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

In a lonely village in the Peak District, during the onset of a once-in-a-lifetime snow storm, Constable Ellie Cheetham finds a body. The man, a local ne'er-do-well, appears to have died in a tragic accident: he drank too much and froze to death. But the facts don't add up: the dead man is clutching a knife in one hand, and there's evidence he was hiding from someone. Stranger still, an odd mark has been drawn onto a stone beside his body.

Sorceress, Princess of Colchis, Securer of the Golden Fleece. Medea - her very name is a byword for infamy. Legend has it that she murdered her own children for revenge. But love in Ancient Greece was often a dangerous game; and legends are not always what they seem. Medea, devoted wife of Jason, was also a loving mother, a loyal friend of Herakles and a brave adventurer with the Argonauts. A woman both betrayer and betrayed, the real story of Medea is strange, sensual and heroic.

When Toot Hansell’s water supply turns murky, it's easy to blame the notoriously soggy Yorkshire weather. But this winter, the rain's endless, the water's undrinkable, and the village is slowly turning into a marsh. The local water sprite, Nellie, could probably sort it all out—if she hadn't mysteriously vanished, leaving behind a battalion of furious geese, which are only adding to the problems. Now the only clean water in town is arriving in pricey bottles from Toot Hansell's new wellness guru, Lachlan Jameson. But the rising water isn't the only problem. People are disappearing.

A simple case - or it should be. But all clues point to the Toot Hansell Women’s Institute, and Detective Inspector Adams is about to discover there’s much more to the W.I. than just bake sales and jam-making. Alice Martin knows the ladies of the W.I. are not guilty. But she has a bigger problem. Toot Hansell has a large and dragonish secret, and she needs to keep the police well away from it. Beaufort Scales, High Lord of the Cloverly dragons, knows even better than Alice that the modern dragon only survives as long as no one knows they exist.

Kweku Ashworth is a child of the cataclysm, born on a sailboat to parents fleeing the devastation in search for a refuge in the Southern Ocean. Growing up in a world forever changed, his only connection to the events that set the world on its course to disaster were the stories his step-father, now long-dead, recorded in his manuscript, The Forcing. But there are huge gaps in the story that his mother, still alive but old and frail, steadfastly refuses to speak of. When he discovers evidence that his mother has tried to cover up the truth, he knows that it is time to find out for himself.

Civilisation is collapsing. Frustrated and angry after years of denial and inaction, a government of youth has taken power in North America, and a policy of institutionalised ageism introduced. All those older than the prescribed age are deemed responsible for the current state of the world, and are to be 'relocated', their property and assets confiscated. David Ashworth and his wife May find themselves among the thousands being moved to the southern deserts.

Rebellious Christmas wreaths. Mysterious welly-dwelling eggs. A plague of irate water fowl. And ten ladies of a certain age who are by no means the least troublesome of Toot Hansell's residents, as far as Detective Inspector Adams is concerned. She's entirely certain her training never covered dealing with the Women's Institute, dragons, or festive magic spills. Not to mention invisible dogs with caffeine dependencies. But Christmas is almost here. Things can't go too wrong. . . can they? Well. It is Toot Hansell.

Baton. Light. Chocolate. Duck. This is not DS Adams' usual kit. This is not DS Adams' usual case. She doesn't think it's anyone's usual case, not with the vanishing children and the looming bridge and the hungry river. Not with the snap-snap-snap. But six kids are missing, and she's not going to let there be a seventh. Not on her watch. And she knows how to handle human monsters, after all. How different can this really be?

Like it or not, when a sorcerer asks you to track a magician, you track a magician. It's that or spend life as a hamster. So we did. But, turns out, the scary magician is the least of our worries. Between raging squirrel mobs, My Little Ravenous sewer monsters, and bungalow-dwelling necromancers with a good line in attack dogs, it's all we can do to keep ourselves the right side of dead. And that's before we stumble onto something far more sinister. Something that makes one dead son look like small carrots. Something that's going to raise an ancient almost-god and bring the world to its knees.

I see dead people. And I'm not the only one. They're even on Facebook. The dead are rising, and if we don't stop them before the infection spreads any further, we're going to be knee-deep in the zombie apocalypse before you can say mmm, brains. The only problem is, we don't know why they're rising, who started it, or how to stop them. But G & C London, Private Investigators, are on the case. Just as soon as we get through dealing with disapproving reapers, irate magicians, zombie-fied chickens, and a small internal case of undeadness. Trust us.

Find a missing book. That was the job the woman in the Doc Martens gave us. Easy money, right? Only now it seems she's actually an ancient, powerful sorcerer, and the book is a Book of Power that doesn't want to be found. It wants to tear reality apart at the seams, and it'll use anyone it can to do it. So now we've got one spectacularly displeased sorcerer, a hungry, still-missing book, a dentist with bad hygiene, and a neighbourhood having some reality issues to deal with. Plus about a day before the book turns our world - and us - inside out.

"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.

There's a fine line between 'eccentric' and 'a danger to oneself and others'. That's certainly what DI Adams is thinking when a body turns up in Rose's freezer. Rose might not look like an octogenarian black widow, but it's the inspector's job to follow the evidence. Alice and the Toot Hansell Women's Institute couldn't disagree more. Certain that Rose is responsible for nothing worse than a little forgetfulness, they're not going to let her be sent to jail or an old folk's home.

We hadn't planned a return to Leeds. But our friend Gerry is missing, and we've got to find him. Never mind the fact that anyone who can take out a troll is operating way above our pay grade. It doesn't take long to discover a missing troll is the least of our worries. Leeds has blown straight past dicey and into end times. The necromancers are back, and this time it's not just a few cats they want dead. It's everyone. So if we want any chance of life as we know it to continue, we need to stop them as well as save Gerry. Easy, right?

Miriam has never exactly seen eye-to-eye with her sister. But when a body's dumped on the doorstep of a Women's Institute meeting and all signs point to Rainbow, Miriam knows her sister's being framed. Going to the police would be the smart move, but Rainbow's got her own reasons for avoiding them. Before long she's on the run, trusting to Miriam and the W.I. to clear her name. The killer's left nothing to chance, though, and Rainbow's in more danger than she realises - and she's dragging the others right in with her.

When a man from Callum's past turns up at our door claiming to have lost both the last herd of unicorns in England and his sister, I knew it should be a hard pass. The past has teeth. But old debts plus a damsel in distress means Callum just can't say no. G&C London, Private Investigators, are plunging deep into the magical underbelly of Leeds, and we're going to have our work cut out for us. Never mind the criminal dynasties, cross-dressing trolls, trained attack lizards, and philosophical donkeys - we need to find the sister and get out before the Watch get involved.

One should never meddle in the affairs of dragons, but someone has been doing just that. They've been making imitation dragon scale baubles that are nothing short of lethal, and kidnapping delivery drivers all over the Yorkshire Dales. They've also been leaving behind some distinctly dragon-ish traces. Beaufort Scales, High Lord of the Cloverly Dragons, is hot on the trail—or would be, if he wasn't having political problems at home.

Climate emergency has spawned a one-child policy in the UK, ruthlessly enforced by a totalitarian regime. Compulsory abortion of 'excess' pregnancies and mandatory contraceptive implants are now the norm. Kai is a 25-year-old 'baby reaper', working for the Ministry of Population and Family Planning. If any of her assigned families attempt to exceed their child quota, she ensures they pay the price. Until she discovers that an illegal sibling on her Ministry hit-list is hers. And to protect her parents from severe penalties, she must secretly investigate before anyone else finds out.

A dragon is missing. DI Adams' missing person is human, not dragon, but the trails of both lead to the village of Eldmere, where glimpses of a mysterious Beast have drawn in the nation's monster hunters. And where the Toot Hansell Women's Institute and the Cloverly dragons are in hot pursuit of Gilbert. A valley full of weekend Yeti hunters and cryptozoologists won't stand between them and the young dragon. But something strange is happening in Eldmere, and the dragons, Beast, and ladies of the Women's Institute are at the heart of it.

DI Adams is not having a good summer. Her house has been hexed. Her parents have just turned up, determined to experience all Yorkshire has to offer. And they're going to get more than they bargained for, because someone else has turned up too. He calls himself Velmyr Duskthorn, Lord of the Fae, and he's demanding a powerful book Adams doesn't have, can't get, and couldn't hand over even if she had it – unless she fancies starting an inter-species war.