Search Worlds Without End

Bill Easter is a petty criminal with a little problem of a £2000 overdraft that he has no means of covering. Fortunately, the bank manager has a problem of his own and needs Bill's help: the corpse of Henry Oliver, a very hairy 350 lb. mass murderer known as the "Mad Vicar," is decomposing in his basement and he wants it removed. Among Oliver's papers, Bill finds a tantalizing reference to treasure that leads him to the Scottish isle of Rhona, where he meets the intrepid General Charles Kirk of British Foreign Intelligence and the arrogant adventurer J. Moldon Mott. Kirk has uncovered a bizarre plot involving the KGB, ex-Nazi mad scientists, and the "mad monk" Rasputin, while Mott is hot on the trail of a stolen gold treasure. And when they discover the island is being overrun by werewolves, their trip to the remote island will become a very beastly business indeed!

When nine-year-old Billy Fenwick goes missing on a train journey through East Germany, British authorities suspect a kidnapping for ransom, or, worse, a Communist conspiracy. But after Billy returns home safely, it appears his parents' fears were unfounded... until a 107-degree fever sets in and the buboes begin to appear on his body. Famed bacteriologist Sir Marcus Levin immediately recognizes the signs of bubonic plague, the first outbreak in England since the Black Death of the fourteenth century. But is it a freak occurrence caused by a natural mutation, or Soviet germ warfare, or something far more sinister? The trail leads Sir Marcus and General Kirk of British Intelligence to an ancient German crypt, where a macabre relic from 600 years ago will provide the crucial clue in unravelling the diabolical plot of a madman hellbent on wiping out the human race!

With a plot featuring Cold War intrigue, Nazi mad scientists, and a pandemic that threatens to destroy humanity by mutating people into fungoid monsters, it is not hard to see why A Scent of New-Mown Hay (1958) became a bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic and an instant science-fiction classic.

After a British ship's crew and a remote Russian village are wiped out in mysterious and horrible fashion, General Charles Kirk of British Foreign Intelligence sets out to investigate. As the plague spreads to England, Kirk's frantic search leads him from the desolate tundra of Russia to the ruins of a Nazi camp, the site of unthinkable wartime atrocities. But who is responsible? Is it a Soviet experiment gone horribly wrong, the work of a depraved madman, or something else entirely? And can it be stopped?

The year is 1969, and in the British city of Randelwyck, racial tensions are simmering, the situation made worse by an acute housing shortage. Legendary architect Sir George Strand has a solution: two new state-of-the-art high-rise apartment towers linked by walkway bridges, symbolizing the bridging of differences and a closer link between the divided citizenry. But when a professor hints there may be a dangerous flaw in the blueprints, he quickly winds up dead. What is Sir George's real agenda, and how is it connected to the centuries-old legend of the Skulda?

John Blackburn (1923-1993) was regarded as one of the great British mystery and thriller writers of his time. This first-ever reprint of Blow the House Down (1970), one of his scarcest books, includes a new introduction by Adrian Schober.

When a dead prostitute is found floating in the river, the local police assume it's just another routine murder. But when it turns out the woman may have been a notorious East German spy, General Charles Kirk and his assistants, Michael Howard and Penny Wise, are called in from the Foreign Intelligence Office to investigate. Kirk is baffled: the evidence of numerous impeccable witnesses proves the murder could not possibly have happened, and yet there's a dead body in the morgue to show that it did. The only clue is a wooden idol in the form of a hideous, misshapen boy, found in the dead woman's room. Soon Kirk realizes that this is no case of espionage: what he is up against is an evil centuries old and long thought vanished from the earth. And when Kirk and his colleagues get close to the truth, can they unravel the mystery before they become the next victims?

For two centuries, the body of Sir Martin Railstone, poet, artist, and libertine, has lain undisturbed in its crypt, amidst rumours that important artistic works of genius are buried with him. The Church of England has refused to allow the opening of the tomb, believing that Railstone was a murderer and dabbler in the black arts and that anything buried with him must be diabolical in nature. But now plans are in the works for a dam, which will leave Railstone's tomb under 100 feet of water, and a small group of fanatics obsessed with Railstone will stop at nothing to discover the crypt's contents before they are lost forever. One of them, George Banks, opens the tomb and releases something ancient and evil. He dies a horrible death, raving mad, and whatever he has unleashed is not done killing. Four unlikely allies - a clergyman, an ex-Nazi scientist, a journalist, and a historian - must come together and find a way to stop it before it destroys all of humanity....

For centuries, the small English village of Dunstonholme has been the scene of mysterious tragedies. Local lore traces these strange events back to the year 1300, when a sect of Christian heretics known as the Children of Paul were involved in a bloody massacre. Since that time, there have been railway disasters, mining accidents, shipwrecks, and other terrible happenings. Now a wave of suspicious deaths has the locals on edge and looking for explanations. Dr. Tom Allen and adventurer J. Moldon Mott think they know what is behind the killings: an ancient evil, dating back seven hundred years, lies hidden underground... and it is preparing to emerge to the surface...

Teenager Elsie Kerr is hospitalized with a high fever after being found raped and beaten. When eminent bacteriologist Sir Marcus Levin is asked to consult on the case, Elsie accuses him of the crime, pointing at him and screaming "Devil Daddy!"

Then things really start to get weird: Elsie ages eighty years in a matter of hours, and Sir Marcus finds himself racing to stop whatever killed her from spreading while at the same time trying to clear his name. But the trail will take some unexpected and sinister turns: a grisly corpse half-eaten by pigs, a coven of madmen with a diabolical plot, a grotesque and sacrilegious ritual, and an enigmatic old man who may be unable to die!

'We daren't go a-hunting for fear of little men' - words from an old children's song, but to the residents of one Welsh village it's more than just a nursery rhyme. A legend has been handed down through the ages, telling of an ancient mountain people, dedicated to evil, who were massacred by the villagers' ancestors three thousand years ago. No animals ever graze on the northern slope of the mountain where the bloodshed took place and strange incidents befall anyone who wanders there.

What does this folktale have to do with a man's recurring nightmares, the murder of a High Court judge, an outbreak of food poisoning, a strange road accident, and the death of a rock climber? Sir Marcus Levin is determined to find out, but he may not be prepared for the truth that will be revealed in a horrifying ceremony at the heart of the mountain.

Three directors of the Van Traylen Fellowship have died in gruesome ways, and now a bus carrying children to the Fellowship's orphanage has crashed, killing the driver and injuring seven-year-old Mary Valley. While in hospital, Mary, the daughter of triple murderess Anna Harb, suffers horrifying nightmares, and psychiatrist Peter Haynes believes she is mentally ill. Is it schizophrenia, or is there another explanation for the strange and vivid images she sees: memories of a past life, psychic possession, or psychological trauma from her lunatic mother's attempts to give her occult powers?

When Anna Harb goes on a murderous rampage at the hospital, trying to kill Mary and exclaiming that she is a 'soul that should never have been born', the mystery deepens. General Charles Kirk of Foreign Intelligence and his friend Marcus Levin, an esteemed scientist, believe Harb is connected with the Van Traylen deaths and are determined to solve the case. They will follow the madwoman to a remote Scottish island, where against the backdrop of a blazing Guy Fawkes night bonfire, a sinister and unthinkable truth will be revealed!

A centuries-old Eastern European legend of a deadly curse. Three hardened criminals who die horribly after being driven mad by terror. A washed-up actress hellbent on revenge against her critics. A sadistic doctor who takes pleasure in mutilating his patients. What is the connection between them? Reporter Harry Clay will risk his life and sanity to find out. Because he knows that when the curtain goes up on the opening night performance of the new play 'Our Lady of Pain', based on the life of the murderous Countess Elizabeth Bathory, something horrific is going to happen and a bloodbath will ensue...

An inexplicable wave of murders has the country gripped with terror. Ordinary men and women are suddenly going mad, committing brutal and horrific killings before slaying themselves in equally gruesome ways. General Charles Kirk of British Foreign Intelligence thinks the case has something to do with the most evil man he has ever encountered: Tommy Ryde, a British spy who defected to the Nazis during the Second World War and who seemed to possess a strange hypnotic power. But Ryde has been dead for forty years - or has he? Kirk and his colleague Bill Easter are determined to find out. The trail takes them first to Berlin to seek answers from a notorious Nazi war criminal, then to an underwater search of a sunken U-boat off the Scottish coast, and finally to the torture chambers beneath a madman's Gothic castle in Dartmoor, where they will come face to face with the living incarnation of evil...

Bill Easter and his common law wife Peggy Tey, two small-time crooks down on their luck, have been hired to help steal the legendary treasure of Renaissance goldsmith Guido Calamai. Calamai's masterpiece, the Cyclops Goblet, rumoured to possess the power to kill whoever drinks from it, is under lock and key at the Danemere Museum, the gift of the rich and eccentric millionaire Sir Thomas Moscow. But when the goblet is discovered to be a fake, Bill and Peggy must locate the real treasure, and to find it, they'll need to break Sir Thomas's daughter, a murderous madwoman, out of an asylum. From there, the trail leads to a remote Scottish island contaminated with anthrax, where the treasure - and the shocking truth behind its deadly power - is hidden. Unprepared for the horror they will uncover, will Bill and Peggy survive to enjoy their big payday, or will they become the next victims of the Cyclops Goblet?

A remote area of the Scottish Highlands has been cordoned off and is being guarded by an army of I.R.A. mercenaries and ex-Nazi thugs. Local rumour has it that eccentric laird James Fraser Clyde is looking for buried treasure, but the British government fears he might be building an atomic bomb in an attempt to win Scottish independence. Yet the truth may be something far worse: a mysterious contagion is turning the locals into deformed, grunting creatures, with a single-minded urge to kill and spread their infection. Sir Marcus Levin, the Nobel Prize-winning bacteriologist, must find a way to halt the epidemic before it gets out of hand and destroys the world. But what is causing it? Who started it, and why? And can it be stopped?

First published in 1976, John Blackburn's horror thriller The Face of the Lion capitalized on the popularity of apocalyptic zombie tales in the wake of George Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968). This edition includes a new introduction by Greg Gbur, which situates Blackburn's novel within the tradition of zombie literature.

'Come back Paddy Reilly to me' - the words of an old Irish ballad provide a sinister theme for John Blackburn's novel, The Household Traitors (1971).

No one has seen or heard from Patricia Reilly in more than thirty years, so why are a ruthless industrial tycoon, a Soviet defector, and a deranged serial killer all so anxious to find her? The trail of mystery leads from a town terrorized by murder to a remote railway station in North Wales, where the action reaches a climax aboard a runaway steam train. Along the way, a hijacked aircraft, a corpse in a safe, and a number of strangled women with something strange in common provide some of the clues, but the final secret is reserved for the last pages of this ingenious thriller.