The SYLE Press
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.
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…
‘Come back and have a meal with us. Hilda would like to see you again. I can telephone her from here.’ ‘Not tonight, I’m afraid. I’d be glad to, some other time.’ Tilling stared at...
He paused to look around the room, observing the known anonymity, the familiar strangeness. Here, too, there was a kind of recognition, but recognition without anxiety – the awareness of a new start in well-trodden...
‘When you return to Guernsey will you not find yourself in trouble? You say they have got the law on their side, and you have defied it. And broken into the Bourgaizes’ house and locked...
‘That fool d’Aurigny had no right to come prying here, and anyway could not have helped you. But as it is he has seen your condition and is welcome to report it. The look of...
Dusk came early that day. The sky had darkened with cloud that only increased the sticky oppressiveness of the heat. And Bourgaize had not yet put new glass in the window but had nailed boards...
‘You are not suggesting that I murdered my father with poison?’ ‘I am saying only what others might say – people with more suspicious minds than Dr Falla. It is known your father made a...
Mrs Jelain smiled. ‘Why, child, you must not mind us! We are your family. And although I was anxious to find out how you were, I cannot stay long. Dr Falla visited us last evening,...
In plain words, she was to be a prisoner here. She felt fear rise again, and fought it down. She asked him: ‘How long a time?’ He merely smiled and shrugged. ‘Until I consent to...
‘My pocket-book, Aunt Jeanne – it is not in the drawer where I left it.’ ‘Is it not? But perhaps you left it at Beauregard?’ ‘I am sure I did not. I can remember bringing...
‘I have been here a week. In another week I shall leave – this house and the island – to return to London. I am determined on it.’ ‘As you wish. You are welcome to...