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If you were looking for a fallen star, would you go happily off to the North Pole and dig holes into the seas-bed, grubbing for pieces of rock? You wouldn’t? Neither would Julian Cole. He was dragged there.

Would you choose as companions a cashiered astronomer whose capacity was purely alcoholic, a pneumatic woman whose walk alone was enough to set a man to itching, plus a collection of failures and misfits scooped from the gutters of New York? Neither did Julian. They picked him.

And when this bungling crew of heterogeneous hoboes stumbled on to a world-shattering discovery, would you believe them? Julian had to. He was there.

In THE LAD AND THE LION, Edgar Rice Burroughs has returned to a theme that catapulted his name to fame when he wrote “Tarzan of the Apes”. For here is the story of a youth – actually a deposed king – whose life is preserved by a miracle and who grows up on a derelict ship in companion with a lion.
Eventually the winds and currents deposit the strange pair on the coast of Africa, and the youth learns the lessons of the wild, helped by his closest friend and protector, the giant, black-maned lion.
The book is filled with the loyalty and staunch friendship of beasts – and with the treachery of man. It has all the trills and adventure and suspense that have made fans of millions of Edgar Rice Burroughs readers.

Anu, red giant companion-star to Bel and Ea, was relentlessly approaching Ishtar – scorching the land, forcing the barbarians of the North ever southward away from the Inferno. Fire Time was fast confronting the planet; civil war broke out as the Tassui led their forces against the army of the Gathering in a desperate struggle for survival.

The Gathering anxiously awaited help from the human colony in Primavera. Jill Conway and other colonists like her hoped to save the civilisation of Ishtar and they relied on the Navy of the Federation of Earth to do so. But now the Federation was engaged in its own was, an interstellar war that seemingly had no end. And no end meant no help of Ishtar…

Darian left his home at the edge of the Pelagiris Forest when barbarians attacked Errold’s Grove and killed Wizard Justyn. Now, under the watchful eye of the Hawkbrothers, Darian is honing his craft and gaining new mage skills, not the least of which is an affinity for mind-speaking with his closest companion, the Hawk Owl Kuari.

Keisha, a nartural-born healer, is proving indispensible in Errold’s Grove, but her destiny seems ordinary when compared with her sister Shandi, who is Chosen to be a Herald.

But there is much more in store for Darian and Keisha: they have a task, the outcome of which will affect all of Valdemar – and their guide is to be the legendary hero of the Mage-Storms, Firesong himself.

THROUGH THE TERROR TOROID

It could have been a black hole – one of those terrifying rips in space that defy all laws. That it was artificial in origin did not make it any less deadly.

Worst of all, that strange extra-galactic torus was drifting into an intersect with Earth in its orbit. The result would be devastation beyond concept.

Cap Kennedy and his three companions were considered expendable in such a cause. And Cap himself volunteered to dare the impossible – to turn that cosmic hole aside.

What he fell into was an adventure utterly different than anything he had expected. The novel of EARTH ENSLAVED is a real surprise package for the legion of Cap Kennedy’s followers.

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.

When Spencer Gill, Jack Turnbull and Angela Denholm were taken by the Castle in Scotland – when they played Sith of the Throne’s monstrous multidimensional game to stay the execution of Earth, and won – they made a deadly, devious enemy of the alien master of The House of Doors.

Now Sith is back, and his game is more deadly yet. In worlds that are known, and others beyond imagining . . . in mad machine worlds, and some that can only be the product of a diseased mind – indeed, in one such that is a diseased mind – Sith’s new game will be played out to the bitter end. For the game is rigged, The House of Doors inscrutable as ever, and its doors all designed to lead Gill and his companions ever deeper into worlds of uttermost terror . . .

‘The English should confine their murders to their own country’ is the view held by Parisians when Lady Dorothy Strathy, sister of the Earl of Tain, is discovered stabbed in her hotel room. This opinion is held by none more strongly than Courtrand, the head of the Sûreté, an outrageous snob who regards the case as closed when it is discovered that Lady Strathy’s paid companion, Miss Newbolt, was the first on the scene.

However, Inspector Gautier is not so easily swayed and comes up with a number of awkward clues which throw doubt on Courtrand’s theory, facing in the process the shady underworld of male prostitution and back-street throat-cutting – alongside more personal troubles including the death of his ex-wife – in a case with a startling dénouement.

CALL ME KETAN!



Like all my companions in Kronweld I emerged full-grown from the Temple of Birth. My needs, my wishes, my passions were coldly filed in the perforated transparencies that constitute the integrated will of Kronweld.



But I alone harbour curiosity about our past. I alone know the Bors of Dark Land and how they are born. I alone have discovered the hidden secret of our birth… and have heard the groaning fertility prisoners of the other world. Here is their message:



“If any of you live, come through to us. Save us. Bring weapons!”



I am going to them now. I do not know whether I will ever return from the great Edge…

After the collapse of civilization, when the social fabric of America has come apart in bloody rags, when every man’s hand is raised against another, and only the strong survive.

“Jeebee” Walther was a scientist, a student of human behavior, who saw the Collapse of the world economy coming, but could do nothing to stop it. Now he must make his way across a violent and lawless America, in search of a refuge where he can keep the spark of knowledge alive in the coming Dark Age. He could never make it on his own, but he has found a companion who can teach him how to survive on instinct and will.

Jeebee has been adopted by a great Gray Wolf.

This classic of Gothic horror follows Laura, a woman haunted by a girlhood dream of a beautiful visitor to her bedroom. Now, a decade later, Laura finds Carmilla, who appears to be her own age, on the side of the road after a carriage accident. The two recognize each other from the same childhood dream and become fast friends. Soon after, Laura begins to experience mysterious feelings and is once again haunted by nightmares. She finds Carmilla strangely irresistible and longs to be with her.

But as the two friends grow closer, Laura’s health begins to fail. It becomes apparent that her enchanting companion is harboring a sinister secret. To free herself from Carmilla’s grasp, Laura and her family must fight for their lives.

The siege of Kerbryhaine had been raised, the Ekwesh hordes vanquished, the Mastersmith slain. But for Alv – now Elof the Smith – the war was not yet won: Kerbryhaine was still a divided city; the Ekwesh, bloodily defeated, would look for revenge; and the Ice, implacably malevolent, continued its inexorable march southward.

So from divided Kerbryhaine Elof, Kermorvan and his companions mounted an expedition to the legendary lost cities of the East; if they managed to reunite the war-torn tribes, perhaps they could stand together against the menace of the Ice. But to Elof and Kermorvan the journey would also bring knowledge: of the Powers ranged for and against them; and the secrets within themselves waiting to be revealed – secrets that would play a part in the war yet to come.

Gifted novelist Fowler (Sarah Canary and The Sweetheart Season) delights in the arcane, and, as a result, these 15 clever tales are occasionally puzzling but never dull.

In the long title story, temperance activist Carry Nation is resurrected in the 1990s (“We’re talking about a very troubled, very big woman,” says one shaken barman to reporters) and becomes such a nuisance that the DEA is forced to dispatch her with voodoo. Other plots are only slightly less outrageous in conceit. In “Lieserl,” a lovesick madwoman dupes Albert Einstein into believing he has a daughter; in “The Faithful Companion at Forty,” Tonto admits to second thoughts about his biggest life choice (“But for every day, for your ordinary life, a mask is only going to make you more obvious. There’s an element of exhibitionism in it”). “The Travails” offers a peek at the one-sided correspondence of Mary Gulliver, who wants Lemuel to come home already and help out around the house. The homage to Swift makes sense, for, when Fowler doesn’t settle for amusing her readers, she makes a lively satirist. The extraterrestrials who appear in her stories (whether the inscrutably sadistic monsters in “Duplicity” or the members of a seminar studying late-1960s college behavior in “The View from Venus: A Case Study”) seem stand-ins for the author herself, who, in elegant and witty prose, cultivates the eye of a curious alien and, along the way, unfolds eccentric plots that keep the pages turning.

Contents:
Black Glass (1991), Contention (1986), Shimabara (1995), The Elizabeth Complex (1996), Go Back (1998), The Travails (1998), Lieserl (1990), Letters from Home (1987), Duplicity (1989), The Faithful Companion at Forty (1987), The Brew (1995), Lily Red (1988), The Black Fairy’s Curse (1997), The View from Venus (1986), Game Night at the Fox and Goose (1989)

When Shadow received a message that Shylar needed his aid, the master thief and his three companions, Allerum – now an elf swordsman but once a twentieth century American soldier – and the two Dragonmages, Silme and Astryd, immediately set out for Shadow’s hometown of Cullinsberg. For Shylar, town madam and high in the thieves’ underground, was all the family Shadow had. But Cullinsberg was an armed trap waiting to close on the four adventurers. For they had slain the Chaos Dragon, and in so doing unleashed a force of pure Chaos, a force which then bonded with the single greatest surviving Dragonmage. Driven by Chaos-induced madness, this master of powers far beyond those of Silme and Astryd would now use anyone and any means to take his deadly revenge on those four warriors of Law.

Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion returns in the form of Michael Kane, a brilliant Earthman stranded on the treacherous deserts of Ancient Mars! In this sweeping, epic sword-and-planet adventure in the tradition of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Kane and his blue giant companion Hool Haji must travel to the far reaches of the Red Planet to halt the hideous Green Death, an unstoppable disease that rots the mind as well as the body. From gorgeous Karnala, City of Green Mists, to the empty streets of tainted Cend-Amrid to the forgotten weird-science laboratories of the lost, highly advanced Yaksha culture, Masters of the Pit promises stunning locales, disgusting Martian creatures, and relentless action from the Nebula and World Fantasy Award-winning creator of Elric of Melniboné! Enjoy book three of the Warrior of Mars series in ebook for the first time!

Tedric the hero had become Tedric the pirate…

He looked at his strange companions: Philip Nolan, an aristocrat turned mutineer; Keller, a subman with canine ancestry; Ky-shan, a huge blue-furred alien; KT294578 Wilson, an extraordinary anarchist robot. A weird band of thieves.

But Tedric intended to use his crew for something more worthwhile than piracy. He had a plan to overthrow the tyrannical Carey family, the oppressors who controlled the Universe.

All the rights and wrongs of the situation were clear to Tedric…until Alyc Carey, beautiful, blind daughter of the megalomaniac Melor Carey, was taken prisoner. She seemed sympathetic to the revolutionary cause, and yet, Tedric was unsure of her…

Should he see her as a hostage…or a recruit?

For ‘refusing to co-operate’ the Emm Luther Special Police took out Earth agent Sam Tallon’s eyes and imprisoned him on a dark and eerie swamp from which nobody ever escaped.

But then Tallon invented a way of seeing – ludicrous, agonizing, yet still a way to make escape possible. He ‘saw’ through the eyes of a bird. A dog, a woman guard and, later, even saw himself through the eyes of his enraged Lutheran pursuers. Madness and death were his constant companions as he schemed and fought and struggled for his life. Any other man would have gladly given up, but then, Sam Tallon had no choice, for he was the unfortunate possessor of the single most important secret in the universe – a secret which had to be returned to Earth, somehow.

Thrown into the alternate universe of 14th century England, 20th century mathematician Jim Eckert and his wife Angie have become Sir James, Baron de Bois de Malencontri, and Lady Angela. A bit of a shock, but they’d coped with it. In fact they were dealing with their new life’s hazards and magical manifestations just fine. Until Jim is suddenly transformed into a dragon. None too pleased about this latest turn of events, Jim turns for help to his neighbour, the magician S. Carolinus, who takes him on as an apprentice. When Prince Edward is captured by the French at the Battle of Poitiers, Jim sets out with some companions, including Aaargh the wolf, to join the English forces. He ends up as chief pawn in a battle against the Dark Powers – with extraordinary consequences.

Reality wasn’t what it used to be. Life after life, as man, woman, and child, Cory Maddox was trapped in an endless cycle of ever-changing realities, on the run from his ruthless companions and from the shadowy figures that seemed to exist outside the increasingly unstable matrix.

As each new world proved increasingly bizarre, Cory wanted nothing more than to find the way home. Fragments of knowledge – a mysterious UFO crash, alien technology, glimpses of a computer that was controlling his fate – all pointed toward Matthew Brand, the virtual reality genius. But Brand had vanished long ago, into, or perhaps beyond, the borders of reality.

To break the cycle of cyber-reincarnation, Cory had to find Brand – before the actions of his enemies destroyed reality altogether . . .

The brain of an Einstein – the mind of an engineer…
Presenting the space adventures of Arthur Morton McAndrew, space-time expert and scientist extraordinaire, and his long-suffering companion, spaceship skipper Jeanie Roker. Jeanie first met McAndrew on a routine run to Titan and quickly learned he was a genius of the caliber of Newton and Einstein. When McAndrew invented a space drive that let frail humans survive hundreds of gravities of acceleration, he disappeared while testing it, and Jeanie had to find him, using a trail of cryptic messages he had left behind.
That was the beginning of a beautiful friendship, in spite of the gray hairs that Jeanie began accumulating as a result of McAndrew’s impractical nature and his talent for getting himself into trouble with much more practical villains…

Lavan Chitward is a very unhappy young man; pulled away from his country home by his parents’ ambitions and resettled in the big city of Haven, he is desperately lonely, bullied and beaten at school, ignored by his parents. It is not surprising that he falls ill — but his illness is the first manifestation of a terrible power, the Gift of the Firestorm, a power which can and does kill. If controlled, the Gift of the Firestorm can save Valdemar, but if it is uncontrolled, it will destroy the country — and him. Chosen by the Companion Kalira, brought into the ranks of the Heralds of Valdemar, Lavan finds acceptance and hope for the first time. But war with Karse threatens to engulf the Kingdom and only Lavan Firestorm stands between Valdemar and destruction — and only then if he can harness his dreadful power to his will.

Call them the spare parts of people. They chose the risk – jail for convicted crimes or semi-freedom as someone’s bonded servant for the same term. The price was that they were body insurance. If their master lost a leg or an internal organ, they would have to supply the missing part. That was the risk. Sagar used bondsmen in his other-world farm where he raised exotic alien pelts to sell to the rich. He had no thoughts on the bondsmen problem, pro or con. But when Carioca Jones, 3-V star, visited him he met her bonded companion, the lovely girl with the musical talent.

It’s dangerous to fall in love with a bondsmaiden. Doubly so when her mistress is in love with you. Triply so when it might set off the social explosion that had been smouldering beneath the delicately balanced surface of their post-cataclysmic Peninsula.

This collection assembles in one volume five works by Kate Wilhelm, masterful fantasist and one of science fiction’s premier storytellers:

In ‘Children of the Wind’, identical twins J-1 and J-2 play subtle games with their parents’ lives. Are the boys just precocious, or are they far more strange – and powerful? ‘The Gorgon Field’ finds Charlie and Constance caught in a mystery of mystical proportions in the Arizona desert. ‘A Brother to Dragons, a Companion of Owls’ depicts a future in which survival may not be merely enough – it may be too much, whilst ‘The Blue Ladies’ studies a disabled woman’s abilities to share his vision. ‘The Girl Who Fell Into the Sky’, winner of the Nebula Award for best novelette, weaves a dreamy tale of love, death and an old piano amid the Kansas plains.


These five tales present luminous, absorbing visions of the world as it could be and as it is.

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.