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 …
While he had been speaking, he had heard Patricia mouthing after him: ‘’Ow the ’ell’ – not so much in mimicry as in delighted interest. But when he had finished there was no immediate reply...
He got there early, and after a while thought that they must have changed their minds and decided against coming. He leaned against the boat-house, kicking the wood with his heel and was depressed to...
‘You’ve been very good to me. Oh, it’s damned hard … Frankie, my precious, I suppose I really want to tell you that I love you. As much as ever – more than ever. I...
Sir Joshua said: ‘Sit down, Frank. Monica and I have been discussing her future. We can’t make up our minds whether she is to marry a duke or a belted earl. What are your views...
He looked once more at the island, and prepared to make his way out through the window. It was then that he heard voices. The accents were unfamiliar and stilted. He caught his breath before...
Inside the wood it was dark and his feet made little noise over the carpet of leaf and leaf-mould. He made for the old chestnut first. It had been a tremendous stretch once to reach...
Esther was galloping round her cage, squawking with excitement or reproach. She climbed, gripping the wire with her beak, and flapped her wings in her emotion. ‘Shame on you, teasing a poor bird,’ Mrs. Bates...
Bates looked round the room. The London headquarters of Amalgamated Cables was a new building, representing one of the first non-Government post-war licences and only completed the previous year. The private offices of the directors...
‘… you haven’t had the experience of moving up in the world, have you?’ Driscoll smiled. ‘The reverse, if anything. I was born into the upper middle class, but the class itself seems to have...
‘How do you feel about returning to London like this?’ ‘I don’t know.’ ‘Moved? Excited?’ ‘No. Numb, rather. A feeling of wanting to get it over and done with.’ ‘I am excited by the idea,’...