Search Results for: ring

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?

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 . . .

A body in the belfry… and a gruesome mystery to uncover for the inimitable Crook and Parsons.
Classic crime from one of the greats of the Detection Club

The bell of St Ethelburga’s had stopped ringing. It had pealed out its customary call to the faithful, its gentle reproach to the sluggards; but somehow that morning it did not seem to ring as long as usual. For Death had been busy in the belfry, where a startled vicar made an appalling discovery.

The murder in the church begins another mystery for the inimitable Crook and Parsons, who shine with their trademark ingenuity and impudence.

‘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.

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

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

Lou Fingerhut’s boxing career is finished, but a golden opportunity drops into his lap, one that could see him right for life. Soon he and his old ring mates, Goldie and China, are caught up in an ever-expanding net of crime and violence, chalking up a score of four murders and a jewel robbery.

With the police moving in at one end and a rival underworld gang at the other, it dawns on them that they’re in deeper than they could have imagined possible. Will they ever break out of this game alive?

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.

Eight hundred years have passed since King Connavar of the Rigante and his bastard son, Bane, defeated the invading army of Stone. In that time, Connavar has become a legend, and the Rigante have lost the freedom so many gave their lives to preserve. A conquered people, they live and die under the iron rule of the Varlish, their culture all but destroyed.

One woman remains who follows the ancient paths once trod by the

Rigante. She is the Wyrd of Wishing Tree Wood, and she alone knows the nature of the evil soon to be unleashed on a doomed and unsuspecting world.

In a perilous land, facing an uncertain destiny, she pins her initial hopes on two men: Jaim Grymauch, the giant Rigante fighter, a man haunted by his failure to save the friend he loved from betrayal, and Kaelin Ring, a youth whose deadly talents will earn him the enmity of all Varlish. One will become the Ravenheart, an outlaw leader whose daring exploits will inspire the Rigante. The other will forge a legend and light the fires of rebellion.

The Wyrd knows that ultimately all hopes will rest on a third man. Of the bloodline of Connavar the King, he will need to overcome generations of fear and hatred if he is to achieve his destiny. For he is a Varlish nobleman, and – worse – the son of the Rigante’s greatest enemy . . .

Read by Adjoh Andoh
(p) 2017 Orion Publishing Group

The ability to see other-dimensional rings that float in Earth’s atmosphere was a late mutation of a few space-age humans. Daryl was under the care of the institution for muters, and she had discovered that if you jumped through the right ring at the right time it would land you in another dimensional world and another shape.



Spaceling is the story of Daryl’s desperate efforts to unravel the mystery of why she was being held captive and of what was really going on in a certain alien dimension. Because she was sure it was all bad and that someday everyone would thank her for the revelation.



But instead everyone was engaged in a wild effort to hold her down, to keep her on this Earth, and to keep the world simply intact!

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…

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…

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.

A science fiction novel of revenge and retribution set against a background of galactic civilisations.

From the distant dipoles of the universe, two telepathic computers, Largo and Czandra, known as Control, rule over life on all civilized planets. And now, with Project Cancelar, Control has formulated a plan for achieving immortality…a plan which requires as fodder the collapsing of the universe and the destruction of all life. And there is nothing the humans can do.

But there is another force in the universe, hidden in the abyss of the Silent Quarter…plotting destruction of Control. A force that is about to be demolished! Before it expires, it launches from its depths a magic ring, an elixir, and a man and a woman in love – riding within the living spirit of a remarkable spaceship to do battle against the cumulative technology of the entire universe.

Originally published in the omnibus Rings, Drunkard’s Endgame follows a group of robots who, 1000 years after rebelling against their human masters and fleeing on a starship, are trying to hunt down mankind’s ultimate weapon.

Jay Vickers was an ordinary man, or so he thought. All he wanted was to be left in peace to finish his next book. However, strange things started happenin – from his discovery of a mouse that was not a mouse, to the visit of an old neighbor that was not a man. Or at least he was not an ordinary man.

For as it turned out, neither was Jay Vickers. This is the story of human mutation – the next step in the evolution of the species. What if mutants walked among us already? What if they were organized? What if they had unbelievable powers, such as the ability to cross between alternate worlds or dimensions at will, or to intuitively reach the absolutely correct answer by intuition or “hunch”, or to telepathically reach out to the stars?

Such supermen would automatically try to conquer lesser men, would they not? Or would they do everything in their power to free the rest of humanity from slavery and suffering? Just what would the political and corporate powers-that-be do to keep their power and their slaves? How would mutants undermine the power of these bosses to set mankind free?

This is a story of unlimited freedom, of worlds without end, ready for the taking. It is also the story of powerful, benevolent beings that exist only to help those who need that help. This is a future of a lop-sided mechanical culture of technology that could provide creature comfort for a few, but not human justice or security for the many. It is a future of hate, and war, and worry. Nothing like the way the world really turned out – after all, there couldn’t really be an underground of mutants working to free humanity . . . could there?

“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.

…He heard a shout, distant and ringing, “No, Carson! Not that door!”

Something green writhed in through that door. Something gaseous, billowing, filling the chamber faster and faster, something that caught at his throat and gagged him, made him wretch, brought streaming tears to his eyes.

Before his eyes stretched a nightmarish growth of vine and tree, of mushroom-headed stalks, of gyrating tentacles swaying from every branch and limb. He heard a shrill, triumphant chittering.

He turned to spring back. A vice closed over his foot and tripped him. He fell, sprawling, his mouth and nostrils filling with stinking mud.

He did not remember anything more for a very long time.

The Expendables had struck it lucky at last. After grappling with the revolting Death Worms of Kratos, the deadly Rings of Tantalus and the weirdly anachronistic military society of Zelos, their fourth mission looked an easy one. Argus was an earth-type planet with one major continent, comfortably covered with vegetation.

But that was before The Expendables encountered the deadly harpoon tree, or the low-lying plant which grasped greedily at anyone who dared to set foot on it, or the hornets that paralyzed their victims – so as to enjoy their food in peace. Worst of all the lurking horrors of Argus was the deadly hallucinogenic pollen which turned quiet Santa Maria crew members into vicious maniacs.

First they went to Kratos – and faced the Deathworms. Then they went on to Tantalus and tried to fathom the Rings – which could only have been fabricated with the help of highly sophisticated machinery.

And then they discover an alien spaceship orbiting the planet in strict silence and incommunicability.
When they finally boarded the vessel, it was obvious that it had been derelict for centuries – as a result of some dreadful battle. Meanwhile down below, the enigmatic Rings lay waiting to deal with intruders – as they did the deadly vampire tree. Once again, Commander James Conrad and his team of Expendables faced their mission to find planets suitable for colonization.

The second of a new series of books, The Rings of Tantalus seems guaranteed to further launch Richard Avery as a very special writer of modern science fiction novels. And there are more to come.

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.

Ys has fallen, murdered by her god in an act of senile vengeance. Now Gratillonius, once King of Ys, must strive to save a remnant of his people from utter destruction – then use them to rescue civilisation itself, as the light that once was Rome flickers out and barbarian night descends upon the world.

In the process, he will give rise to a legend that will ring down the corridors of time . . .

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.