Showing results by publisher "W. F. Howes Ltd" in Post-Apocalyptic

Kavanagh begins his life patrolling the Wall. If he's lucky, if nothing goes wrong, he only has two years of this, 729 more nights. The best thing that can happen is that he survives and gets off the Wall and never has to spend another day of his life anywhere near it. He longs for this to be over; longs to be somewhere else. He will soon find out what Defenders do and who the Others are. Along with the rest of his squad, he will endure cold and fear day after day, night after night. 

Throughout the universe, intelligence is a rare and fragile commodity - a fleeting glimmer in the long night of cosmic history. That Earth should harbour not just one but two intelligent species at the same time defies the odds. That these species, so unalike - and yet so complementary - should forge an alliance that kindled a civilisation defies logic. But time is endless and everything comes to pass eventually....

In this twisty and action-packed adventure from the BSFA award-winning author of Descendant Machine and Future’s Edge, a crew of bounty hunters find themselves ensnared in a conspiracy on the very fringes of the devastated solar system. Perfect for fans of James S. A. Corey and Adrian Tchaikovsky.

The second volume of the epic Helliconia trilogy, the enthralling masterwork of one of the last century's greatest masters of imaginative fiction. It is the summer of the Great Year on Helliconia. The humans are involved with their own affairs. Their old enemies, the phagors, are comparatively docile at this time of year; yet they can afford to wait, to take advantage of human weakness—and of the king's weakness.

The Philip K. Dick Award-winning debut short story collection from Sarah Pinsker, author of the Nebula Award-winning A Song for a New Day. Pinsker has shot like a star across the firmament with stories multiply nominated for awards as well as Sturgeon and Nebula award wins. The baker's dozen stories gathered here (including a new, previously unpublished story) turn listeners into travellers to the past and the future, and explorers of the weirder points of the present. 

The sun is bloated, diseased, dying perhaps. Beneath its baneful light, Shadrapar, last of all cities, harbours fewer than 100,000 human souls. Built on the ruins of countless civilisations, Shadrapar is a museum, an asylum, a prison on a world that is ever more alien to humanity. Bearing witness to the desperate struggle for existence between life old and new is Stefan Advani: rebel, outlaw, survivor. This is his testament, an account of the journey that took him into the blazing desolation of the western deserts and into the labyrinths and caverns of the underworld. 

In those days, Earth was a planet in space. In those days, Beijing was a city on Earth. On this night, history as known to humanity came to an end. Eight light years away, a star has died, creating a supernova event that showers Earth in deadly levels of radiation. Within a year, everyone over the age of 13 will die. And so the countdown begins. Parents apprentice their children and try to pass on the knowledge they'll need to keep the world running. But the last generation may not want to carry the legacy of their parents' world....

A thrilling, profoundly moving science fiction retelling of the Greek tragedy Antigone filled with inevitable doom, heart-break and one final act of courage. Outside the last city on Earth, the planet is a wasteland. Without the Archive, where the genes of the dead are stored, humanity will end.

Hirsch's rural beat is wide. Daybreak to day's end, dirt roads and dust. Every problem that besets small towns and isolated properties, from unlicensed driving to arson. In the time of the virus, Hirsch is seeing stresses heightened and social divisions cracking wide open. His own tolerance under strain; people getting close to the edge. Today he's driving an international visitor around: Janne Van Sant, whose backpacker son went missing while the borders were closed. They're checking out his last photo site, his last employer. A feeling that the stories don't quite add up.

A young man is found brutally murdered in the middle of the snowed-in village of Wivenhoe. Over his body stands another man, axe in hand. The gathered villagers must deal with the consequences of an act that no one tried to stop. Wivenhoe is set in an alternate present, in a world that is slowly waking up to the fact that it is living through an environmental disaster. Taking place over twenty-four hours and told through the voices of a mother and her adult son, we see how one small community reacts to social breakdown and isolation.

Millennia ago, Ginny's family farm was all grass and rock and wild horses. A thousand years hence, it'll all be peacefully underwater. In the matter-of-fact here and now, though, its a hotbed of lust and resentment, because Ginny has just cheated on her husband with the man who lives next door. When a crowd of locals - including Ginny's bitter sister Ella - turn up to help out on the farm, a day of chores turns into a night of serious drinking and then of brutal, communal retribution. By morning, Ginny has been left for dead. But dead is the one thing she isn't.

In a space research centre near Washington, United States Government scientists monitoring pictures beamed to earth by an orbiting satellite observe an extraordinary 'hot spot' at a remote point in Manchuria, just on the Soviet side of the disputed border with China. Daring reconnaissance missions prove that the phenomenon is caused by a huge deposit of natural plutonium. Whoever controls it will have unlimited resources of nuclear fuel – in short, will rule the world!

Only the elders of the Valley remember life the way it used to be, when people travelled in automobiles and bought food others had grown. When the ratio of male to female was nearly the same. Before the bombs fell, and a deadly virus claimed the world's men. Now, civilization's few surviving males are guarded by women warriors like Dian, the Valley's chief protector, as fierce and loyal as the guard dogs she trains. When an unexpected convoy of strangers rides into her village, it is Dian who meets them, ready to do battle....

In Zombies, the absurdity of both life and death are on full display as the best and brightest of a high school prep school become tragically addicted to the latest drug craze - electric shocks from cardiac defibrillators. Funny, caustic, bizarre, poignant - this story represents everything listeners have come to love and expect from Chuck Palahniuk.

The collapse of civilization has left survivors scattered among a few settlements. Preyed upon by roving bands of sadistic ex-soldiers and forever at the mercy of a natural world that has turned against them, a family is facing their final days. Hope appears in the guise of their young son. Taught by his father to survive at any cost, he is thrust headlong into a battle for the future of humankind. A Desolate Splendor weaves a stark portrayal of life on the brink of extinction....

When the grain crop failed in Kansas it seemed like an isolated incident and no one took much notice. Except Ed Hardesty. Then the blight spread to California's fruit harvest, and from there, like wildfire, throughout the nation. Suddenly America woke up to the fact that her food supplies were almost wiped out. Her grain reserves lethally polluted. And botulism was multiplying at a horrifying rate.

A suicide assault has destroyed the life support system of a major waystation. All that is known about the young men responsible is that in their last living moments, they were receiving messages from an uninhabited sector of space and were playing a virtual reality game. Two unlikely allies have joined forces to investigate the incident: Ru Gaya, a mercenary explorer with a taste for high risk ventures, and game designer Micah Bello, who must find the parties responsible for the attack in order to clear his name.

Val and Julie just want what's best for their kids, David and Sophie. So when teenage son David comes home one day asking for a Pilot, a new brain implant to help with school, they reluctantly agree. This is the future, after all. Soon, Julie feels mounting pressure at work to get a Pilot to keep pace with her colleagues, leaving Val and Sophie part of the shrinking minority of people without the device.

Luce Cannon is on the road. Success is finally within her grasp: her songs are getting airtime; the venues she's playing are getting larger. But mass shootings, bombings and now a strange contagion are closing America down around her. The gig Luce plays tonight will turn out to be the last-ever rock show as the world's stadiums, arenas and concert halls go dark for good. 

In a world prone to violent flooding, Britain, ravaged 20 years earlier by a deadly virus, has been largely cut off. Survivors are few and far between, most of them infertile. Children are a rare commodity. For 22-year-old Roza Polanski, life with her family in their isolated tower block is relatively comfortable. But when a stranger called Aashay Kent arrives, everything changes. Roza can't shake the feeling that there's more to Aashay than he's letting on. Is there more to life beyond their isolated bubble?