Showing results by publisher "Isis Publishing Ltd" in Science Fiction & Fantasy

I'm not saying the entire magical population of North Yorkshire want us dead. Just the majority. Which is why we fled Leeds to hide out in the dubious safety of the seaside town of Whitby. But lying low isn't really in our skillset, and when one of our few remaining friends is taken by the sea, we can't just walk away. We've got to get her back. Especially as her partner is a reaper with a scythe that can slice through reality, and the whole situation might be a teeny, tiny bit our fault. We're not going after Emma alone, though.

DI Adams fled London to escape bridge-dwelling monsters and magical toasties - a one-time experience she's in no hurry to repeat. She's police, not some cryptid hunter. Leeds has other plans, though. Tasked with the seemingly mundane case of a missing necklace, Adams soon realises she's stumbled into something inexplicable. The trinket is dangerous, and she's the only one who recognises it for what it is - a weapon that could tear the North apart.

It’s our world, but decades into the future...an ordinary world, where cars drive themselves, drones glide across the sky, and robots work in burger shops. All conflicts are safely oceans away. People get up, work, and have dinner. Everything is as it should be. Except for 17-year-old John, a tech prodigy from a damaged family, who hides a deeply personal secret. But everything starts to change when he enters a tiny café on a cold Tokyo night. A café run by a disgraced sumo wrestler, where a peculiar dog with a spherical head lives, alongside its owner, enigmatic waitress Neotnia.

A call from an old colleague has DI Adams off her patch and out of her depth, dealing with a mysterious new beer that has unexpected side effects. Side effects that are much more dangerous and far-reaching than a simple hangover. Missing brewers. Inexplicable superpowers. Erratic behaviour. And it's not just the punters. Half the police in Yorkshire seem to have fallen under the beer's spell, and she's barely keeping a step ahead of them.

Hakan, son of Haldan, chosen son of the lord of the Northern Jutes, swears loyalty to his father in fire, in iron and in blood. But when a terrible tragedy befalls Hakan's household, he is forced to leave his world behind and pledge his sword to a new king. Nameless and alone, he embarks on a journey to fulfil his destiny as a great warrior. Whispers of sinister forces in the north pull Hakan onwards to a kingdom plagued by mysterious and gruesome deaths.

Ruth's tireless research into the disease that killed her young daughter had an unexpected outcome: the discovery of a vaccine against old age. Just one jab a year reverses your biological clock, guaranteeing a long, healthy life. But Ruth's cure was hijacked by her colleague, Erik Grundleger, who hungers for immortality, and the SuperJuve—a premium upgrade—was created, driving human lifespan to a new high. The wealthy elite who take it are dubbed Supers, and the population begins to skyrocket. Then, a perilous side-effect of the SuperJuve emerges, with catastrophic consequences.

Post-Roman Britain. Thousands of desperate Saxon refugees are flooding the island, fleeing their homelands as the whole world warms and the waters rise, and worse, the mighty dragon Cythraul from the once-frozen North has been awoken by an evil sorceress. His lust for human flesh is insatiable, and he threatens to extinguish all human life.

Something out in the Everglades is killing people - and eating them. Supernatural detective Jack Nightingale is called in to investigate and discovers that evil is at work out in the swamps, and that more people will die unless he can stop it.

Boarding an airliner headed from New York to London, writer Jane Forrest knows it will be a turbulent flight. An electrical storm stands between Jane and London. When the airliner is safely landed on a deserted airfield they find cars abandoned and a mysterious lack of people on the deathly silent streets of Glasgow. Believing she will be safe in the arms of Sir Richard, it's not until he is mysteriously taken ill that Jane questions her love.

"Find Malcolm. His safety is your safety." Threat or promise, I wasn't hanging around to find out. Not when the sorcerer making it had just yanked me out of my skin for a friendly chat. But with scheming magicians, lurking necromancers, and Callum's long-lost family all competing to make my next out of body experience a permanent one, having a sorcerer on our side seems like a pretty good option. There's just one problem. If we want her help, we need to find her dentist. And we've only got one lead. Weres. Mouth-breathing, ravening monsters with too many teeth and no affection for my kind.

Decades of spiralling drug resistance have unleashed a global antibiotic crisis. Ordinary infections are untreatable, and a scratch from a pet can kill. A sacrifice is required to keep the majority safe: no one over 70 is allowed new antibiotics. The elderly are sent to hospitals nicknamed ‘The Waiting Rooms’, hospitals where no one ever gets well. Twenty years after the crisis takes hold, Kate begins a search for her birth mother, armed only with her name and her age.

After the events in Coldbay where they sealed the hell hole, Lucy is trying to learn more about it and how to save Murzzzz from eternal damnation. Yes, he's a demon, but he's also a part of the family. Lucy's turned to her diocese for guidance but they've gone strangely quiet so she persuades the Rooks to drive there so they can sort this out. On the way, they realise something is incredibly wrong with a motorway service station - it's empty except for lingering, sad ghosts and...oh no, another hell hole has opened and sucked in a load of people.

The Rook family run a little business: ghost hunting. And things have picked up recently. Something's wrong. It's been getting noticeably worse since, ooh, 2016? Bad spirits are abroad, and right now they're particularly common around Coldbay Island, which isn't even abroad, it's only 20 miles from Skegness. The Rooks' 'quick call out' to the island picks loose a thread that begins to unravel the whole place, and the world beyond. Is this the apocalypse? This might be the apocalypse. Who knew it would kick off in an off-season seaside resort off the Lincolnshire coast?

In a forgotten nook of Cambridge a little shop stands where thousands of sheets of beautiful paper and hundreds of exquisite pens wait for the next person who, with Clara Cohen's help, will express the love, despair and desire they feel to correspondents alive, estranged or dead. Clara knows better than most the power a letter can have to turn a person's life around, so when she discovers a cache of wartime love letters, she follows them on a profound journey of her own.

It's New Year's Eve, and the Rook family are at odds with one another. Unfortunately, not only is their psychic rival Aurora coming to their hometown, but there's another visitor - Death. The newly appointed Replacement Reaper, who is not grim at all, but a very cute Canadian. He's here to end the world - albeit ethically and politely. This time, Armageddon is coming home. Can the family overcome their differences in time to stop the ultimate New Year Countdown? Who is Aurora, really? And, is Death single?

Margaret Woodruff is slowly dying in a care home. When her son is presented with the chance of exceptional care in her final months, he finds the offer hard to resist. Winifred is assigned to Margaret’s care. She’s a Helper: a new kind of carer that’s capable, committed and completely tireless - because she’s a synthetic human being. Under Winifred’s care Margaret’s health improves beyond everyone’s expectations, and Winifred begins to learn from Margaret what it means to be alive. But how will Winifred use what she learns from Margaret - and what does she truly want from her?

London, Christmas 1999. The world is on edge. With the new millennium just days away, fears of the Millennium Bug are spiralling – warnings of computer failures, market crashes, even global catastrophe. But 50 miles east, on the frozen Blackwater Island, a different kind of mystery unfolds. A child's body is discovered on the bracken, untouched by footprints, with no sign of how he died. And no one has come forward to claim him. At the International Tribune, reporter Jonny Murphy senses something is off. Police are appealing for relatives, not suspects.

Written in 1881, ‘Winthrop’s Adventure’ is Vernon Lee’s first ghost story. Set in Florence, the story regales the story of young painter Julian Winthrop who becomes transfixed by a piece of music. He traces this haunting back to one of his previous paintings.

When Major Mercer visits his old friend Lionel Deacon and his family in the country, his visit is hampered with heavy rain. As soon as there is a break in the weather, though, he heads into the village for a walk. Across the river, he sees a mother and a child, but when he returns to the Deacons, they assure him that he cannot possibly have seen who he thinks he saw.

Written in diary entries from a Polish scholar, this short story features a mysterious femme fatale, Medea, who is responsible for the deaths of five men, including her husbands. The scholar is soon cast under her spell from behind the grave.