A second novel by the author of "A Dangerous Energy", which won the Gollancz/BBC "Bookshelf" First Fantasy Novel Competition. Set in Renaissance Italy, it features a Machiavellian anti-hero who, in his Capri villa, looks back on a life of stoicism, a life spent serving a cause - a life of infamy.

Dangerous Energy

Whitbourn, John

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Orion Publishing Co

Popes and Phantoms

Literature & Fiction

Short Stories & Anthologies

Gollancz

1st VGSF 1995 edition 1st printing paperback, vg+ In stock shipped from our UK warehouse

To Build Jerusalem

Fantasy

Victor Gollancz

Thomas Blades has been released from his time as God-King in the alternative world he fought and ruled over. His descendants rule and fight but he cannot bear to return and meddle in their lives.

Downs-lord Day (The Downs-Lord Triptych)

SIMON SCHUSTER (TRADE DIVISION)

Mr Oakley has moved back to the small English village where his family once had roots. Binscombe is a place of cricket and corner shops and after-work pints in the Duke of Argyll. But peel away the wallpaper of the ordinary and you will find cracks in the fabric of what we think of as reality: • The man who spent a lifetime waiting for a bus • The suburban kitchen with a gateway to another world • The whispering voices that torment a nightclub owner • The ancient danger that lurks under an electricity substation For a reasonable man like Mr Oakley it could all be too much. But luckily he has the enigmatic figure of Mr Disvan as his guide to the borderland between the everyday and the uncanny. Part-wizard, part-tribal elder, Mr Disvan is Mr Oakley's much-needed lifeline to sanity-and at the same time might just be the scariest of all Binscombe's many secrets. Collected here for the first time, these twenty-six classic tales by John Whitbourn are some of the most anthologized in modern weird fiction. So draw your chair close to the fireside, pour yourself a pint or a cuppa or a scotch, and settle back to have your blood chilled and your imagination thrilled as only a master storyteller can.

Binscombe Tales: Volume One

Genre Fiction

Spark Furnace

Mr Oakley has moved back to the small English village where his family once had roots. Binscombe is a place of cricket and corner shops and after-work pints in the Duke of Argyll. But peel away the wallpaper of the ordinary and you will find cracks in the fabric of what we think of as reality:   The man who spent a lifetime waiting for a bus The suburban kitchen with a gateway to another world The whispering voices that torment a nightclub owner  The ancient danger that lurks under an electricity substation  For a reasonable man like Mr Oakley it could all be too much. But luckily he has the enigmatic figure of Mr Disvan as his guide to the borderland between the everyday and the uncanny. Part-wizard, part-tribal elder, Mr Disvan is Mr Oakley's much-needed lifeline to sanity-and at the same time might just be the scariest of all Binscombe's many secrets. Collected here for the first time, these twenty-six classic tales by John Whitbourn are some of the most anthologized in modern weird fiction. So draw your chair close to the fireside, pour yourself a pint or a cuppa or a scotch, and settle back to have your blood chilled and your imagination thrilled as only a master storyteller can.

Binscombe Tales: Volume Two

There is a real place called Binscombe, located in the south-east of England; but these tales are not about that Binscombe. Instead they concern another Binscombe, linked to the first by subtle but invisible bridges of 'what if?'. This other Binscombe is a place rich in history, where strangers are welcome, but not always safe. A place where watching a video is not as harmless a pursuit as it might seem, where waiting for the bus may take much longer than expected, and where you may count the rooms in your house and not always come up with the same number. It is, in short, a place that takes its history very seriously-and with good reason, as the unwary are apt to find out to their cost.  No one takes Binscombe and its history more seriously than Mr Disvan, whose encyclopaedic knowledge of the village and its past seems to have been acquired through more than simply reading history books. We see Mr Disvan and Binscombe life through the eyes of Mr Oakley, a newcomer whose family has long had roots there, and who thus proves the truth of a local saying: 'They always come back'. This local connection gives Mr Oakley an opportunity to experience some of the stranger side of life in Binscombe, with Mr Disvan as his guide. But it also shows him that, once you come back, it isn't always possible to leave again.  John Whitbourn's Binscombe Tales are defining classics of the English new weird, and were originally published in various anthologies and collections between 1987 and 1998. This three-volume edition from Spark Furnace Books is the definitive set of all twenty-six tales in the saga.

Binscombe Tales: Volume Three

Imagine historians' surprise on learning that 'icon of excess' and larger-than-life playboy monarch, King Farouk I of Egypt, 1920-1965, wrote an autobiography. Allegedly. Transcribed from a manuscript discovered in mysterious circumstances, and only now publishable in these more liberal times, this book reveals a scandalous secret history requiring a radical rethink of just about everything. Including World War II, the Cold War, and Stalin's dancing skills. Covering Farouk's rake's progress from birth to death, it details his claim to be a much misunderstood and maligned world leader, selected by Fate (and an angel) to single-handedly alter world history. Whilst having a whale of a time. Farouk's words are footnoted by two antagonistic editors, whose work on the shocking manuscript brings both close to breakdown. Their stunned, chalk-&-cheese contributions become as much a part of the narrative as Farouk's confessions. As a (usually) forgivable monster of self-indulgent self-deception, porn connoisseur, master of Machiavellian statecraft and pickpocketing kleptomaniac, King Farouk's disgracefully amusing and amusingly disgraceful admissions will inform and entertain. And probably appal... Everything is Permissible is a stand-alone novel but is exquisitely complemented by a prequel, Nothing is True..., covering King Farouk's pre-exile Egyptian excesses, 1920-1952.

Everything is Permissible: The Second Book of Farouk

Independently published

Binscombe Tales: Sinister Saxon Stories

Science Fiction

Ash Tree Publishing

Amy-Faith & The Stronghold

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