The SYLE Press
‘So, you have married these two beautiful young ladies,’ General Tulenkov remarks to Lionel Sickert and his friend John Burchall, ‘and taken them from the shores of sparkling Leman to the dark Lancashire wastes. Love is more powerful than one commonly thinks.’
To his employers, he was a first-rate engineer. To his friends, he was something of a Don Juan. A more perceptive acquaintance described him as possessed of ‘a kind of bitter integrity’ … But beneath the front, the real Charles Hibson lay buried – deep.
The Fratellini Winter they had called it, after the Italian scientist who had first detected the decline in solar radiation. The seasons pass and the cold bites ever harder. The Thames freezes over, stocks of food and fuel run low, and London falls under martial law. That first arctic winter, it seems, was only …
‘It is always nonsense for us that says some are chosen and others left to die. If that should be, it is better not to be chosen.’
‘You mean, we’re all chosen.’
‘No,’ Dadda said. ‘I mean, we are all left to die.’
One night, the island of Guernsey convulsed. As shock followed shock, the landscape tilted violently in defiance of gravity. When dawn came and the quakes had stilled to tremblings, Matthew Cotter gazed out in disbelief at the pile of rubble that had been his home…
In 1949, Sam Youd – who would later go on, as John Christopher, to write The Death of Grass and The Tripods – published his first novel. As he later said:
I knew first novels tended to be autobiographical and was determined to avoid that. So my main character was a woman …
When the storm rages and the avalanche cuts off power and phone lines, no one in the chalet is particularly bothered. There are kerosene lamps, a well-stocked bar and food supplies more than adequate to last them till the road to Nidenhaut can be opened up…
The Chung-Li virus has devastated Asia, wiping out the rice crop and leaving riots and mass starvation in its wake. The rest of the world looks on with concern, though safe in the expectation that a counter-virus will be developed any day. Then Chung-Li mutates and spreads…
Five people enter the Frohnberg caves, three men and two women. In the glare of the Austrian sunshine, the cool underground depths seem an attractive proposition – until the collapse of a cave wall blocks their return to the outside world. Faced with an unexplored warren of tunnels and caves …
A disparate group of Londoners are brought together by Sweeney, a mysteriously charismatic man of wealth, for a luxury cruise in the South Pacific – they know not why. Sailing far from the normal shipping routes, the ship weighs anchor just off an uninhabited tropical island…
He said, ‘Your appetites coarsen – whisky’s only a part of it.’ ‘Is it?’ Katharine asked. She smiled, but there was a small ring of steel in her voice. ‘What other appetites, then?’ He missed...
You’re thirty-three.’ ‘It’s a ripe age.’ Her eyes appealed to him. ‘If you’d been like John, a family man, it would have been different. You wouldn’t have thought you had to go.’ ‘That’s not true....
‘Everything in order,’ he told her. ‘I’m to report in ten days’ time.’ ‘You’re cracked,’ Wilf said. He was breathing heavily, nervously. ‘For God’s sake, Vicky, how did you come to let him do a...
‘Your husband is a great man, Vicky,’ Tulenkov said. ‘He is a samurai of commerce. I would like to take him back with me to Russia. We could learn from him.’ ‘Some day,’ Lionel said,...
‘The birds will have gone to roost,’ Lionel said. From the pocket of his overcoat, Tulenkov took the bag into which, on their way out, he had put cakes from the stand. ‘They will wake...
‘We’re very fond of Wilf.’ ‘I can’t think why! He has no conversation, and even less appearance. That suit, that dreadful tie, those boots! And that washable collar.’ ‘You make him nervous,’ Victoria said. ‘Most...
‘I’ve behaved cheaply. I’ve known it and not been able to help it. I regret that, but I don’t regret the thing that made me act so. I shall never regret it. Lye, dear Lye,...
Gilbert smiled at his son-in-law. ‘You see design in the world, Lye – purpose, laws of cause and effect, the meshing of gears as events roll forward to their destination.’ ‘Do I?’ ‘I have no...
Lionel said, ‘Did you know Vicky and Kitty had been estranged from each other?’ Gilbert nodded. ‘I noticed it during the winter. And it was obvious when Vicky came out here by herself to have...
Katharine arrived in the morning without advance warning. Lionel was sitting by Victoria’s bed when the door opened and she came in. For a moment Lionel thought it would be necessary to tell her of...