Showing results by publisher "W. F. Howes Ltd" in Metaphysical & Visionary

In the half a square mile of decay and demolition that was England's Saxon capital, eternity is loitering between the firetrap tower blocks. Embedded in the grubby amber of the district's narrative, among its saints, kings, prostitutes and derelicts, a different kind of human time is happening. Through the labyrinthine streets and minutes of Jerusalem tread ghosts that sing of wealth and poverty, of Africa, hymns and our threadbare millennium.

Following the deaths of her husband and son, Helen Cartwright returns from sixty years in Australia to the English village of her childhood. Her only wish is to die quickly and without fuss. Helen retreats into her home on Westminster Crescent, becoming a creature of routine and habit. Then, one cold autumn night, a chance encounter with an abandoned pet mouse on the street outside her house sets Helen on a surprising journey of friendship, and a way back into life itself.

Nick Appleton is a menial labourer whose life is a series of endless frustrations. Willis Gram is the despotic oligarch of a planet ruled by big-brained elites. When they both fall in love with Charlotte Boyer, a feisty black marketer of revolutionary propaganda, Nick seems destined for doom. But everything takes a decidedly unpredictable turn when the revolution's leader, Thors Provoni, returns from ten years of intergalactic hiding with a 90-ton protoplasmic slime that is bent on creating a new world order…

"I very much need to be dead." These are the chilling words left behind by a man who had everything to live for - but took his own life. In the aftermath, his widow, Jane Hawk, does what all her grief, fear, and fury demand: find the truth, no matter what. People of talent and accomplishment, people admired and happy and sound of mind, have been committing suicide in surprising numbers. When Jane seeks to learn why, she becomes the most-wanted fugitive in America. Her powerful enemies are protecting a secret so important - so terrifying - that they will exterminate anyone in their way.

981 AD. The Viking King of Dublin is dead. His young widow, Gormflaith, has ambitions for her son – and herself – but Ireland is a dangerous place and kings tend not to stay kings for long. Gormflaith also has a secret. She is one of the Fomorians, an immortal race who can do fire-magic. She has kept her powers hidden at all costs, for there are other immortals in this world – like the Tuatha DE Danann, a race of warriors who are sworn to kill Fomorians.

Louis Rosen and his partners sell people—ingeniously designed, historically authentic simulacra of personages such as Edwin M. Stanton and Abraham Lincoln. The problem is that the only prospective buyer is a rapacious billionaire whose plans for the simulacra could land Louis in jail. Then there's the added complication that someone—or something—like Abraham Lincoln may not want to be sold.

This is the compelling story of two women, born centuries apart, and the ancestral legacy that binds them. Ella Turner tries hard to fit into the small, close-knit community of the French town that she has moved to. She even changes her name back to Tournier, and knocks the rust off her high-school French. However, isolated and lonely, she is drawn to investigate her Tournier ancestry, with heart-wrenching results.

Bibi Blair is a fierce, funny, dauntless young woman - whose doctor says she has one year to live. She replies, "We'll see." Her sudden recovery is a medical miracle. An enigmatic woman convinces Bibi that she escaped death so that she can save someone else. Someone named Ashley Bell. Bibi's obsession with finding Ashley sends her on the run from threats both mystical and worldly, including a charismatic cult leader with terrifying ambitions.

Ragle Gumm has a unique job: every day he wins a newspaper contest. And when he isn't consulting his charts and tables, he enjoys his life in a small town, in 1959. At least, that's what he thinks. But then strange things start happening. He finds a phone book where all the numbers have been disconnected, and a magazine article about a famous starlet named Marilyn Monroe, whom he's never heard of. Plus, everyday objects are beginning to disappear and are replaced by strips of paper with words written on them, like "bowl of flowers" and "soft-drink stand".

In this wry, paranoid vision of the future, overpopulation has turned cities into crammed industrial anthills. For those sick of this dystopian reality, one corporation, Trails of Hoffman, Inc., promises an alternative: Take a teleport to Whale's Mouth, a colonized planet billed as the supreme paradise. The only catch is that you can never come back.

Gundersen returns to Holman’s World seeking atonement for his harsh years as colonial governor. But now this lush, exotic planet of mystery is called by its ancient name of Belzagor, and it belongs once again to its native alien races, the nildoror and the sulidoror. Drawn by its spell, Gundersen begins a harrowing pilgrimage to its mist-shrouded north to witness a strange ritual rebirth that will alter him forever.

Vessel Iris has devoted himself to the Starlit Order, performing funeral rites for the dead across the galaxy, guiding souls back into the Infinite Light. Despite the comfort he wants to believe he brings to the dead, his relationships with his fellow Vessels are distant at best, leaving him reliant on his AI implant for companionship.

Time's Arrow tells the story, backwards, of the life of Nazi war criminal, Doctor Tod T. Friendly. He dies and then feels better, breaks up with his lovers as a prelude to seducing them and mangles his patients before he sends them home.

It began with a blinding light, a divine revelation from a mysterious intelligence that called itself VALIS. And with that, the fabric of reality was ripped open and laid bare so that anything seemed possible, but nothing seemed quite right. Part science fiction, part theological detective story...

In Grudova's unforgettably surreal style, these stories expose the absurdities behind contemporary ideas of work, Britishness and art-making, to conjure a singular, startling strangeness that proves the deft skill of a writer at the top of her game.

FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE AND DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? Mary Anne Reynolds is a young and vulnerable woman, determined to make her own way in the world. But Pacific Park, California, in the 1950s is not really the place for Mary. Her relationship with a...

Episcopal bishop Timothy Archer is haunted by the suicides of his son and mistress, and must cope with the implications of the discovery of a religious artefact. These events drive him into a quest for the identity of Christ. The Transmigration of Timothy Archer is Philip K. Dick's last completed novel and a learned, moving investigation of the paradoxes of belief.

When Holly applies for a job at the Paradise—one of the city's oldest cinemas, squashed into the ground floor of a block of flats—she thinks it will be like any other shift work. She cleans toilets, sweeps popcorn, avoids the belligerent old owner, Iris, and is ignored by her aloof but tight-knit colleagues who seem as much a part of the building as its fraying carpets and endless dirt. Dreadful, lonely weeks pass while she longs for their approval, a silent voyeur.

Pre-empting novels such as the Booker Prize-winning "Time’s Arrow" by as much as 20 years, Counter-Clock World is a story of racial tensions told against the background of the year 1998, in which time flows in reverse as people are born old only to grow younger and younger.

When a repairman accidentally discovers a parallel universe, everyone sees it as an opportunity, whether as a way to ease Earth’s overcrowding, set up a personal kingdom, or hide an inconvenient mistress. But when a civilization is found already living there, the people on this side of the crack are sent scrambling to discover their motives. Will these parallel humans come in peace? Or are they just as corrupt and ill-intentioned as the people of this world?