Search Results for: into-the-darkness

The death of a duke leads to a bloody war, as the King of Algarve moves swiftly to reclaim the duchy which was lost during a previous conflict. But country after country is pulled into war, as alliances reassert themselves and a hatred of difference escalates into rabid nationalism.

Today the names of H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, August Derleth, and Clark Ashton Smith, all regular contributors to the pulp magazine Weird Tales during the first half of the twentieth century, are recognizable even to casual readers of the bizarre and fantastic. And yet despite being more popular than them all during the golden era of genre pulp fiction, there is another author whose name and work have fallen into obscurity: Seabury Quinn.

Quinn’s short stories were featured in well more than half of Weird Tales‘s original publication run. His most famous character, the supernatural French detective Dr. Jules de Grandin, investigated cases involving monsters, devil worshippers, serial killers, and spirits from beyond the grave, often set in the small town of Harrisonville, New Jersey. In de Grandin there are familiar shades of both Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, and alongside his assistant, Dr. Samuel Trowbridge, de Grandin’s knack for solving mysteries-and his outbursts of peculiar French-isms (grand Dieu!)-captivated readers for nearly three decades.

The third volume, The Dark Angel, includes all of the Jules de Grandin stories from “The Lost Lady” (1931) to “The Hand of Glory” (1933), as well as “The Devil’s Bride”, the only novel featuring de Grandin, which was originally serialized over six issues of Weird Tales.

Ted Bunpole proposes, and Betty Haverhill says no. But Ted won’t take “no” for an answer, and the situation gets tiresome. Betty books passage to Europe by freighter.
The Garda departs San Francisco for Italy, via the Panama Canal. Passengers include the intellectual Alex Cato and his wife Ora; Nello di Prieri, whose father is a Marquis; plump Harry Mayberry, owner of a dry-cleaning plant in Oakland-and the formidable, cigar-smoking Mik Finsch, a Dutchman recently from El Salvador.
And who but the dogged Ted Bunpole-following Betty despite her clear wishes? In desperation, Betty flirts with Mik Finsch; Ted loses his head, and sinister events follow.
In San Salvador, Betty witnesses a killing. With the Garda back at sea, the killer is on the ship-and her life is in danger…
But Betty is no pushover.

Bearing the Ra’ira, Raithskar’s most sacred gem, Rikardon and Tarani flee a ruthless enemy across the burning deserts of Gandalara. Protected by the swordsman’s mighty warcat Keeshah, and the mystic bird called Lonna, who obeys the illusionist’s commands, the two discover the smoldering passion they have long denied. But Keeshah leaves them to fulfill an ancient mating ritual in the Valley of the Sha’um, Rikardon and Tarani must risk death in the Well of Darkness to fulfill their destiny.

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.

‘The British, once they take the gloves off – once they forget to play cricket, to be English gentlemen – they are the toughest things on earth,’ says one German espionage agent to another in Dark Duet. And the trouble with Michael Kane, hero of this spy thriller, is that he never plays cricket with Nazi spies …

‘Dark Duet seems to me damn good’ Raymond Chandler

‘Pretty Boy’ Johnny McIver is a small-time crook thinking big. But when he and his girlfriend ‘Solitaire’ cross gangland chief Sonny Tarrant he is soon made to realise how small he really is. Forced on the run for a murder he did not commit, trying to lose himself among the post-war Bournemouth holidaymakers, Johnny McIver is a man in panic, a man ‘dancing in the dark’. A man who could soon be dancing at the end of a rope…

A dark tale of the destructive power of love and obsession from ‘The supreme master of suspense’ NEW YORK TIMES

‘The father of the modern suspense story’ LA TIMES

When Louis Durand first meets his bride-to-be after a months-long courtship by mail, he’s shocked that she doesn’t match the photographs sent with her correspondence. But Durand has not exactly been truthful, either, concealing the details of his wealth. Mostly, he feels fortunate she is so much more beautiful than he expected.

Soon after they marry, however, he becomes increasingly convinced that the woman in his life is not the same woman with whom he exchanged letters – and then she suddenly disappears with his fortune.

Alone and desperate, Louis becomes obsessed with finding Julia and bringing her to justice – but it is only when he finally tracks her down that the nightmare truly begins…

Elinor has spent her life being bullied and abused by her uncle, aunt and cousins. Her mother missing, her father dead, she has been left her adoptive family’s not-so tender mercies. The prospect of a holiday to Dartmoor seems like just a chance to experience the same awful life in a new location.

It’s worse than Elinor could have predicted.

Forced to sleep in the smallest, darkest room with its musty, curtained four-poster bed, Elinor finds herself retreating into the life of another Elinor – Nell the nurserymaid, whose tragic story from three hundred years ago is at first intriguing, then horrifying.

When she becomes trapped in what was once her escape, Elinor faces forever stuck in a nightmare, unless she is willing to commit to the horrifying price of freedom.

You can find out more about the fiction Gwyneth Jones wrote as Ann Halam here: http://www.gwynethjones.uk/HALAM.htm

Two men, one of them a policeman, are investigating a death involving a large international genetic engineering corporation. They become bothersome to the corporate owners and are taken out of action – not by being killed, but by being put to sleep for hundreds of years. But this may be a fate worse than death.

They awaken to a distant future in which contemporary industrial civilization has been “cleansed” from the earth and what humanity survives is learning to live a very low-technology lifestyle, being bred eugenically to this life. This cleaning was done on purpose, an international plot by the rich and powerful who in fact rule the world – and who, in this distant future, are dying off.

This is a complex and morally tortuous vision, and Turner’s characters find it nearly impossible to adapt without killing someone, perhaps even themselves.

On what trivialities the big things in life hang.

From the moment when, dining alone in her Brussels hotel, Georgia Yeo, celebrated writer of detective thrillers, opens her cigarette case and the Count comes into her life with the polite offer of a light, she realises that here is fate.

In that moment too begins the strange and inimitable spell of Georgia’s story. It is an enthralling story, of a woman successful in her career, yet timid and hesitant in making a decision which might have a far-reaching effect on her private life.

It’s truly a step in the dark …

The fifth book in the New York Times bestselling Longmire series, featuring Sheriff Walt Longmire

Wade Barsad locked his wife Mary’s horses in their barn and then burned it down. In return she shot him in the head six times – or so the story goes. Sheriff Walt Longmire doesn’t believe Mary’s confession, and he’s determined to dig deeper.

Posing as an insurance claims investigator, Walt goes undercover and soon discovers that the population of an entire town might have wanted Wade dead, including a beautiful Guatemalan bartender and a rancher with a taste for liquor but not so much for honesty . . .

‘A winning mystery with characters coming off the page’ Portland Oregonian

A seemingly-innocent advert; a missing widow. And it’s the detective who’s in the most danger…
Classic crime from one of the greats of the Detection Club

Detective Arthur Crook is browsing the newspaper on the morning of 14 April 1947, when an advertisement jumps out at him.

‘Rest and Refreshment: to a lady seeking the above and able to pay for it, is offered a unique opportunity for complete seclusion in a delightful country house’

Disastrously, Mrs Emily Watson has read the same ad, and soon Crook becomes embroiled in the disappearance of a rich widow preyed upon by her unscrupulous nephew. And, for once, the super sleuth almost comes a cropper . . .

‘The ebullient Crook at his boisterous best’ Country Life

An elegiac ghost story from the acclaimed and visionary author of the Corlay sequence.

Fifteen billion years from now, Earth is a dying planet, its skies darkened by the ashes of burned-out galaxies, its molten core long cooled. The sunless planet is nearing the day of final gravitational collapse in the surrounding galaxy. Mutations and evolution have led to a great disparity of life-forms, while civilization has resorted to the primitive.
Young Deyv of the Turtle Tribe knew nothing of his world’s history or its fate. He lived only to track down the wretched Yawtl who had stolen his precious Soul Egg. Joined by other victims of the same thief – the feisty Vana and the plant-man Sloosh – the group sets off across a nightmare landscape of monster-haunted jungle and wetland. Their search leads them ultimately to the jeweled wasteland of the Shemibob, an ageless being from another star who knows Earth’s end is near and holds the only key to escape.

As guardian of the Universe’s freedom from the domination by the Cyclan, Earl Dumarest is ruthlessly hunted by their agent, Cyber Broge, as he searches for the fortune necessary to finance his epic quest for Terra – the planet of his birth. Hunter and fugitive, predator and victim, Earl Dumarest lands on the planet Zakym.

ZAKYM – a cadaverous, twin-sunned world where the spectres of the dead daily claim the lives of the living; a decadent world that threatens to explode with the unparalleled violence of civil war and broken taboos.

ZAKYM – home of the beautiful, haunted Lavinia whose soul is claimed and condemned by a power-crazed madman.

Both Lavinia and her planet are doomed until a man appears who promises to be their saviour. Dumarest is the only person capable of challenging the terrifying menace of the Cyclan and the terrors of Zakym. But can even he triumph against such foes?




(First published 1977)

The Collected Stories Volume 7: We Are For The Dark (1987 – 1990)

Winner of multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards, Robert Silverberg is one of the all time greats of science fiction. A professional writer for more than half a century, his short story output has been prolific and exceptional in quality.

This series of nine volumes will collect all of the short stories and novella-length that SF Grand Master Silverberg wants to take their place on the permanent shelf.

Each volume will be roughly 150,000-200,000 words, with classics and lesser known gems alike. The author has also graced us with a lengthy introduction and extensive story notes for each tale.

Contents:
The Dead Man’s Eyes
Enter A Soldier. Later: Enter Another
To The Promised Land
Chip Runner
A Sleep And A Forgetting
In Another Country
The Asenion Solution
We Are For The Dark
Lion Time In Timbuctoo
A Tip On A Turtle

The Collected Stories Volume 2: To The Dark Star (1962 – 1969)

Winner of multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards, Robert Silverberg is one of the all time greats of science fiction. A professional writer for more than half a century, his short story output has been prolific and exceptional in quality.

This series of nine volumes will collect all of the short stories and novella-length that SF Grand Master Silverberg wants to take their place on the permanent shelf.

Each volume will be roughly 150,000-200,000 words, with classics and lesser known gems alike. The author has also graced us with a lengthy introduction and extensive story notes for each tale.

Contents:
To See The Invisible Man
The Pain Peddlers
Neighbor
The Sixth Palace
Flies
Halfway House
To The Dark Star
Hawksbill Station
Passengers
Bride 91
Going Down Smooth
The Fangs of the Trees
Ishmael in Love
Ringing the Changes
Sundance
How It Was When the Past Went Away
A Happy Day in 2381
(Now + n, Now – n)
After the Myths Went Home
The Pleasure of Their Company
We Know Who We Are

At ten-thirty in the morning the skies over London were clear. Then an arrow formation of five bright points became visible. They appeared to be moving at an amazing speed in tight circles. They were spiralling down to about five thousand feet, and at that altitude their nature was easily discernable. They were the tings most of us had discussed and dismissed at one time o another. Flying Saucers. Giant saucers, smooth and lustrous and blinding, more than a hundred yards in diameter. They hung over the city in a neat formation.

World War II veteran Edward Bond’s recuperation from a disastrous fighter plane crash takes a distinct turn for the weird when he encounters a giant wolf, a red witch, and the undeniable power of the need-fire, a portal to a world of magic and swordplay at once terribly new and hauntingly familiar. In the Dark World, Bond opposes the machinations of the dread lord Ganelon and his terrible retinue of werewolves, wizards, and witches, but all is not as it seems in this shadowy mirror of the real world, and Bond discovers that a part of him feels more at home here than he ever has on Earth.

Anna, white-haired and grey-eyed, is born into the luxurious and mysterious family of Scarabae, a family of inhuman age and consuming passions. As she matures, it becomes clear that she shares some of their blood, for at three she appears sixteen, and holds knowledge known only to her dead sister Ruth… Suddenly Anna, along with a score of other children, is kidnapped and carried away to the end of the earth, to the pyramid hidden in the Southern ice that is home to the terrible immortal named Cain.

Emerging from the burned remains of their old home, the ancient, elegant Scarabae ready themselves for a new life of seduction and feasting, until little Ruth ignites a blaze of chaos through the streets of London that threatens them all.

This is book two in the Blood Opera series.

Rachaela worked in a bookstore, a conventional young woman, living a conventional life. Then they beckoned, using a variety of ruses to lure her to the house by the sea. Now she is a prisoner, part of a family of creatures she cannot escape, lover to a demon who thirsts for her blood.

For something like two hundred and fifty years Earth had been dominated by humanoid aliens from the star world of Alishang. But man’s spirit refused to be conquered. There was a world-wide underground planning for the day of final liberation. And there were four leaders who knew the secret that would guarantee victory – the secret of ZI.

Rupert Clinton, intelligence man for this underground, was not one of those four; yet somewhere deep in the recesses of his subconscious mind, he knew ZI’s secret.