Search Results for: who-goes-there

An ordinary couple – but wherever they go, death follows…
Classic crime from one of the greats of the Detection Club

Mr Cobb is the third elderly invalid to die conveniently, if unexpectedly, in the house of Fred and Bessie Meadows. Yet who could suspect this responsible, honest couple? Nothing is too much trouble, yet wherever they go, death goes too. But their third crime involves them with Arthur Crook, and that’s when their luck turns.

Fans of the lawyer-sleuth know that his arrival on the scene brings action, and that every sort of cunning will be employed to ensure the innocent are kept safe and the guilty … trapped.

‘No author is more skilled at making a good story seem brilliant’ Sunday Express

Grad-school dropout Matt Fuller is toiling as a lowly research assistant at MIT when, while measuring quantum relationships between gravity and light, his calibrator disappears – and reappears, one second later. In fact, every time Matt hits the reset button, the machine goes missing twelve times longer.

After tinkering with the calibrator, Matt is convinced that what he has in his possession is a time machine. And by simply attaching a metal box to it, he learns to send things through time – including a pet-store turtle, which comes back no worse for wear.

With a dead-end job and a girlfriend who left him for another man, Matt has nothing to lose by taking a time machine trip for himself. So he borrows an old car, stocks it with food and water, and ends up in the near future – under arrest for the murder of the car’s original owner, who dropped dead after seeing Matt disappear before his eyes. The only way to beat the rap is to continue time travelling until he finds a place in time safe enough to stop for good. But such a place may not exist…

The Lyonesse sequence evokes the Elder Isles, is a baroque land of pre-Arthurian myth now lost beneath the Atlantic, where powerful sorcerers, aloof faeries, stalwart champions, and nobles eccentric, magnanimous, and cruel pursue intrigue among their separate worlds . . .

King Aillas of Troicinet defends the peace of the Elder Isles against both the Ska marauders who once enslaved him and the wicked King Casmir. While organizing the unruly barons in the frontiers of his land, Aillas goes out of his way to capture the lovely Ska noblewoman who once stung him with her disregard. When he gets separated from his men, his dream of forcing the lady’s recognition becomes the toil of dragging a defiant captive across lands governed by Casmir’s henchmen.

Meanwhile, the world of magic has gone on the move. The concentrated malice of the witch Desmëi has manifested as a green pearl, breeding lust and envy and death; and a sorcerer in Casmir’s employ abducts the princess Glyneth, in a bid to draw Aillas and friends on a hopeless rescue mission across a bizarre and deadly alternate world . . .



(First published in 1985)

Lying off the coast of Monterey, Bird Island is favored with tranquil beaches, coves and rocky hills. The island is home to a finishing school for girls, and a picturesque old hotel-in desperate need of repair. The hotel owner must sell plots of the island to finance renovation and enlargement.
The buyers are an odd bunch: a whale hunter, an amateur photographer of artistic nudes, a fugitive from justice, a young poet who composes rhymes for greeting cards, and an explorer, accompanied by his pet baboon.
Everything goes wrong, to the extent that even Rexie, the cheese-loving hotel cat is affected! So much for tranquility, on Bird Island…
First published as Isle of Peril, Bird Isle mixes intrigue with humor, inspired by the great P.G. Wodehouse.

By the CWA Gold Dagger award-winning author of Other Paths to Glory

David Roche, a young double agent, is assigned to recruit British Intelligence Chief Dr David Audley into Soviet service. It isn’t long before Roche begins to doubt the information he has been given . . . and it isn’t long before he sees how he might use than information to free himself of his obligations to both sides.

Roche joins Audley and two friends at an ancient tower in the French countryside, and also meets with Lady Alexandra Champeney-Perowne – who shows him why it is so vital that he get out.

And out he goes, in an exciting denouement involving the KGB, British Intelligence and – out of the blue – a team of Algerian terrorists.

The Travel Tales of Mr. Joseph Jorkens, the first collection of Dunsany’s Jorkens tales to be published, containing thirteen short pieces.
The Jorkens stories are set in the London gentleman’s or adventurer’s club of which the title character is a member. They usually open with another member mentioning an interesting experience he has had; this rouses Jorkens, who in return for a whisky-and-soda (merely to “moisten his throat,” you understand!) goes the other member one better with an extraordinary tall tale, supposedly from his own past. His stories often tip well over the boundaries of the plausible, into the realms of fantasy, horror, or even science fiction, and his auditors can never be quite sure what proportion of what he relates was truly experienced and to what degree he might have embellished.

‘No one writes a better crime novel than Charles Willeford’ Elmore Leonard

By day, Richard Hudson, woman-chaser and used-car salesman, works his crooked car lot with much success. By night, he returns home to a family of misfits. One day, seized by a feeling of terror and revulsion, he realises he’s wasting his life in the meaningless pursuit of money. His only hope, he decides, is to pursue his dream of making a movie.

Richard completes his cherished project, but forces beyond his control swiftly reject and destroy it. As a result, enraged and humiliated, he goes on a bender of epic proportions, drinking his way through the underbelly of Los Angeles and exacting a monstrous revenge on all who have crossed him.

Before Jack Reacher . . . there was Mike Hammer

PI Mike Hammer is out for a late-night walk in the rain when he sees a woman being pursued across a bridge. He deals with the man, but, terrified, the woman jumps to her death.

Pat Chambers, Hammer’s police department friend, identifies the pair as Communists. Hammer visits a meeting of the local party and is mistaken for a Soviet spy. Into the mix comes Oscar, the insane brother of a political candidate on an anti-corruption ticket, who Hammer must deal with so that the politician’s career prospects aren’t spiked. But is Oscar really what they say he is?

Meanwhile, Velda, Hammer’s adored secretary, goes missing, and Hammer soon finds out that the two incidents are linked by a deadly thread . . .

Cherry, Nebraska, population 312, is just off the highway between the sticks and the boonies. It’s where Dave Rhodes and his friends have lived all their lives. They own businesses, raise families, pay taxes, deal with odd neighbors, and, once or twice a month-just like their fathers before them-transform into wolves.

It’s not a bad life, but when one of the group members goes astray, it sets in motion a series of events that will threaten to destroy the delicate balance that has kept Dave and his clan off the radar. Between a son getting ready for his first transformation-called The Scratch-a wife with sordid secrets, a new sheriff who knows nothing of the creatures in his midst, and a mysterious man in a bow tie with a shady agenda, the middle of nowhere is about to get very dangerous.

Jorkens Remembers Africa, the second collection of Dunsany’s Jorkens tales to be published, is a collection of fantasy short stories, narrated by Mr. Joseph Jorkens. The book collects twenty-one short pieces by Dunsany.

The Jorkens stories are set in the London gentleman’s or adventurer’s club of which the title character is a member. They usually open with another member mentioning an interesting experience he has had; this rouses Jorkens, who in return for a whisky-and-soda (merely to “moisten his throat,” you understand!) goes the other member one better with an extraordinary tall tale, supposedly from his own past. His stories often tip well over the boundaries of the plausible, into the realms of fantasy, horror, or even science fiction, and his auditors can never be quite sure what proportion of what he relates was truly experienced and to what degree he might have embellished.

The Fourth Book of Jorkens, the fourth collection of Dunsany’s Jorkens tales to be published, is a collection of fantasy short stories, narrated by Mr. Joseph Jorkens. It collects 33 short pieces by Lord Dunsany.

The Jorkens stories are set in the London gentleman’s or adventurer’s club of which the title character is a member. They usually open with another member mentioning an interesting experience he has had; this rouses Jorkens, who in return for a whisky-and-soda (merely to “moisten his throat,” you understand!) goes the other member one better with an extraordinary tall tale, supposedly from his own past. His stories often tip well over the boundaries of the plausible, into the realms of fantasy, horror, or even science fiction, and his auditors can never be quite sure what proportion of what he relates was truly experienced and to what degree he might have embellished.

A Story of the People of the Sea

The adventure begins when Johnny, who has run away from home and hidden aboard an intercontinental hovership, is shipwrecked in the middle of the South Pacific Ocean. Stranded on a raft, and in an apparently hopeless situation, he is propelled by a pack of dolphins towards an island in the Great Barrier Reef, a famous centre for Dolphin Research.

Professor Kazan, the director of research, shares Johnny’s bewilderment as to the reason for the dolphin rescue operation and arranges for Johnny to stay on the island to assist in unravelling the mystery. In the chapters that follow, Johnny learns how to communicate with dolphins, explores the coral reef, goes skin-diving at night, survives a fearful hurricane, unearths a horrifying underwater conspiracy, and, in an intensely exciting final episode, makes a dangerous 100 mile tip on surfboard towed, turn and turn about, by his two closest dolphin friends.

In Aztechs, Shepard returns to the near-future setting of his Nebula Award-winning story, “R&R” (later part of Life During Wartime). El Rayo, the bustling border community grown up along the electrified fence along the U.S./Mexican border, is home to Eddie Poe, who earns his living by providing security. The men he hires are AWOL U.S. soldiers. AZTECH, a mysterious high-tech firm rumored to be run by a renegade U.S. military AI named Montezuma, hires Eddie and his bodyguards to join AZTECH representative Montezuma 2 (“Z2”) for a meeting with the Carbonell cartel. When the meeting goes sour and Z2 is badly wounded, one of the soldiers lobs a pocket nuke to cover their escape, and Eddie realizes he’s no longer in control…

Jorkens Has a Large Whiskey, the third collection of Dunsany’s Jorkens tales to be published, is a collection of fantasy short stories, narrated by Mr. Joseph Jorkens. The book collects twenty-six short pieces by Dunsany.

The Jorkens stories are set in the London gentleman’s or adventurer’s club of which the title character is a member. They usually open with another member mentioning an interesting experience he has had; this rouses Jorkens, who in return for a whisky-and-soda (merely to “moisten his throat,” you understand!) goes the other member one better with an extraordinary tall tale, supposedly from his own past. His stories often tip well over the boundaries of the plausible, into the realms of fantasy, horror, or even science fiction, and his auditors can never be quite sure what proportion of what he relates was truly experienced and to what degree he might have embellished.

Aleph is a machine mentality overseeing a future Earth largely bereft of humans, most of whom have sublimed into a virtuality.Remaining are the smug but cautious adherents of science. Amanda, still a teen at age 30, is a skilled violinist and mathematician but craves the applause of the Mall for some daring exploit.

In a nearby enclave live the rustic, non-scientific people who worship the god of their choice. In the center of their poly-religious valley a wicked tower has emerged, surely a tool of evil temptation. Far below, a supersonic railroad is being constructed. Amanda conceives a dangerous feat: to enter the valley and descend to the rushing train, hitching a mad ride to the next city.

Using a cyber “Liar bee,” she buzzes the ear of young Matthewmark, who chafes under the restrictions of his own narrow society. He agrees to aid Amanda and her friend Vikram Singh, but the scheme goes horribly wrong. Vik dies; Matthewmark’s brain is seriously damaged, although he recovers with advanced neurological prostheses. This treatment, condemned by his own people, allows him contact with the AI Aleph.

In a series of startling moves, Amanda graduates to adulthood (and her modish clipped speech patterns give way to this new sophistication), while Matthewmark explores uncanny and sometimes very funny opportunities in the Alephverse, climaxing in the dismantling of the solar system and its embrace by the hyperuniverse beyond ours. This is the Singularity, at last, the Transcension, and everyone lives happily ever after, for rather mindboggling values of “lives” and “happily.”

Jorkens Borrows Another Whiskey, the fifth collection of Dunsany’s Jorkens tales to be published, is a collection of fantasy short stories, narrated by Mr. Joseph Jorkens. The book collects thirty-four short pieces by Dunsany, and in one key story, Jorkens is joined in the story by his most common adversary, Terbut.

The Jorkens stories are set in the London gentleman’s or adventurer’s club of which the title character is a member. They usually open with another member mentioning an interesting experience he has had; this rouses Jorkens, who in return for a whisky-and-soda (merely to “moisten his throat,” you understand!) goes the other member one better with an extraordinary tall tale, supposedly from his own past. His stories often tip well over the boundaries of the plausible, into the realms of fantasy, horror, or even science fiction, and his auditors can never be quite sure what proportion of what he relates was truly experienced and to what degree he might have embellished.

The Last Book of Jorkens, the sixth and last collection of Dunsany’s Jorkens tales to be published, is a collection of fantasy short stories around the character Joseph Jorkens. It was left unpublished on Dunsany’s death, and was finally issued in a limited first special edition in 2002. The book collects twenty-two short pieces by Dunsany.

The Jorkens stories are set in the London gentleman’s or adventurer’s club of which the title character is a member. They usually open with another member mentioning an interesting experience he has had; this rouses Jorkens, who in return for a whisky-and-soda (merely to “moisten his throat,” you understand!) goes the other member one better with an extraordinary tall tale, supposedly from his own past. His stories often tip well over the boundaries of the plausible, into the realms of fantasy, horror, or even science fiction, and his auditors can never be quite sure what proportion of what he relates was truly experienced and to what degree he might have embellished.

Mad as Hell – and Loving It!

Ruthless mercenaries, hired by an ex-Pentagon chemical-weapons designer turned rogue, take over a small town in Oregon. The plan: use the citizenry as guinea pigs in a test-run of a bootlegged bio-agent for an Islamist terror organization.

But something goes wrong and the mercs and their clients find themselves surrounded by townsfolk who have turned into hyper-coordinated killing machines.

PAROXYSM is an action-packed tale about the seductive power of righteous violence, about how ordinary people can explode when fate gives them the power to hit back.

Praise for Matthew Hughes:

“Matthew Hughes does Jack Vance better than anyone except Jack himself” – George R.R. Martin
“Heir apparent to Jack Vance” – Booklist
“Hughes’s boldness is admirable”- New York Review of Science Fiction
“Hughes effortlessly renders fantastic worlds and beings believable”- Publishers Weekly
“A towering talent”- Robert J. Sawyer
“A treasure” – David Gerrold

Merlin is a Prince of Chaos and Amber, Corwin’s son and heir. He has grown up knowing that his legacy is to one day follow in his father’s footsteps, live up to his father’s legend.

When Corwin goes missing, that day comes far sooner than he could ever have expected. Merlin must find his own identity as the ruler of the worlds, and discover what kind of King he wants to be. Will he be a warrior like his father, or embrace his own path as a hacker-magician?

A generation after Corwin’s rise to the throne, Merlin is aided by powers beyond anything Corwin could have imagined. The epic magic from The Chronicles of Amber is wielded alongside sentient computers, a vorpal sword, and the ghosts of those who came before.

Featuring the Locus award-winning Trumps of Doom, the Locus nominated Blood of Amber and Sign of Chaos, and the final two novels Knight of Shadows and Prince of Chaos, the Second Chronicles of Amber continues the epic story of Amber and the Shadow worlds.

Mindplayers are tomorrow’s psychoanalysts, linked directly to their patients using sophisticated machinery attached to the optic nerve. In one-to-one Mindplay contact, you can be inside someone else’s head, wandering the landscapes of their consciousness. Allie is a sensation-seeking young woman, obtaining illicit thrills from her shady friend Jerry Wirerammer. But Allie goes badly astray when Jerry supplies her with a “madcap” – a device that lets you temporarily and harmlessly experience psychosis. There’s something wrong with Jerry’s madcap, and the psychosis doesn’t go away when it’s disconnected. Allie ends up undergoing treatment at a “dry-cleaner”, and she is faced with a stark choice – jail, for her illegal use of the madcap; or training to become a Mindplayer herself.

During training Allie becomes familiar with the Pool – a cohesive, though shifting mental landscape jointly constructed by a number of minds; and more disturbingly encounters McFlor, who has been mind-wiped, so that his adult body is inhabited by a mind only two hours old. And as a fully-fledged Mindplayer Allie has to choose between the many specialist options open to her – Reality Affixing or Pathosfinding; Thrillseeking or Dreamfeeding.

In the domed city of Atlanta, after the breakup of the United States, a young writer named Julian Cawthorn is in trouble. Because he insulted the daughter of a public official, Cawthorn is out of work, and virtually unemployable. He begs a temporary job on the city newspaper and finds himself assigned to cover the first public appearance of the aliens Cygnusians, travelers from outer space who have been living in seclusion in Atlanta while visiting Earth.

A Christian revivalist dictatorship rules Atlanta; church services are as much social as they are religious events. When one of the aliens chooses to appear at a church service, Julian watches as the first alien from space stands up and is “saved”. The alien’s voluntary salvation is taken as a sign that the state religion is indeed the one true religion, and minority groups, previously tolerated, are attacked by gangs, leaving Atlanta in turmoil.

The service is a turning point in Julian’s life. He is hired by Fiona Bitler, hostess to and protector of the aliens; at her invitation he goes to work in the secret alien enclave. In this environment Julian comes to know the fascinating aliens. He is mystified by the aliens’ interest in his personal life and cannot understand how they have acquired so many oddly human characteristics in their brief period on Earth.

The inhabitants of a planet called Iszm, a species known as the Iszic, have evolved the native giant trees into living homes, with all needs and various luxuries supplied by the trees’ own natural growth. The Iszic maintain a jealously-guarded monopoly, exporting only enough trees to keep prices high and make a great profit. The protagonist, Ailie Farr, is a human botanist who goes to Iszm (like many others before him, of many species) to steal a female tree, which might allow the propagation of the species off world and break the monopoly.

This volume includes two short novels, previously published separately – the title story, and Nopalgarth (published as The Brains of Earth). The collection is rounded out by two of his best shorter works – “The Gift of Gab” and “The Narrow Land”. “The Narrow Land” was the first of a proposed story sequence which was never completed.

Contents: The Houses of Iszm, The Gift of Gab, Nopalgarth (The Brains of Earth), The Narrow Land

All Jack Vance titles in the SFGateway use the author’s preferred texts, as restored for the Vance Integral Edition (VIE), an extensive project masterminded by an international online community of Vance’s admirers. In general, we also use the VIE titles, and have adopted the arrangement of short story collections to eliminate overlaps.

“LAMB HOUSE is in Rye, an ancient town of East Sussex, England. It is very much a real place, even a famous one, yet The Haunting of Lamb House is as elusive to review as it must have been to write. It is safe to say that no one but Joan Aiken could have written it, not only because she was born in Rye and has the town in her bones as it were, but also because she has the power — shown in her other books — of evoking strange, often eerie events of the past and making other times, places and people vividly alive. This book goes further: She has taken the real history of Lamb House and interwoven happenings that are purely imaginary, working so skillfully that even those who have lived there can hardly tell which is which!”

So wrote novelist Rumer Godden, who also lived in Lamb House. She went on:

“For those who do not sense such things, The Haunting of Lamb House is a most skillful and intriguing interweaving of fact and fiction; to those who do, it is a memorable evocation. In either case it is a little masterpiece.”

Lamb House in Joan Aiken’s birth town of Rye in Sussex is said to be haunted. This is her story of what might have happened to cause the haunting: using the imagined diary of an earlier Mayor of Rye, Toby Lamb, whose father built the handsome Georgian house, and later episodes that might have occurred during the occupancy of two of its famous literary tenants – Henry James and E.F. Benson.

Joan Aiken was born in another haunted house owned by her father Conrad Aiken: Jeake’s House, just around the corner in Mermaid Street, Rye, which she also wrote about in Return to Harken House.

“Joan Aiken has written a clever book, kindling a whole world of feeling out of small macabre details, presenting to the senses a series of apprehensions of reality which seem to touch a completeness beyond themselves. An impressive achievement; I shivered as I admired” Robert Nye, The Guardian

“Joan Aiken’s artful web of truth and fancy is divided into three histories of haunting – the first employs Aiken’s considerable skill in a vivid evocative rendering of the old town of Rye when the house was built…followed by the twenty years of Henry James’ residence. The end is worth waiting for…where E.F.Benson encounters hideous apparitions and even an exorcism in the last enthralling twenty pages” Miranda Seymour, T.L.S.

“Aiken has conjured up a deliciously scary ghost story…her mastery of style serves her well in the creation of three separate voices. Those familiar with Henry James’s writing especially The Turn of The Screwwill derive special enjoyment from this novel, but there are shivers enough for any reader willing to acknowledge the possibility of ghosts and the reality of evil” U.S. Library Journal

“In three interlocking ghost stories this veteran British novelist places a fictional haunting within the history of a real house, and displays a masterly way with several contrasting narrative styles, sympathetically evoking some ghostly presences…the wayward spirit of the house and the growing number of literary presences which gradually take possession” Publisher’s Weekly

WINNER OF THE 2018 BRAM STOKER AWARD FOR BEST ANTHOLOGY

It’s only water, so why should we fear large bodies of it, such as the sea or the ocean? However, when you’re all alone, you realize how scary a place it can be.

Stranded on a desert island, a young man yearns for objects from his past. A local from a small coastal town in England is found dead as the tide goes out. A Norwegian whaling ship is stranded in the Arctic, its crew threatened by mysterious forces. In the nineteenth century, a ship drifts in becalmed waters in the Indian Ocean, those on it haunted by their evil deeds. A surfer turned diver discovers there are things worse than drowning under the sea. Something from the sea is creating monsters on land.

In Devil and the Deep, award-winning editor Ellen Datlow shares an original anthology of horror that covers the depths of the deep blue sea. Whether its tales of murderous pirates who stalk the waters in search of treasure and blood, creatures that haunt the depths below?ones we’ve only seen in our nightmares, or storms that can swallow you whole, the open water can be a dangerous and terrifying place.

With stories from New York Times-bestsellers and award-winning authors such as Seanan McGuire, Christopher Golden, Stephen Graham Jones, and more, Devil and the Deep guarantees you’ll think twice before going back into the water.