The skilled bodyguard John Locke has a different type of job this time. He must guard—more like baby-sit—the rebellious Herbie, whose dismayed grandmother decides that his defiant personality can be tamed by exposure to Renaissance culture. John Locke has the great honor of escorting young Herbie to Florence, Italy, where this obnoxious little brat accomplishes the impossible. Herbie manages to get himself kidnapped—we know that this kidnapper is truly deranged if he wants Herbie—and now Locke has to sift through a bunch of deadly women and a murder plot in order to save Herbie. Full of action and suspense, Jack Barnao's HAMMERLOCKE will have you on the edge of your seat fighting the bad guys with Locke and hoping that Herbie will never be found.

The frozen splendor of the Arctic Ocean and the absorbing drama of a nineteenth century whale hunt unfold in The Corvette. Rewarded by promotion for his services at the Battle of Copenhagen, Commander Drinkwater is dispatched in haste to replace the captain of the MELUSINE, who has been shot in a duel. The ship sails as an escort to a whaling fleet on its annual expedition to the Greenland Sea in pursuit of right whales. During the whale hunt the loss of one of the vessels sets off a chain of misfortune. Disaster, death and treachery result. To repair his ship, Drinkwater seeks shelter off the Greenland coast and finds more hazards than the Arctic alone can produce. It is here that Drinkwater makes the most difficult decision of his career.

Johnson is plagued by the absence of his memory and by the strange dreams of horrific futures that he somehow knows will become reality if he does not act. He was born in a hopeless future and is doomed to travel in the past and repair humanity's problems before they can happen. Unfortunately, every time he returns to the abyss outside of time he loses all memory of what just occurred. The only information Johnson has of his existence is a one-page letter written to himself, reminding him of his duties. Over and over, he must follow his nightmares and repair the damage done by those in the past. Time is in a perpetual state of turmoil for Johnson, but he lives in a future free of damage. His duty is to erase all possibility of the predicted Crisis!

From Publishers WeeklyBanks received rave reviews from critics in his native England and the U.S. for his debut in The Wasp Factory. His second novel is also an extraordinary feat, terrifying and baffling, going far beyond the bounds of fiction as it's usually defined. There are really three separate stories here. The first concerns nice young Londoner Graham Park, in love with Sara ffitch (sic), whom he meets through his gay friend, Slater. The latter's wild ideas provide needed comedy in an otherwise brooding atmosphere, as Graham worries over whether he can win the mysterious Sara from her biker boyfriend. The next story tells of Steven Grout, a laborer who can't keep a job because of his disruptive temper. The paranoid Steven believes "They" are out to get him via lethal microwaves. The scene is laid in a surreal castle where two prisoners, Quiss and Ajayi, are being held for failing as soldiers in the War Against Banality and Interest. The pair, required to answer riddles to win release from this science-fiction hell, miss every time. Banks connects the entirely different events in the novel's closing pages, which reveal what happens between Graham and Sara in a scene so shocking it leaves the reader numb. February 14Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library JournalBanks's unusual novel explores the imagination's more grotesque efforts to cope with life, in three personal dilemmas. Graham Park is a young innocent in love, due to awaken to his role in an unwholesome relationship. Steven Grout is a paranoid and a betrayed warrior from another realm, exiled to our world to suffer secret microwave and laser torments as a social misfit. The elderly Quiss and Ajayi themselves are dishonored exiles of a cosmic war, fated to play bizarre games and answer an impossible riddle, in the strangest castle this side of Mervyn Peake. Banks shows a compelling ability to enter their lives. How he brings them together in a fantastic framework is somewhat less compelling. But his vision of disillusion and escape remains memorably funny and sad, like the idea of glass made real in his castle: a transparent yet only apparent solid, that slowly is puddling under the pull of gravity. Recommended. Jeff Clark, SUNY Coll. at Old Westbury Lib.Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

T.E.D. Klein's highly acclaimed first novel The Ceremonies - which Stephen King called "the most exciting novel in my field to come along since Straub's Ghost Story - established him in the top rank of horror writers. Now, with the four novellas gathered here, Klein proves himself to be a master of this classic shorter form.The collection opens with "Children of the Kingdom", a beautifully crafted chiller that gradually reveals the horrors that lurk behind the shadows of the city. In "Petey", George and Phyllis and the die-hards at their housewarming think that their new rural retreat is quite a steal - unaware that foreclosure, in a particularly monstrous form, is heading their way.In the insidiously terrifying "Black Man with a Horn", a homage to Lovecraft, a chance encounter with a missionary priest over the Atlantic lures a traveller into a web of ancient mystery and fiendish retribution. And in "Nadelman's God", the protagonist discovers, degree by shocking degree, that the demons of our imaginations are not always imaginary. Book Contains Four stories:-"Children of the Kingdom," "Petey," "Black Man With a Horn," and "Nadelman's God," All deal with creatures of the urban night, a hungry beast, a ritual murder, and terrifying apparitions.

There is much want in the kingdom and the tales of Jackaroo, the masked outlaw who helps the poor in times of trouble, are on everyone's lips. Gwyn, the innkeeper's lively daughter, pays little attention to the tales. But when she is stranded during a snowstorm in a cabin with the lordling Gaderian, and finds a strange garment that resembles the costume Jackaroo is said to wear, she begins to wonder....

Written as a practical introduction to natural magic, this workbook serves as a practical reference for the practicing magician. It contains over 100 useful spells from a wide variety of magical traditions from all over the world. The clear, complete instructions detail how to make and work with water spells, baths, sprinkles, incense, oils, and herbs. Also included are spoken spells, and written spells passed down to and developed by the author.

Inbote stood alone in great brightness. His eyes were restored, and focused on the immense doors before him. Slowly he walked toward them, wondering at the shining that came through the tiny space beneath. As he drew nearer he saw that their surfaces were composed of purest diamond, black with the emptiness of the void, in which all Essence is born and annihilated each moment…-----The people of Earth whispered the name in fear…the Overmind…the powerful entity which could reactivate the dreaded machines of long ago, before the last great war.I War had changed the planet in strange and terrible ways. But one thing had not changed.’War still went on.In this troubled world, a brighter destiny has brought together an intrepid band of adventurers—among them an ancient scholar possessed of vision like no ordinary; man, a royal warrior, and the frail but unafraid young woman with whom he has fallen in love.Across dangerous lands and through evil perils, they will venture to the secret place of the overmind - somewhere not in space but in time - to a rendezvous with the beginning of a new future for their world.

Garion has slain the evil God Torak and been crowned King of Riva. The Prophecy was fulfilled—or so it seemed. While the strange child Errand was growing up in the Vale of Aldur with Polgara and Durnik, showing only occasional flashes of inexplicable knowledge and power, Garion was learning to rule and to be the husband of his fiery little Queen Ce’Nedra. Eleven years passed. Then suddenly the Voice of Prophecy cried out a warning: “Beware Zandramas!” Not even Belgarath the Sorcerer knew who or what Zandramas was. But Garion discovered hints in a previously obscured part of the Mrin Codex. Worse, he learned that the Dark Prophecy was still waging its ancient struggle against the Prophecy of Light. Again, great evil was brewing in the East. And again, Garion found himself a pawn, caught between the two ancient Prophecies, with the fate of the world somehow resting on him.

With the great king dying, the sole hope of the people of Alemar to protect them from the powerful dragon and its minions lies in two warriors, lost deep in the heart of a perilous desert

The first victim lived just long enough to describe his attack. First came a deep growling...then a sudden thrust for his throat. He died...convinced he'd been attacked by a werewolf. The grisly murders of Rochester's huge film manufacturing complex puzzled Chief of Detectives Tom McCabe. A werewolf prowling the corridors of the huge facility...attacking middle-management level employees? Preposterous. But just to be on the safe side, he'd call in Ryerson H. Biergarten, the well-known parapsychologist. If Rye could deal with ghosts, he could catch a werewolf!

A tale of magic and murderThe increasingly bizarre murders have baffled the police—but each death is somehow connected with the city's elusive Gypsy community. The police are searching for a human killer, but the Romany know better. They know the name of the darkness that hunts them down, one by one: Mulengro.

They named him Thorn. They told him he was of their people, although he was so different. He was ugly in their eyes, strange, sleek-skinned instead of furred, clawless, different. Yet he was of their power class: judge-warriors, the elite, the fighters, the defenders. Thorn knew that his difference was somehow very important - but not important enough to prevent murderous conspiracies against him, against his protector, against his castle, and perhaps against the peace of the world. But when the crunch came, when Thorn finally learned what his true role in life was to be, that on him might hang the future of two worlds, then he had to stand alone to justify his very existence.

Amidst the many calamities of the late 14th century something sinister is at work among the sisters of la Tres Saunte Annunciacion, a force the women and the men around them seem powerless to fight. What is overwhelming both the holy and the damned? The true horrors of a dark age combine with ingenious imagination for a tumultuous tale of tragic love and disastrous desire.