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‘The door was open. McCool stood in the doorway and switched on the light. He gazed at an open safe, and then he turned his head slightly to observe a heap of stained brown gabardine which lay on the floor. It was an untidy sight, even though the legs and feet which protruded from it were expensively trousered and immaculately shod.’

Chief Inspector McCool has two murder cases on his hands – and one of the victims is his ex-fiancee, found dead after a reunion with him.

When Evelyn Henshaw comes to Rosa Epton’s office demanding that in the event of her disappearance her husband be investigated for murder, Rosa is more than a little doubtful. Hesitant to take the woman on as a client, she is drawn in when Mr Henshaw subsequently arrives at her office claiming that his wife has disappeared.

And when the young lodger living in the couple’s home turns up dead, Rosa must unearth the skeletons of the couple’s troubled marriage and fit together the pieces of a complicated puzzle.

It is extremely bad luck for Sarah Atkins that she is very slightly over the limit when she knocks down and kills a man in a patch of fog. It is even worse luck that the man is Jonathan Cool, a well-known pop star.

There are three witnesses: Cool’s girlfriend, Sarah’s husband and Sarah, whose fate will turn on their testimony. But as the evidence unfolds, it begins to appear that this may not have been a run-of-the-mill accident, and it is down to her solicitor, Rosa Epton, to unravel the truth.

Jack Crane arrives in Paradise City to find a job lined up for him by his ex-boss Bernie Olson. Bernie, a bomber pilot turned personal pilot to multi-millionaire Lane Essex, wants Jack to fly Essex’s new luxury plane in a hijack plan.

Planning a hijack shouldn’t be that difficult, but they soon discover they didn’t account for every eventuality. There’s a stowaway passenger on board – Lane’s gorgeous wife Victoria – who decides to join the party …

At the end of The Cyborg and the Sorcerers, Sam Turner was making a life for himself on the planet Dest. He thought he had left the long-lost interstellar war between Earth and its rebellious colonies behind him forever.
“Forever” turned out to be eleven years. That was how long it took for another Independent Reconaissance Unit to respond to the distress call his ship had sent before it was destroyed. And this one made his own berserk killer computer look sane.

When a woman’s body is found by the Thames river police, floating opposite the Houses of Parliament in London, it doesn’t take DCI Brock long to work out that she has been murdered.

Further investigation reveals the woman was one of a stable of prostitutes run by a shadowy figure wanted in his native Australia. But the investigation presses other names upon Brock and Poole, and they must suffer several missed turns and pay the price for their assumptions before they get their man.

When the traffic police call the local police station, who call CID, DI Brock is none too pleased to be forced to attend the scene of a traffic accident when he doesn’t see how it’s any of his business. But then it turns out that the body of a woman discovered in a ditch alongside the crashed car was not involved in the accident, but had been there for some time. What’s more, the woman is naked and covered in the vicious marks of a whip.

Unpleasant as it might be, this is very definitely Brock’s business.

At a meeting of Quenborough Borough Council, the Mayor, Sir John Assington, is accused by Alderman Trant of wasting money and turning a blind eye to speculators on the make.

Then Trant is stabbed with his own knife, and while dying, manages to scratch the initials ‘MA’ on a piece of paper.

Local Chief Constable Race is on the case. He is new to the force, so Superintendent Vorley comes to his aid. With the help of Scotland Yard, in the shape of Inspector Lott, they each bring a different approach to the investigation.

For the truth is rarely straightforward . . .

A woman dies by violence aboard the Santa Cristina. A radio flash from the West Indies brings word of an apparently related death. A man’s body turns up, and in his hand is a suicide note written in one woman’s handwriting but signed with another woman’s name.

But what part does the jar of blood play – and why is everyone so interested in the contents of a certain package wrapped in cherub-bedecked paper? That’s the puzzle Captain Urizar has to solve in a case with a startling showdown.

Lawyer-detective Arthur Crook always believes his clients are innocent… despite the evidence to the contrary.
Classic crime from one of the greats of the Detection Club

A famous art collector’s car discovered at the bottom of a cliff after he was supposed to have taken a young woman to the railway station, so naturally the police expect to find his body there, too. But it turns up weeks later, in a locked room in his country house, and he’s been stabbed to death…

Todd Wells is prepared for excitement when he joins his father, captain of the atomic tugboat STORMQUEEN, on a voyage from Antarctica to California. For this is no ordinary journey – they are towing five icebergs, each weighing six thousand million tons, to bring pure water to the drought-stricken areas of the United States.


But when a violent storm erupts and once iceberg threatens to break loose, the excitement turns to terror – as Todd is caught up in the desperate battle to save the iceberg and the lives of the men on the ship.

When the Inter-Planetary Corporation’s crack spaceliner Arturus took off on a routine flight to Mars, it turned out to be the beginning of a most unexpected trip to the unexplored moons of distant Jupiter.

For once wreaked on Ganymede, the survivors had first to master that world’s primeval terrors, then reconstruct a new spacecraft, and finally find a way out of the problems presented by the warring intelligence of the Jovian system.

SPACEHOUNDS OF ICP is justly considered to be on of Edward E. Smith’s finest novels – a standalone classic of exciting space adventure.

One was discovered quite by accident. A man in a mental hospital said he wasn’t real. He wasn’t.

There were more. Scientists feared that half the population of Earth might be Syns.
Methodically, the Syns were being rooted out and destroyed. In turn, they were carrying on their own fearful destruction of human life and works.
Everyone’s humanity had been challenged. Every man was aligned against each other…because no one knew what a Syn was.

A secret research station near the Cornish fishing village of Falcombe has discovered the existence of an apparently infinite series of parallel worlds, each a slightly distorted reflection of our own. It has also developed a technique for investigating these worlds; but the only person who can possibly visit and explore a parallel world is the rare individual whose counterpart has lately died there and whose place he can therefore take – which in turn presages his own death on his version of Earth.

The countryside is hundreds of feet deep in snow, and a small community is managing to exist in the bell-tower of a church, just above the snow level. For sustenance they make journeys to the shops of the village far below by tunnels. They also stay alive by hunting the ferocious and telepathic bear-like animals known as Pals.



The individuals in the small group are brilliantly portrayed, in turn defeatist, boastful, querulous, selfish and generous. They are obsessive, they argue; but when danger threatens, as it often does, they immediately band together in their common fight for survival.

The son of a Civil War veteran, Edgar Rice Burroughs was a prolific writer for the early pulp magazines. Famous the world over as the creator of Tarzan – and in SF circles for his Martian tales featuring John Carter – Burroughs turned his talents to a bewildering array of settings – the African jungle, Mars, Venus, the Wild West… and the Land that Time Forgot.

This omnibus collects his tales of that lost world: THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT, THE PEOPLE THAT TIME FORGOT and OUT OF TIME’S ABYSS.

Gregory Benford is a Professor of Plasma Physics and Astrophysics, expertise he turns to great effect in his widescreen hard SF epics. Best known for the NEBULA AWARD-winning TIMESCAPE he has written in some of SF’s greatest playgrounds, penning a sequel to Sir Arthur C. Clarke’s great novella AGAINST THE FALL OF NIGHT, and contributing an authorised sequel to Isaac Asimov’s Foundation books. This omnibus collects three of his best works: ARTIFACT, COSM and EATER.

When a team of scientists starts to investigate the flora and fauna of the distant planet of Xica, it soon becomes apparent that this is a unique opportunity to study alien life forms. The planet offers a rich and varied eco-system and each of the scientists recognises what this could mean for their individual reputations.
And then, their dreams come true – they establish first contact with a humanoid civilization.
But this is a planet where nature breaks all the rules, where logic falls apart, and where nothing is as it seems. And their dreams turn into a nightmare.

Even after the set had been turned off, the TV blared the announcement:

“Citizens of Earth, I am Tersh Jetterax. It is my pleasure to announce to you that a new government has taken over the conduct of all public affairs.”

And thus the US was in the hands of the Monitors, the strangely polite yellow-clad beings whose powers were such that they could render everyone helpless – without shedding one drop of blood.

Who are they? The Russians? An alien race from another planet?

An ordinary day – which turns to blackmail and murder.
Classic crime from one of the greats of the Detection Club

What seemed like an ordinary phone call in the middle of the afternoon suddenly plunges its recipient, Simon Crete, into a plot of blackmail and murder.

‘Tell him it’s no use. I haven’t got it,’ the mystery woman’s voice cried desperately down the line. But who was she? And why was she ringing a man whom she had never seen?

All that glitters isn’t gold.

A rich man sends Donald Lam looking for a man – when he really wants to find a woman. A minor missing persons case turns out to be a major one. And a pleasure boat on pontoons serves as a smuggler’s ship on wheels.

This is a job for detectives who know their fact from fiction, and Bertha Cool and Donald Lam are pitted against people who know too well that all grass isn’t green.

When Mike Rodenska, a former journalist and recent widower, visits his old friend Troy Jamison in Florida, he’s shocked at what he finds. For despite the parties, the shapely women, the devil-may-care air that surrounds Troy and his friends, Mike can see a life slowly coming apart. The only question is: why?

Putting together the pieces of his friend’s life – and downfall – turns an ordinary visit into a mystery that Mike Rodenska is compelled to solve …

Hubbard made his money in blackmail, most detestable blackmail at that. A wealthy, lisping butterfly collector, there were no special regrets when he was found dead at his desk in his own home. Yet Colonel Sanderstead felt it his duty to probe the affair, since his nephew’s best friends had very good reason to wish Hubbard dead.

His investigation, as it turns out, would never have solved the case, but it leads to an amazing confession …

Slim Callaghan had been hired by beautiful Cynthis Meraulton to stop her cousins getting her step-father’s money. But when the old man is murdered, the only suspect with no alibi and a giant motive is Cynthis.

Slim always played his cases the way they came, but it turned out the Meraulton job had more twists than a hangman’s rope.

‘Slim Callaghan’s quick wit and knowledge of rough and tumble place him in the top ranks of private eyes. What a man!’ New York Times Book Review