You will rule to see everything precious destroyed and every hope ruined. You will rule Athadia, and the world will die in anguish. The ambitious sons of a dead monarch fulfill an ancient prophecy—their battle for a bloody throne plunges the empire into a revolution. Like jackals, the nations around them seek to lure the greedy princes into further traps. One king offers his beautiful daughter as a prize. Another wishes only to fulfill his own destiny of endless war. And so an ancient world of empire and power—the First World—begins to collapse.As the thrones fall and the battles rage, a tragic young priest becomes a force for evil more powerful than any empire or army. The world is at war. The West is dying. More blood will flow, and more kings will dies...The first riveting novel in the great fantasy trilogy, The Fall of the First World, now available again for the first time in thirty years! Views: 13
His first three victims ended up dead. His fourth was not so fortunate...Alison Willetts is unlucky to be alive. She has survived a stroke, deliberately induced by a skilful manipulation of pressure points on the head and neck. She can see, hear and feel and is aware of everything going on around her, but is completely unable to move or communicate. Her condition is called Locked-In Syndrome. In leaving Alison Willetts alive, the police believe the killer made his first mistake.Then D.I. Tom Thorne discovers the horrifying truth; it isn’t Alison who is the mistake, it’s the three women already dead. "An appropriate margin of error" is how their killer dismisses them, and Thorne knows they are unlikely to be the last. For the killer is smart, and he’s getting his kicks out of toying with Thorne as much as he is pursuing his sick fantasy. Thorne knows immediately he’s not going to catch the killer with simple procedure. But with little more... Views: 13
A Lenten sod turning ceremony for a new water feature in the back garden of St. Aidan of the Wood Parish Church goes utterly pear-shaped when the upturned soil reveals a human skeleton. With Berdie Elliott at the helm, the whole of Aidan Kirkwood digs into the mystery. When the bones held life, just who was this person? Who is the mysterious contessa who arrives on the garden scene? And what does the young and beautiful Robin Derbyshire's wedding have to do with the grave? Unearth the answers in this fun spring romp. Views: 13
When Alice, a middle-aged mother and wife, sees a couple having sex in the park, she is embarrassed but walks on and thinks no more of it. Later, however, a policeman knocks on her door, asking her to make a statement about what she saw. The man from the couple is notorious for taking advantage of young girls, and the one from the park was only fifteen. Alice is the only witness. If she gives evidence in court, she might stop the man from hurting more vulnerable adolescents. But by putting herself on the stand, Alice risks exposing her own past ... Views: 13
Boston Kincaid is ruthless when comes to getting what he wants – and from the minute he sees Julianna Holly, he’ll stop at nothing to have her in his bed but the tide turns when Julianna turns up pregnant and runs away. Now, Boston is determined to drag her back to his bed — whether she’s willing or not. Julianna is in a terrible position. Not only is she knocked up but she may have gone and fallen for the jerk, too. However, Julianna is no push-over and she might just have to find a way to forget about Boston Kincaid if she wants to save her heart. Now, if only her heart would cooperate. This is the second installment of a three-part serial. Enjoy! EXCERPT:“If that baby is mine…”“Quit saying that, you know it’s yours!”His gaze roamed hers and for the briefest moment she thought she saw desperate hope glimmering in his dark eyes that caused a traitorous leap in her heart. No, don’t do that, she told herself, horrified that she would care about his feelings. He’d done this to her on purpose. He’d tricked her. That was the only answer. But even as she cursed him silently for what he’d done, she wasn’t prepared for the soft touch of his lips brushing against hers as he said, “If what you say is true…then we truly created a miracle and nothing will keep me from my child.” He deepened the kiss and her knees threatened to buckle, damn him. “Not even if its mother hates me,” he murmured and she swallowed a cry as he abruptly let her go. “Richard will take you home. I have calls to make.”And then he left her to stare after him. Julianna wiped away the remnant of his kisses and ground the tears from her eyes. She ought to grab a cab and screw Boston with his dictates but even as the defiant thought blazed across her thoughts, she sank back down on the bed and knew she’d await Richard to ferry her back to Boston’s house because in a way, his place had become more like home than her apartment, even with the gaudy gold-plated bathroom fixtures that she hated.Why? Ah crap, because as much as she hated to admit it…it was because at night, Boston crawled into bed with her and they slept entwined with one another, as if they were carved from the same block of wood to fit together. Dumb bad luck.Julianna glanced down at her belly and her breath hitched in her throat as the sobering thought of motherhood weighed on her shoulders.She squeezed her eyes shut and a tentacle of fear reached from a dark place and curled around her thoughts. Women died giving birth. It was rare — but it happened. It was a worst-case scenario…and it’d happened to someone she’d loved very much.It might be irrational to fear the same fate but by the time Richard had arrived to pick her up, she was fighting the urge to lose whatever food remained in her stomach.Bottom line? She was afraid of this baby.And she was ashamed to admit it. Views: 13
A brutal game devised by three intelligent but bored teenagers escalates into murder. Led by the charismatic and cunning Laurence, the trio of 'brothers' meets once a year to carry out untraceable, motiveless murders - for fun. Until, years later, they must murder in order to protect one of their own, leaving themselves vulnerable to discovery. This killing is investigated by Detective Inspector Paul Snow, a complex man with a secret of his own which links him to the murder. As Snow grows closer to unmasking the killers, his professional life begins to unravel in a terrifying fashion. Brothers in Blood is a dark and chilling thriller which surprises and excites all the way to the shocking climax.About the AuthorDavid Stuart Davies is the editor of Sherlock Magazine and an expert on Sherlock Holmes, having written five novels, film books, and plays featuring the character. He also edits the Crime Writers' Association's monthly Red Herrings magazine, and is the author of the Johnny Hawke novels, Forests of the Night and Without Conscience. Views: 13
In this short story by Jason Mott, author of The Returned, a man is forced to choose between the life he has now, and the one he thought was gone forever…Peter Galvin was just seventeen when Tracy Whitland—the love of his life—vanished without a trace. In the years after her death, he had finally moved on, gotten married, started a family. He is content with his life now—happy, even…. Until Tracy suddenly and inexplicably returns.For weeks, Peter and his wife, Samantha, have been watching mysterious reports of people's loved ones returning from beyond, the world spinning into uncertainty and chaos. But they never imagined it would happen to them. With Tracy's unusual homecoming, Peter and Samantha must decide where they can possibly go from here, and whether their family can survive….Read more stories of the Returned in The First and The Sparrow. And don't miss Jason Mott's haunting debut novel, The Returned, a story of one family given an extraordinary second chance. Views: 13
Imaginary Toys (1961) marked the literary debut of the then 26-year-old Julian Mitchell, who would eventually set aside his prizewinning career as a novelist and achieve wider renown as a dramatist, most famously with Another Country (1981).Imaginary Toys is a novel of Oxford after World War Two, where class consciousness has become newly acute, and a quartet of narrators wrestle with their studies and their more personal difficulties - among the four a coalminer's son and the daughter of a solid bourgeois family, who fall in love to the discomfort of their respective friends.In the first of a sequence of reflective, autobiographical new introductions composed especially for Faber Finds' reissues of his early novels, Julian Mitchell recalls the atmosphere of mid-1950s Oxford, and the path he took to a literary vocation. Views: 13
A stint playing Portia at the Theatre-Royal at Haymarket in London, a dropped valentine and a dangerous desire lead gentle-born Rose Collingwood into the arms of an Irishman whose love will hazard all she knows and is. Views: 13
