The SYLE Press
Holly Ash – once a straggle of rural cottages a tram’s ride from Liverpool – has been transformed, Frank Bates discovers when he returns years later as local boy made good. Now a director of Amalgamated Cables, and son-in-law of the chairman, he is shocked to see that in place of Ash Cottages …
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…
London in the late forties: strange shifting times in the aftermath of the war. A motley sample of humanity has washed up on the shores of the down-at-heel boarding house that is 36 Regency Gardens, their mutual proximity enforced by shared impoverishment…
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 …
An Englishman’s home, supposedly, is his castle, and property developer Rod Gawfrey was incensed when a gang of hooligans gatecrashed his son’s party, infiltrating the luxury residence that was also home to his wife’s parents and her sister Jane.
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 …
In 1955 – a year before, as John Christopher, he published The Death of Grass, and a dozen years before he embarked on The Tripods series – Sam Youd brought out his sixth title under...
Neither Carlow nor Prentice was in the camp area. It seemed fairly clear what had happened. They had taken their automatics, and a good supply of ammunition and of food. ‘The fools,’ Abonitu said. ‘How...
‘It is a short swim back to shore. Perhaps your Governor will give you a drink of his whisky when you get there.’ One of the men, a small swarthy man, said: ‘You don’t need...
‘You said he’s wily, but not intelligent. He told me about the deportation scheme. That was quite bright. Someone else’s?’ The Colonel paused. ‘Yes.’ ‘It has the flavour of a military mind. Yours?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Over...
‘How many now?’ ‘I can tell you to the last one. Five hundred and forty-five. And eighteen kids expected before summer – four of them mine.’ Andrew said: ‘And the other forty-four thousand five hundred?...
Carlow and Prentice were sitting near Andrew, and he saw them exchange looks. ‘Proper bloody Karno’s mob,’ Prentice muttered. ‘Hope you can flogging well swim, china,’ Carlow said. ‘You may have to.’ ‘Black bastards,’ Prentice...
‘It sounds risky.’ ‘Yes. Will you go, Andrew?’ ‘In what capacity?’ ‘An expedition needs documentation. I am quite a good camera-man. You will pass as one, with my help. And my uncle is the Minister...
The waiter brought their drinks over – service was prompt here – and Andrew rattled the ice in his glass. ‘The Albert Hall, Abo,’ he said, ‘coupled with the Albert Memorial.’ Abonitu raised his glass...
Outside the New Moon Cabaret Café, at two o’clock in the morning, the winking neon cast regular patterns of light and shade on the ranks of parked bicycles, and on the relatively few cars that...
“Dearest Andy, I do wish there was time to tell you how grateful I am to you for everything, how fond I am of you, how much I’m going to miss you. I wish I...