Search Results for: faces

Immaculate officers and rough-bearded riflemen, evangelists, card-sharps and dandies face death at attention on the sloping deck of the Birkenhead. But who was the coward hidden among the women in the lifeboat, and who was the girl who lived to report his shame?

Eight years later in the summer of 1860, the coward’s legacy unfolds, and Verity must piece together a mystery that leads him to uncover an ingenious plot: a madman’s revenge for the loss of the Birkenhead. And with this knowledge, only Verity can avert a tragedy unparalleled in English history since the loss of Prince William in the White Ship 700 years before.

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.

Four years ago Gevan Dean found his fiancée Niki Webb in his brother Ken’s arms and fled his hometown for a peaceful life in the Florida sun. But now Ken is dead – murdered by a thief, the police say – and Gevan is desperately needed to keep their company, Dean Products, from falling apart.

Everywhere Dean turns he finds only questions and confusion. But he doesn’t suspect the truth behind Ken’s murder or the real goings-on at Dean Products until the stakes get too high to ignore – and the truth explodes violently in his face …

Two dramatically contrasting episodes face Inspector Gautier in his latest mystery: the death by stabbing of the vicar of the fashionable church of Saint Clothilde in the confessional box; and the theft of the Duchesse de Paiva’s diamond necklace during the extravagant fête thrown by Armand de Saules to celebrate the eighteenth birthday of his daughter, Marie-Thérèse.

As the inspector investigates Marie-Thérèse’s clandestine affair with a somewhat discreditable Italian poet, Daniele Pontana, and her rejection of her parents’ choice for a husband, Gautier discovers the two crimes are strangely connected. As is a third, the murder of Pontana’s valet Ponzi . . .

Private eye Bill Crane is back, in his fifth and final case, working and drinking as usual with his old sidekick, Doc Williams, and a new member of the gang, Ann Fortune, who is posing as his girlfriend – and disapproves of his carousing.

The trio has been sent to a Chicago suburb to investigate a murder and death threats made to the family of an industrial magnate. Alternately impeded and abetted by the many attractive women of the family, Crane cracks the case in his own inimitable way, following a trail of clues including the perfume of gardenias, the lipstick marks on the dead man’s face and the crimson cat.

AN UNLIKELY BAND OF SUPERHEROES

A woman who loved in vain, a magician who loved only wisdom, and a warrior to whom love was a genetic impossibility – fought the Doom that filled the skies of their strange world.

And it came to pass that Zolobion the Magician and Ganelon Silvermane set forth from the land of the great Stone Face and took the first steps of their gigantic journey across the world, a journey so long and fearful and so filled with wonders that no man since time began until that hour had undertaken a like adventure.

But their mission was a logical impossibility. Hence what purpose in undertaking it?

Only that the Moon was falling.

Astronomy professor Aurora ‘Rory’ Bell gets a message from space that seems to portend the arrival of extraterrestrial visitors. According to her calculations, whoever is coming will arrive in three months – on New Year’s Day to be exact.

A crowded and poisoned Earth is moving toward the brink of the last world war – and is certainly unprepared to face invasion of any kind. Rory’s continuing investigation leads her to wonder if it could be some kind of hoax, but the impending ‘visit’ takes on a media life of its own. And so the world waits. But the question still remains as to what, exactly, everyone is waiting for…

The legendary Nicholas van Rijn had, of course, been right all along. Just as he had foreseen, the Polesotechnic League – that great empire of merchant princes – had flowered and then crumbled into the vastness of space.

The same fate would befall the Terran Empire that succeeded it. Even heroes like Dominic Flandry lived under the shadow of their eventual extinction – the ever-hungry darkness that would take him and his world in the end.

But for those who came after, those wretched heirs of Terran civilisation, the darkness was no impending tragedy. This time they were facing the reality of…

THE LONG NIGHT

On several settled worlds of the Earth Confederation, towns had been utterly destroyed by attacking alien vessels – exploded into flaming ruin, and fleeing people reduced to smears of blood and bone.

And so they sent for Captain Kurt Varl, the only man to have fought an alien ship and destroyed it – the only survivor from his crew of thirty souls. And now he would have to lead another ship and crew into battle, knowing that as well as the alien raiders he faced the things that lurked in limbo, existing in four dimensions and capable of transforming humans into things of screaming horror…

PROGRAMMED FOR DESTRUCTION



In a way, they were the same, the man and the machine. Both had been ordered to do one thing – kill.



The robot had been created to wreak revenge on the humans who had brutally conquered its planet.



The man was the product of years of training by an Earth that had set out to take over the Universe.



Now the two faced each other in the icy reaches of the galaxy. The robot, with its calculating machine of a brain, its impenetrable force shield, its deadly laser beam. The man, with the kind of nerve that refused to admit the odds against survival…

This is the story of one member of the Terran Survey Corps. His name is Loftus Tait. There are many men of his stamp in the Corps; men who possess a deep and unshakable conviction that what they are doing has a meaning in face of the great unknowns, men who, recognising the transience and minuteness of humankind, yet believe that Man has a destiny among the stars.

Not for him or his crew was there the refinement and luxury of a base ship equipped like a small world; they took their frail craft across the parsecs and set down as and when they could, and worked at their jobs, and came back – if they were lucky.

Some were not so lucky.

I saw her, hanging in the sky like a flake of the moon. A woman, her face masked by a black shireen, her body by a black shift, but her white arms spread, and her white, white, bone-white hair blowing all around her like a flame composed of smoke. Recognition was immediate. It was my mother. I shouted at her. It was crystal clear to me, what he had meant for me, my father, Vazkor, what she had robbed me of. And I drew from my belt my hunting knife and threw it at her heart.

‘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.

They had conquered Mars! Earth was next.

And in the council chambers at Washington, Earth’s leaders gathered to face the peril.

Mars had gone down to defeat in one hour and thirty-four minutes. And now a fleet of creatures from outer space was headed towards Earth.

All eyes turned to Eldin Raigmore, President of the United States – the one man to be trusted above all others. One by one the elite were dispatched on missions of last-minute strategy. They went with confidence, inspired by the swift, sure mind of Raigmore.

Civilization rested in his hands. And he was a secret member of the invader race!

Kyreol’s small world begins at the Face, a high rock cliff, and ends at Fourteen Falls, a series of rapids. Each year, her people celebrate Moon-Flash-a spark of light that seems to come from and go into the moon, a symbol of life and joy. When a mysterious stranger arrives, Kyreol wants to know more about him, as well as the Moon-Flash, and soon she and her childhood friend Terje leave their home to look for answers. Those answers will pluck Kyreol from Riverworld and transform her life forever-by fast-forwarding her into a future she can barely comprehend.

Across the galaxies, against wrongdoers and rogues! Only Retief – the indomitable champion of the underdog and 27th-century diplomacy – can seal the peace between the battling earthlings and the lobster-like aliens known as the Haterakans. In constant peril, the daring spacewarrior must join a pirate band, cross the fatal boundaries of the Terran Defense League, and take on his arch rivals Foulbrood and Bloodblister. Facing certain torture, double-dealing, and ruthless espionage, he passes within inches of death. But he must emerge victorious – or the Hatracks will waste no time in executing their berserk plan to raise earthlings as a food supply!

‘He put the glass to his lips, and drank at one gulp. A cry followed; he reeled, staggered, clutched at the table and held on, staring with injected eyes, gasping with open mouth; and as I looked there came, I thought, a change – he seemed to swell – his face became suddenly black and the features seemed to melt and alter…’

Troubled by the strange behaviour of his friend, Dr Jekyll, a young London lawyer decides to investigate. But the truth, as he discovers that Jekyll and the brutal Edward Hyde are one and the same is more terrible than he could possibly have anticipated…

The case started with a corpse. Nobody knew who he was. Next, a man named John Burke disappeared. But D.A. Doug Selby could not find his body.

Then Mrs Burke swore that the corpse and her missing husband were one and the same man. This should have solved both mysteries. All it did was run the D.A. up two different trees. Sure, the faces of the dead man and John Burke were exactly the same. The only trouble was that their fingerprints were different!

Impossible? That’s what Doug Selby thought too – until the killer struck again …

The astronomers at the International Symposium were faced with an alarming discovery. An unexpectedly early solar eclipse had caused the Moon’s orbit to contract. Evidence from a hurried investigation all pointed in one direction: the Moon was drawing nearer to Earth, and in five years the two would collide and both would be destroyed.

What were the astronomers to do? They knew that once the news became public there would be a world-wide panic, and they turned for advice to Billy Gillanders, the head of the United Nations Exploration Agency. Gillanders and his deputy, Chris Godfrey, had one faint hope to offer, and it lay in the experiments of an eccentric retired professor…

By the author of Rogue Male, one of the classic thrillers of the twentieth century: a bestseller that redefined its genre Guardian

Geoffrey Household returns to the rural England of Rogue Male and Watcher in the Shadows, with the savage hunting of his two heroes from the estuaries of South Devon to the empty Marlborough Downs.

The novel reveals at last the fate of Alwyn Rory, the security officer who was believed to have taken a bribe to allow a naval spy to escape and to have defected to Russia rather than face trial. Both Rory and his new ally, Adrian Gurney, by whom the story is told, are on the run and may be killed with impunity, as they do not exist …

Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur and his amoral superior Assistant Chief Constable Desmond lles face a political and personal dilemma when they suspect fellow Officer Nivette of taking bribes from underworld villains, panicking Ralphy Ember and Mansel Shale.

Is Nivette doing some unauthorised undercover work, or is he really bent? And where has the body of smalltime dealer Slow Victor gone? Trussed up in the cabin of a deserted boat one minute, gone the next. Harpur starts to make the connection, but will it be in time to save Nivette?

‘The suspense is almost unbearable, the latent truth uncomfortable and the result haunting’ Frances Fyfield

It is 1936 – the year of the Abdication Crisis – and gangland capo Sonny Tarrant’s money-laundering operation is being threatened by three small-time thieves thinking big.

Would-be gangsters Sandboy, McGouran and Gillis have carried out a violent raid on the premises of furrier Pelly Pender. But Pender insists to the police that no attack took place, for he knows the trio will face a different justice in which the law plays no part. And Sandboy soon finds himself caught in a nightmare world in which Tarrant manipulates his victims with the deftness of a flick-knife.

His last hope is Yvonne Manders, once the stage-dancer ‘Lady Blue’ . . .

The concert draws to a close for the rulers of rock, Fiorinda, Ax and Sage, as they face the darkness spreading across the world despite their best efforts.

They’ve fought against collapsed economies, environmental meltdowns, energy crises, dark magic cults, and the complexities and struggles of their relationship. They’ve explored alternate states of being, embraced parenthood, raged against the machine, and then taken over running it. But has this been enough? Or was Earth and humanity always doomed to fall apart? Will this modern-day Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot see a brighter tomorrow?

This is book five in Gwyneth Jones’ critically-acclaimed BOLD AS LOVE series.

Two threats from a newly released convict – a poacher framed on a murder charge – put Captain Scole, Chief Constable of Brodshire, on his guard. Special men are assigned to protect him.

But four days later, Captain Scole is found shot through the head at his desk in Police Headquarters.

A full week later, young Inspector Poole of Scotland Yard is called in to follow a cold trail in the face of open hostility from the local police. And the further he explores the murder, the more baffling it becomes.

Could Scole’s First World War past be catching up with him – or something much closer to home?