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“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

The fifth title in the popular Harpur and Iles series.

Sarah Iles’ latest young lover, Ian Aston, and the seedy gangland club he frequents both possess the intense attraction of the forbidden. When one night at the Monty they witness a fatal knifing, they unwittingly learn far too much for their own good of a deadly plot that could, if successfully executed, rearrange the city’s criminal power structure.

Immediately, the unfaithful wife and petty criminal become targets of both police and underworld observation. In Come Clean Bill James once again explores that no-man’s-land of law enforcement, where human concern and naked expediency stand perennially at odds with each other.

The Russians will pay $4,000,000 for the top secret formula to a revolutionary new metal … and the CIA will do anything to stop them.

American inventor Dr Paul Forrester is the man that both sides want. He alone can decipher the vital code but, for two years, Forrester has been in a mental asylum – ever since that bloody day when he walked in on his beautiful wife and her lover.

So it’s Nona Jacey, Forrester’s former lab assistant, who becomes a helpless pawn in the power struggle to possess the scientist. Because she is the only person that holds the key to unlocking Forrester’s mind …

William Clarence Verity, Sergeant in ‘A’ Division of the Metropolitan Police, has seen most of the horrors of the nineteenth century, from the stews of Seven Dials to the prisons of the maharajahs. Now he is sent to the United States, to a nation on the brink of civil war, to guard two of his country’s most precious possessions: her good name, and the heir to the throne.

Both are threatened by Verney Dacre, thought to have died in the aftermath of the Great Train Robbery of 1857, but planning a coup to crown his career of evil: the robbery of the US mint in Philadelphia.

Journalist Hamish Hunter finds himself in possession of a film on which the fate of several people and the relations between two countries – Poland and Great Britain – depend. But who can he trust? His girlfriend, Wanda, daughter of a déraciné Polish count, whose loyalties are more complex than they seem? An old friend in the intelligence racket? The authorities?

Soon Hunter finds himself in desperation, hounded on all sides, and in a climax of nerve-racking suspense it becomes finally clear that no on is on any side but their own.

When she was thirteen years old, Abigail Allen was responsible for killing her parents and boyfriend. Guilt has become Abigail’s constant companion. She has reconciled herself to living alone – until she meets Silas Graves, a photographer who knows about her past but loves her in spite of it.

A possessive, jealous man, Silas can forgive almost anything – except betrayal. But the people he has loved most have all betrayed him. Abigail is different. Abigail needs him, adores him. And besides, they have two things in common. Their secrets … and death.

‘A goose-pimply, page-turning read right to the end’ Company

In a small English town, family conflict can be murder…
Classic crime from one of the greats of the Detection Club

When spinster Emily Foss, who ran the haberdashery, is found bludgeoned to death, the silver pencil that had surely been in her purse that night is found in brash young Lennie Hunter’s possession, and it is he who is to be hanged for the crime.

To clear his name, Hunter’s fiancée brings in Detective Arthur Crook. Soon Crook discovers Emily was not on good terms with her nephew, his wife, or many others in the small English town where she lived. Faced with a maze of hidden motives, Crook must contrive against the clock to trap the real murderer.

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

The fourth book in the New York Times bestselling Longmire series, featuring Sheriff Walt Longmire.

When the body of a young Vietnamese woman is found alongside the interstate in Absaroka County, Sheriff Walt Longmire is determined to discover the identity of the victim and is forced to confront the horrible similarities of this murder to that of his first homicide case as a Marine investigator in Vietnam. To complicate matters, Virgil White Buffalo, a Crow Indian, is found living in a nearby culvert and in possession of the young woman’s purse.
There are only two problems with what appears to be an open-and-shut case. One, the sheriff doesn’t think Virgil White Buffalo – a Vietnam vet with a troubling past – is a murderer. And two, the photo that is found in the woman’s purse looks hauntingly familiar to Walt.

‘A rising star’ Los Angeles Times

One of them is the link to Davidian.
One of them is holding out . . .

Steve Wintress’s flight to Los Angeles is forced down in bad weather, and he shares a car into town with three fellow travellers: a shy young soldier, a cool Hollywood actress and a Justice Department official.

But all four passengers have something in common – something any one of them might kill to get their hands on.

Every secret agency in the world wants to possess the Davidian Report, smuggled out of East Berlin by a Communist defector, and it’s lying somewhere in LA. Steve wants that Report, but he’ll have to fight with the big guns, like the CIA and the FBI, if he’s going to get there first . . .

Laura Chance, wife of Borford’s prospective Lord Mayor, becomes infatuated with her young hairdresser, Pierre, who resembles her dead son. Pierre is utterly selfish, unscrupulous and sees in the wealthy, middle-aged woman a dupe who can give him some of the material possessions he covets.

Despite her innate intelligence, Laura deceives herself that their relationship has a basis of real affection. But the trouble really starts when James Chance discovers what is happening and determines to ruin Pierre by using his influence in the city. Pierre, in his turn, plans a violent revenge . . .

A painter has vanished: normally an event of no importance, but Théo is the heir to a fortune, and so Inspector Gautier of the Sûreté is put on the case. Then a shady art dealer is murdered. A dealer who had acquired three paintings under dubious circumstances, from a minor artist who died in similarly dubious circumstances.

But why is it that so many people want to gain possession of the paintings now – a princess, a Greek millionaire and even, in a roundabout way, Théo?

David Fox, fast approaching his fortieth birthday, is in the throes of a mid-life crisis. That is until he finds a message in a bottle whilst walking on the beach. The message, written in 1953, is from a boy called John Marshall who claims his father his trying to kill him. And with a new, invigorating purpose to his life David is compelled to find out what happened all those years ago.

The truth is more bizarre and horrific than he could ever have imagined. At the heart of his investigations is a secret society called the Flux and each of its members possesses unique and formidable supernatural powers. And they want the bottle…

Marked with the tainted sword of the evil Prince Mephtik, Jarral Gullen will die horribly unless both the blade and the prince are destroyed by the next full moon. With the help of his friends, Archer, Scythe and the Lady Mandragorina – a band of magically talented adventurers – Jarral undertakes a perilous journey to Mephtik’s demon-guarded fortress. Battling monsters and demons, they fight to overturn Jarral’s sentence of death.

According to the wizard Cryl, only Jarral can save the country from Mephtik’s evil forces. Of the four friends, Jarral alone possesses the greatest magical talent. But will he live long enough to use it?

Psychology recognises the existence of multiple personalities inhabiting the same mind. To the ancients such strange transformations were evidence of demonic possession, and even today there are reputable experts who would not rule out the possibility that something else can take over a human mind.

To the victim of such personality change there are long periods for which the memory cannot account, periods during which the secret enemy is in charge.

Walter Hamilton was a perfectly normal, well-adjusted man in early middle age when strange gaps in his memory first began to worry him. At first he tried to ignore the tell-tale symptoms of schizophrenia but other clues presented themselves.

The face in the crowd scene on a telerecorded film vaguely familiar. It wasn’t his fave… but there were undeniable similarities. A picture in a newspaper worried him more…

Before he could extricate himself he was trapped in a tangled web of interwoven personalities, unable to find himself, powerless to break away from the sinister complications of his two other lives.

Dan Bellamy was down and out. It seemed that he had reached the end of the road… and then he met the stranger. Who was the mystery man? Why were his amber eyes so powerful? Above all why did he call himself Melchizdek?
The stranger took him to a house, and then the mystery deepened. What was going on in the hidden laboratory? Why were M.I.5 so interested? These men were different. They possessed uncanny mental powers. They had a weird control over matter that was outside any known physical laws. Then Bellamy asked himself the $64,000 question. Was he one of them? And if he was, what were they?
Mutation is well-known, though still only partially understood, biological phenomena. Atomic radiations cause strange changes in the genes and chromosomes of plants and animals. They might also change men…. To find out just how strange these changes would be, you must read “Dawn of the Mutants”. A superb science fiction story – that might be fact.

Anzar was known as a crazy eccentric scientist. Nobody paid much attention to his weird pseudo -scientific experiments. When unexplained accidents started to happen around his derelict house it took a young I.P.F lieutenant named Cameron to find out what was going on… Then Cameron vanished.

The I.P.F sent another man after Cameron, he went too. That started the full scale attack; an attack that was repulsed before it started. Anzar was ready.

Maybe Anzar wasn’t crazy? Maybe Anzar was the outstanding scientific genius of the 22nd century? What strange power did his yellow mist possess? What became of the men who got caught in it? As Cameron blacked out he wondered whether there was flesh and blood behind the metal . . .

Above all, what mystery lay locked in the great steel cylinder?

Henderson was a brilliant nuclear physicist until the night he staggered home a pathetic wreck of his former self, raving wildly about flying saucers and a strange being named Ravan. No scientific nation could afford to lose a genius of Henderson’s capacity and Parnell Scott, an experimental psychiatrist, was given the job of restoring Henderson’s sanity. Scott gradually infiltrated Henderson’s apparent fantasy and found himself involved in research that produced frightening results.

According to ancient legends there had once lived a strange, tyrannical ruler named Ravan, who had possessed a vimana or ‘flying car’. Bur Henderson knew nothing of the legends!

Parnell Scott worked desperately against time, sinister foreign agents intent on keeping Henderson insane, and something as old as human history yet as new as tomorrow and more dangerous than nuclear energy.

Valli had always lived for the Dance. She expressed her very soul through the sinuous, mystic movements that were as old as the East itself. Like all true artists she was a perfectionist. Her mind, as lithe as her body, was always searching for new material. At last she discovered a temple, old and deserted, hidden by Time and the mysterious, impenetrable jungle. In the temple she saw a series of carvings depicting an ancient sacred dance. It was a dance such as she had never imagined possible. Slowly at first and then with increasing speed she began to copy the movements recorded so faithfully by the timeless stone.

A strange feeling possessed her as the rhythm of the ancient dance obsessed her whole being. Dark beings of terrifying supernatural aspect glided from the crumbling walls an joined in the ancient rhythm.

Not until it was too late did Valli realise that the Forbidden Dance had resurrected forces of cosmic evil which had been sleeping in the lost temple.

Riverworld was a planet of Eden whose people possessed the power of dreaming the future. Kyreol, daughter of a Healer, pierced the vision veil to discover the ultimate truth – that her home world unknowingly hosted the way station of a vast interstellar civilisation.

An evil star shone on Kyreol’s first mission as an interplanetary agent. Her ship fell out of space, cracking on a lonely, mysterious moon. Rising from its endless plains was the white city – awesome, abandoned, eons-dead – a silent world of secret wonders.

Only her prophetic dreams linked Kyroel to Riverworld, but she was hopelessly marooned light-years away. And she was not alone…

Although she leads an overprotected life with the two old hags, Lilune knows she possesses a special gift. When she ‘calls’ the musician, Lir, to her prison-like castle, she knows she must avail herself of the opportunity to escape and explore the world. But travelling south of the castle, Lilune and Lir realize that they aren’t alone – for an ancient, infectious evil accompanies them, which instills terror in everyone they meet. Lir dislikes arrogant Lilune, but finds himself intrigued by her and the source of the evil. Is it within Lilune, or does it come from a deeper source? When the pair become separated, he carries on searching for her. Finally, Lilune returns to her castle in despair, believing that she must be imprisoned to protect the world from the evil within her. But Lir follows her, and discovers that the root of the evil lies deep beneath the castle…

There were many reasons why the Time Kings sent their warrior hordes back through the endless corridors of Time. The ancient spaceships had been destroyed by the wrath of a people smarting under the aftermath of the Galactic War. But though the lanes of space were deserted to them, the Time Kings possessed a weapon more deadly than any other – the Amphichron. Sweeping through the grey ages, the warriors destroyed and pillaged the peaceful eras of the past.

They came out of the great abyss which lay around the Earth, from the planet of a star so distant that it could not be seen with the naked eye. Their purpose was survival and the conquest of Earth. They were alien and possessed a mysterious force which lay at the very origin of human comprehension; the ability to enter into a man’s mind, to make him think the thoughts they chose, to make him hear and see and feel the things they wanted.

Against such a force there seemed no defence; for who could say that the man or woman by his side was not motivated by one of these creatures? Who could say that his own thoughts and senses belonged to him and not to some ‘thing’ seated in some alien way inside his brain?

With the discovery of the hyperdrive, mankind at last possessed the means of going out to the stars. Four expeditions had already gone by the fine the fifth starship left Pluto for Vega. Carrying its complement of scientists and military personnel, they arrived at the solar system of Vega to find one planet sufficiently like Earth to allow them to land.

Here, they discovered mystery. The ruins of great cities built on the shattered remains of still earlier fortresses, showing that some great race of conquerors had passed that way sometime in the past thirty thousand years.

No life now remained on this planet and speeding to the next sun, they found a civilisation which possessed powers so utterly strange to them that one native almost succeeded in destroying them and taking over the ship. And still the mystery remained, for the legends of the planet spoke of a race of gods who had come down from the stars twenty thousand years before.

It was not until they reached the planet of a red giant sun that they ran into a race of creatures so fantastically alien that there was no defence against them, and they learned the real identity of the race which had conquered the stars millennia before…

A new radio telescope picks up from the constellation of Andromeda a complex series of signals which prove to be a programme for a giant computer. After the computer is built it begins to relay information from Andromeda. Scientists find themselves possessing knowledge previously unknown to mankind, knowledge that could threaten the security of human life itself.