Showing results by narrator "Gildart Jackson" in All Categories

 Things are coming to a head for Ahren and his companions. It is true that they have won the Paladins Fisker and Aluna over to their cause in the campaign against the Adversary, but the Pall Pillar is going through an ominous change. 

Barley Blair is not a Service man: he is a small-time publisher, a self-destructive soul whose only loves are whisky and jazz. But it was Barley who, one drunken night at a dacha in Peredelkino during the Moscow Book Fair, was befriended by a high-ranking Soviet scientist who could be the greatest asset to the West since perestroika began, and made a promise. Nearly a year later, his drunken promise returns to haunt him.

As the first anniversary of the formation of the Kings Lake murder squad approaches, there is a problem—they've run out of murders. As a result, they are given the task of reviewing unsolved cold cases. One of these comes back to life in unexpected ways as the team try to discover the identity...

Winner of the British Fantasy Award, The Scar by China Miéville is a colossal fantasy of incredible diversity and spellbinding imagination, set in the richly visualized world of Bas-Lag. A human cargo bound for servitude in exile . . . A pirate city hauled across the oceans . . . A hidden...

"And see if there's any news about the missing girl." Life, as Smith used to say, is just one thing after another - as one investigation ends, a new one begins. But for reasons unknown to the rest of her team, DCI Cara Freeman will be haunted by the next case for the Kings Lake Central murder squad. They find themselves delving into the seamy side of life in the town, and one of their number will have departed before this new investigation is over. Perhaps Detective Sergeant Chris Waters should have seen it coming, but he has a lot more than work on his mind these days.

Alex's girlfriend, the life mage Anne, has fallen fully under the control of the deadly djinn she made a bargain with, and it is preparing to create an army of mages subject to its every whim. Alex, the Council, and the Dark mage Richard Drakh agree to call a truce in their war, and plans are made for a joint attack. Alex knows that it's only a matter of time before Drakh and the Council turn on each other...and neither cares about keeping Anne alive.

When another resident of the Rosemary House care home is found dead in her chair one Saturday evening in December, no one is very surprised - not until the results of a routine post-mortem reveal something extraordinary. Sergeant DC Smith and his team have to tread carefully as they investigate what took place, and Smith himself has to confront some difficult memories. Others, meanwhile, seem intent on getting him to leave the force altogether.

Life is quiet for Alex Verus. Amazing. With a flat full of friends (and the occasional fish) and business booming, why not enjoy the humdrum here and now? But of course that's too good to be true. In a sudden and cruel pincer movement of fate, Alex finds himself fighting a sinister and powerful gang as well as his own demons - for the same crime. Held hostage by the choices of his past, Alex's future is now in jeopardy....

Alex Verus can see the future. But he never thought he'd see this day. Manoeuvred by forces beyond his control, the probability mage has made a terrible choice: he's agreed to work for his old master once more. Richard Drakh, the sadistic dark mage Alex escaped as an apprentice, has him in his clutches again. And this time he won't let go so easily.

Alex Verus is a mage who can see the future, but even he couldn't have seen this day coming. Alex has agreed to join the Keepers, the magical police force, to protect his friends from his old master, the Dark mage Richard Drakh. Going legit was always going to be difficult for an outcast like Alex, and there are those in the Keepers who aren't keen to see an ex-Dark mage succeed. Especially when Dark mages are making a play for a seat on the council for the first time in history.

Ahren can hardly believe his luck. His normal life consists of being beaten up by his drunkard father or bullied by the village lads. But at the annual suitability tests for apprenticeships, the young boy finds himself selected by Falk, the guardian of the forest, to be his apprentice and his world is turned upside down. From his new master he learns the skills of archery and how to fight the Dark Ones. And then, on the day of the Spring Ceremony there is another unexpected turn of events. He touches the Stone of the Gods and it illuminates for the first time ever. 

It's 1194, and Sir Faucon de Ramis, the shire's newly appointed keeper of the pleas, must do his duty and make an official declaration of the cause of a miller's death. Saddled with a clerk who names Faucon his "penance", the shire's first crowner must thread the tangled relationships between the sheriff, the village of Priors Holston, and the priory that once ruled it. As a simple task takes a turn to the political, what seems obvious isn't, and what appears safe turns out to be more dangerous than he could imagine.

Orphaned as a child by a blood feud and sold as a slave to an exiled chieftain in Ireland, the boy Hasting had little hope of surviving to adulthood. The gods had other plans. A ship arrived at his master's longphort carrying a man who would alter the course of his destiny and take him under his wing to teach him the ways of the Vikings. His is a story of a boy who was a slave, who became a warlord, and who helped topple an empire.   

Long lost to the public in out-of-print pulp magazines, dusty Victorian anthologies, and the pages of now defunct newspapers, these vintage vampire stories have truly proved immortal. Resurrected now for the year 2011, this is a stunning collection of nineteenth-century vampire stories by heavyweights such as Sabine Baring-Gould and Bram Stoker. These rare stories are arranged in chronological order from 1846 to 1913 and are compiled by two of the world's leading vampire anthologists and experts.

David Roberts was Whitney Houston's bodyguard, the real one. Roberts was hired in 1988 for Houston's UK portion of the Moment of Truth world tour. Accustomed to working for diplomats and Fortune 500 clients, Roberts had reservations about working with a pop star. But Houston's heart of gold won him over from the moment they met at Heathrow airport.

Camden, North London. A tangled, mangled junction of train lines, roads and waterways. Where minor celebrities hang out with minor criminals and where tourists and moody teenagers mingle. In the heart of Camden, where rail meets road meets leyline, you might find the Arcana Emporium, run by one Alex Verus. He won't sell you a wand or mix you a potion, but if you know what you're looking for, he might just be able to help.

"He might be a nobody, but he was their nobody and their first case." The new Kings Lake Central murder squad is about to spend its first morning on team-building exercises and reviewing cold cases when the call comes in that the body of one of the city's rough sleepers has been found in a shop...

When 14-year-old Zoe Johnson doesn't come home on a Monday night in early December, the alarm bells in Kings Lake Central police station do not ring straight away - after all, she's from the Dockmills, one of the toughest estates in the town. But for Detective Sergeant DC Smith, due to retire in just three weeks' time, there are some strange echoes of the case that has haunted him for the past 13 years. Maybe it's simply his over-developed sense of irony, or maybe, in his final days as a police officer, Smith must look once more into the eyes of a serial killer.

Owen Deathstalker became a hero after the great rebellion against the tyranny of Lionstone XIV. But he and his compatriots have no chance to enjoy their victory before they are launched into conflict again - this time among factions quarreling over who will replace the deposed Empress. Owen and Hazel d'Ark attempt to escape the ensuing chaos only to discover that Humanity has problems more pressing than political squabbles as they encounter an even greater threat - an encroaching invasion fleet of alien origin....

Ryan Kaine is on the charge . . . Kaine's hunt for the truth takes a dangerous turn as he targets Gregory Enderby, deputy head of the National Counter Terrorism Agency. Determined to expose the conspiracy that branded him a mass-murderer, Kaine launches an audacious plan to abduct Enderby and...