Search Results for: faces

At the end of the 22nd century, following a nuclear accident, the birth rate is falling.

Faced with a rapidly shrinking human race, governments come up with a solution: new people from old. Cloning.

But these Reborn people are kept closely monitored, in controlled scenarios. Will they really fit into futuristic society? What other secrets are being hidden outside of the worlds in which they are contained?

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 Tavona is called to action once again!

When signals from space summon Vargo, the Professor joins the crew to conduct more research into the alien races their adventures have introduced to them. This journey takes them into the unknown reaches of the galaxy, trying to find a planet which has shifted orbit between solar systems. On their way they face snake aliens, tiny meteorites, and worlds where the air itself is deadly.

The eighth instalment in Captain W. E. Johns’ science fiction series brings more classic sci fi adventures from the legendary creator of Biggles.

The Tavona and its crew of intrepid heroes, led by Tiger Clinton, are back and exploring the galaxy once again.

On a routine trip to Mars, a chance visit to a new planetoid leads to kidnap! Another planet is populated entirely by identical twins. Even simple streams are not as they appear, and everything holds hidden and unexpected dangers.

Using their wits, their skills, and with the help of friends made on their travels, Tiger Clinton and his team are ready to face anything – and they’ll have to!

Why is the government deliberately destroying all trace of Man’s past?

Why are the laws of gravity and momentum strangely altered?

Why has the world’s population continually increased without the predicted eco-crisis taking place?

Why is there an international conspiracy to conceal the future of the human race?

These are just some of the reality-shattering questions that face Manalone, a brilliant computer scientist, when he tries to find out exactly what has happened to humanity. Manalone, outcast from society, must fight the entire machinery of a ruthless police state to discover the truth. And the truth is an awful, chilling one, that sounds only too real in today’s world.

Captain Future meets Captain Future…

The two men stood facing each other.

One man was tall and impressive. His red hair, his self-assured manner, the global ring he wore on his finger, left no question in the minds of viewers that he was the man he said he was – the man known the Solar System over as Captain Future.

The other man was tall too, but fierce looking, with a wild black beard and a scarred face. They called him Blackbeard and believed he was a space pirate, although the main claimed he didn’t remember who he was. Not even he suspected that he might be the real Captain Future…

CAPTAIN FUTURE FACES FIERY SOLAR DEATH

It was ten o’clock, solar time, when disaster struck. At exactly the same moment, gravium mines on Mercury, Mars and Saturn were totally destroyed by an unidentified army. Without gravium – the life-blood of interplanetary civilization – the system would perish.

Meanwhile, Captain Future struggled on the floor of a moving space craft, his arms and legs bound by steel ropes. He did not know why he’d been captured – only that the system was in grave danger – that he was needed…

As Captain Future was plunged through space, towards a deadly orb of flaming gases – the raging inferno of the sun – he planned his daring escape. It was to be the most dangerous gamble of his life.

‘Spaceships in their thousands, and they’re attacking us! They’ve come from somewhere toward our galaxy – have come out of intergalactic space itself to attack our universe!’

The Interstellar Patrol, that fabulous fleet manned by all the assorted races of our galaxy, faced its greatest struggle when that alarm came through. For this was an attack from OUTSIDE THE UNIVERSE, a vast migration from another galaxy, and it had to be stopped if a thousand worlds were to survive!

This terrific classic space novel on the grandest scale involves three giant galaxies in an all-out conflict.

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!

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.

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.

When winter comes, the mutants gather . . .

They have always lived in the shadows, on the fringes of normal society. Ignored, shunned, they survived in their own invisible clans, using their extraordinary psychic abilities to shield themselves from the intolerance, bigotry, and hatred of the normals – until now . . .

The first mutant leader to emerge into the light of public life demanding equality has been savagely murdered. Finding her assassin has become the obsession of one courageous group of mutants. There is Michael, torn between loyalty to his clan and his love for a normal. Melanie, denied her mutant heritage by a cruel trick of genetic fate. And Jena, willing to use her psychic powers and mutant sexuality to get what she wants most.

As society faces the explosive implications of radical evolution and as inner rivalries threaten to tear the clan apart, the mutants must find a way to protect their identities, their lovers – and their very lives.

It advanced not in the manner of a living creature but in the manner of sand. It had no arms and then a hundred, no feet but one as wide as the base of the advancing dune itself.
Everywhere and all of it was dark red, like all the rust that had ever afflicted the metals of the world squeezed into a swiftly shifting pyramid rage.
The dune howled and moaned and bellowed like some sky-scraping banshee unwillingly fastened to the Earth.
And in the midst of all that geologic fury, two thirds up the face of the oncoming mountain were two eyes…

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.

They called him Flinx…

He was just a freckle-faced, redheaded kid with green eyes and a strangely compelling stare when Mother Mastiff first saw him on the auctioneer’s block. One hundred credits and he was hers.

For years the old woman was his only family. She loved him, fed him, taught him everything she knew – even let him keep the deadly flying snake he called Pip.

Then Mother Mastiff mysteriously disappeared and Flinx took Pip to tail her kidnappers. Across the forests and swamps of the winged world called Moth, their only weapons were Pip’s venom…and Flinx’s unusual Talents.

A century earlier, the Markovians were the meanest, nastiest, orneriest specimens in the entire Council of Galactic Associates. The worlds in their corner of their galaxy controlled a military force that outweighed anything the Council could possibly bring to bear against them.

With complete disregard for interplanetary order they harassed and attacked peaceful shipping and inoffensive cultures throughout a wide territory. For years the Council debated and threatened – but nothing was ever done. Then, so gradually it was hardly noticed, the harassments began to die down. The warlike posturing was abandoned by the Markovians. Within a period of about seventy or eighty years there was a complete about-face.

What had happened? Cameron and his new wife Joyce are going into unfriendly regions to find out…

The Girlhood of Shakespeare’s Heroines is a moving meditation on the things that endure in the face of implacable circumstance: art, love, freedom, the persistence of erotic fervor, the indelible beauty of the natural world.

Millennia ago Starquin visited the Solar System. Because he is huge – some say bigger than the Solar System itself – he could not set foot on Earth personally. yet events here were beginning to interest him, and he wanted to observe more closely.


So he sent down extensions of himself, creatures fashioned after Earth’s dominant life-form. In one of Earth’s languages they became known as Dedos, or Fingers of Starquin. Disguised, they mingled with Mankind.


We know this now, here at the end of Earth’s time. The information is all held in Earth’s great computer, the Rainbow. The Rainbow will endure as long as Earth exists, watching, listening, recording and thinking. I am an extension of the Rainbow, just as the Dedos are extensions of Starquin. My name is Alan-Blue-Cloud.


It is possible you cannot see me but are aware of me only as a voice speaking to you from a desolate hillside, telling you tales from the Song of Earth. I can see you, the motley remains of the human race, however. You sit there with our clubs and you chew your roots, entranced and half-disbelieving as I sing the Song – and in our faces are signs of the work of your great geneticist, Mordecai N. Whirst. Catlike eyes here, broad muzzles there, all the genes of Earth’s life, expertly blended, each having its purpose. Strong people, adapted people, people who survived.


The story I will tell is about people who were not so strong. It is perhaps the most famous in the whole Song of Earth, and it tells of three simple human beings involved in a quest who unwittingly became involved in much greater events concerning the almighty Starquin himself. It is a story of heroism and love, and it ends in triumph – and it will remind the humans among you of the greatness that was once yours.

The Conversationalist sat among the boxes, trying to interest the friends in history. “The Compulsory Transfer Act was passed in 2056,” he was saying, “with the dual object of reducing the birthrate and preventing the wastage of valuable minds through death. It might fairly be said to have changed the face of civilisation.”

“I’ll say!” rasped one of the friends.

“If it wasn’t for the Act, I’d have been in a physical body now, instead of being in this damned box!”

“If it wasn’t for the Act, you’d have been dead this last hundred and fifty years,” pointed out the Conversationalist.

“You’ve probably has four physical bodies by now, a total of one hundred and sixty years of active life. And just twenty years in a box. That’s not bad!”

The problem of immortality had been solved in the 21st century: when you reached forty, your brain was transferred to the head of a six-month-old infant. In that way, you obtained another forty years of life, until you could do it all over again. But nobody could have foreseen the dramatic manner in which the birthrate would fall – resulting in a growing waiting list for host bodies, and the creation of Friendship Boxes to house the brains of those who waited. The Friendship Boxes proliferated: a grumbling section of the community, a constant source of embarrassment to every politician…Until the day it all came to a head.

Called to the end of time by a being they knew only as The Face of Ea, four adventurers from the twentieth century faced a power that not even the super-science of that era could meet – the nekron, negative matter, negative force, ultimate destruction for everything it touched. It seemed hopeless to expect them to win this battle for the fate of the universe – but between them they had a power they themselves could not suspect.

Asia, vast continent of ancient civilizations and mysterious peoples, has many corners little known to the rest of the world. One such was the jungle-hidden heart of exotic Cambodia, where Gordon King, a daring American explorer, stumbled upon the thousand-year secret kingdom of THE LAND OF HIDDEN MEN.



Edgar Rice Burroughs, whose Tarzan tales have enthralled millions, has written a novel of another such jungle hero that is as exciting, as adventure-packed and as imaginative as his best. The dangers Gordon King faced, his rescue of a jungle princess, and his combat against the perils of the lost city of Pnom Dhek are first-rate Burroughs to the last exciting line.

In the Room of the Seven Doors, Carson Napier faced the choice of his life. Six doors led to terrible deaths – the seventh was the door of life. But for him, this door too would lead only to the new dangers of a planet whose beasts were more frightful than those of his native Earth.


But Carson sought the rescue of the planet’s fairest princess, and even though he stepped from one danger to meet another, he was determined to make good an Earthman’s pledge.

Here is the most exciting and dangerous adventure of them all, in which Tarzan of the Apes is faced with some of his most baffling challenges ever! A beautiful white girl on safari is captured by a lost civilisation of semi-pagan tribesmen in inaccessible jungle, and worshipped as a prisoner goddess…

Two ruthless crooks from across the ocean, on a feverish hunt for a lost horde of gold in Tarzan’s territory, plunder the innocent folk and creatures of the forest in their relentless search…

And a young man – strong, and bronzed and dressed in a loin-cloth – calls himself ‘Tarzan’, and causes chaos and confusion among all but the most faithful of the real jungle hero followers.

When the American bomber crashed in the jungles of enemy-held Sumatra, the survivors faced the perils of a completely unknown world…and the RAF colonel who had flown with them as observer seemed to compound their danger by going mad – stripping to a loincloth and throwing away his weapons except for his knife. But for Colonel John Clayton, Lord Greystoke, the hazards of wild beasts and a remorseless enemy were a familiar and joyously accepted challenge – a chance to return to his true identity of Tarzan of the Apes.

Gathering a motley crew of allies of many nations, Tarzan worked a terrible vengeance on the occupying Japanese, led an epic trek to the coast – to a final ocean rendezvous with enemies human and inhuman.