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The Riddle of Enigma

Years of exacting study were coming to an end. All five student scientists, each the best its species had to offer, were one step away from their final degrees. One examination remained: the students were to determine why the tiny planet of Enigma, a planet with so little mass that it should never have had an atmosphere, in fact it did.

Everything seemed to be running smoothly until the only Human member of the team, Molly was accidentally blown into one of the deep fissures that pocked the planet’s surface.

She found herself trapped in a series of tunnels and caves that only led her deeper into the riddle that was at the heart of Enigma. But as her concerned companions followed her, they found Enigma’s most puzzling anomaly. For in the dark passages they discovered life – life which couldn’t possibly exist.

Remote, mysterious and deadly, Verdia is a world from which no one has ever returned.
But Jan Hazard is convinced his brother could still be alive and Petra knows Jan can’t make it alone…on the Killer Planet.
Together they go in search for survivors – only to find themselves the next victims, trapped by the malign forces of a monstrous alien…

The hoax proposed to John Baird by a two-bit con man in a seedy Key West bar was shady but potentially profitable. With little left to lose, the struggling, middle-aged Hemingway scholar agreed to forge a manuscript and pass it off as Papa’s lost masterpiece. But Baird never realized his actions would shatter the history of his own Earth . . . and others.

Now the unsuspecting academic is trapped out of time – propelled through a series of grim parallel worlds – and pursued by an interdimensional hitman with a literary license to kill.

Astronaut Ben is lost – a million miles from Earth! His last message: “Strange life forms here…we’re under attack…!”

Jeff sets off to rescue him, but soon his own crippled starship is caught in the same eerie web of a monstrous creature from outer space!

From the depths of space the Seeker had come, to make the Solar system her nest. The invader was defeated, but not before the Earth was ravaged, its technology destroyed and its inhabitants reduced to barbarism. Mankind’s only chance for salvation lay with the alien Eldren – but the Eldren considered humanity primitive and savage, and so they withheld their help.

Young Benn Dain hoped to prove humanity’s worth on Mazeway, a planetary doublet whose twin worlds, Blade and Stone, were a testing ground for Eldren young. For Roxane Kwan and Diego Bolivar, Mazeway was a path to control of the dying Earth, and Dain’s quest was not part of their plans. But the Game of Blade and Stone was not designed for humans, and to survive, they would have to work together to fathom the depths of alien minds and the subtle traps of Eldren way…

Trapped in the confines of their fragile lifeship, a tiny band of aliens and humans faces the awesome challenge of survival after the mysterious explosion of a giant spaceship.
Giles Steel, a member of Earth’s master race, assumes responsibility for erupting tempers, the dwindling food supply…and the saboteur whose ugly work has already begun!

Trapped behind walls of towering ice, First City was a prison from which no one ever escaped. The Trysts ruled with an iron fist: violent death was a common sight on the streets.

Morag MacKenzie was a mind-prostitute who gave erotic thought stimulation, without giving her body. Those who yearned for other escapes visited the Timesmiths, within those hands time could be moulded like clay as they spun dream-visions. But morag has her own dreams, of a world outside the ice walls, a world of space and freedom, and she is determined to find it.

The roads that made up the new Diamond Estate were all named after gems. There was Emerald Avenue, Ruby Close, Garnet Crescent . . . and Bloodstone Street.

It started on the day the Peters family moved in. Patty was lying in the road and when her farther made her get up her body left a damp imprint on the asphalt.
“Look, Daddy,” she said, “the street is crying.”

But within days the tarmac was bubbling with a malevolent will of its own, sucking at the feet of unwary pedestrians, chopping at the arms of maintenance workers and redirecting the wheels of speeding cars.

The residents of Bloodstone Street had moved into open plan suburbia – only to find themselves trapped in a cul-de-sac of terror . . .

Trapped by the evil Edrick in a locked room, Yaleen is cold-bloodedly murdered. But it is not the end of Yaleen’s story, for she is given a second life – a reincarnation on Earth as a ‘cherub’.

Soon she encounters Godmind, the megalomaniac artificial deity which controls life on Earth – and maintains a brutal labour colony on the Moon for any who dare to rebel. Bit by bit, Yaleen comes to understand the horrifying project of the Godmind…

He is a financial giant but the Sponsor wants more – he wants to become a super human, to be the modern-day Adam, father to a new generation of humans with heightened DNA. He had the viral injection to change himself, the will to do it, and now all he needs is an Eve to join him on his journey. He thinks he’s found the perfect match in Jean Sandra Norwich, a woman convinced she is trapped between the genes of her mother and daughter. The Sponsor offers her freedom – and so much more, the chance to be the mother of all Superbeings. But she will get more than she bargained for.

CONVERTS is a masterpiece of science fiction and Ian Watson has superbly reworked Ovid’s METAMORPHOSES to create an extraordinary futuristic tale.

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 largest spaceship ever made is hurtling overhead, falling. Six people are trapped inside with no escape. If it strikes the Earth it will explode with the force of an atomic bomb; what can be done?

The mighty 2,000-tonne Prometheus is the largest piece of space hardware ever launched – a joint Soviet-American project to harness solar energy before the power resources of the world run out. But politically and technically the project is doomed, and the nerve-racking predicament of the crew of six shrinks to nothing beside the horrifying destruction which threatens hundreds of thousands of people if no way can be found to move the satellite from it’s ever-decreasing orbit towards Earth . . .

Skyfall is a tale of incredible terror, giving a foresight of the global disaster which could one day become reality.

The son of Mavin Manyshaped is back.
Let the Players of the True Game beware.
A giant stalks the mountains. The Shadowpeople gather by the light of the moon. The Bonedancers raise up armies of the dead. And the Wizard’s Eleven sleep, trapped in their dreams.
Players, take your places. The final Game begins.

In the near future, the debt-laden U.S. owns a technology that renders it “the world’s best-defended Third World country.” The only real outer-space planning is in Common Europe, so young American “space cadet” Jerry Reed goes to work in Paris. He falls in love with and marries Soviet career bureaucrat Sonya Gagarin and the story jumps ahead 20 years, blending world events with a focus on their family. Sonya’s star has risen with the Euro-Russians’ while Jerry has been stymied by pervasive anti-Americanism. Daughter Franja has her father’s space fever and enrolls in a Russian space school; son Bob, fiercely curious about an earlier, admired America before it was run by xenophobic “Gringos,” enters Berkeley. Ten years later the U.S. is a pariah, Euro-Russia the pet of the civilized world and the Reeds scattered – politics forced Jerry and Sonya’s divorce, Franja speaks only to her mother and Bob is trapped in “Festung Amerika.” A series of odd, occasionally tragic events brings the family (and the world) together. Despite some tech-talk this is not science fiction: the first two-thirds of this hefty book is chillingly logical, if sometimes very funny, and while the “happy” ending may seem forced, Spinrad ( Bug Jack Barron ) gives us a wild, exhilarating ride into the next century.

A time-traveller on an illegal trip into the past learns a chilling truth about her own destiny…


As a deadly Superflu runs rampant through a polluted, overpopulated Earth, a husband-and-wife scientific team races to scientific team races to salvage a livable future…


On a planet where the laws of physics are strangely twisted, a brilliant scientist’s work undermines an ancient faith and leads to a shattering revelation…


An ore-hauler on Mercury, desperate to save her endangered ship and career, finds a remarkable way out: a wormhole trapped in the hellish flux of magnetic fields and fiery plasma generated by the nuclear furnace of the sun…

She looked like an ordinary Indian girl. But within her she carried a burden of evil, a force that yearned to rend and destroy. And she had travelled 3000 miles, crossing plains, seas and mountains, to bring that force to Arachne.
Arachne – the obscene occult power that had seized Dan Brady’s wife and children and still held them in its evil clutches. Its strength was growing, its tentacles reaching out to trap and enslave the innocent and the unwary.
And now, in a bleak mountain village, Dan Brady, the Night Hunter, prepared to confront a horror that could finally destroy him and all he held dear.

Wolff-Jadawin, demigod in Earthman’s guise, and Lord of the Planet of Many Levels, opened his eyes to see the symbol of the Master Lord, Urizen, floating below the ceiling.

The summons of the Cruellest of the Universe-makers was direct and urgent. Jadawin’s beautiful wife had been abducted and held captive by the satanic Urizen

In this uniquely amazing adventure, contrived by Urizen, Jadawin was required to enter the many-levelled universe that had been purposely constructed for his torment and possible destruction. Only through crossing the Gates of Creation could Jadawin redeem his bride, as he ventured through world after brutal world in an attempt to outfox the Master Lord’s diabolically booby-trapped planets.

The winner of multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards, Connie Willis capture the timeless essence of generosity and goodwill in this magical collection of Christmas stories. These eight tales boldly re-imagine the stories of Christmas while celebrating the power of love and compassion. This enchanting treasury includes:

“Miracle”, in which a young woman’s carefully devised plans to find romance go awry when her guardian angel shows her the true meaning of love.

“In Coppelius’s Toyshop”, where a jaded narcissist finds himself trapped in a crowded toy store at Christmastime.

“Epiphany”, in which three modern-day wise men embark on a quest unlike any they’ve ever experienced.

“Inn”, where a choir singer gives shelter to a homeless man and his pregnant wife-only to learn later that there’s much more to the couple than meets the eye.

And more . . .

Hesta Web, with her hot red hair and her tough, guarded coldness, is trapped with a mother who hates her and a father who is mostly away earning money on an oil rig. When Hesta discovers that her mother and her mother’s lover have had rampant sex in Hesta’s bed, she absconds with her friend Janey to the seaside.

It is the last day of the season, sun bright and sea sparkling. The bars and shops are open, the funfair spins round with shrieks and shouts. As night falls, the illuminations go on. But when Janey catches the last train to London, Hesta stays behind. She falls in with the gothic-looking, unpleasantly attractive Skilt and his subject colony of junkies and beggars. In a rotting hotel on the front, among the broken marble balustrades, the mouse-eaten rooms and the bonfire in the ballroom, Hesta takes up her new life. She hears drugged legends told beside the fire, the rumours of ghosts and the strangeness of the sea.

For now the season has ended, the seaside is deserted, the illuminations are switched off, this place is very strange. Does Skilt know its secret? Should Hesta be wary of the blond man who watches her from the pier? And what happens when the lights go out?

It’s dark.

The planet beckoned them from space – and closed round them like a Venus Fly Trap!

Assailed by strange perils and even stranger temptations, the little group stumbled towards its destiny – Mike Ross, the pilot, Sara Foster, the big game hunter, blind George Smith, and the odious Friar Tuck.

Before them was a legend made flesh, around them were creatures of myth and mystery, close behind them stalked Nemesis. The doll, the little wooden painted doll, was to be their salvation. Or their damnation, for each might choose, and find, his own Nirvana.

Secretly and in stealth four puny humans set out to invade the heartland of Evil – the so-called Empty Lands, filled with every evil creature from the darkest of mankind’s myths.

Harcourt went reluctantly to rescue his long-lost and almost forgotten fiancée. The Knurley Man, who was somewhat other than quite human, went to find the death that would be kinder than the future he foresaw. The abbot sought to recapture a fabulous prism in which the soul of a saint had been trapped. And the girl Yolanda was seeking the answer to a mystery and a question she did not know.

But already their coming and their purpose was known. The denizens of the Empty Lands were girding for war.

And behind all the Evil lay the most ancient of dark Powers, waiting patiently for the humans whose souls should set it free.

Classic space opera adventure, Book #7 in the “Family D’Alembert” series. For centuries, the planet Gastonia has been a planet of exile, an escape-proof prison world for the worst sorts of traitors. But now, it seems, prisoners are indeed escaping, and all evidence points to the sinister, all-knowing conspiracy that continues to shadow the Throne. The d’Alemberts must infiltrate this world of traitors – and they must do it without a safety net, because if they fail they themselves will be trapped on this inhospitable world.

In uncharted Caprona, a continent lost from the map of Earth, where Time had stopped and all the primeval creatures of long-gone ages still prowled, Bowen Tyler was lost.

Strange mysteries awaited the expedition that went in search of Tyler. A barbaric, warring civilization hid there, trapped between the impassable jungle on one side and an unknown menace on the other.

The daughter of rich but neglectful parents, Terisa Morgan lives alone in a New York City apartment, a young woman who has grown to doubt her own existence. Surrounded by the flat reassurance of mirrors, she leads an unfulfilled life-until the night a strange man named Geraden comes crashing through one of her mirrors, on a quest to find a champion to save his kingdom of Mordant from a pervasive evil that threatens the land. Terisa is no champion. She wields neither magic nor power. And yet, much to her own surprise, when Geraden begs her to come back with him, she agrees.Now, in a culture where women are little more than the playthings of powerful men, in a castle honeycombed with secret passages and clever traps, in a kingdom threatened from without and within by enemies able to appear and vanish out of thin air, Terisa must become more than the pale reflection of a person. For the way back to Earth is closed to her. And the enemies of Mordant will stop at nothing to see her dead.