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

In her new novella, Sunday Times best-selling author Becky Chambers imagines a future in which, instead of terraforming planets to sustain human life, explorers of the solar system instead transform themselves. Adriane is one such explorer. As an astronaut on an extrasolar research vessel, she and her fellow crewmates sleep between worlds and wake up each time with different features. Her experience is one of fluid body and stable mind and of a unique perspective on the passage of time. Back on Earth, society changes dramatically from decade to decade, as it always does.

Stephen King has fully authorised a return to the harrowing world of The Stand through this original short story anthology, as presented by award-winning authors and editors Christopher Golden and Brian Keene. Bringing together some of today's greatest and most visionary writers, The End of the World As We Know It features unforgettable, all-new stories set during and after (and some perhaps long after) the events of The Stand - brilliant, terrifying, and painfully human tales that will resonate with readers everywhere as an essential companion to the classic, bestselling novel.

The Dragonbone Chair: Booktrack Edition adds an immersive musical soundtrack to your audiobook listening experience! 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 possibly imagine are gathering: forces which will change Simon's life - and his world - forever.

Where Nirrim lives, crime abounds, a harsh tribunal rules and society's pleasures are reserved for the High Kith. Life in the Ward is grim and punishing. People of her low status are forbidden from sampling sweets or wearing colours. You either follow the rules, or pay a tithe and suffer the consequences. Nirrim keeps her head down and a dangerous secret close to her chest.

Whilst working on a spreadsheet for a New York-based PR firm, Gerald has his consciousness uploaded into his company's Slack channel. He posts for help, but his colleagues assume it's an elaborate joke to exploit the new working-from-home policy and, now that Gerald's productivity is through the roof, his bosses are only too happy to let him work from...wherever he says he is. Faced with the looming abyss of a disembodied life online, Gerald enlists co-worker Pradeep to care for his body and Slackbot, the service's AI assistant, to help him navigate his new digital reality.

Lovelace was once merely a ship's artificial intelligence. When she wakes up in an new body, following a total system shutdown and reboot, she has to start over in a synthetic body, in a world where her kind are illegal. She's never felt so alone. But she's not alone, not really. Pepper, one of the engineers who risked life and limb to reinstall Lovelace, is determined to help her adjust to her new world. Because Pepper knows a thing or two about starting over. Together, Pepper and Lovey will discover that, huge as the galaxy may be, it's anything but empty.

Esta has known nothing but Eden's Isle her whole life. Raised by her grandmother, after a fire claimed her parents and scarred her face, she's instructed to piety, to deference and acquiescence by a religious society that will not suffer anything else. Cut off from the moral iniquity of the mainland, the island believes it can stay free of the Seawomen—creatures from the water that came upon land to corrupt God's creation and Man.

From the first night they met, Rachel and Josh knew they were meant to be. When Josh makes an extraordinary decision, the future that Rachel felt so sure about seems impossible. Walking away from the love of her life is unimaginable. But with everything that's happened - and all that is to come - how can Rachel possibly stay?

1782. Nancy Lockaby is trying to salvage her reputation as an astronomer - left in tatters after a discredited discovery - when she receives a mysterious letter, inviting her to join Shakespeare scholar Caelan Malles at his crumbling house in Inverness. But at Blackthistle House, Nancy notices that Caelan is spending more and more time locked away in his study with his books. As his behaviour becomes ever stranger, more questions gnaw at Nancy. Why does Caelan believe there is a link between Shakespeare and the stars? Why does he refuse to discuss Charlotte, his now-deceased wife?

Dean Evers, an elderly widower, sits in front of the television with nothing better to do than waste his leftover evenings watching baseball. His adopted Florida baseball team, the Rays, is going strong. Suddenly, in a seat a few rows up beyond the batter, Evers sees the face of someone he knows from decades past, someone who shouldn't be at the ballgame, shouldn't even be on the planet. And so begins a parade of people from Evers's past, people he has wronged, all of them behind home plate.

International number-one best-selling author Stephen King presents a brand-new, never-before-published, audio-only story. In this new tour de force from Stephen King - unavailable in print or any other format until November 2015 - a salt-of-the-earth Maine native recounts how a friendly annual summer fireworks show rivalry with his neighbour across the lake gradually spirals out of control...with explosive results.

Four complete and unabridged selections from the electrifying best seller read by a stellar group of narrators. The Raft is the unforgettable tale of an idyllic autumn swim suddenly transformed into an ordeal of unbridled horror. Read by Stephen King. Mrs. Todd's Shortcut is a story in which a middle-aged woman in a Mercedes roadster finds a terrifying pathway to paradise. Read by Dana Ivey. The Monkey - is it merely a child's wind-up toy, or an incarnation of the purest evil? Read by Matthew Broderick.

The terrifying future of our world after climate change - as predicted by a leading geochemist. As his health begins to fail, a historian in the year 2084 sets out to document the irreparable damage climate change has wrought on the planet over the course of his life. He interviews scientists, political leaders and ordinary people all around the world who have suffered its catastrophic effects, from devastating floods and mass droughts to war and famine.

The outbreak tore the USA in two. The east remains a safe haven. The west has become a ravaged wilderness. They call it the Evacuated States. It is here that Henry Marco makes his living. Hired by grieving relatives, he tracks down the dead to deliver peace. Now Homeland Security wants Marco, for a mission unlike any other. He must return to California, where the apocalypse began. Where a secret is hidden. And where his own tragic past waits to punish him again.

In the second instalment of Tara Sim's Dark Gods trilogy each heir walks a dangerous path, attempting to undo the damage the gods have wrought across the four realms. But they live on borrowed time. The divine will have their war - and not all of them will survive it.

Josie is at rock bottom. Burned out, heartbroken and recovering from an abusive relationship, she lives a haunted existence after returning to her isolated hometown on the edge of the Forest of Dean. Josie's hopes of a fresh start are horribly derailed when she stumbles across a dead woman's decaying, ant-infested body in the woods. The grim discovery sends her into a downward spiral, forcing her to face uncomfortable truths about the victim and her own past - all whilst battling the swarming black ants that seem to have burrowed into her mind . . . and her flesh.

Set against the backdrop of rapidly approaching climate catastrophe, scientists Kate Larkin and Jay Gunesekera are recruited by tech billionaire and mogul Davis Hucken to the forests of Tasmania, Australia. His foundation's mission is not only halting the effects of climate change, but to re-engineer and reverse the damage through the ambitious process of reviving species lost to the earth over time through natural and unnatural means. Including a clandestine ambition to resurrect the Neanderthals.

The comet, Cain, came from beyond our solar system, its debris containing elements unknown. It brought a powerful new metal to the once-declining Midwest, alien fungus to the forests of the Pacific Northwest, and now, in the isolated region of Fairbanks, Alaska, the skies shift and stretch as an interstellar dust cloud seeds itself in the atmosphere. The National Weather Service dismisses the anomaly. Then, an hour outside of Fairbanks, a plane shudders its way through pulpy, swirling, bruise-shaped clouds, lit with sudden cracks of lightning. The sky opens. And the plane vanishes.

After the death of his daughter, Ty dispatches his son Simon to an Anxiety Abatement Centre. There he encounters another boy called the Prophet. And the Prophet wants him to join a quest. Before long, Simon is on the road with a crew of new comrades on a rescue mission as urgent as it is enigmatic. Suddenly heroes of their own story, they are crossing the country in search of a young woman held in a billionaire's retreat - and, just possibly, the only hope of escape from the apocalypse bequeathed to them by their parents' generation.

Endland holds a broken mirror to England. In its garish but strangely familiar world of empty tower blocks, 24-hour cyber cafes, and bomb sites, a motley collection of misfits, wanderers and charmed drunks do their best to survive. Nothing is stable in Endland, and what's more, the gods have started drinking at lunchtime, which can lead only to trouble.