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“LAMB HOUSE is in Rye, an ancient town of East Sussex, England. It is very much a real place, even a famous one, yet The Haunting of Lamb House is as elusive to review as it must have been to write. It is safe to say that no one but Joan Aiken could have written it, not only because she was born in Rye and has the town in her bones as it were, but also because she has the power — shown in her other books — of evoking strange, often eerie events of the past and making other times, places and people vividly alive. This book goes further: She has taken the real history of Lamb House and interwoven happenings that are purely imaginary, working so skillfully that even those who have lived there can hardly tell which is which!”

So wrote novelist Rumer Godden, who also lived in Lamb House. She went on:

“For those who do not sense such things, The Haunting of Lamb House is a most skillful and intriguing interweaving of fact and fiction; to those who do, it is a memorable evocation. In either case it is a little masterpiece.”

Lamb House in Joan Aiken’s birth town of Rye in Sussex is said to be haunted. This is her story of what might have happened to cause the haunting: using the imagined diary of an earlier Mayor of Rye, Toby Lamb, whose father built the handsome Georgian house, and later episodes that might have occurred during the occupancy of two of its famous literary tenants – Henry James and E.F. Benson.

Joan Aiken was born in another haunted house owned by her father Conrad Aiken: Jeake’s House, just around the corner in Mermaid Street, Rye, which she also wrote about in Return to Harken House.

“Joan Aiken has written a clever book, kindling a whole world of feeling out of small macabre details, presenting to the senses a series of apprehensions of reality which seem to touch a completeness beyond themselves. An impressive achievement; I shivered as I admired” Robert Nye, The Guardian

“Joan Aiken’s artful web of truth and fancy is divided into three histories of haunting – the first employs Aiken’s considerable skill in a vivid evocative rendering of the old town of Rye when the house was built…followed by the twenty years of Henry James’ residence. The end is worth waiting for…where E.F.Benson encounters hideous apparitions and even an exorcism in the last enthralling twenty pages” Miranda Seymour, T.L.S.

“Aiken has conjured up a deliciously scary ghost story…her mastery of style serves her well in the creation of three separate voices. Those familiar with Henry James’s writing especially The Turn of The Screwwill derive special enjoyment from this novel, but there are shivers enough for any reader willing to acknowledge the possibility of ghosts and the reality of evil” U.S. Library Journal

“In three interlocking ghost stories this veteran British novelist places a fictional haunting within the history of a real house, and displays a masterly way with several contrasting narrative styles, sympathetically evoking some ghostly presences…the wayward spirit of the house and the growing number of literary presences which gradually take possession” Publisher’s Weekly

Draken’s queen is presumed dead. His adopted country is buckling under attack from religious fanatics, and he must try to protect both his country and family. Draken’s daughter is the only thing that gets him through the long days, but when her life is threatened, he must make hard choices about whom he can trust and whom he can no longer protect. The Gods themselves stalk Draken across the war-torn landscape, and his daughter somehow seems to be at the center of it all. Bitter from fighting an insurmountable war, feeling the life he’s rebuilt crumble around him, the ghosts of past mistakes drive him to blindly chase revenge. But Draken is about to learn that in the pursuit of retribution, gods and wars have a way of catching up to a man. In the thrilling conclusion to Dornbusch’s Book of the Seven Eyes trilogy, one man must fight to keep the things he holds dear, and find peace and security at the end of a life of bloodshed.

A selection of John Grimes short stories including:

With Good Intentions
The Subtracter
The Tin Messiah
The Sleeping Beauty
The Wandering Buoy
The Mountain Movers
What You Know

Tucker Loomis is a hard and dangerous man with a ruthlessness all West Bay fears and respects, and an improbable amount of money. Wade Rowley is a common man who aspires to honour but gets caught up in the footwork of a skilled swindler.

In a pitiless game, with a few harsh rules and just one way of keeping score, the wrong man will die. And another will get away with more than murder.

‘Lively, gritty … complex and convincing’ New York Times Book Review

David Fisher, an EPA (Environmental Perfection Agency) bureaucrat, was not the stuff of which heroes are made. At least he hoped not. All he wanted was a good life with a good wife, and a chance to do his bit for society reviewing magical impact statements (like the one that assesses the effect on local non-life resulting from the introduction of leprechauns into Southern California, for example) and ensuring that various manufacturers of magical devices did not intentionally or otherwise foul the environment with the sorcerous by-products of their trade. Indeed it would be hard to imagine a more regular and down to earth soul than that of David Fisher of the EPA. No hero he!

Then one day David received a call from Washington to investigate a certain Toxic Spell Dump, and suddenly he is up to his neck in skullduggery and magic most foul. Some ancient deity, it seems, is attempting to reopen for business in the L.A. Basin, complete with human sacrifice (open up their hearts and let the sun shine in!) and the destruction of Western Civilization. All that stands in the way is David Fisher – and he’s no hero.

Until he has to be.

Light on Bottom…

The light was artificial. Believe it if you can. I realise that for a normal person it’s hard. Wasting watts to light up the outdoors is bad enough. Spending the world’s limited power to illuminate the sea bottom, though – well, for a few moments I was too furious to think straight. My job has brought me into contact with people who were careless with energy, with people who stole it, and even with people who misused it; but this was a brand-new dimension!

I was lower now and could see acres and acres of light stretching off to the north, east, and west until it blurred out of sight. Acres and acres lighted by things suspended a few yards above the level bottom, things visible only as black specks in the centre of slightly brighter areas.

Then I got my anger under control, or maybe my fear did it for me. I suddenly realised that if I hit bottom the way I was heading I might never be able to get back to the…

Ocean on Top.

The Soviet Union won the Cold War. The Russians were a little smarter than they were in our own world, and the United States was a little dumber and a lot less resolute. Now, more than a century later, the world’s gone Communist, and capitalism is a bad word.

For Gianfranco and his friend Annarita, a couple of teenagers growing up in Milan, life in a heavily regimented, surveillance-rich command economy is just plain dreary. The eventual withering-away of the state doesn’t look like it’s going to happen anytime soon.

Annarita’s a hard-working student and a member of the Young Socialists’ League. Gianfranco is a lot less motivated–but on the other hand, his father’s a Party apparatchik. The biggest excitement in their lives is a wargame shop called The Gladiator, which runs tournaments, and stocks marvelous complex games you can’t find anywhere else.

Then, abruptly, the shop is shut down. Someone’s figured out that The Gladiator’s games are teaching counterrevolutionary capitalist principles. The Security Police are searching high and low for the shop’s proprietors, who’ve not only vanished into thin air, but have left behind sets of fingerprints that aren’t in the records of any government on earth.

Only one staffer is left: Gianfranco and Annarita’s friend Eduardo. He’s on the run, and he comes to them in secret with an astonishing story: he’s a time trader from our own timeline, accidentally left behind when the store was evacuated. The only way Eduardo can get home to his own timeline is if Gianfranco and Annarita can help him reach one of the other time trader sites in this world – and the Security Police will be on their tails all the way there…

Shot at by aliens, eaten up by monsters, frozen up, burned up and shipped all over the galaxy¿ war was one game Private Peace didn’t want to play. So why had he joined the Space Legion?

Warren Peace had joined the Space Legion to forget – exactly what, he hadn’t the faintest idea. But he was sure about one thing – however horrific the crime he’d once committed, the memory of it could hardly be more unbearable than life in the lunatic Space Legion. Private Peace knew he’d got to get out¿

The trouble was, the only way to escape his 30-year contract was to discover exactly why he’d signed it in the first place. And that meant a hair raising journey into his forgotten past to meet the one person Peace definitely didn’t want to know – Warren Peace Mark I – in other words, himself!