Search Results for: in-the-beginning

In an age that takes wireless for granted and its beginning to tire of television, it seems incredible that parts of the globe are still unexplored.
Powerful modern steamers connect landmass with landmass, island with peninsula, and archipelago with isthmus. Screaming jets roar through the upper atmosphere, at speeds in excess of a thousand miles an hour.
Yet the mysteries remain. The ancient planet is reluctant to divulge her timeless secrets to the probing, insolent minds of mortal man.
On a remote island, amid weird reef-ridden seas, the Flame Goddess lives on… immortal… undisturbed… alone, save for her primitive worshipers.
And then the white man came…

George Mallory was out for a quiet day’s shooting. A typical country-man, in typical English country. His day’s sport was interrupted by the beginning of the greatest catastrophe in man’s history – an alien space ship was crashing as his feet.
The ghastly monstrosity that emerged was so hideously repulsive that no one would have guessed at the degree of intelligence and potential friendliness in its strange mind.
Mallory shot first and asked questions afterwards. With its dying strength, the alien cursed the earth with a scientific horror beyond the comprehension of man, a horror that turned the beasts against us.
The only escape seemed to lie out in space… but the devastating effect of the cosmic rays wrought havoc in the minds of the space men and the lunar expedition turned on itself in deadly carnage.
What would be the outcome of the terrible conflict between man and beast?

Having succeeded in defeating the deadly Mr Redman, Nick and April are left alone with the knowledge that their only friends, Paddy and Julia, may be dead as a result. But as time passes April, whose psychic powers are increasing, begins to sense that they are still alive. So begins a journey in search of their friends. A journey for which even stronger magic is required. And a journey which takes them into a terrifying nether world where soulless beings walk a never ending path of mist and sorrow.
And if they find their friends . . . what then? Even with the help of creepy skeletal Bertrand do they have the slightest hope of escaping the path and returning home? Or are they too doomed to be swallowed by the mists and lost to the mortal world forever . . ?

Soon after being exiled to the planet Klydor, five young people begin to suspect that their struggle for survival is somehow linked to the rebel uprising against the Earth’s harshly authoritarian government.

Keill Randor, the Last Legionary, and his alien companion, Glr, set course for the uninhabited planet of Rilyn in the Jitrell Federation to investigate the sinister activities of the Overseers’ deadly enemy, the Warlord, and his agents the Deathwing.

Amongst these strange and deadly life-forms on Rilyn, Keill encounters the grotesque, golden figure of the Altern, “The One”, leader of the Deathwing. In a thrilling climax, Keill must not only pit his wits against the concerted forces of the Deathwing band of warrior clones but also defend himself and Glr from the savage futy of the elements as the murderous Starwind begins to blow.

These seventeen classic stories create their own unique galaxy of vain, protective, and murderous robots; devilish angels; and warm and angry aliens. In “Mimsy Were the Borogoves”-the inspiration for New Line Cinema’s major motion picture The Last Mimzy-a boy finds a discarded box containing a treasure trove of curious objects. When he and his sister begin to play with these trinkets-including a crystal cube that magnifies the unimaginable and a strange doll with removable organs that don’t quite correspond to those of the human body-their parents grow concerned. And they should be. For the items are changing the way the children think and perceive the world around them-for better or worse.

Ray Bradbury called Henry Kuttner “a man who shaped science fiction and fantasy in its most important years.” Marion Zimmer Bradley and Roger Zelazny said he was a major inspiration. Kuttner was a writer’s writer whose visionary works anticipated our own computer-controlled, machine-made world. At the time of his death at forty-two in 1958, he had created as many as 170 stories under more than a dozen pseudonyms-sometimes writing entire issues of science fiction magazines-in close collaboration with his wife, C. L. Moore.

This definitive collection will be a revelation to those who wish to discover or rediscover Henry Kuttner, a true master of the universe.

Thomas Covenant returns unwillingly to a Land ravaged by four thousand years of Lord Foul’s pestilence. Under the evil Sunbane, the people of the Land submit to cruel sacrifices; the rulers of Revelstone are corrupt, the fields and forests laid waste; the healing Earth-power impotent.

Accompanied by a woman from his own world, Covenant begins a new quest to save the Land from the forces that have all but destroyed it.

Michael Greatrex Coney was a British-born author who spent the last three decades of his life in Canada – including 16 years in the British Colombia Forest Service. His early work carried a sense of Cold War-inspired paranoia, but his repertoire was wide and perhaps his best novel, HELLO SUMMER, GOODBYE, is a wistful story of adolescent love on a far-distant planet. The titles collected in this omnibus come from the fertile beginning of his career and include his debut novel MIRROR IMAGE, CHARISMA and the BSFA AWARD-winning BRONTOMEK!

The filth and the fury…

During the long, hot summer of 1976 sixteen year-old Rob Swann decides to kill himself. Then, on a tinny transistor radio, he hears the Sex Pistols for the first time and it changes everything.

Over a quarter of a century later, Rob is a man with a colourful past. Ex-punk, drug addict, gangster and jailbird, he has finally put his troubled life behind him and is enjoying a settled, law-abiding, carefree existence. Then one day he meets and befriends the enigmatic Suzi – at which point everything begins to unravel.

Who is Suzi? Simply a vindictive young woman or some vengeful phantom from his past. And who or what is not merely taking his life apart piece by piece, but undermining his memories, seemingly punishing him for past misdemeanours which he cannot even recall? As he is pulled ever deeper into a murky underworld he thought he had long ago managed to leave behind, Rob is haunted not only by the fact that nothing is what it seems, but also by the horrifying prospect that he himself is not, nor ever was, the person he believed himself to be.

When Ruth Gemmill’s younger brother Alex fails to return her calls, she sets off to check up on him. Unable to find him in Greenwell, the town where he has been living and teaching, she begins her tentative enquiries. She soon discovers the locals to be frustratingly unhelpful, while the eerie town holds more questions than clues. Why are the police so uncooperative? Why is Greenwell so dark and lonely? And who is the ‘grey man’ the schoolchildren saw Alex with not long before he went missing?

As Ruth becomes concerned that something terrible has happened to her brother, events escalate mysteriously, dangerously out of control. Then in one fearful moment she is sure she glimpses the abusive ex-boyfriend she left behind in London, the man who caused her years of torturous pain. Too late, Ruth realises that her worst fears haunt her still, and that she is at the centre of a far darker nightmare than she could ever have imagined…

It’s breaking through…

In a nightclub rest room a man mumbles these words and then puts a shotgun in his mouth and pulls the trigger. The only witness, music journalist Nick Finch, watches in horror as he crumples to the ground beside the similarly slain bodies of a woman and a little girl. Nick exits the room fast, but when someone goes in to check out his story the bodies are no longer there.

Then things get really strange.

Unspeakable nightmares. Hallucinations. Mysterious figures shadowing him. Is Nick losing his mind? Or is someone – or something – planting ideas in his head? And why does that word – GENESIS – keep cropping up?

Nick battles to keep a grip on his sanity. But Nick’s wildest nightmares, his deepest fears, couldn’t begin to prepare him for the horror from the past which is about to engulf him…

It started as a harmless practical joke. But then the real nightmare begins…John Straker is the neighbourhood bogeyman. Hideously disfigured, he hides himself away from the rest of the world – until the night when a group of children set fire to his house and reduce it – and its owner – to ashes.

Mr Bad Face has been well and truly laid to rest. Or so the children think…

They’re grown up now and they’ve struggled hard to leave the bad dreams behind. Then, without warning, a figure from the past casts his shadow across the present. Mr Bad Face is back – and he wants revenge.

England, 1967: ruled by the power of the Catholic Church, as it has been since the failure of the Protestant Reformation. In this England there are steam trains, but no internal combustion engine; rifles but no electricity; heresy but no democracy.

And in this England, magic works.

England, 1967; young Tobias Oakley, out on an illicit nighttime expedition, meets an elven woman – and is chosen for initiation into the secrets of necromancy. Tobias has a powerful talent and his injudicious use of it brings him to the attention of the Church – whose Thaumaturgical Division soon recruits him.

And so Tobias enters the Church, beginning his career amid the brothels and taverns of the teeming slums of the diocese of Southwark. From there his progress, if not steady – there is something about Tobias that arouses unease in his superiors – is generally upwards. As a curate, as a priest, as a soldier in the bloody war against heresy and finally as an eminent expert on diabolism, Tobias becomes a power in the English Catholic Church.

And as he does so, he pursues his second career: as liar, drug smuggler, rakehell, mass murderer, betrayer, vicious libertine and consorter with demons. For the elf legacy that has shaped his life has robbed him of something vital. And when Tobias, in an effort finally to discover some meaning in life, embarks on a fantastic and perilous quest through supernatural realms he finds himself at the last confronting a savage irony.

It is the year 2166. Eighty years have passed since the Gene Wars devastated the Earth, decimating the human population and giving rise to myriad new life-forms. Now, among the dolphins of Australia, Jenae Kim stumbles on the information that could mean a new beginning for human civilization: information that the government is determined to keep secret – even if they have to kill her . . .

A wedding ring, a missing woman, a bizarre disappearance…

Brock and Poole have one of their most unusual cases to unravel

‘Devilishly engaging characters and authentic details of police operations’ Booklist

When Eunice Bailey takes her wedding ring to a London jeweller to have it enlarged, she is very keen for it to be done quickly. She is a reliable and favoured customer and when the jeweller is unable to get in touch with her to collect the ring, he contacts the police.

Detective Chief Inspector Brock and Detective Sergeant Poole are assigned to the case, and what begins as a fairly simple missing person enquiry develops into a mystery that has ramifications stretching as far as Bermuda . . .

A series of accidents? Or is it Murder in the library…?

A wonderfully entertaining classic from the Golden Age of crime fiction

At first, for the staff of the university library, it’s easy enough to dismiss the death of a woman who fell from a rolling ladder as nothing more than an unfortunate accident. It’s more difficult, however, to explain away the strangled corpse of a man found inside a locked room, surrounded by rare and obscure erotica.

When a valuable manuscript disappears from the archive, it begins to look like both a killer and a thief are on the loose. It’s up to chief cataloguer Gilda Gorham to solve the crimes but, unless she’s careful, the next death in the library might just be her own.

A dark tale of the destructive power of love and obsession from ‘The supreme master of suspense’ NEW YORK TIMES

‘The father of the modern suspense story’ LA TIMES

When Louis Durand first meets his bride-to-be after a months-long courtship by mail, he’s shocked that she doesn’t match the photographs sent with her correspondence. But Durand has not exactly been truthful, either, concealing the details of his wealth. Mostly, he feels fortunate she is so much more beautiful than he expected.

Soon after they marry, however, he becomes increasingly convinced that the woman in his life is not the same woman with whom he exchanged letters – and then she suddenly disappears with his fortune.

Alone and desperate, Louis becomes obsessed with finding Julia and bringing her to justice – but it is only when he finally tracks her down that the nightmare truly begins…

A group of strangers are forced to take shelter in a remote house – and then the murders begin…

‘A new Ellery Queen book has always been something to look forward to’ Agatha Christie

‘Ellery Queen is the American detective novel’ Anthony Boucher

When Ellery Queen and his father take shelter from wildfires in an isolated manor, they don’t expect their detective skills to be required. But the next morning a body is discovered. The suspects include a society beauty, a highly secretive valet, and a pair of conjoined twins.

When another murder follows, and the only clue is a torn playing card, Queen must use all his powers of deduction to unpick a web of alibis, motives and evidence, before the killer strikes again.

A child in danger, an isolated house in the depths of winter – and a killer on the loose…
‘Don’t miss … guaranteed unputdownable’ Observer

Snow-covered fields and moors stretch away on all sides of Herondale House. Despite rumours of an escaped killer on the run, Deborah Lindsay knows that she must control her fear – she has a young charge, 13-year-old prodigy Carreen, to care for.

But the isolated Yorkshire farmhouse already holds the terrible secret of one death – and after an increasing number of sinister ‘accidents’, Deborah begins to wonder how long it will be before evil strikes again…

‘A splendidly romantic first thriller’ Times Literary Supplement

Charles Rathlyn has everything – a benefactress, a rich wife and a comfortable country life. But while riding to hounds one day he takes a terrible spill, and, on reviving, finds himself looking into a pair of beautiful brown eyes. He knows he has fallen once again . . . in love.

But are his fall and those soft brown eyes linked to another fall – the fatal plunge his wife, Kate takes over the banister to the parquet floor below, supposedly while sleepwalking?

Did she fall or was she pushed? Kate Rathlyn’s death begins an investigation into blackmail and murder among the sporting set.

Returning to Paris, Inspector Gautier is devastated to learn that his Dutch mistress Ingrid has been brutally murdered. Before he can begin to investigate, the British Ambassador informs Gautier that his daughter has been abducted in England. With the help of Sylvie, a secretary at the French Embassy, the inspector follows the trail to Edinburgh to track down the ambassador’s daughter.

Back in Paris, influential people are being murdered, and the wife of the Minister for War is abducted. Out of these shocking events a political motive begins to emerge, and Gautier, with Sylvie’s help, starts to unravel the conspiracies under the looming threat of war.

When both his holiday plans and love affair collapse, London doctor Charles Mackinnon agrees to act as locum in Skye, looking forward to a peaceful stay. However, within hours of his arrival he witnesses someone being thrown off a distant cliff into the sea.

When the body of Jamie Gillespie is discovered in the water, the police remain sceptical of his report, and he begins to doubt what he saw. Then a pregnant, disabled woman disappears, and Charles finds himself drawn into a primitive ritual of superstition and violence.

A skilfully planned murder in Portugal; a clever con-game in Texas; a body washed up on the Galloway coast. What have these far-flung events in common? In a word: whisky. And not any kind of whisky, but a fine malt.

Bruce Sanderson is on a ten-day holiday in the Highlands when he encounters Iain MacNair, who begins to teach him the mysteries of blending noble malts. He soon embarks on a relationship with MacNair’s daughter Katriona but, shortly after, Macnair is murdered. Bruce begins to investigate the murder and soon finds that both he and Katriona are in the sights of a dangerous killer who will go to any lengths to protect an ingenious fraud.

When car trouble forces private detective John Bryant to spend the night in the small village of Foxall, he is immediately struck by the antagonism and secrecy of the locals. Why was there so much hostility and fear? And why were the streets deserted after dark?

Next morning the murdered body of Andrew Woodside is discovered on a nearby hill, beginning an investigation that takes Bryant to the dingy industrial town of Castington, where an atmosphere of jealousy, suspicion and intrigue prevails . . .