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 …
Frank said slowly: ‘No. I’m afraid I won’t accept it. I don’t think personal attitudes are important enough to allow them to lead to that kind of thing. As far as I’m concerned, you’ll just...
How did you get on?’ Frank took his jacket off. He glanced at Patrick. ‘Very pleasant.’ He paused. ‘I took the liberty of doing a little something for you. On the seaward side of the...
Frank led the way on to the pier, down the ramp – slanting sharply since the tide was out – and through to the landing stage. The ferry boats huddled against the wharf, and beyond...
‘Do they give you much trouble?’ ‘They would if they had the guts. Best part of them never went in the Army, you know. Work of national importance, that was what they were on. Eight...
It was dusk outside; a clear night with stars beginning to appear. Cartwright had driven back through Huyton, and come in from the Huyton road. Bates walked in the opposite direction. Going home, he thought....
‘Milly! We’re here.’ Milly came down the stairs, bulking even larger than was reasonable against the sunset light from a window behind her. She greeted Bates in a friendly but shy fashion. He wondered what...
‘I’m not going to have it said that my son pushed in where he wasn’t asked.’ He had used indifference against his mother for so long that he could adopt it with both ease and...
She said: ‘You say that John’s written back accepting?’ ‘Of course,’ Frank said. ‘It would have been very impolite if he hadn’t done so.’ She was replenishing the food in Esther’s cage. Esther was failing...
‘I’ve no intention of being a wife ever.’ She glanced at Frank, and then quickly to Patrick and John. ‘Having been brought up in close contact with such wonderful specimens as these three, I can’t...
‘What did you think of going in for when you leave the University, Frank?’ ‘I don’t know yet. If I go to the University my mother wants me to be a schoolmaster.’ Mr. Lucus nodded...