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Aided by the powerful magic of Vagel, the evil Arch-Imager, the merciless armies are marching against the kingdom of Mordant. In its hour of greatest need, two unlikely champions emerge. One is Geraden, whose inability to master the simplest skills of Imagery has made him a laughingstock. The other is Terisa Morgan, transferred to Mordant from a Manhattan apartment by Geraden’s faulty magic. Together, Geraden and Terisa discover undreamed-of talents within themselves-talents that make them more than a match for any Imager…including Vagel himself.Unfortunately, those talents also mark them for death. Branded as traitors, they are forced to flee the castle for their lives. Now, all but defenseless in a war-torn countryside ravaged by the vilest horrors Imagery can spawn, Geraden and Terisa must put aside past failures and find the courage to embrace their powers-and their love-before Vagel can spring his final trap.

The Humanx Commonwealth: Book Five.

He was smart. He was good. He was backed by the Commonwealth’s best equipment. So what could possibly go wrong?

‘In the midst of life…’ thought Evan Orgel.

A whole lot of life. Alien life-form upon alien life-form, crawling, floating, wriggling, darting and oozing. The entire unexplored surface of the planet Prism was unimaginably alive.

‘…we are in death.’

His death. His Mobile Hostile World suit – the very latest, state-of-the-art, off-world protection gear – had just failed. Attacked in just about the only way its proud makers hadn’t thought of.

So there he lay, a hermit crab trapped in his own armour, while the myriad alien life-forms of prism crawled, floated, wriggled, darted and oozed about him, getting ready to open him up like a tin of upmarket cat food.

Evan Orgell was full of misery.

Jonathan Meriweather, trapped in the strange world where animals walk and talk, and where he, as the Spellsinger, possesses unearthly powers, has faced any number of perils since Clothahump the wizard called him from his own world to help in the war against the evil of the Greendowns.

Now Jonathan, with Clothahump and Mudge the Otter, faces the greatest challenge of all, for the mysterious Perambulator is threatening the very fabric of the universe – unless Jonathan and his company can stop him.

Not so long ago Marcus Walker was just another young commodities trader in Chicago, working hard and playing harder. But that’s all in the past, part of a life half forgotten – a reality that vanished when he was attacked while camping and tossed aboard a starship bound for deep space.

Desperately, Walker searches for explanations, only to realise he’s trapped in a horrifying nightmare that is all too real. Instead of being a rich hotshot at the top of the food chain, Walker discovers he’s just another amusing novelty, part of a cargo of “cute” aliens from primitive planets – destined to be sold as pets to highly advanced populations in “civilized” regions of the galaxy.

Even if he weren’t constantly watched by his captors, Walker has few options. After all, there is no escape from a speeding starship. Another man might resign himself to the inevitable and hope to be sold to a kindly owner, but not Walker. This former college football star has plenty of American ingenuity and no intention of admitting defeat, now or ever. In fact, he’s only just begun to fight.

It was just an average day for tabloid reporter Max Parker when he arrived in Malibu for a demonstration of a brand-new parallel-universe machine. But everything changed in an instant when inventor Barrington Boles succeeded in making Max the human gate to numerous parallelities.


Now Max was lost in a virtual sea of collateral worlds, confronting man-eating aliens, dinosaurs, talking frogs, dead Maxes, girl Maxes, old Maxes, even ghost Maxes. His only chance to escape the space-time continuum was to find Boles and hole the loony genius could rescue him. But how could he be sure which world was real, which Max was Max, and which Boles was the Boles who could stop the madness – or trap Max in the wrong world forever…?

The year is 1998, and the nightmare is close at hand.

The world economy has gone into a mega-crash. Most of the population has been plunged into abject poverty. Anarchy and violence stalk the streets. All power is in the hands of Dryco, headed by paranoid tycoon Thatcher Dryden, and his monstrous wife, Susie.

But on the desperate streets of the Lower East Side miracles are happening. A Messiah seems to have risen from the people and is healing the sick, teaching children, raising the dead.

Dryco’s New Projects Manager, Joanna, is sent to check him out. Thatcher’s got a plan for world domination, and a genuine Messiah could be the key he’s looking for. And even if he’s fake, he may have his uses.

But soon, Joanna finds herself trapped in a crisis of conscience, between the relative security of a Dryco job and the dream of healing a sick world.

Spring comes to the mutant clans. Now, the mutants begin to emerge from their long, hidden sleep. Slowly, quietly, they have slipped into the paths of ordinary life and become caught up in the everyday problems that face all of us, mutant or normal. One career is stalled. Another is threatened by the political need for a scapegoat. The clan must come together again.

Michael, trapped in a loveless marriage and facing the blame for a disaster in which he had no part.

Melanie, separated from clan and family, fighting to prove her worth in the world of normals.

Narlydda, using her fame and wealth as a blind for her mutant identity, trapped in an age of luxury.

Now, from nowhere comes a man who thrusts himself into all their lives – a man who might change the world. Is Victor Ashman the long-awaited, long-sought supermutant – the Mutant Prime? Before his frightening powers can turn the normal world against them all, the clan must find him, identify him, and – if necessary – stop him.

Empath Kayla John Reed’s rebel forces, the War Minstrels, had struck a crucial blow at the heart of Yates Keller’s empire, conquering the Alliance capital, Vardalia. It should have been Kayla’s moment of triumph. But Vardalia was a shambles, and not only had Yates himself escaped, he claimed to have her friends and shipmates in his clutches.



Kayla had no choice but to agree to the terms he’d left in a holographic message. Meet him on their home world, the mining colony Styx, surrender the fabled Mindstone to him, and Keller would release her friends. Yet even as she set off for the rendezvous point, trouble was brewing among the War Minstrels – trouble that could transform their successful revolution into the deadliest kind of anarchy if she didn’t make it back in time. And what Kayla had no way of know foreseeing was that Styx itself hid a peril far greater than any trap Keller had planned for her…

In that hidden valley, land of strangely forbidding beauty, Eric Nelson, soldier of fortune, faced a battle weirder and more savage than any he had ever fought. He was hired to fight for humanity, against beings that seemed to be both more and less than human.

The weapons of the enemy included centuries-old powers of magic and superstition . . . but Nelson fought grimly, even when his mind was helplessly trapped in the body of a wolf. Then came the climactic test of his allegiance, the knowledge that more than just humanity was at stake . . . and the final mind-shattering discovery of an alien secret that lay buried in the Cavern of Creation!

They called him the Life-Lord and the deadly milk-white elixir that his syndicate pushed was called Lifewater.

As promised, Lifewater brought youth to the old. Women who were losing their once cherished beauty, men who were losing their strength gave their life’s savings for a vial of the magic substance. What they did not know was that the powerful brew could cause sudden and violent death.

As the fatal youth epidemic spreads throughout the Solar System, Captain Future battles with time and danger to save his fellow beings from doom – only to find himself trapped in a master fiend’s plot to conquer the solar system.

Continuing their mission to explore the galaxy and find new worlds for man to conquer, Captain Timothy “Tiger” Clinton, the Professor, Toby Paul and Rex are ready for whatever challenges the stars have to throw at them.

From Mars to Mino, Unkos to Lin, they explore planets and planetoid alike, encountering tree-dwelling creatures, lizard-people, watery worlds and spider-like aliens. As they try to communicate with civilisations trapped under ice, or escape cannibals, no adventure is too tough for Tiger, and there is nothing they can’t overcome!

The third book in Captain W. E. Johns’ Tiger Clinton space adventure series, Now to the Stars brings yet more action and adventure from the legendary creator of Biggles.

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

Even in the era of glasnost a defector is worth having, especially if he is a senior computer specialist in Russian military intelligence. But when the defection goes wrong, the British are left with three bodies and two inadequate clues to the nature of the information they might have been offered, and which now lies buried somewhere in the collective memories of David Audley and his one-time colleague Major Peter Richardson.

But what is the secret Audley shares with the half-Italian Richardson, now frightened into hiding somewhere in Italy? For once David Audley has no idea and the race is on to find the elusive Major. But Audley’s objective is fast being overtaken by modern political imperatives – ones very different from the black and white certainties of the old Cold War days . . .

In his seventh adventure ‘G’ man Lemmy Caution is sent to investigate the murder of a female agent and the disappearance of a prominent scientist. His search leads Lemmy to notorious gangster Enrico Pranzetti, and straight into a trap …

Two Granchester constables find a wrecked, blood-soaked car. But there’s no one in it, and no one has turned up at the nearest village. Then, miles away, a body is found on the road.

A patrolman on night duty opens an unlocked door at the shop of a dealer in gemstones, a man named White. The police want to talk to White. Meanwhile, White has talked to mobster Dixie Costello. White’s safe has been broken into, and diamonds are missing, but he hasn’t told the police what has been taken.

Granchester Police will need every strategy they can think of to trap their man …

A cash-in-transit raid goes pear-shaped when armed police show up. After all the smart planning and careful preparation someone must have talked – so think the relatives and friends of the jailed gang members. And it looks like the grass must have been the only raider to escape the trap.

A vengeance squad is on the prowl and Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur and his boss Assistant Chief Constable Desmond Iles are given the job of protecting the informant and his family. Yet all the time the lynch mob is closing in . . .

‘James’s writing dazzles with its poetic brevity’ Publishers Weekly

‘Donald MacKenzie is a born storyteller’ Guardian

Every thief dreams of committing the perfect crime. Cameron, Thorne and Gun are convinced that the jewel robbery they have planned cannot possibly go wrong, but jealousy mistrust and fear doom the enterprise from the start.

One of them dies a slow, hideous death; the other two find they have walked into hell. Soon, a beautiful woman and two desperate men find themselves trapped by their own actions. And when the thread of tension snaps they learn that death can indeed be a friend.

On his return to Geneva, Brian Innes must meet Audrey Page and find a way to prevent her from joining the strangely temperamental group of people gathered around film star Eve Eden at the Villa Rosalind. With characteristic stubbornness, if not trusting naivety, she refuses to be detained and is immediately encircled by terror, while the jaws of a murder trap swing closed.

Fortunately, Dr Gideon Fell is on hand, and when the murderer strikes with an invisible weapon, Fell accepts the challenge with brilliance and wit.

Perry Mason orders a double serving of trouble the night he and Della Street dine at an intimate restaurant after a hard day at law. In the middle of their steaks a waitress flees the premises in terror, leaving the puzzled proprietor holding her mink coat.

Why a humble working girl abandons such a pricey wrap is only the first question in a cop-killer case that traps Mason’s client with both an impossible story and the murder weapon, makes Perry himself a prime suspect, and blazes a gunpowder trail that leads straight to the heart of the police department itself.

Bertha Cool was purring like a kitten. A client had just hired the agency to investigate a suspected insurance swindle and, in Bertha’s glittering eyes, that was just the sort of respectable case they needed. Donald Lam had his doubts but he began looking around for suitable bait to set the trap.

What he didn’t know was that the trap was already baIted – and more than ready to spring.

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

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

In life, Jane Ann never had much use for a halo, but in her violent death she finally earned one. When they found a suspect, everyone relaxed except Hugh MacReedy.

Maybe he should have stayed out of it, but MacReedy owed a big debt to the patsy they were sending to the electric chair in a week. And he would have stayed out of it, if he’d known what his chances were of coming out alive …

A remote, crumbling house; four sisters; and the secrets that imprison them…

‘Before Gillian Flynn, there was Lesley Glaister’ Harper’s Bazaar

‘Frightening yet eerily beautiful … Lesley Glaister is adept, original and mature’ Hilary Mantel

In a remote, crumbling house in the Fens live four sisters – Agatha, Milly, and Ellen and Esther – identical twins so closely linked as to be almost one person. They have lived there all their lives, trapped still by the fear of their dead father, who governs his daughters’ lives from beyond the grave. And then there is George, another inhabitant, imprisoned in the cellar.

Little by little, macabre events come to light: events that transform an idyllic country childhood into a world of eccentric isolation.

‘Eerie and satisfying – a horror story told with tenderness’ Sunday Times

‘My favourite American crime-writer’ New York Herald Tribune

Sergeant Ivor Maddox of the Wilcox Street precinct has more crime on his hands than even he is accustomed to: murders, con-men, a dismembered corpse, runaway teenagers and a multiple rapist.

To catch the rapist, whose victims are always attractive and respectable women, Maddox persuades his true love, policewoman Sue Carstairs, to bait the trap . . .