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…
‘I didn’t persuade him to leave Sickert’s. As a matter of fact he was sacked. He came to see me about it, and it was just the right time. I’d already been up here to...
She reached on tiptoe and kissed him. ‘I love you,’ she said, ‘wildly, passionately, and you’re quite right, I could never flirt with you again. I don’t want to. This is the best.’ ‘Not quite....
He had been sitting near the French windows; he got to his feet, with Victoria making a show of helping him, and they went outside. The night air was cool after the warmth of the...
‘You must remember, concerning Russia, that it is a country of snow and wolves, a vast and hard land. When I am there and I think of the Western cities, of London and Paris, it...
‘Do you ski yourself, sir?’ Tulenkov shook his head. ‘After forty, a man is a fool to attempt to learn new sports. And although I enjoy our season here – from my own point of...
General Tulenkov said, ‘Are you comfortable? We can arrange to have an easy chair brought up.’ ‘No, thank you. This is fine.’ ‘Hors de combat,’ the General said, ‘and watching the ladies in their finery....
‘It’s something I’ve only just realised.’ He settled her weight more firmly against him. ‘And what was the cause of your just realising?’ ‘Little things. You know.’ ‘I know when you’re deceiving me.’ She blushed....
‘I’ve never thought money important,’ Gilbert said. ‘So many people who have it seem not to know how to live.’ ‘I suppose if you have a great deal of money it becomes important. If you...
‘We’ll soon be there.’ ‘Soon! An hour almost.’ ‘You can stop at Chamby,’ Lionel said, ‘if you wish. Breakfast at the hotel there, and take the train up when one comes.’ ‘Perhaps we will do...
The cab smelled of plush and wet paper. They sat close together; cold seemed concentrated in this small space. The driver offered a rug for the ladies, but Katharine declined it. She said in English,...