Search Results for: The Islanders

The enchanting islands in the Indian Ocean beckon irresistibly, though Copper Randal soon discovers that paradise has a darker side, and a sense of foreboding hangs in the hot stillness among the mango trees and coconut palms. But neither she nor her friend Valerie, stepdaughter of the Islands’ Chief Commissioner, anticipate the sinister climax to their hurricane-struck picnic.

And when one of their party is presumed drowned and another is mysteriously murdered, Copper and her friends, stormbound and marooned on tiny Ross Island with no links to police or doctor, must turn detective to save their own lives …

When Davey and his family moved to the city from the island of Muckle Burra off the coast of Scotland, they left his grandmother behind. But now his parents are dead-after a car accident that left Davey confined to a wheelchair-and Gran has moved in to take care of him and his sister, Lu-Lyn. But Lu-Lyn believes that both she and Gran are “Ridders” who have strange, dark powers and must return to the island… or has a dangerous force already followed them here?

Davey must embark on a terrifying journey that will reveal the true secret of his grandmother’s rare gift-and the limitless power of his own potential.

Joan Aiken mixes myth and magic in this mysterious short novel inspired by the Munch painting, The Scream.

“An eerie story from this bestselling children’s author: ‘Superbly chilling…this is one of her best” Independent on Sunday

“A tense, exciting and disturbing new story from Joan Aiken, whose magical, fantastic and supernatural books for children are among the best ever written” World of Books

“A prolific and much-beloved children’s author, Joan Aiken is perhaps best known for her classic “Gothic” adventures, chief among them The Wolves of Willoughby Chase and Midnight is a Place. The Scream, which features Edvard Munch’s famous painting of the same name, was written later in the author’s career, and makes for an agreeable “shivery” read” LibraryThing

“Joan Aiken, one of the most brilliant children’s writers of her generation, delivers a dark and potent reading experience in this short, disturbing story. After their parents’ fatal accident, David and his sister live with their grandmother, a fearsome woman who possesses the power of the Evil Eye. Gran’s mysterious links to the old legends and magic of a remote Scottish island seem destined to lead to another tragedy” Amazon Review

“Joan Aiken is just ridiculously talented in terms of the scope of her writing and this is truly demonstrated by her ability to create a chilling and compelling narrative in such a short book” Goodreads Review

You need to be rich to survive at all. But it’s easier to be dead than poor.

Twenty-first-century New York. It’s a nightmare. Reaganomics has gone mad. There’s murder and mutilation on the bombed-out streets and in the corporate conference rooms. Manhattan is a zoo. There’s guerrilla war on Long Island.

Seamus O’Malley is a bodyguard and assassin in the outrageously powerful Dryco organisation, and he’s in deep trouble. Taking the job sounded like a good idea at the time. Falling in love with his employer’s mistress, Avalon, probably wasn’t so bright. Getting caught up in the Dryden family’s crazy rivalries didn’t help. Agreeing to murder the Old Man was plain stupid. And getting involved with the Ambients could only complicate matters further.

Before long, O’Malley’s on the run, and there’s nowhere safe to hide.

The newly discovered planet of Senisran is a veritable paradise, its oceans dotted with thousands of lush islands containing vast deposits of rare-earths and minerals. But Senisran is also the Humanx Commonwealth’s problem child, for each island is inhabited by a different tribe of aboriginal natives. Each has to be negotiated with separately for mining rights – and the Commonwealth is locked in a race against the vicious AAnn Empire to secure those rights.

The clans of the Parramat Archipelago on Senisran are resisting entreaties by the Commonwealth and AAnn alike. But Pulickel Tomochelor, xenologist and first-contact specialist, is confident of his ability to handle to negotiations.

What Pulickel hasn’t counted on is the secret of Parramat: the strange green stones that the natives use to bless the crops, ensure plentiful fishing, heal the injured and ill, and control the weather. For within those stones lies an awesome technology the origin of which is lost in time – a technology that has to be kept from the AAnn at any cost.

The Humanx Commonwealth: Book Six.

A guilt-ridden Earth had turned Cachalot over to the few surviving cetaceans as a perpetual refuge – a planet whose surface was one great ocean, where the remnants of the whales, porpoises and dolphins could pursue their lives and perhaps even the development of an intelligence even greater than man’s.
Humans on Cachalot were strictly confined to a few islands and the floating towns, prospering from the wealth of its sea. The cetaceans seemed to have forgiven the thousands of years of terror and slaughter they had suffered – some had even befriended selected humans.
But something was destroying the towns of Cachalot – leaving no clues…or survivors.

When the curiously exotic millionairess Klai Ford started telling him about ghosts in a uranium mine, Sawyer knew he’d better be ready for anything in his investigations.

But he didn’t count on being drawn into a passage between dimensions and tossed adrift in a world of islands floating in the sky, where strange brute-like creatures were attacking the cities in a vast struggle for power.

Lost in this new world, Sawyer realised that the key to everything lay in the mysterious Well of the Worlds – and that the future of the universe lay in its secret.

The transformation of a highly civilized, blue-blooded young Bostonian into the savage bone-and-muscle chief of a band of shaggy cavemen is a challenge worthy of the talents of the man who created Tarzan of the Apes.



In THE CAVE GIRL, Edgar Rice Burroughs tells, in a thrill-after-thrill novel, the story of Waldo Smith-Jones and how his desperate effort to survive on a lost island of primitive men and primitive beasts. How Waldo was given the name of Thandar, how he had won the hand of the cave princess Nadara, and how he overcame the most desperate of odds make this a real Tarzan-type epic.

They called him Number Thirteen, the latest and best of Dr. Von Horn’s attempts to make life from lifeless chemicals. He found himself an almost-human on Von Horn’s hideaway jungle island off the coast of Borneo. He saw the monsters that had preceded him and grew used to those dreadful travesties of humanity.



Not until Number Thirteen met the American girl who was Von Horn’s unwilling prisoner did he realize how different he was from the others. Because, monster or not, he turned against his master and threw in his lot with the girl and his friends in their desperate effort to escape the island of terror.



The story of THE MONSTER MEN is an Edgar Rice Burroughs novel of savages, primitive monsters and jungles in the best Tarzan style.

Hidden behind towering, impassable cliffs, Caspak will not easily give up its secrets. Unique and terrible animals and peoples inhabit the island. Dinosaurs terrorise tropical jungles to the south, while menacing winged humanoids dwell in cities on a large island in the north. Caught between these threats are scattered groups of human beings. Despite their differences, however, Caspak’s animals and peoples are all connected in a mysterious and marvellous way.

Carson Napier set out for Mars in a secret interplanetary rocket but found himself instead on a different world – the cloud-hidden planet of Venus.


Venus was a startling world – semi-private, semi-civilised. It was a place of unmapped oceans dotted with great islands; a world whose trees pierced the clouds and whose cities squatted on their branches; a planet whose inhabitants included men, half-men, and monsters, all struggling with each other for dominance.

Stranded on an uncharted Pacific island, Tarzan was forced to take command of an ill-sorted party-English aristocrats, a Dutch officer, a woman of doubtful reputation-to insure their safety from a band of mutineers led by a madman. A lost colony of Mayans, avid for potential victims for their barbarous human sacrifices, only added to the danger. But the Lord of the Jungle had unexpected allies…Cast away with his band was a shipment of African animals unknown to the island, striking terror in the hearts of Mayans and mutineers alike-but old friends and familiar antagonists to the man brought up among them…Tarzan of the Apes.

Now that he was the rich Lord Greystoke, Tarzan became the target of greedy and evil men. His son was kidnapped, his wife had been abducted, and Tarzan was stranded on a desert island where he seemed helpless. But with the help of Sheeta, the vicious panther, and the great ape Akut, Tarzan began his escape. Together with the giant Mugambi, they reached the mainland and took up the trail of the kidnappers. Tarzan sought his wife and his child – and he sought such vengeance as only a human beast of the jungle could devise. But the men Tarzan sought had fled deep into the interior – and the trail was old and well-hidden.

‘YOU KEEP OUT OF HARM’S WAY, SOPHIE FARTHING’ Her father’s advice seemed only sensible. The flying island of High Haven was a dangerous place. So what was she doing down on the docks at midnight, talking to the sinister gentleman with the iron jaw? Where had he come from on his majestic space yacht? And why did he laugh when she spoke of her poor dead mama? Sophie only wanted to talk to him again. She didn’t really mean to stow away – certainly not on the wrong ship. Her unintended quest is to take Sophie far from home, to the pleasure gardens of the Moon, the grogshops and grime of Lambeth Walk, through the perilous Asteroid Sea and the cruel canyons of Mars where Angels fill the red sky with their ravenous cries.

Imagine a living specimen of a multimillion-year-old hominid species, Homo habilis, encountering the contemporary world.

Told in the first-person narrative of Paul Loyd, divorced owner of a small town restaurant, Ancient of Days tells the story of a habiline man found wandering in a Georgia pecan orchard, a living descendant of a habiline tribe, brought from Africa via Haiti as a slave. Paul’s ex-wife, RuthClaire, takes in the living fossil, appropriately naming him Adam, and as an artist she discovers Adam’s mute but vibrant artistic sensibility, falls in love with him, and marries him – much to Paul’s confusion and dismay.

And then the story begins to widen out onto a broader canvas, as Adam first faces persecution by small town Georgia Klansmen, then, surviving that, moves with RuthClaire to Atlanta and encounters the whole spectrum of American culture, from art critics and media spectacles to evangelists and punk clubs.

Throughout the peregrinations and travails of Adam, however, runs a rich and developing strain of self-conscious spiritual, intellectual, and artistic growth, interwoven with Adam’s genuine anguish over the problematic nature of his true humanity.

In the end, the central characters come together on the Haitian island of Montarez in the aftermath of crisis, and in a moment of illumination and revelation meet the mysterious and extraordinary origins of Adam and his race in human prehistory.

Twelve thousand years in the future, mankind has survived two enigmatic, civilisation-destroying setbacks. Now a third holocaust is anticipated by the people of the island refuge of Ongladred. They fear destruction from invading barbarians of the Angromain Archipelagoes, the reappearance of a semi-mythical sea creature and the devious intervention of the neo-human Parfects.

The imminent disaster is very much the concern of Ingram Marley, a government spy sent to keep surveillance over Stonelore – a secluded haven and the centre of free thought on Ongladred – and Gabriel Elk, Stonelore’s master and resident genius. While panic and fear rage outside, deep inside Stonelore the mysteries of life are pursued – reanimation of the dead, the invention of powerful laser weapons and the secrets of ‘old earth’ knowledge.

Amidst harrowing dangers of sea battles and land invasions, beneath the shattered moons, Ingram Marley’s world is about to change beyond his wildest imaginings.

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.

When young Roy Malcolm won the aviation quiz contest, his prize should have meant an ordinary sight-seeing jaunt on one of the man-made space stations that circled the earth. But instead the trip turned into a terrifying journey as misadventure after misadventure plagued the artificial satellite. The climatic moment came when one of the crew pushed the wrong button and rocketed the runaway ship into outer space…

Years after the appearance in the solar system of the immense, deserted spaceship named by its discoverers Rama, a second craft arrived, destined to become home for a group of human colonists. But now the colony has become a brutal dictatorship, committing genocide against its peaceful alien neighbours and terrorizing its own inhabitants.

Nicole Wakefield, condemned to death for treason, has escaped and crossed the Cylindrical Sea to the island of mysterious skyscrapers which the humans call New York. There she is reunited with her husband, and soon they are joined by others of their family and friends. But pursuit is not far behind and they are forced to flee to the subterranean corridors of New York inhabited by the menancing octospiders.

The year is 1597. For nearly a decade, the island of Britain has been under the rule of King Philip in the name of Spain. The citizenry live under an enforced curfew – and in fear of the Inquisition’s agents, who put heretics to the torch in public displays. And with Queen Elizabeth imprisoned in the Tower of London, the British have no one to unite them against the enemy who occupies their land.

William Shakespeare has no interest in politics. His passion is the theatre, where his words bring laughter and tears to a populace afraid to speak out against the tyranny of the Spanish crown. But now Shakespeare is given an opportunity to pen his greatest work – a drama that will incite the people of Britain to rise against their persecutors – and change the course of history…

George was a shoemaker – but not just a simple artisan. He thought a lot, worried too much and questioned everything. But he knew when to keep his mouth shut, and he knew his duty. Life in the Roman Empire was hard these days, and no one could say it might not get harder. Cities to the north of Thessalonica on the Greek peninsula had already fallen to the swarming Slavs and Alars.

The tribes were definitely on the move, bringing their powerful pagan demons with them: bats with gleaming red eyes spied out the city, diving on the militia men as they patrolled the city walls; giant wolves whose howls chilled the soul surrounded the city; and there were rumours of worse. Even the satyrs, centaurs, nymphs and other remnants of the Greek pantheon lurking in the mountains around Thessalonica were frightened. George’s city was a Christian light in a sea of pagan darkness. And now that sea was rising, threatening to wash over him and his little island as if they did not exist and were of no account.

For George, that was just unacceptable. He was a simple artisan – but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t give everything to defend his family, his city and his faith.

Six weeks ago, Imperial Japanese military forces conquered and occupied the Hawaiian Islands. A puppet king sits on Hawaii’s throne, his strings controlled by the general of the invasion force. American POWs, malnourished and weak, are enslaved as hard labourers until death takes them. Civilians fare little better, struggling to survive on dwindling resources. And families of Japanese origin find their loyalties divided.

Despite the victory, the strain is starting to take its toll on the Japanese. Inhabiting the islands and keeping American, British, and Australian forces at bay are pushing their supply lines to the breaking point.

Meanwhile, across the United States, from Pensacola, Florida, to San Diego, California, the military is marshaling its forces. Steel factories and fuel refineries are operating around the clock. New recruits are enlisting, undergoing rigorous training exercises.

All for the opportunity to strike back and drive the enemy from American soil…

Japanese Zeros appear in the skies over Hawaii and descend upon Pearl Harbor in a devastating attack that cripples the U.S. Navy fleet and airfields. One after another, the islands are conquered and occupied by the Empire of the Sun. In the hands of a merciless enemy, American soldiers in POW camps suffer cruel punishment. Many older Hawaiians of Japanese origin support the invaders – while some of their children want to fight back.

But the domination of the Pacific and the submission of those who live there is merely the beginning. With the U.S. military on Hawaii completely subjugated, there is no one to stop the Japanese from using the islands’ resources to launch an offensive against America’s western coast…

As the war which consumes Dervelai drags on, Algarve’s reserves become more and more stretched. King Mezentio undertakes war on many fronts, and his main armies become sucked in to the huge landmass of Unkerlant, their main enemy. As conquered races are inducted into the Algarvian army, their fighting edge softens, and swift victory becomes ever more necessary, leading to the sacrifice of more and more Kaunians to allow Algervian mages to create ever stronger blood sorcery. Meanwhile, the mad King Swemmel of Unkerlant orders the death of thousands of his own subjects in an attempt to match the magecraft of Algarve. But the most deadly magic of all is taking place on a small island, where the ultimate weapon is coming slowly to fruition.

In this sequel to the bestselling INTO THE DARKNESS, the country of Algarve is successful in its blitzkrieg tactics, but becomes bogged down in the desolate winter of Unkerlant, its main enemy.

Algarve’s king decides to undertake blood magic, which amounts to genocide, in order to break the deadlock; when it is seen to work, its use elsewhere cannot be long coming. On a small island, a theoretical sorcerer may hold the only answer to this horror . . .

Harry Turtledove has taken events similar to those from Earth’s wars and transplanted them to a wonderfully imagined fantasy world.