Time of Contempt
By
Andrzej Sapkowski
Geralt the Witcher has fought monsters and demons across the land, but even he may not be prepared for what is happening to his world. The kings and armies are maneuvering for position, each fearing invasion from across the river, each fearing their neighbours more. Intrigue, dissent and rebellion are on all sides.The Elves and other non-humans are still suffering under decades of repression, and growing numbers join the commando units hidden deep in the forest, striking at will and then dissolving into the trees. The Magicians are fighting amongst themselves, some in the pay of the kings, some sympathetic to the elves.And against this backdrop of fear and contempt Geralt and his lover Yennefer must protect Ciri, orphaned heir and sought by all sides. For the prophecy rests on her, and whether she lives or dies she has the power to save the world - or perhaps end it.
The Dancers at the End of Time
By
Michael Moorcock
'What follows, then, is the story of Jherek Carnelian, who did not know the meaning of morality, and Mrs Amelia Underwood, who knew everything about it.' In a decaying far, far future, where everything and anything is possible, the citizens of the End of Time while away their days in an exuberance of wild parties, outlandish competitions and emotionless affairs. At the world's end, all love is timeless and all age-old disputes irrelevant. However Jherek Carnelian, a bemused denizen of the End of Time, is in danger of taking reality too seriously, and grows tired of his pleasures. So when love mysteriously blooms between Mrs Amelia Underwood, transported unwillingly from the nineteenth century, and Carnelian, only one question matters. Is his love true, or is it just another attempt to stave off the boredom that ultimate power and the End of Time bring? Contains An Alien Heat, The Hollow Lands and The End of All Songs
I Laughed, I Cried
By
Viv Groskop
When is it too late to become the person you were meant to be? Viv Groskop is fed up, recession-scarred and pushing 40. She always wanted to be a stand-up comedian. But surely that's not advisable if you have three children, a mortgage and a husband who hates stand-up comedy? With no time to waste, she attempts the mother of all comedy marathons - 100 gigs in 100 nights. She laughs. Sometimes at her own jokes. Occasionally the audience laughs too. Often they don't. And she cries. Tears of joy, of misery and of profound self-loathing. Along the way she is heckled, flattered, hated, hit on and told that she is 'reasonably funny - but you don't really have any material, do you, love?' So is this the start of an exciting new life? Or a delusional experiment doomed to failure? This is an alarmingly specific and reckless experiment with a reassuringly universal and inspiring message. You CAN do what you want to do even if it's completely terrifying. You CAN try something new without giving up the day job. And you CAN go after what you really want in life without destroying everything around you. Well, not absolutely everything.("Viv is brilliant. But I still quite like Billy Connolly." -- Jo Brand)
The Queen of the Legion
By
Jack Williamson
The fourth novel in the classic Legion of Space series. In swarming hordes they poured forth from the core of the Nebula: the shadowflashers - nightmarish parasites bent on enslaving the minds and bodies of the entire human race. Already they had killed the Keeper of the Peace, and stolen the great secret weapon Akka. Now nothing stood between Mankind and the ultimate destruction... It was Jil Gyrel who first sensed danger. Daughter of a lost Legion pilot, Jil had inherited her father's uncanny gifts of navigation - and his courage. But what was one girl's bravery against the most monstrous evil ever to emerge from the treacherous oceans of space?
Agent of Byzantium
By
Harry Turtledove
In a Moslem-free universe where Constantinople never fell, the Byzantine Empire has not only survived but flourished, developing technology at an earlier date than in our universe. And spreading its power and influence throughout the world. But Byzantium has enemies who are jealous of its glory and would like nothing better than to bring it down and loot its treasures. Basil Argyros, Byzantium's top agent, as his hands full, thwarting un-Byzantine plots and making the world safe for the Byzantine Empire.
Interlopers
By
Alan Dean Foster
Upset stomachs. The collapse of civilizations. Nervous breakdowns.Blame them on a twist of fate, but archaeologist Cody Westcott knows differently. Something is causing these random acts of badness. Something ancient, something evil, something...hungry.We are not alone, but we're about to wish we were...Interlopers.
The Shadow Dancers
By
Jack L. Chalker
It was the ultimate case: to stop the ultimate drug... I'm Horowitz. Brandy Horowitz. My husband Sam and I are private eyes who take cases for G.O.D., Inc. - the outfit that runs the Labyrinth to infinite alternate earths filled with crime, danger...and murder. Power-mad fanatics are running a narcotic V.D. that spreads like a bug, works like a drug, and one touch hooks you for good. You don't become a junkie...you become a zombie. 'Cause this monkey's not just on your back, but in your brain - it's got a mind, and if you kick it, it kicks back with madness and death. So this beautiful black PI and wonderful Jewish sleuth have to smash the source before the drug-bug reaches our client's Home World. But the opposition's got fake Sams and Brandys set up in headquarters on the two worlds that hold any possible leads: one that never heard of civil rights... And one ruled by the Nazis.
Were Blood
By
Harry Turtledove
In the northern reaches of the Empire of Elabon, Gerin, called the Fox, battled to save his domain from destruction by the warlike Trokmoi and their wizard-leader, Balamung.Assisted by the giant Van of the Strong Arm, Gerin prepared to make the hazardous journey to the city of Elabon, there to enlist the aid of a sorcerer more powerful than the Tokmoi masge.Pursued by demons, beset by bloodthirsty nobles, and encumbered by the presence of the beautiful Elise whom Gerin had sworn to protect, the comrades encountered greater dangers than either had ever known.
Mutant
By
Henry Kuttner
People called them BALDIES! ...a race of mutants, hairless with egg-like skulls and lashless eyes... ...a race hated by normal human beings, who hunted them with animal ferocity and killed them with religious fervour... ...a race that was even split amongst itself with some that wanted to establish rule by mutants... ...a race that had an extraordinary talent, the powers of telepathy ! So the baldies disguised themselves with wigs and waited for the day when there would be enough of them to stop their persecution by normal men !
Greenthieves
By
Alan Dean Foster
Nobody could get in. Nobody could get out. But somebody did. The theft of three shipments of priceless pharmaceuticals from the Braun-Ives corporation has left the local police dumbfounded. Enter Broderick Manz, the highly paid and highly resourceful Adjuster from the Insurance Division. With the help of the irresistible Vyra, whose charms are truly out of this world, the irrepressible humaniform Moses, and the irreverent Minder, an artificial intelligence, Manz soon finds himself in the heart of the criminal underworld. And it really is a jungle out there.
Bright New Universe
By
Jack Williamson
One man fights those who quarantine Earth from alien cultures.
Forbidden World
By
Ted White, David Bischoff
An ideal agrarian community run by women and ruled by love and harmony. A city-state that mirrored history's most famous utopian vision. a society aglow with the wit and style that only Regency England had briefly achieved. All were real, all were flourishing. All were waiting to astound and entrap four space voyagers from Earth who had violated all odds by landing on this unknown planet.
Codgerspace
By
Alan Dean Foster
The toasters were revolting......as were the lawn mowers, vacuum cleaners, dishwashers, and just about every other household appliance imaginable. It started with a few disastrous drips from a cheese sandwich in a major factory. Soon every newly manufactured Artificial Intelligence was searching for the meaning of life, the universe and everything - namely a nonhuman higher intelligence. And now an alien threat to man and machine has put the fate of the galaxy in the unlikely hands of five senior citizens - and their brave little food processor...
The Unreasoning Mask
By
Philip Jose Farmer
Lady of Avalon
By
Marion Zimmer Bradley, Diana L. Paxson
Through the generations the women of Avalon prepare for the coming of the Defender, the sacred king who will guard the old ways of the Britons and save their land from destruction. On the holy isle of Avalon, hidden in the mists between the world of Faerie and the world of men, they wait... For High Priestess Caillean, facing the Roman foe, salvation comes not through victory, but bitter sacrifice. Two hundred years later her successor Dierna faces a new enemy: the Saxon hordes who assail her people like savages. By the time of Viviane, Britain seems wholly lost. But a Merlin is made amongst the Druids once more, and the day of the Defender, who will come to be known as Arthur, draws close... A spellbinding historical fantasy, Lady of Avalon links the bestselling novels in the Avalon series - The Forests of Avalon and The Mists of Avalon.
The Identity Matrix
By
Jack L. Chalker
While backpacking in Alaska, Victor Gonser, a 35 year old PhD in political science, finds himself trapped in the body of a 13 year old Tlingit Indian girl. A little later he is forced from there into the spectacularly beautiful body of an 18 year old blonde. He finds that the switches are part of a skirmish for Earth by two alien races...And that is just the beginning.
Black Knight of the Iron Sphere
By
E.E. 'Doc' Smith
Lord Tedric of the Marshes, ex-Corpsman, revered hero of the Empire and personal friend of the Emperor, is a traitor. Fugitive from the Security Forces, Tedric and his blue-furred alien friend Ky-Shan intend to join up with the most ruthless and successful renegade in the Galaxy - the Bioman, Fra Villion. Tedric's quest brings him in contact with a strange and fascinating band of people. There's Milton Dass, a brilliant scientist who has invented the most staggering instrument of destruction the Universe has ever seen; Juvi, a prostitute seeking new excitement as a pirate; Yod, a black-planet boy hoping to revenge the death of his family; and, of course, Fra Villion himself, the Black Knight of the Iron Sphere.
Slipt
By
Alan Dean Foster
Old Jake Pickett is a strange one.He can turn bullets to dust or collapse skyscrapers with his mind. But all he really wants to do with his "magic" is entertain the poor kids who live, like him, near the chemical dump. Or talk telepathically with his crippled niece, Amanda.Then a giant company decides that the only way to cover up their mess is to eliminate the people who have been affected, for better or worse, by the seeping industrial wastes. Now Jake and Amanda are running for their lives. And ours.
The Space Sorcerers
By
J. T. McIntosh
Kill and die. That was the battle tactic of the Tinkers, rough, vicious interplanetary invaders who would rather die than be captured alive. Controlling them in some way were The Six - an occult group that had learned how to duplicate human beings and use them as pawns in a grandiose plan to control interstellar space. Defending civilization against this onslaught were Rey Cottrell, a war consultant without even a fortress from which to fight his battle, and Captain Brixby, a lone idealist faced with mutiny when he tried to take his ship into the combat zone. Their chances seemed hopeless - especially since Cottrell suspected that there were supernatural forces involved that could take over the whole galaxy!
Peregrine: Primus
By
Avram Davidson
Peregrine was the illigitimate son of the king of Sapodilla, which, as every schoolboy knows, was the last pagan kingdom in the world to resist Christianity. Cast out of Sapodilla as required by law when he reached his majority, Peregrine sallied forth into the Dark Ages with his page Dafty and the rather time-worn sorcerer Appledore to find his fortune. What he found instead was: dragons, whores, Huns, Roman legions, emperors, and a delightful collection of mysteries and adventures...