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

Phoebe, an eight-year-old girl, lies comatose following a car accident. She is a body without a spirit, a stolen child. Ceres, her mother, can only sit by her bedside and read aloud to Phoebe the fairy stories she loves in the hope they might summon her back to this world. But it is hard to keep faith, so very hard. Now an old house on the hospital grounds, a property connected to a book written by a vanished author, is calling to Ceres. Something wants her to enter, and to journey - to a land coloured by the memories of Ceres's childhood, and the folklore beloved of her father.

Meet Theo. Handsome, sexy, funny. kind. And he can cook. He's literally the man of Esme's dreams. But Esme's sensible enough to know that you can't just manifest your perfect boyfriend then have him turn up on your doorstep. Or can you?

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.

At first glance, the world has not changed: the trams on the boulevards, the grand hotels, the cafes abuzz with conversation. The street kids still play on the two great bridges that divide the city, and the smart set still venture down to the Morgue Ship for an evening's entertainment. Yet it only takes a spark to ignite a revolution.

A Stephen King original short story featuring an excerpt from 11.22.63, his latest full-length novel. With the heart of Stand by Me and the genius horror of Christine, Mile 81 is Stephen King unleashing his imagination as he drives past one of those road signs.... At Mile 81 on the Maine Turnpike is a boarded-up rest stop, a place where high-school kids drink and get into the kind of trouble high-school kids have always gotten into....

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.

Wolfe is the bunker's resident pharmacist. While the inhabitants wait for the outside world to heal, she doles out ibuprofen, sanitary towels and Xanax—all under the watchful eye of the increasingly erratic and paranoid leader. But when the leader starts to ask things of Wolfe, favours she can hardly say no to, her world is thrown off its axis once again. Forming an unlikely alliance with the young Doctor Stirling, her troubled assistant Levitt and Canavan, Wolfe has to navigate the powder keg of life underground, knowing her every move is being watched.

With supply in the Scottish cities drying up, Aida is forced back home to live with her mum at their rural farm. For now, they are safe with just enough to get by. Yet at the border, tensions are close to breaking point as more and more southerners chase the delusion that Scotland is an eternal spring - while fewer and fewer are allowed through. The service station where Aida works grows emptier with every day. Then, when suspicious strangers arrive at the farm asking for help, Aida and her family face a terrible decision. How much water can they afford to share?

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.

Named after a star, war correspondent Maia knows how to find the brightest stories—the tales of survival and strength—hidden amongst the dark realities of combat. Now, travelling to Malta to visit her estranged father, with one more chance to build a relationship with her last remaining relative, she's here to find her own story: never having found somewhere—or someone—she can call home, she's desperate for answers that might show her where she truly belongs.

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.

It's the year 2035 and fiction has been banned by the government for five years. Writing novels is a crime. Reading fairytales to children is punishable by law. Fern Dostoy is a criminal. Officially, she has retrained in a new job outside of the arts but she still scrawls in a secret notepad in an effort to capture what her life has become: her work on a banned phone line, reading bedtime stories to sleep-starved children; Hunter, the young boy who calls her and has captured her heart; and the dreaded visits from government officials.

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?

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.

On Whidbey Island, secrets never stay buried. A mysterious girl who won't speak; a coal-black seal named Nera that returns to the same place every year; a bitter feud of unknown origin - strange things are happening on Whidbey Island and Becca King is drawn into the maelstrom of events. But Becca, first met in The Edge of Nowhere, has her own secrets to hide. Still on the run from her criminal stepfather, Becca is living in a secret location.

Celeste Morton has eagerly awaited her passage into adulthood. Like every woman, she holds a map of the future in her skin, every mole and freckle a clue to unlocking what will come to pass. With puberty comes the changeling period - when her final marks will appear, those that will solidify her fate - and that of those around her. The possibilities are tantalising enough to outweigh her worry that the future she dreams of won't be the one she's fated to have - or the fact the changeling period is the most dangerous in a woman's life. A time when abduction is rife.

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.

Years ago, Dana Mayer had a vision of a better world: one where women are in charge. Now her manifesto, The Quickening, has established the rules for a new order, designed to elevate and protect women. A genteel and peaceful society that prioritises nature, good manners and aesthetics. Of course, in order for women to maintain control, the freedoms of men have been necessarily limited.

A modern-day Sleeping Beauty story of love and hope, for fans of Jojo Moyes. Elsa has been in a coma for five months. With all hope of reviving her gone, her family and doctors are having to face the devastating fact that it might be time to turn off her life support.... They don't realise that in the past few weeks, Elsa has regained partial consciousness; she knows where she is and can hear everyone talking around her bed, but she has no way of telling them she's there.

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.