Written in Georgette Heyer's lightest vein, this is the story of the adventures in Regency London of the Merriville family: Frederica, riding the whirlwind and directing the storm; Harry, rusticated from Oxford and embarking with enthusiasm on the more perilous amusements pursued by young gentlemen of ton; the divine Charis, too tender-hearted to discourage the advances of her numerous suitors; Jessamy, destined for the Church and wavering, in adolescent style, between excessive virtue and a natural exuberance of spirits; and Felix, a schoolboy with a passion for scientific experiment. In Frederica, Georgette Heyer created one of her most engaging heroines; and in the Marquis of Alverstoke — a bored cynic who becomes involved in all the imbroglios of a lively family — a hero whose sense of humour makes him an excellent foil for Frederica.

Black Easter is a Nebula Award-nominated fantasy novel by James Blish in which an arms dealer hires a black magician to unleash all the Demons of Hell on earth for a single day. It was first published in 1968. The sequel is The Day After Judgment. Together, those two very short novels form the third part of the thematic "After Such Knowledge" trilogy (title from T.S. Eliot's "Gerontion," "After such knowledge, what forgiveness?") with A Case of Conscience & Dr. Mirabilis. Black Easter was serialised as Faust aleph-null in If magazine.

THE SCIENCE FANTASY CLASSIC! Out of print for more than a quarter of a century! An American pilot unleashes Ragnarok. He flew over the rainbow — but not to Oz! "Memorable!" The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. The author of The Star Kings returns! In A Yank at Valhalla, the author's euphonious protagonist, a war-weary aircraft pilot on a scientific expedition in the Artic, helps discover a strangely shaped gold cylinder covered with runic symbols. Flying it back to the mainland he soon finds his plane is being drawn northward by an irresistible force. When he spots a vast chasm in the earth spanned only by a shimmering bridge of rainbow hues, with a noble castle rising on the far side, and a golden-haired Valkyrie on a flying horse being pursued by hideous giants, our hero realizes he may have flown over the rainbow, but he hasn't landed in Oz! When he is rescued by the Valkyrie, he discovers her name is Freya, and although he wasn't planning to fall in love with a warrior-maid and demigoddess, he does. Soon Odin, Thor, Baldur, and the other Norse Gods welcome him into the fraternity of Valhalla, as a brother warrior and reveal the super-scientific secrets that have kept them alive — and hidden — for tens of thousands of years. But what he does not suspect is that he, and his love for Freya, is part of Loki's long-brewed plan to free the sinister giants of Jotunheim, trigger Ragnarok, and bring on the Twilight of the Gods! The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction calls A Yank at Valhalla one Hamilton's most "formidably composed" novels, "dark in texture," "one of the novels for which he will be remembered.

T. George McDowell believes in getting the job done.'I do not care for words in top hats. I believe in shirt-sleeve words. I believe in getting the job done. We're like that on the coast.' T. George McDowell, a manufacturer of soft drinks on the south coast of New South Wales, prides himself on extolling the virtues of progress. He is a Rotarian and exponent of wireless, refrigeration and electricity. He is a Realist and a Rationalist - a 'fair man but hard as nails' according to his staff - but trouble in the shape of his youngest daughter, Terri, tests his values and beliefs, and he finds that his own sexual longings begin to intrude in his dreams. First published in 1974, The Electrical Experience is an at times humorous examination of the Australian soul, and won the National Book Council Award for Fiction.

Book DescriptionIn one swift moment, a fall wiped away his memory. All he knew for certain was that someone wanted him dead--and that he had better learn why. But everywhere he turned there seemed to be more questions--or people too willing to hide the truth behind a smoke screen of lies. He had only the name he had been told was his own, his mysterious skill with a gun, and a link to a half million dollars' worth of buried gold as evidence of his past life. Was the treasure his? Was he a thief? A killer? He didn't have the answers, but he needed them soon. Because what he still didn't know about himself, others did--and if he didn't unlock the secret of his past, he wasn't going to have much of a future.

The author of A. Fine and Private Place and The Last Unicorn , a pair of the very best fantasy novels of our time, Peter S. Beagle has written only two fantasy short stories of which "Lila the Werewolf" is the best, a contemporary classic. Beagle is a musician, a script writer, and a literary descendant of the fantasist Robert Nathan. Like Avram Davidson, he is an urban fantasist of wit and perception; a lover of animals who knows their personalities; a writer with a flair for characterization that raises him to the very top rank of contemporary writers who choose the fantastic as their metier. And his New York setting vibrates with authenticity, though it has been twenty years since dogs have been so common in the city. This is not a story about love.

An engineer drifting through life finds himself trapped in a village where nothing ever happens.

The third book in the Elric series introduces the reader to Moonglum, Elric's longtime companion. Much of the second novel moved away from the events of the first, and concentrated Elric's character on other adventures. The Weird of the White Wolf brings Elric back to Melniboné along with Moonglum, their friend Smiorgan Baldhead, and an army of raiders bent on overthrowing Yyrkoon, who stole the throne when Elric left Melnibonл for a year to travel the world. For those wondering, whether you've read the book or not: the “weird” of the title is an archaic definition of the term, given by Merriam Webster as “One's assigned lot or fortune, especially when evil.” And when he finds it, he's not all that happy about it. But that's to be expected when one's antihero has a crisis of conscience. Certainly not a slow book by any means, nor a weak one in the context of the series. And it's definitely a necessity as a prelude to what comes after it.

Adrian Sherd is a teenage boy in Melbourne of the 1950s, the last years before television and the family car changed suburbia forever.Earnest and isolated, tormented by his hormones and his religious devotion, Adrian dreams of elaborate orgies with American film stars, and of marrying his sweetheart and fathering eleven children by her. He even dreams a history of the world as a chronicle of sexual frustration.A Lifetime on Clouds is funny, honest and sweetly told: a less ribald, Catholic Australian Portnoy's Complaint.Gerald Murnane was born in Melbourne in 1939. His first novel, Tamarisk Row, was published in 1974. It was followed by A Lifetime on Clouds, The Plains and five other works of fiction, the most recent of which is A History of Books. In 1999 he won the Patrick White Award. Ten years later he won the Melbourne Prize for Literature.textpublishing.com.au'Unquestionably one of the...