of the greats of the Detection Club

What seemed like an ordinary phone call in the middle of the afternoon suddenly plunges its recipient, Simon Crete, into a plot of blackmail and murder.

‘Tell him it’s no use. I haven’t got it,’ the mystery woman’s voice cried desperately down the line. But who was she? And why was she ringing a man whom she had never seen?

From the vaults of the SF Gateway, the most comprehensive digital library of classic SFF titles ever assembled, comes an ideal introduction to the varied work of author, editor and critic, L. Sprague de Camp.

Although arguably best known for his continuation of Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories, de Camp was an important figure in the formative period of modern SF, alongside the likes of Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein. In a career spanning seven decades, he won the HUGO, WORLD FANTASY LIFE ACHIEVEMENT and SFWA GRAND MASTER AWARDs. This omnibus collects three previously out-of-print classics: LEST DARKNESS FALL, ROGUE QUEEN and THE TRITONIAN RING.

Lest Darkness Fall:
The Roman Empire had spread order, knowledge and civilisation throughout the ancient world. When Rome fell, the light of reason flickered out across the Empire. The Dark Ages had begun; they would last a thousand years. Could a man from the 20th century prevent the fall of Rome?

Rogue Queen:
Decades before a certain five-year voyage, L. Sprague de Camp sent a spirited crew to a strange and distant world, where their meeting with its inhabitants created chaos in local politics, upset the balance of power and generally created the most entertaining havoc.

The Tritonian Ring:
The gods of Poseidonis – or Atlantis – were powerful and real. Now they were determined to destroy the kingdom ruled by the father of Prince Vakar, the one man whose mind they could not read. The only way to save the kingdom was to discover that thing which the gods feared most.

Quayle, the master of a British spy ring in World War II, is faced with the task of dealing with a man who has come from Morocco with what he says is important information about German troops there. But is the man what he seems?

Quayle puts his agents into action, not hesitating to risk their lives to discover the answer, but it is Quayle who ends up doing most of the work – and who is prepared to sacrifice everything for the cause of war.

Young Roderick Kinsmere was a country bumpkin when he strolled into the Great Court of Charles II’s Whitehall Palace. Three days later he had lost his fortune, gained a wife, fought for – and been outwitted by – his king, and no one would ever call Rowdy Kinsmere a bumpkin again.

It was 1670 and London was a teeming, filthy, dangerous and splendiferous place. The king was in trouble and Roderick was surrounded by plots and counterplots. And somehow everything centred on the beautiful sapphire ring he had inherited from his father …

‘Mr Carr has contrived a fine, adventurous entertainment of politics and piracy, espionage and murder’ The Times

Duke Dorian Hawkmoon’s quest to destroy the Dark Empire of Granbretan leads him onto the path of a man who possess a rare ring that allows men to travel through time. Hawkmoon uses this ring to travel to a far future New Orleans, where he must battle the Pirate Lords who possess the Great Sword of the Dawn, which can end the Dark Empire once and for all.

Thomas Covenant found himself once again summoned to the Land. The Council of Lords needed him to move against Foul the Despiser who held the Illearth Stone, ancient source of evil power.

But although Thomas Covenant held the legendary white gold ring, he didn’t know how to use its strength, and risked losing everything . . .

Even before the renegade pirates of the giant spaceship Thunder had collected all five of the rings that would eliminate the threat of Master System forever, Hawks knew that they still faced even greater problems.

The shapechanger, Vulture, was lost on the watery planet of Chanchuk, his fate unknown. Master System’s space fleet dogged the renegade’s every step. Hawks suspected that the group was harbouring a traitor, but he was powerless to act. And, most important, the rebels had not yet figured out how the rings were used – a riddle that seemed to have no solution!

Somewhere back on Earth lay the original computer interface, and somewhere in the distant past lay the secret to Master System’s demise. As a historian, Hawks had the knowledge to solve the riddle; yet he had to be absolutely sure – for one misstep would destroy them all.

“Heard of you?” The princess spoke with a great weariness. “We hear about all the adventurers of the galaxy. So far all have failed. You will fail too. I know it – but I must go on trying to find the prince. When you are dead and scattered into the atoms we shall find another strong man and try again.

One day, perhaps, we shall succeed. Maybe you will, but I doubt it. You too will be destroyed like all the others.”

With these words of confidence ringing in his ears, Big Bill Jarrett was sent out on an impossible journey – one he knew could kill him if he went, and would kill him if he didn’t.

The twenty-year Earth-Mars war was finally over. What was left of Earth – its crumbled cities, its ruined farmlands – were firmly and completely under the rule of the Martian Archon. And this powerful planetary ruler was taking no chances: he intended to reduce the Terrans to a society of primitive agricultural tribes in less than a generation!

But for David Arnfeld, ex-spaceman and Earth Base Commander, there was something in the whole set-up which did not ring true. Why had both sides muffed countless chances to end that awful war in the first year or two? And why had the two planets gone to war in the first place?

In the back of Arnfeld’s mind an idea was growing…perhaps there was yet a chance to save the doomed population of Earth. But if his idea was true, and proof was available, he had to work fast. Too many people were involved in this War of the Two Worlds to let one man upset their plans.

A brilliant but sadistic safe-breaker; a beautiful seductress; an expert young hunter and an ace pilot with a shady past – this is the team that undercover operator Armo Shalik assembles to steal the priceless Borgia ring from millionaire Max Kahlenberg’s closely guarded fortress in the remote and deadly African bush.

But when Kahlenberg finds out they are coming, the gang’s expedition turns into a strictly one-way safari – to slaughter …

‘Insanely readable’ Observer

‘Roger waited but nothing further came. Dayne’s expression, however, told its story. A story of fear and cunning …’

Tony Dayne’s predicament presents a problem. The English police had promised him escape and immunity for feeding them all he knew about his partners in an international counterfeiting ring.

But an accident and an over-zealous policeman gets Tony pulled during the raid. The best the police can do for him is appoint a young lawyer, Roger Elwin, who does some detecting that takes him as far afield as Vienna and the violent end of yet another conspirator.

There were problems with the Form Change process. One or two malfunctions at first: people emerging from the tanks in an incorrect form or completely unchanged.

For three years it had been getting worse. Now there had been deaths, and on the Space Farms panic was setting in. People were refusing to go into the tanks. Yet out in the Cloudlands, they needed continuous small form corrections just to stay effective. As the faults increased, their society was on an exponential curve to disaster.

Behrooz Wolf, down in the Inner System, was sent for. But far gone in despair, he was in no state to help. He himself was going mad. Like a hallucination, the Dancing Man would come capering across his field of vision. Dressed in skin-tight scarlet, he danced up to him, mouthing gibberish, then skipping backwards, tantalisingly, out of sight.

While, hidden in the Kernel Ring, Black Ransone bided his time, waiting for the disintegration of the empires, waiting to inherit the universe.

A mothballed space fleet, the great ships were silent and shut down. Each up to fourteen kilometres long, they had been circling Jupiter in their hundreds for nearly a millennium.
To the little band of fugitives, they were both their hope for the future and a terrible reminder of the past. Once they had been the slave ships of their time, transporting whole populations of unwilling humans to the star colonies at the behest of the Master System.
Now, reactivated, one might not only help them escape the Master System but take them in search of the five gold rings that were the key to its control and their freedom.
Cautiously, nervously, their craft edged towards the huge empty hull that loomed in the sky before them…

Across the galaxy and beyond, he Master System ruled. Once the product of human intelligence, it now far surpassed its creators. All understanding of it was lost and any attempt at rediscovery ruthlessly suppressed. The rule of the Master System was unchallenged.


Yet there was a key, long forgotten, that would break that control and it happened by chance that two people, an American and a Chinese woman, stumbled across the secret of the five golden rings that were the key.


Now their only hope lay in finding the rings themselves for the Master System was at their backs, hunting them down…

They were Thieves for Freedom.

The golden ring – a sacred object to the inhabitants of Janipur – was one of five. Together they were the key to control of the Master System and the only hope of humanity taking charge once more of its own destiny.

Hunted through the galaxy, the rebels’ chances of survival, let alone success, were desperately slim. The three had been transmuted into Janipurians – four-legged, hairy creatures – and had infiltrated the complex, ritualised society of this long-ago terraformed planet.

And with them was Vulture, the artificially created shapechanger who could become, in body and mind, any organic creature. Vulture it was who now watched the solemn ceremony as the ring was brought out and displayed to the crowd, who understood that not just the Master System but the whole population would be hunting down the stealers of the ring.

Wormhole technology has revealed that our sun will die in 5,000,000 years. A race of superbeings, the fabulous Xeelee, owners of the universe, are thought to be responsible. The bizarre and wealthy cult, the Superet, funds two projects aimed at combatting the force that will murder the sun.

For Ethan Frome Fortune and his musclebound sidekick Skua September, the frozen planet of Tran-ky-ky had become too much of a cold thing. Aboard their giant icerigger Slanderscree, they headed for the trading post of Brass Monkey to book a passage home.
Then fate intervened with the news that their Tran friends were being exploited by ruthless off-world profiteers. To help, Ethan and Skua – interplanetary sales team extraordinaire – must make a desperate mission to Moulokin, the fabled fortified city across the frozen seas and ringed with chilling peril…