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For hundreds of years the mutants walked among us, concealing their dazzling psychic abilities, living in fear. With the coming of the 1990s, the mutants took their rightful place in normal human society in a storm of political upheaval. Now, as summer ripens for the mutant clans, the long struggle for equality nears its end. But the mutants’ awesome talents – and their belief in the coming of a mutant messiah – still set them apart. The clans can join together in hope…but for how long?

Alanna, talented in her own right, but overshadowed by the brilliance of her mother, the world-renowned artist Narlydda.

Julian, he gifted graduate student, hoping to forge a link between medicine and mutant healing – and between himself and the beautiful researcher, Eva Seguy.

Rick, Julian’s mercurial twin brother, whose lack of mutant talents is his burden…and his freedom.

Strange currents are flowing, and the entire world is about to change. Unthinkable and unspeakable powers are about to be released, powers that not even the massed mutants can control.

THE MINDSTONES were the only reason anyone lived on – or more accurately, in – the planet Styx. An unthinkable ice world, Styx only survived as an underground mining colony because of the discovery of the beautiful jewel called Cyrilite, a crystalline stone with unique mind-altering properties.
But to Kayla John Reed, Styx was all the home she’d ever knownuntil her parents were killed in a tragic mining accident. Claiming her father’s Guild seat, the extraordinarily gifted young empathy was forced to flee the planet when she tangled with the Kellers, the wealthiest and most important psi family in the colony.
On the run in a galaxy wary of anyone with mind powers and all too willing to turn her in for the bounty on her head, Kayla found an unexpected haven aboard Falstaff, a “merchant” spaceship that stretched the limits of legal shipping beyond the breaking point. But there were those among the crew with a far more treacherous agenda than simple privateering, and Kayla was soon caught in a planets-spanning struggle between two deadly forces ready to sacrifice anyone who got in their way and determined to use any weapon – even the power of Kayla’s mind – to secure total victory…

Kirk Hammond was a man alone.

He had been chosen to ride in the first manned satellite to go out around the Moon and back to Earth. But when the satellite failed to orbit properly, it went on past the Moon into the vastness of outer space, and a whole world watched helplessly as he was borne toward an unthinkably lonely death.

Yet destiny decreed that Kirk Hammond should suffer, not death but a pseudo-death. And he awoke from it to find that a hundred centuries had passed and that the space age which had begun in the 20th Century had now grown into a vast galactic civilization that had carried the sons of Earth to countless stars and worlds. But, unexpectedly, the conquest of space had changed Man himself, and the human race had become not one but several species.

Hammond was plunged into the climactic struggle between the new races. And in his quest with a desperate band for the mysterious Star of Life that was the key to the struggle, in his relations with the strange and beautiful Thayn Marden who was not a human woman, in his odyssey through the mighty suns and earthly worlds of the galaxy, a man of the 20th Century found himself facing the dangers of the great space age which he himself helped pioneer.

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.

They were the first arrivals from the other side of the cosmos.

With the help of the Martian scientist Thrin, they had crossed the whirling black abyss of the fourth dimension – a dimension that had never been reached before!

Now a man with skin of pure marble-white and a woman of unearthly beauty stood before the disbelieving eyes of Captain Future and the Futuremen. The strange couple stared back in awe and amazement – particularly at Captain Future.

“Here is the one,” the man said finally in his alien tongue. “He is the only one who can save us!”

Beneath the surface of To Walk the Night lies something strange and exciting that lends the tale a tense and troubling quality. There is the baffling and beautiful woman who complicates the lives of four men. Who is she whose past is a mystery so deep, so inexplicable that those who penetrate it die?

When Meg Frazer’s actress mother is killed in a Hollywood accident, nineteen-year-old Meg finds it hard to adapt to life in Britain with her cold, distant father . . . and at night she is haunted by a strange dream of a face which she is sure has something to do with her past.

Meg follows a clue from the past to a remote Cornish Village. There she becomes involved in a nightmare web of terror and suspense . . . She meets a young man called Toby, who is different from her staid fiancé, but how is he wrapped up in the secrets she is unravelling?

First written as a short suspense story in the 1960’s, this YA romantic thriller went on to win an Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Joan Aiken in 1972

“A cunning thriller romance, with the ever popular suspense and terror… good holiday reading for the not so bookish” Elaine Moss, Times

“Young, beautiful, talented, engaged to a handsome and successful stockbroker, she should have been content to stay in London. But irresistibly Meg was drawn back to Penlaggen…back into a forgotten past… And waiting for her was a man who exercised a strange and fearful power over her…and a secret that led her ever closer to danger” Fiction Database

“The suspense is wonderfully sustained and leads to a terrifying climax, and there is even a satisfying love story” Publisher’s Weekly

“A dream has haunted nineteen-year-old Meg for ten years, ever since her mother’s death. Now engaged and determined to exorcise the dream before her marriage, Meg drives to the remote Cornwall village of Penleggen where the author’s gift for direful scene and gripping incident takes control…the physical danger mounts as Meg’s psychological mystery is solved and a literate thriller gathers momentum” Kirkus review

The Elder Isles – an ancient land where chivalry and the realm of fairie exist side by side. A land of mystery, strange beauty, high adventure and arcane magic. Kings are at war, opposing magicians devise ever more cunning stratagems. It is a land where princesses and changelings both can become embroiled in political rivalries and the quest for the grail.

The Gollancz Black Books have proved to be an immensely successful formula for getting well loved stories into the hands of people who also love well made books. Jack Vance’s Complete Lyonesse is a perfect addition to the series and contains Madouc the novel for which Vance won the World Fantasy Award.

The Mau Mau terrorist uprising is now over, but when Victoria joins her family on their beautiful Rift Valley estate, the horrors continue. What began as the malicious persecution of a poltergeist has ended in brutal murder. In the small community passions run deep – but deeper still is the mind of a ruthless killer …

Mark Hawkins is an engineer and a loner, who has always resented his adventurer-archaeologist brother, Dick. But when Dick vanishes, allegedly dead in a climbing accident, Mark starts investigating the site his brother was excavating, a Cistercian monastery, and meets three strange souls who were the last to see his brother alive.

Among them is Dr Merrion, a specialist in medieval archaeology. As Mark pokes around the woods surrounding Merrion’s home, he begins to feel that sinister forces are at play in Dick’s death.

‘Beautifully put together with an atmosphere that literally chills you’ San Francisco Chronicle

Curtis had killed a man, and he had paid the price. Now free from prison and moving his way across England searching for a place to begin a new life, Curtis slowly realises he is being shadowed by mysterious pursuers and is entering a very dangerous, stealthy game of hide-and-seek.

Curtis finds himself in a desolate seaside village where a beautiful woman and a deserted house will be crucial in the desperate – and murderous – drama about to be played out on the English Coast.

‘The novel is written with power’ New York Times Book Review

‘A smooth elaboration of mounting horror and danger’ Library Journal

Cara, Gayda, Pearl: sizzling dames. Travis, Clemensky, Clansing: desperate men. A set of secret papers. Bring in FBI man Lemmy Caution to recover the papers, and we have all the ingredients for a fast-moving story of espionage, deception and double dealing.

Lemmy Caution once again steers his way round the bodies of dead men and beautiful, very much alive, women to a successful conclusion.

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

A dame has to have more than beauty and breeding to stop Slim Callaghan doing things his way. Mrs Riverton has plenty of both, but when she begins to interfere in Slim’s search for her stepson, things start to hot up.

Slim’s motto is: ‘We get there somehow and who the hell cares’. The problem is that someone does …

No one asked Slim Callaghan to investigate – he just did it – and they had to like it. A £40,000 insurance claim, two beautiful women and possibly a fake suicide were at stake. Slim Callaghan, private detective, reckoned the situation looked very interesting indeed, but he didn’t have a client.

Callaghan’s motto was, ‘We get there somehow and who the hell cares how’. He got there and got himself a client, eventually – an exquisitely beautiful client …

The sinister business of counter-espionage is played out by an array of magnificent characters. Quayle, compounded of wisdom, administrative genius and the ability to live without sleep, wine or women; Shaun O’Mara, who loves all those things, looks like an actor and is an aristocrat, and works with subtlety, artistry and distinction; and Ricky Kerr, a cleverly drawn portrait of a man who is not quite able to stand the pace.

The women, of course, dress superbly, move like angels, are as beautiful as diamonds and, with one notable exception, behave abominably.

‘If there are better thrillers it is hardly possible to think of them while under the spell of this one’ Times Literary Supplement

Agent Michael Kells is in pursuit of Nazi spies in London, who have been tasked with the job of pinpointing the actual landing places of V1 bombs to improve their accuracy.

Through the strange byways of Kells’s sinister errand flit the mysterious ‘Auntie’, the alluring Janine, the beautiful Mrs Vaile and the delightful and unfortunate Alison Fredericks.

‘Nobody eats or sleeps in the course of this tale. And you probably won’t either’ New Yorker

Rene Burg, one-time Chicago gunman, finds himself mixed up in the Norwegian underground movement during the war. As well as gunning for the German Army in general, Burg is out to get one person in particular: a beautiful deadly woman who has brought the technique of double-crossing to a fine art. And he doesn’t have much time, because they are both under sentence of death.

Fourteen miles off the tail-end of Andros Island in the West Indies lies Dark Bahama. Many people have discovered they can find their heart’s desires there; many have found, too, that even in paradise it pays to watch your step.

Viola Steyning is young, wayward, rich and good looking, and the sort of girl to cause her mother back home in England a certain anxiety. That is why Julian Isles has been sent out by Johnny Vallon of Chennault Investigations to bring her back alive – for beneath the tranquil surface of Dark Bahama’s tropical beauty lurk sinister and dangerous undercurrents.

US Federal agent John Dennison arrives in the UK to meet Chief Inspector Philip Hunter of Scotland Yard, and to find $300,000, smuggled ashore via Liverpool. According to Dennison, the smugglers are intent on buying diamonds, to ship back to the US.

Two suspects are followed to a London hotel and the diamonds are found. Shockingly, they are discovered to be real . . . but synthetic.

The diamond deal, involving an eccentric middleman, exposes a much bigger racket. Hunter and Dennison have a complex plot to unravel, some dangerous men to deal with – and Dennison the beautiful, red-headed Martine to keep an eye on . . .

Janey Elliott fails to return home one evening from a friend’s, and her husband John goes out looking for her car. He and the friend’s husband find Janey, brutally murdered.

The gruesome killing of beautiful but wayward Janey Elliott calls for the special services of the Metropolitan Police. Does the element of sexual violence point to a frenzied killer, or is it a cover for a more straightforward motive? Scotland Yard soon find the answer to that question, but the murderer remains elusive.

Someone is caught in the tangle of relationships that goes along with the wealth and social prestige the Elliotts and their circle enjoy …

When Sergeant Devery is allotted a female police office to assist him on a plain-clothes prowl he is concerned it will cramp his style. He soon changes his tune when the woman in question turns out to be ‘unusually beautiful’.

The Devil Was Handsome is a fascinating portrait of drug-dealing, assault and murder against the backdrop of mid-twentieth-century CID methods, written by a serving police officer.

At ten, David Shaw, a silent and observant little boy already fluent in half a dozen languages, was being dragged through the capitals of Europe by a diplomat father and a beautiful scatterbrained mother. At twenty, in the midst of the troubled 1960s, David abruptly disappeared from his Ivy League college – to be reborn as Jan Van Zee, amiable Dutch drifter, making his way around Europe and working as an occasional courier for a syndicate of smugglers.

At thirty he is cruelly betrayed and left for dead by the syndicate, and now lives only for revenge against an apparently all-powerful and invulnerable foe. Reverting to his true identity, David returns to America to claim his vast inheritance, and sets out to execute a consummate vengeance against each of the syndicate’s three bosses