Search Results for: stay

When Holly Dunthorne returns home to the village of Roydon Saint Agnes she finds that a friend, Marcus Meriden, has been accused of beating up an old man. There are witnesses who say they saw it happen, and the only one who might possibly clear him stays stubbornly silent.

But when murder happens and a newcomer to the village seems to attract everyone’s attention, Holly finds everything has changed, not least her old friends, the Meridens, among whom she feels herself a stranger – and afraid.

When Chief Constable Sir Clinton Driffield goes to stay with his friend Wendover, mysterious goings-on in the boathouse he owns soon attract the duo’s attention. Lights go on and off, strangers come in and out, and a game warden is found murdered nearby.

And as they work to solve the crime, a second body is dredged up from the lake …

‘Mr J. J. Connington is a name revered by all specialists on detective fiction’ Spectator

The ad in the Daily Telegraph read: ‘Wanted: a man of resource and courage to act as companion’.

Ex-con Macbeth Bain must stay on the right side of the law, and this job seems like the perfect opportunity for him to prove that he can. A woman needs protection from a jealous husband – the only thing is, this husband has been dead for seven months. His phone calls, however, continue unabated, or so the widow maintains. Crazy? Bain doesn’t think so. But it’s not until his third day on the job that the real trouble starts. And when the noose begins to tighten, Bain knows he must break out soon or it will be too late.

While John and Kirstie Raven are in Paris they come across an old college friend of Kirstie’s, Kirk Cameron. Learning he is coming to London in an attempt to raise some funds, Kirstie insists he stay with them on their houseboat in Chelsea.

What Cameron doesn’t tell his hosts is that he has agreed to help a casual acquaintance in a little ‘industrial espionage’: and what Cameron hasn’t been told is that he is to be involved in robbing a safety deposit box . . .

Poke Tohola, a Seminole Indian, is on to a smart racket. His formula is that fear is the key that unlocks the wallets and handbags of the rich. But Chuck, a cop-killer at 18, and Meg, beddable but dumb, don’t work to formula. The three of them turn Paradise City into Panic City. Then Detective Tom Lepski lumbers in …

‘An old master on top form’ Sunday Telegraph

Like most bank managers, Dave Calvin had acquired an irresistible charm that he could switch on whenever he felt the necessity. Underneath it he was cold, calculating, brutal – a perfect murderer.

For years he had waited – watching an endless stream of money pass through his hands – knowing that a risk was only worth taking if the reward was justified. And a $300,000 payroll was justification enough – even for murder …

When Dave Fenner is hired to solve the Blandish kidnapping, he knows the odds on finding the girl are against him – the cops are still looking for her three months after the ransom was paid. And the kidnappers, Riley and his gang, have disappeared into thin air.

But what none of them knows is that Riley himself has been wiped out by a rival gang – and the heiress is now in the hands of Ma Grisson and her son Slim, a vicious killer who can’t stay away from women, especially his beautiful new captive. By the time Fenner begins to close in on them, some terrible things have happened to Miss Blandish …

Eleri ap Vaughan, Keith Vine’s best dealer, has turned to other drugs wholesalers for her supplies. Now she has to die. For the threat of invasion by rival syndicates cannot be ignored, particularly as an elegantly dressed spy from London, nicknamed Lovely Mover, is in the area. Eleri’s death must serve as a warning to others to stay loyal.

It’s at times like these that Vine’s new partner, Detective Chief Inspector Colin Harpur, will prove invaluable – for example, in sweeping the murder scene for incriminating evidence. Harpur, however, is playing a dangerous game, and he now finds himself in the precarious position of covering up a murder and investigating it.

‘There is nothing else quite like this series…all delivered in a ferociously poetic voice that is uniquely Bill James’ The Times

Miranda Brand was uneasy even before the train left to take her to stay with her army cousin in divided Berlin. Then a story of a missing fortune in war-looted diamonds, told to pass the time on the journey, brings back nightmares of her past. And causes murder.

This is dazzling entertainment from a master of suspense.

When young Sarah Parrish takes a skiing holiday in Gulmarg, a resort high above the fabled vale of Kashmir, she anticipates an amusing but uneventful stay. But the discovery of the grotesque corpse of grey-haired, sociable Mrs Matthews casts a dark shadow over the party. On learning the real truth about her death, Sarah is plunged into a deadly intrigue of secret messages, mysterious rendezvous – and murder.

A delicious blend of menace and romance set against the background of M. M. Kaye’s beloved India.

Sid Shanley couldn’t stay in one place very long. He had to keep on the run, changing towns, changing jobs, changing women. He worked out the perfect setup – no attachments, no trails, no explanations. But now a girl has caught up with him. Her name was Paula – and a million dollars lay behind her strange invitation …

In life, Jane Ann never had much use for a halo, but in her violent death she finally earned one. When they found a suspect, everyone relaxed except Hugh MacReedy.

Maybe he should have stayed out of it, but MacReedy owed a big debt to the patsy they were sending to the electric chair in a week. And he would have stayed out of it, if he’d known what his chances were of coming out alive …

Twenty-two stories and novella-length works, mixing imagination with suspense in the kind of tale that can slide into the back of your mind and then stay there for the rest of your life… well-known as a novelist and screenwriter, the author of Valley of Lights and Oktober has assembled a signature collection from over two decades’ worth of his lesser-known short fiction.
A telephone chat line where not all of the respondents can be found amongst the living… the terrified flight of a hit-and-run driver whose fate was sealed at the moment of his deed… the seduction and harrowing education of a young artist in nineteenth-century France… the unholy alliance of an honest psychic and a skeptical conjurer…
All brought together in one volume for the first time anywhere, with an introduction by TV scriptwriter/producer Brian Clemens and an afterword filled with background insights and dashes of autobiography.

They call it Asgard, the Home of the Gods. Beneath its artificial shell are at least three vast cave-systems, each one the size of an Earth-like world; and beneath those, possibly many more. No one knows how many layers there might be, and no one knows what secrets might be buried down at the “center”–if there is a center. At some time in the distant past, Asgard had suffered a terrible catastrophe. Now its outer layers are cold, its builders presumed dead. Explorers and exploiters from a hundred different worlds and races are scavenging among the ruins–but deep down, there might still be light, warmth, life…and perils unknown. Mike Rousseau was one of the first humans to come to Asgard, decades earlier. Now he’s challenged by both friends and foes–and it’s hard to tell them apart on this icebound planet. He might also be the one man who can solve the biggest puzzle in the galaxy…if only he can stay alive!

There is only one Jenna Starborn . . .

A baby harvested from the gen-tanks on the planet Baldus.

A girl scorned by the only family she has ever known.

A woman bold enough to seek her own way, strong enough to stay true to herself, and brave enough to follow her heart – wherever in the universe it may lead her . . .

Stay gathers together 100,000 words of reviews, plus short fiction by John Clute, and was originally published to coincide with Loncon3 (the 2014 World Science Fiction Convention) at which he was one of the Guests of Honour.

Also included is a complete reprint of the text of The Darkening Garden.

In the culture of the galaxy, the Star-Pilots of the starships that link the cosmos together have become the great heroes of the day. Grainger, who has become a legend in his own lifetime, is drafted to fly the prototype (the Hooded Swan) of a new ship that could revolutionize space travel. The members of the ultra-ascetic Church of the Exclusive Reward have colonized a number of marginal worlds to exclude themselves from galactic society. On Rhapsody, church members lead a completely subterranean existence. Even closed societies have their rebels, however, so when a major scientific discovery emerges from the caves of the dark planet, everything there falls apart. If Grainger can secure a share in the coming bonanza, he could buy back his freedom from Titus Charlot. Before he can do that, however, he has to find some way of just staying alive . . .

In a galactic culture that extends from quasi-Utopian worlds like New Alexandria to vermin-infested slums like Old Earth, starship pilots have become the great romantic heroes of the day. When Star-Pilot Grainger is rescued from a shipwreck, he finds himself pressed into reluctant service to fly the Hooded Swan, the prototype of a new kind of interstellar ship. He’s also picked up an alien parasite that’s determined to share his brain. Under these dire circumstances, can Grainger possibly stay out of trouble? Not a chance!

When George Randolph first caught sight of Orena, he was astounded by its gleaming perfection. Here were hills and valleys, lakes and streams, glowing with the light of the most precious of metals. And, more astonishing than that, it was a world of miniature perfection -an infinitely tiny universe within a golden atom! But for Randolph it was also a world aglow with danger. Somewhere in its tiny vastness were the friends he had to rescue. Captives of a madman, they had been reduced to native Orena size; to return to Earth they needed the growth capsules Randolph was bringing them. It was up to Randolph to find them – and quickly – for the longer they stayed tiny, the closer they came to passing BEYOND THE VANISHING POINT!

Fenris isn’t a hell planet, but it’s nobody’s bargain. With 2,000-hour days and an 8,000-hour year, it alternates blazing heat with killing cold. A planet like that tends to breed a special kind of person: tough enough to stay alive and smart enough to make the best of it. When that kind of person discovers he’s being cheated of wealth he’s risked his life for, that kind of planet is ripe for revolution.

Before the dawn of man . . .

. . . there was a covenant between the land and the sea people – a covenant long forgotten by those who stayed on shore, but indelibly etched in the minds of others – the dolphins of Altair.

Now the covenant had been broken. Dolphins were being wantonly sacrificed in the name of scientific research, their waters increasingly polluted, their number dangerously diminished. They had to find allies and strike back. Allies willing to sever their own earthly bonds for the sake of their sea brothers – willing, if necessary, to execute the destruction of the whole human race . . .

Kemlo and Krillie, together with Krillie’s sister Krinsetta, set out for a visit to S Belt in Kemlo’s space scooter. They are attacked by three boys from S Belt, who kidnap Krinsetta. Kemlo gives chase, and both his and the other craft are forced down, off course, on to the Zones of Silence, part of a large area known as the Dead World where the slightest whisper is magnified into a roar…

The inhabitants of the Zones have no audible form of speech, but use instead a highly developed system of thought transference. These creatures are friendly, but too friendly: they attempt to drug the minds of visitors with thought impulses compelling them to stay on the Zones. Kemlo is able to resist this powerful impulse, but…

His wild career as a space pirate ended, Grimes faced his toughest assignment – he was “punished” by being made governor of the anarchists’ own planet! John Grimes, living legend of the spaceways, had been in and out of some cosmic catastrophes but this threatened to reach his luck’s ultimate breaking point!

An influx of planetary refugees had made that world a paradise of cheap labor and the original anarchist colonists had become such masters of wealth that no mere outsider could hope to dictate “law and order” to them. They had their own ideas which included slavery, treachery, and utter villainy.

Grimes’ first task as governor would be simply to stay alive with a whole world plotting his murder!

Pennterra is a beautiful and fertile planet and humanity’s last hope for survival. But Pennterra is already inhabited. After warning other colony ships to stay away, the small advance colony of Quakers has adapted to life on Pennterra. Heeding the empathic warnings of the native hrossa, they have settled in a single valley, sharply limited their population, and continued to use no heavy machinery in their building and farming. But surviving under these conditions has left the Quakers little time to learn more about their native neighbors. Catastrophe or peace-Tanka Wakan, the omnipotent master spirit of Pennterra, will decide.