Showing results by publisher "Hodder & Stoughton" in Science Fiction & Fantasy

At midnight comes the point of balance. Of danger. The instant of utter stillness when, between two beats of the heart, an alternative reality can slip through, like a blade between the ribs, and switch you into a new and terrifying world. Four Past Midnight: four heart-stopping accounts of that moment when the familiar world fractures beyond sense, the fragments spinning away from the desperate, clutching reach of sanity....

In the near future, where America has become a police state, 100 boys are selected to enter an annual contest where the winner will be awarded whatever he wants for the rest of his life. The game is simple - maintain a steady walking pace of four miles per hour without stopping. Three warnings and you're out - permanently.

The stunning second novel in Tad Williams' classic fantasy series, Memory, Sorrow and Thorn, set in the fantasy world of Osten Ard. Following a brutal civil war, Osten Ard has been crushed under the rule of the two villainous High Kings. A single hope remains: if the rebels can find the three swords of legend - Memory, Sorrow and Thorn - they might be able to bring the Storm King and evil King Elias down. Once but a humble kitchen boy, Simon is now Simon Snowlock, dragonslayer and bearer of the mythical sword Thorn.

Kitchen-boy Simon is bored, restless and 14 years old - a dangerous combination. It seems, however, that his life has just taken a turn for the better when he's apprenticed to his castle's resident wizard. As Simon's learning to read and write under Doctor Morgenes' tutelage, forces greater than he could possible imagine are gathering: forces which will change Simon's life - and his world - forever. Following the death of Good King John, Osten Ard is plunged into civil war as his sons battle for control of the fabled Dragonbone Chair - the country's throne as well as the symbol of its power.

When Dirk t'Larien is beckoned across space to the distant world of Worlorn by his lost love, Gwen Delvano, a wild hope flares inside him. However, the rogue planet and his long awaited reunion with Gwen are nothing like Dirk ever imagined. Gwen is radically changed from the girl Dirk first fell in love with, and appears to be irrevocably bound to a violent alien savage and his barbaric culture. Worlorn is a desolate ruin of a planet, steadily hurtling through space away from the star system it relies on to support life - each dawn its seven red suns shine a little dimmer.

A collection of tales to invade and paralyse the mind as the safe light of day is infiltrated by the shadows of the night. As you listen, the clutching fingers of terror brush lightly across the nape of the neck, reach round from behind to clutch and lock themselves, white-knuckled, around the throat.This is the horror of ordinary people and everyday objects that become strangely altered; a world where nothing is ever quite what it seems, where the familiar and the friendly lure and deceive.

Christine was eating into his mind, burrowing into his unconscious. Christine, blood red, fat, and finned, was 20. Her promise lay all in her past. Greedy and big, she was Arnie's obsession, a '58 Plymouth Fury. Broken down but not finished. There was still power in her - a frightening power that leaked like sump oil, staining and corrupting. A malign power that corroded the mind and turned ownership into possession.

Born on Christmas Eve, Arthur Pendragon is the illegitimate son of the married duchess Ygraine and Uther Pendragon, brother of a great king: a union Merlin arranged. But Arthur's birth is not welcomed by everyone: his father demands he be hidden until a legitimate son can be born, and Merlin is forced to give the babe to his own childhood nurse for safekeeping and go into hiding....

Best-selling author Jasper Fforde begins an effervescent new series. It's Easter in Reading - a bad time for eggs - and no one can remember the last sunny day. Humpty Dumpty, well-known nursery favourite, large egg, ex-convict and former millionaire philanthropist, is found shattered beneath a wall in a shabby area of town.

Life is lived according to The Rulebook and social hierarchy is determined by your perception of colour. Eddie Russett is an above average Red who dreams of moving up the ladder by marriage to Constance Oxblood. Until he is sent to the Outer Fringes where he meets Jane - a lowly Grey with an uncontrollable temper and a desire to see him killed. For Eddie, it's love at first sight. But his infatuation will lead him to discover that all is not as it seems in a world where everything that looks black and white is really shades of grey.

In order for the Storm King to cement his power over Osten Ard, he must find and defeat the rebel forces massing against him. But the rebels, led by the exiled Prince Josua, have rallied at the Stone of Farewell and are ready to fight the Storm King with every power they can muster. The key to their victory lies in finding the third sword of legend, Memory - but the sword has been lost for ages. Lost, that is, until Simon Snowlock realises that he knows exactly where the sword is and how to recover it.

There is another 1985, somewhere in the could-have-been, where the Crimean war still rages, dodos are regenerated in home-cloning kits and everyone is deeply disappointed by the ending of 'Jane Eyre'. In this world there are no jet-liners or computers, but there are policemen who can travel across time, a Welsh republic, a great interest in all things literary - and a woman called Thursday Next. In this utterly original and wonderfully funny first novel, Fforde has created a fiesty, loveable heroine and a plot of such richness and ingenuity that it will take your breath away.

In a small New England town, in the early '60s, a shadow falls over a small boy playing with his toy soldiers. Jamie Morton looks up to see a striking man, the new minister. Charles Jacobs, along with his beautiful wife, will transform the local church. Then tragedy strikes the Jacobs family, the preacher curses God, mocking all religious belief, and is banished from the shocked town. Jamie has demons of his own. In his mid-30s, he is living a nomadic lifestyle of bar-band rock and roll. Addicted to heroin, stranded, desperate, he sees Jacobs again....

It's 1953. Britain and her empire are diminished. Nazi Germany controls Europe and a vast African territory. There has been no Holocaust. Instead the Jews have been exiled to Madagaskar, a tropical ghetto ruled by the SS. Returning home after a disastrous mission to Africa, ex-mercenary Burton Cole finds his lover has disappeared. Desperate to discover her, he is drawn into a conspiracy that will lead him back to the Dark Continent.

Every Winter, the human population hibernates. During those bitterly cold four months, the nation is a snow-draped landscape of desolate loneliness and devoid of human activity. Well, not quite. Your name is Charlie Worthing, and it's your first season with the Winter Consuls, the committed but mildly unhinged group of misfits who are responsible for ensuring the hibernatory safe passage of the sleeping masses. You are investigating an outbreak of viral dreams which you dismiss as nonsense - nothing more than a quirky artefact born of the sleeping mind. When the dreams start to kill people, it's unsettling.

In order for the Storm King to cement his power over Osten Ard, he must find and defeat the rebel forces massing against him. But the rebels, led by the exiled Prince Josua, have rallied at the Stone of Farewell and are ready to fight the Storm King with every power they can muster. The key to their victory lies in finding the third sword of legend, Memory - but the sword has been lost for ages. Lost, that is, until Simon Snowlock realises that he knows exactly where the sword is and how to recover it. The only problem: an undead army, bolstered by powerful magic, lies between him and his destination.

Fourteen years after her last adventure, Thursday Next, literary detective, finds herself in an unusual situation her job policing the fictional characters of the BookWorld has been downgraded since her previous escapades are now themselves in print. However, a pressing threat may call her back into action: first Sherlock Holmes and then Miss Marple are found dead, stopping their series in their tracks.

Childhood sweethearts Neve and Jamie are inseparable from the moment they meet. Everyone knows they'll be together forever - that is, until tragedy strikes, and Jamie is torn from Neve's life. One street away, Ash is hit by lightning. As he recovers, family members notice a drastic change in Ash, almost as though he is a different person. Years later, chance brings Neve and Ash together- and she is struck by his familiarity. He shares so many traits with Jamie, as if their souls are entwined. Neve must ask herself whether she can love for a second time in the face of her grief.

On the stormy planet of Windhaven, flyers are idolised as the vital link between its disparate islands. The common people rely on this elite class to support their way of life. These 'land-bound' can only dream of what it must be like to take to the skies. For Maris, dreams are not enough, and through an unlikely twist of fate, she has a taste of what life as a flyer is like. However, just as it seems that she has found her true calling, the hereditary dogma which rules the skies sets out to strip Maris of her wings.

Common enemy, common cause. When Jael's brutal seraph army trespasses into the human world, the unthinkable becomes essential, and Karou and Akiva must ally their enemy armies against the threat. It is a twisted version of their long-ago dream, and they begin to hope that it might forge a way forward for their people. And, perhaps, for themselves. But there are bigger threats than Jael in the offing. A vicious queen is hunting Akiva, and, in the skies of Eretz...something is happening.