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Six stories from Phillip Mann, taken from his long and varied career.

Includes stories from the Out of Time Cafe, a very unusual refuge from reality. It attracts people afflicted with a deep malaise. It offers what seems from the outside to be sanctuary, but it can be subversive too, for on entering the cafe, one gives up a certain amount of independence, and before one knows it one is trapped. There is no escape… save one: the lift which services the cellars descends… but no one who has used the lift has ever returned. On a brighter note, the cafe has a will of its own, and travels different dimensions with ease and every journey is a new beginning.

Also featured are The Gospel According to Mickey Mouse, originally produced as a hugely successful radio play; Maestro;Lux in Tenebris, a cautionary tale about a medieval stonemason’s encounter with an anachronism and the effect it has on his culture; and An Old Fashioned Story, wherein Jody is having problems with his Sythno companion Elizabeth, who head butted him without warning. He is attempting to repair her. Then Elizabeth and her Sythno Joseph from next door drop in…

Set sixteen years after the events of The Exiled Earthborn, this explosive conclusion of the Earthborn trilogy tells the story of two brothers, the sons of Lucas and Asha, tasked with surviving the Xalan war to ensure the continued existence of the human race.

Noah, an orphan from Earth’s last days who, as a child, was smuggled to safety across the stars, is now nearly a man and a leader to the young enclave of Earthborn who reside on Sora. When the tranquility of their settlement is shattered by a shocking assassination attempt, Noah turns to his combative younger brother Erik, Lucas and Asha’s only child by blood, for aid. Their journey takes them to the remnants of a dead planet, an outlaw-infested space station, and back to Sora, whose inhabitants are bracing for a final showdown with the bloodthirsty Xalans.

They find themselves facing a new evil: the omnipotent Archon, who is somehow controlling the whole of the Xalan horde, and his bloodthirsty lieutenant, the Black Corsair, who has an unmatched taste for brutality. The Archon, so-called God of the Shadows, has unearthed knowledge that could wipe both Sorans and humans alike from the face of existence. The descendants of the Earthborn must uncover the true nature of the Archon and the Xalans before he burns everything they know and love to ashes.

A decade dead, Jacob Campbell is a preservationist, providing a kind of taxidermy to keep his clients looking lifelike for as long as the forces of entropy will allow. But in the Land of the Dead, where the currency is time itself and there is little for corpses to do but drink, thieve, and gamble eternity away, Jacob abandons his home and his fortune for an opportunity to meet the man who cheated the rules of life and death entirely.

According to legend, the Living Man is the only adventurer to ever cross into the underworld without dying first. It’s rumored he met his end somewhere in the labyrinth of pubs beneath Dead City’s streets, disappearing without a trace. Now Jacob’s vow to find the Living Man and follow him back to the land of the living sends him on a perilous journey through an underworld where the only certainty is decay.

Accompanying him are the boy Remington, an innocent with mysterious powers over the bones of the dead, and the hanged man Leopold l’Eclair, a flamboyant rogue whose criminal ambitions spark the undesired attention of the shadowy ruler known as the Magnate.

An ambitious debut that mingles the fantastic with the philosophical, Dead Boys twists the well-worn epic quest into a compelling, one-of-a-kind work of weird fiction that transcends genre, recalling the novels of China Miéville and Neil Gaiman.

The Nightingale was the most advanced craft in the entire fleet of Mercy ships belonging to the Gentle Order of St Francis Dionysos. On its maiden voyage, its life bays packed with refugees, the Nightingale disappeared. Despite strenuous efforts no trace of it could be found.

Then, a year later, a distress signal was heard and the Nightingale reappeared. It was damaged in ways that meant its survival in space was a miracle. But of its previous cargo of life-forms there was no sign. Only one creature remained alive within the ship, and that was its captain, Jon Wilberfoss.

Wulfsyarn is the story of the Nightingale, and of Jon Wilberfoss. It is told by Wulf, an autoscribe who has the task of observing Wilberfoss in the aftermath of his return. For the captain of the Nightingale is a condemned man: condemned by the Gentle Order, and self-condemned by a burden of guilt so intense his mind refuses to acknowledge it. Over the long period of Wilberfoss’ tortured convalescence in a peaceful monastery garden on the planet Tallin, Wulf watches and waits, recording the mosaic of Wilberfoss’ life: his childhood and adolescence, his entry into the Gentle Order, his marriage (to a native Tallin woman), and the great moment when he was chosen as captain of the Nightingale.

But can Wulf bring Wilberfoss to finally face the truth of what happened on the Nightingale’s fatal first and last journey?

These were the last weeks and days before the end of the world, before total destruction overwhelmed Earth and every living thing on the surface of the planet. No one knew exactly how long they had before the sun turned nova and destroyed not only Earth but all of the other planets in the Solar System. For mankind, the only excape lay in flight to the stars, to Alpha Centauri, more than four light years distant.

The hyperdrive, capable of carrying them there at close to the speed of light had been developed, but as yet had not been perfected. In a world without a future, the starships were the only salvation of mankind and they could save only a minute fraction of the population of Earth.

Panic is there, but temporarily forgotten by most, as the plans for a mass exodus are speeded up, as the long hours of mounting tension draw to a close and Judgement Day, when the world shall be destroyed by fire, is mo longer a hazy time in the far future, but something very close and very terrible. For those who remained behind, there could be no escape; death would come suddenly, eight minutes after the nova explosion. For those who fled the Solar System in the starships, untried and working on principles only partially understood, there was only the long, terrible journey through the endless night, not knowing what lay at the end of it.

Powerful war machines of the far-future collide across a barren desert world in this post-apocalyptic debut novel from award-winning Australian author Cat Sparks.

Seventeen-year-old Star and her sister Nene are orphans, part of a thirteen-wagon caravan of nomadic traders living hard lives travelling the Sand Road. Their route cuts through a particularly dangerous and unforgiving section of the Dead Red Heart, a war-ravaged desert landscape plagued by rogue semi-sentient machinery and other monsters from a bygone age.

But when the caravan witnesses a relic-Angel satellite unexpectedly crash to Earth, a chain of events begins that sends Star on a journey far away from the life she once knew. Shanghaied upon the sandship Dogwatch, she is forced to cross the Obsidian Sea by Quarrel, an ancient Templar supersoldier. Eventually shipwrecked, Star will have no choice but to place her trust in both thieves and priestesses while coming to terms with the grim reality of her past-and the horror of her unfolding destiny-as the terrible secret her sister had been desperate to protect her from begins to unravel.

Meanwhile, something old and powerful has woken in the desert. A Lotus Blue, deadliest of all the ancient war machines. A warrior with plans of its own, far more significant than a fallen Angel. Plans that do not include the survival of humanity.

In 1993, a character took the fantasy world by storm. He was known by countless names and terrifying deeds-thief, magic wielder, swordsman, assassin, adventurer. But chief among those names and the most dangerous of his personae was Nightfall, a man-or perhaps the legendary demon himself-gifted with a power any sorcerer would kill to possess.

Now, Nightfall makes his triumphant return in a spellbinding new adventure that sweeps readers from the high courts to the darkest dungeons, from piracy and derring-do at sea to sorcerous encounters and cutthroat attacks in enemy territory.

Bound by sorcery and oath to guard and guide Prince Edward on his quest, Nightfall is forced to reveal his true name, Sudian, and to use every trick at his command to keep himself and his idealistic young charge alive. And when Edward suddenly becomes a king, he makes Sudian his advisor. But advisor or not, Sudian cannot dissuade King Edward from a journey to repay a debt of honor to Duke Varsah, an expedition that ends in disaster when all of Edward’s guards are slain and the king himself vanishes without a trace.

Now Sudian must turn to Duke Varsah for aid. But is he putting himself into the clutches of the very man responsible for Edward’s disappearance, a man whose greatest desire is vengeance against Sudian himself?

In every mouse’s long life, there comes a time when ancestral voices tell him to move on. Pedlar, a yellow-necked mouse, has reached that point. Told to leave the Hedgerow and go on a long journey, the adventurous mouse says his farewells and sets out for a far-distant country knows as The House. Reaching his destination, Pedlar enters a strange new world inhabited by many warring tribes: the Stinkhorns of the cellar, the great Savage Tribe in the kitchen, the library Bookeaters, the Invisibles, the Deathshead and the rebellious 13-K Gang.

During his stay, Pedlar witnesses a momentous truce, in which the tribes come together at an Allthing meeting and decide to rid themselves of the greatest pests in The House, the greedy, stupid nudniks – the humans. And so the Great Nudnik Drive is set in motion, a time of considerable anxiety for the nudniks, when clocks strike twenty and inanimate objects seem to have a life of their own. Ranged against the mouse tribes are the nudniks’ allies: the two cats, Eyeball the Burmese blue and Spitz the ginger tom; the Headhunter, a barbarian human child; and Little Prince, the Headhunter’s cannibalistic pet white mouse. The House becomes a hotbed of riot and discord, until Pedlar finally comes up with a solution. The outcome of this heroic struggle has gone down in the annals of mouse history, a history tens of thousands of days long, and the whole remarkable tale is recorded here, between these pages.

In its hour of need, the Well World’s guardians had been neutralized. Nathan Brazil was shipwrecked on a desert island with a seemingly harmless girl but his contact with her had allowed his mind to be invaded, his will sapped, and his mission forgotten.
Mavra Chang had been abducted by a vicious gang of inter-hex drug smugglers, and was now held prisoner by a revenge-mad creature who had surgically and genetically altered her into a bizarre form and made her a slave to powerful narcotics. But the Well could allow nothing to stop the guardian’s journey for long. For the Well of Souls was only a machine; it needed the Watchers to handle events and circumstances beyond its sophisticated programming. And so it set plans in motion to jolt its champions back into the game.
The only other help Brazil and Chang could expect was from the companions who had been swept along to the Well World by accident or design. But the newcomers had been caught in a web of intrigue and deceit spun by the ruling council, a group desperate to stop both Brazil and Chang.
What none of them could know was that all of them, even the great Well computer, were being manipulated by the Kraang, an entity more ancient than the universe itself, a being that would use the guardians to give it powers far beyond even those of the Well of Souls- a being that would become a living god…

It was a changed world. No longer did the black monks of the Christian Church own half of England and extend their deadly domain over their flock. No longer did the murderous Ragnarssons and their Viking hordes ravage the shires unopposed. Now, in the year 867 AD, those who wished to be Christian were free to worship without the heavy yoke of the ever-hungry Church. Those who did not could follow the Asgarth Way, the Norse religion that paid homage to the gods of Asgard: Othin, Thor, Frey…and Rig. Rig, the patron – perhaps the father? – of Shef Sigvarthsson. Whose new weapons and battle strategy had defeated both the battle-hardened Vikings and the Frankish knights of Pope Nicholas’ failed Crusade.

While enemies plotted, Shef left England by ship, to avoid the wedding of his ally, Alfred of Wessex, to his childhood love, Godive. Shipwrecked on the Frisian Coast he begins a journey that will keep him away from England for months and years, and add more legends to his already myth-shrouded life.

In One King’s Way Harry Harrison Continues the story of Shef Sigvarthsson, god-chosen warrior and mystic. From the Vikings of the North Sea to the scheming priests of Germany, from the frozen northern lands to the snow-covered Finnish tundra, he fights his way towards overwhelming kingship. While his supernatural allies and enemies engage in a shadowy battle for his future. This is historical fantasy of the highest order, from a giant of the genre.

This is the story of how a world could be resurrected¿

Mars is a barren planet, almost without atmosphere and with a temperature ranging from near zero to 120 degrees below. No water flows and there is no evidence that life has ever existed there.

Yet Mars is Earth’s near neighbour and has always exerted a powerful hold on our imagination. The astronomer Lowell thought he’d discovered canals on the planet’s surface; H.G. wells (and his near namesake Orson) speculated on the red planet’s inhabitants invading Earth; sf writers have always used Mars as a setting and continue to do so.

In the Snows of Olympus Arthur C. Clarke uses a revolutionary computer program to show, in words and pictures, how the surface of the planet would change as, gradually, scientists created an atmosphere and raised the temperature. Taking as his starting point Olympus Mons, the highest mountain in the Solar System, a 27km extinct volcano, Clarke creates detailed ‘photographs’ of the Martian surface and then shows how the landscape would change as vegetation began to thrive and water to flow. He speculates about how this might happen, about the journey to Mars and about what living on the planet would be like. The result is one of the most fascinating, challenging and imaginatively stimulating books of the year.

Arthur C. Clarke has long been hailed as the most visionary and accurate of science fiction and non-fiction writers, having predicted communications satellites years before their development. In this extraordinary booked he chart the next chapter of humanity’s future in space.

Harry Keough, aka the Necroscope, has always considered himself a master of the Mobius Continuum – a dimension existing parallel to all space and time and his personal instantaneous gateway to anywhere in the multiverse. But this is hardly overweening conceit on Harry’s part, for to his knowledge he is not unique; two other intelligences, with powers similar to his, do indeed exist. One such is the long-dead August Ferdinand Mobius himself, the German astronomer, mathematician, and discoverer of the eponymous Mobius Strip which led him to explore, posthumously, his previously conjectural Continuum; and the other is Harry’s son, who has not only inherited his father’s mathematical skill but also the metaphysical talent by means of which the Necroscope converses with dead people in their graves!

Picture Harry’s confusion, then, on returning home via the Mobius Continuum from an adventure in Las Vegas, as he witnesses however briefly a flailing figure hurtling conscious but uncontrolled through the endless midnight of the Continuum. Who could this be – how can it be? – that a helpless, silently protesting other is rushing meteor-like across the Continuum’s Stygian vault? Moreover, if he hasn’t arrived here voluntarily, then what vile murderer has sent his victim on this monstrous journey to the end of life itself? For Harry is sure that this is neither his son’s nor Professor Mobius’ doing.

Who and where is he, this Mobius murderer? It is a mystery that only the Necroscope can ever hope to solve – but at what risk to his own life?

Ed Carter, a New York reporter on his way to his home town in Omaha for a short vacation, saw the missile in the last moments in its journey back to earth. A sweller on the brink, like all of us, he had no doubt about what it was; Oh God, he thought, this is it. The blast of the impact flung him some distance, and when he regained consciousness, his first reaction was one of surprised to find himself still alive, and not, it seemed, even badly hurt. Presumably the missile had been directed at the big Air Force base nearby, and should have destroyed everything and everyone within a radius of miles. Could it have failed to explode?

Carter sees the remains of part of the missile in an adjacent field and hobbles over to it. A minute or two later several Air Force officers arrive. They examine the remains, and find the burned-up body of a pilot. In other worlds, the missile was not Russia’s first shot in the Third World War, but a failure to launch a man into space. But Carter knows that the Distant Early Warning line will have reported the missile; that the senior Air Force officers, in accordance with plan, will have taken to the air – in the country’s interest, their lives must, of course, be preserved if possible; that by now the retaliatory American bombers will have passed the point of no recall; and that the Third World War has begun. Not so, Colonel Ben Goldwater tells him: “I called the bombers back.”

Goldwater, the man who had been left in command, has saved the world – for at least a little longer. So he becomes a world hero? Not a bit of it. On the contrary: a nightmare looms ahead both for him and for Ed Carter, and the reader watches it all with growing fury…

Hidden away from the world by his mother, the powerful sorceress Heloise Oliver, Pierce has grown up working in her restaurant in Desolation Point. One day, unexpectedly, strangers pass through town on the way to the legendary capital city. Look for us, they tell Pierce, if you come to Severluna. You might find a place for yourself in King Arden s court.

Lured by a future far away from the bleak northern coast, Pierce makes his choice. Heloise, bereft and furious, tells her son the truth: about his father, a knight in King Arden s court; about an older brother he never knew existed; about his father s destructive love for King Arden s queen, and Heloise s decision to raise her younger son alone.

As Pierce journeys to Severluna, his path twists and turns through other lives and mysteries: an inn where ancient rites are celebrated, though no one will speak of them; a legendary local chef whose delicacies leave diners slowly withering from hunger; his mysterious wife, who steals Pierce s heart; a young woman whose need to escape is even greater than Pierce s; and finally, in Severluna, King Arden’s youngest son, who is urged by strange and lovely forces to sacrifice his father s kingdom.
Things are changing in that kingdom. Oldmagic is on the rise. The immensely powerful artifact of an ancient god has come to light, and the king is gathering his knights to quest for this profound mystery, which may restore the kingdom to its former glory or destroy it…”

When Davey and his family moved to the city from the island of Muckle Burra off the coast of Scotland, they left his grandmother behind. But now his parents are dead-after a car accident that left Davey confined to a wheelchair-and Gran has moved in to take care of him and his sister, Lu-Lyn. But Lu-Lyn believes that both she and Gran are “Ridders” who have strange, dark powers and must return to the island… or has a dangerous force already followed them here?

Davey must embark on a terrifying journey that will reveal the true secret of his grandmother’s rare gift-and the limitless power of his own potential.

Joan Aiken mixes myth and magic in this mysterious short novel inspired by the Munch painting, The Scream.

“An eerie story from this bestselling children’s author: ‘Superbly chilling…this is one of her best” Independent on Sunday

“A tense, exciting and disturbing new story from Joan Aiken, whose magical, fantastic and supernatural books for children are among the best ever written” World of Books

“A prolific and much-beloved children’s author, Joan Aiken is perhaps best known for her classic “Gothic” adventures, chief among them The Wolves of Willoughby Chase and Midnight is a Place. The Scream, which features Edvard Munch’s famous painting of the same name, was written later in the author’s career, and makes for an agreeable “shivery” read” LibraryThing

“Joan Aiken, one of the most brilliant children’s writers of her generation, delivers a dark and potent reading experience in this short, disturbing story. After their parents’ fatal accident, David and his sister live with their grandmother, a fearsome woman who possesses the power of the Evil Eye. Gran’s mysterious links to the old legends and magic of a remote Scottish island seem destined to lead to another tragedy” Amazon Review

“Joan Aiken is just ridiculously talented in terms of the scope of her writing and this is truly demonstrated by her ability to create a chilling and compelling narrative in such a short book” Goodreads Review

So begins one of the most celebrated stories in fantasy literature . . . packed full of mystery, deep themes and incredible prose, meet Severian the Torturer and follow him on his journey across the great world of Urth

Severian is a torturer, born to the guild and with an exceptionally promising career ahead of him . . . until he falls in love with one of his victims, a beautiful young noblewoman.

Her excruciations are delayed for some months and, out of love, Severian helps her commit suicide and escape her fate. For a torturer, there is no more unforgivable act. In punishment he is exiled from the guild and his home city to the distant metropolis of Thrax with little more than Terminus Est, a fabled sword, to his name.

Along the way he has to learn to survive in a wider world without the guild – a world in which he has already made both allies and enemies. And a strange gem is about to fall into his possession, which will only make his enemies pursue him with ever-more determination . . .

Winner of the World Fantasy Award for best novel, 1981
Winner of the BSFA Award for best novel, 1982

Readers can’t stop reading The Shadow of the Torturer:

‘Full of rich characters and great imagination’ Mark Lawrence, author of Red Sister

‘A dark jewel . . . He has a mastery of language not often seen in fantasy writing . . . Couple this with an original and unique, highly imaginative and complex worldbuilding and the high praise is warranted‘ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

‘This is a picaresque fantasy with a difference, for our hero Severian is no wide-eyed country boy from the shire, but an apprentice torturer, thoroughly schooled in his trade’ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

‘There are certain books that can be considered life-changing experiences. Gene Wolfe is an author who has written one of those for me’ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
‘The Book of the New Sun Tetralogy is one of the great achievements in science fiction and is a MUST READ for fans of the genre. HIGHEST POSSIBLE RECOMMENDATION!!!’ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

‘In addition to being unique in style, The Shadow of the Torturer is a gorgeous piece of work: passionate storytelling (heart-wrenching in places), fascinating insights into nature and the human condition, beautiful prose’ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

‘Genre fiction at its finest. Original, difficult and well-crafted, it is easy to see how Wolfe is regarded as a writer’s writer’ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐