The SYLE Press
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 …
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…
Torbock was a large red-faced man, in his early forties, with a generous but straggly moustache. He looked as though the heat bothered him. ‘Do come in,’ Madeleine said. ‘We had your message. I’m Madeleine...
‘Have you heard anything from David lately?’ ‘I had a letter last week.’ ‘Anything of interest?’ ‘Not really. Quite apart from the censorship, he’s not a good letter writer. He’s frank in speech and reticent...
‘I saw your interview on the rushes.’ ‘Yes, I thought that might have something to do with your dropping in.’ He sipped the Scotch, feeling it tingle, familiar and unfamiliar, against his tongue. ‘For which...
The man who had accosted him was a Nigerian, in immaculate white drill; he was about twenty-five, tall, heavy-boned, his skin gleaming with health and assurance. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ he said. ‘May I have your...
‘Ituno’s jolly nice,’ the smaller boy said. ‘No swank about him at all. And he’s a Chief’s son.’ ‘So is Akki,’ the other said. ‘He’s invited me to stay with him in the next hols....
Her gaze had turned from the roof to the nearest wall, and his own followed it. She was looking at one of the plates torn from the Swiss calendar. It was a colour photograph of...
Madeleine spoke for the first time since they had come into the shack. She said: ‘Where does one get water?’ ‘Why, child, there’s a tap right at the end of the street. You don’t have...
‘And you want somewhere to live?’ Madeleine said: ‘Yes.’ ‘I hope you can take it straight. You’re going to have to live in a poor quarter. A very poor quarter. You can’t even afford one...
‘There’s a law against white vagabonds, boss. You can sleep any place you like so long as you’ve got ten pounds in your pocket. Do you have that money?’ ‘No. Not with me. I didn’t...
Andrew went to sleep quite soon. When he awoke there was light from a half moon, just lifting clear of the branches of the trees. Madeleine seemed to be peacefully asleep. He got up quietly,...