Garry Kilworth – författare

After roving through space for centuries, a starship unburdens its cargo of human embryos on a harsh new world. They quickly grow to maturity in the ship''s artificial womb. A lifetime of Earth memories is programmed into their dreams.But before their indoctrination is complete, an alien intruder infiltrates and destroys the system, and the reason for the odyssey is never learned.Now, on a verdant island surrounded by quicksand, Othman, wanderer, dreamer, and self-proclaimed leader of the Earthling band, builds a mighty bridge to span the ocean of molten mud that keeps them from the world beyond.He has yet to face the deadly toll his quest will take on the delicate ecology of the planet - or the revolt of his beautiful, strong-willed wife, Silandi. And he has yet to discover the hidden knowledge locked deep within their hearts.

The human race is in decline, is withdrawing into protective city shells. Could contact with civilised aliens revive the probing curiosity once the hallmark of human achievement? Are there any such beings in the Universe? If there are, can they be contacted? The beginnings of an answer, oddly enough, begins to form when Alex Craven sets out in search of his girlfriend Nicole and finds her working in the marshlands of the Angles. Reluctantly he becomes involved in her work. She is experimenting with empathic communication between twins. Eventually, accompanied by one of two particularly gifted twins, he leaves Earth for New Carthage. In that strange world a shadow-line civilisation is in perpetual slow motion to avoid the intolerable daytime heat. But what lies beyond the shadow line . . . ?

Trapped behind walls of towering ice, First City was a prison from which no one ever escaped. The Trysts ruled with an iron fist: violent death was a common sight on the streets.Morag MacKenzie was a mind-prostitute who gave erotic thought stimulation, without giving her body. Those who yearned for other escapes visited the Timesmiths, within those hands time could be moulded like clay as they spun dream-visions. But morag has her own dreams, of a world outside the ice walls, a world of space and freedom, and she is determined to find it.

On Cloudrock the penalty for imperfection is death: death by the long fall into the void, through the poisonous mists and gases that rise from the deadlands far, far below.The two tribes who survive on the Rock, the tribes of Day and Night, keep their families tight, their bloodlines pure and true, by incest, by cannibalism and by murder. Parcelling out their tiny world in measures of light and time, they wrap themselves in ritual and taboo, each family denying the presence of the other. Then came the Shadow.Born to the matriarch Catrunner, the Shadow is deformed - a neuter dwarf - a natural candidate for instant death. But for this mutant, fate intervenes. The Shadow may live - on the condition that none acknowledge its presence: one word, one glance, and the Shadow will join its luckless kin in the long death-flight.Surviving on the outskirts of the family, the Shadow''s very existence creates an unspoken question that challenges the ties that bind. This is the Shadow''s tale...

The roads that made up the new Diamond Estate were all named after gems. There was Emerald Avenue, Ruby Close, Garnet Crescent . . . and Bloodstone Street.It started on the day the Peters family moved in. Patty was lying in the road and when her farther made her get up her body left a damp imprint on the asphalt."Look, Daddy," she said, "the street is crying."But within days the tarmac was bubbling with a malevolent will of its own, sucking at the feet of unwary pedestrians, chopping at the arms of maintenance workers and redirecting the wheels of speeding cars.The residents of Bloodstone Street had moved into open plan suburbia - only to find themselves trapped in a cul-de-sac of terror . . .

''The wolf Meshiska gave birth to five cubs on the night before full moon. Outside the den a storm was lashing the spruce trees. The sky and the land had become part of each other: a scatterwind night swirling with fragments of black and white. Snow became darkness and darkness snow, and any creature lost between the two found a rock or a tree and lay down beside it, to wait until the world had formed again.''Into this bleak landscape, Athaba is born, a young wolf destined for great adventure. Exiled from his pack for breaking its rigid codes of behaviour and showing too much imagination, Athaba becomes a ''raven wolf'', a lonely scavenger living on scraps and his wits.Survival in the icy wastes is hard and dangerous without the comfort and protection of the pack. Injured, and stranded far from home, Athaba is forced to strike up an uneasy alliance with his natural enemy: a man. Together, but ever wary of each other, the wolf and the solitary hunter start their long walk home across the wilderness.It soon becomes clear that the man must learn to be a wolf if he is to survive in the wolf''s world. And Athaba has to use all his imagination to learn new skills and strategies to fend for himself and his new pack member: for he discovers that men are frail, and often very ignorant!

Amongst the gorse and the heathers of his native highlands, Skelter the mountain hare enjoyed an idyllic life: browsing and gambolling; taking in the superb scenery and making female friends, including the beautiful Rushie. Then one day Skelter''s life of ease came to an abrupt end. Netted and captured, he and several other hares are transported hundreds of miles, to the strange lands of the south, destined for the cruel sport of hare coursing. Amidst a hell of shouting men and howling greyhounds, Skelter witnesses a nightmare, before making a miraculous escape.Alone, stranded in a landscape he does not understand, Skelter must learn to survive, despite the hostility and distrust of the local hares and other natural hazards.By far the most horrifying peril that faces Skelter is the florge: a vast, flying monster which is terrorising the countryside, killing indiscriminately. Raised in isolation by a man, thousands of miles from his native habitat, Bubba is a killer more terrifying than any natural creature: for he believes himself human. Can one small mountain hare survive against such a monster?

In every mouse''s long life, there comes a time when ancestral voices tell him to move on. Pedlar, a yellow-necked mouse, has reached that point. Told to leave the Hedgerow and go on a long journey, the adventurous mouse says his farewells and sets out for a far-distant country knows as The House. Reaching his destination, Pedlar enters a strange new world inhabited by many warring tribes: the Stinkhorns of the cellar, the great Savage Tribe in the kitchen, the library Bookeaters, the Invisibles, the Deathshead and the rebellious 13-K Gang.During his stay, Pedlar witnesses a momentous truce, in which the tribes come together at an Allthing meeting and decide to rid themselves of the greatest pests in The House, the greedy, stupid nudniks - the humans. And so the Great Nudnik Drive is set in motion, a time of considerable anxiety for the nudniks, when clocks strike twenty and inanimate objects seem to have a life of their own. Ranged against the mouse tribes are the nudniks'' allies: the two cats, Eyeball the Burmese blue and Spitz the ginger tom; the Headhunter, a barbarian human child; and Little Prince, the Headhunter''s cannibalistic pet white mouse. The House becomes a hotbed of riot and discord, until Pedlar finally comes up with a solution. The outcome of this heroic struggle has gone down in the annals of mouse history, a history tens of thousands of days long, and the whole remarkable tale is recorded here, between these pages.

Sherwood Forest, home of Oberon, Titania, Puck, Cobweb, Peaseblossom and the rest of the mob, has been whittled away by urban development. It''s time to move on, the fairies decide. Sid, their captive, a kindly if gruff young car mechanic, teaches Titania to drive, and on Midsummer''s Eve the party sets off in a battered and smelly old bus. They''re bound for the New Forest, where they hope to be able to regenerate their magic.The fairies'' journey is full of excitement. At a village fair, they show the morris dancers how to cut previously undreamt-of capers. Titania falls in love with a human baby and steals her from her pram, starting a nationwide search for the missing infant. The fairies then link up with a group of New Age travellers on their way to Stonehenge, who befriend them almost without question.Finally, a fight to the death between Titania and the terrifying and sadistic Morgan-le-Fey must take place before everyone can settle down into some form of harmony and peace.

Somewhere, deep in the mighty rainforest, is the Kingdom of the Sun Bear. And there, legend has it, are the seven ancient heads of the Punan - and the secret of untold riches.To find and possess the heads, a man must brave not only the terrifying creatures of the forest, but must also risk the displeasure of the gods and spirits that inhabit it.Yet, two groups set off in a ferocious rivalry in pursuit of the legend. They disturb the equilibrium of the forest and risk awful consequences. For, it seems, only one creature can benefit from such a quest - Shadow-hawk, the eater of men''s souls.

There is a citywide epidemic of arson in San Francisco, and Detective Dave Peters and his partner, Danny, are on the case. But their routine investigation becomes more and more bizarre as the fires seem more and more spontaneous and impossible. An astonishing scenario emerges: the War in Heaven, which takes place outside of time, is still being fought. Sometimes a minor demon drops out of that war and into time, on Earth, to hide - masquerading as a human. Sometimes an angel is sent to Earth to destroy these evil beings. But an angel on such an errand may care nothing for human life. Those who die go to heaven, or elsewhere - not the angel''s concern. Such an angel now stalks its prey in San Francisco - but it is newly fallen because it has begun to enjoy destruction. Dave and Danny, the only ones who believe in the angel, must track it down and, with the help of the Church, exorcise it.

When Kupe, one of the great Polynesian voyagers, chases a huge octopus across the ocean, he discovers the strange and mysterious Land of Mists and rescues a man and a woman from the wild sea. He carries them back to the island of Raiatea where the pale strangers witness the momentous events that follow the death of the king and the struggle for succession.But the gods are watching also, and when Prince Tangiia and his followers secretly flee the island in search of a new home, their intervention becomes inevitable.Delighting in the rich and colourful detail and myth of Polynesian life, The Roof of Voyaging is the first part of a wonderful tale which will become a landmark in fantastic fiction.

THE EPIC FANTASY OF THE PEOPLE OF THE WIND CONTINUES . . . Kieto''s destiny, set in the heavens, is to conquer the Land-of-Mists, the mysterious island discovered by Kupe, one of the great Polynesian voyagers. But he knows it won''t be easy: the wild native tribes, particularly the Scots and Picts, have two formidable advantages - iron and horses. But Kieto has heard of a magnificent warrior race, the Maori, who live in another world and from whom he hopes to learn the secret of success in war. The gateway to this world is on the island of giants, and Kieto and his friends, Boy-Girl, Seumas and Dorcha, themselves taken years before from the Land-of-Mists, leave the safety of Rarotonga and embark on an epic voyage of discovery aboard THE PRINCELY FLOWER. Pursued by sea-fairies, vengeful gods, power-hungry priests and, in Seumas''s case, by a murderously angry son, confronting their worst fears and supernatural horrors, the friends finally face the awesome wrath of the mighty Maori. THE PRINCELY FLOWERS is the second wonderful volume of THE NAVIGATOR KINGS, set in the richly imaginative world of Polynesian life and myth.

It was always Keito''s destiny to lead the Polynesian armies against the Celts and the Picts of the Land-of-Mists. And now the time has come. The Warriors are assembled, the boats are ready, and the gods are preparing for the confrontation.Only Seumas, the Celtic warrior taken from his homeland years before, speaks out against the great adventure. But Seumas is an old man now, embittered by the loss of his beloved wife, Dorcha. Not even the love of his son, Craig, can console him.Soon the mighty army is on the move, crossing the sea towards the unknown land, and Seumas and Craig swell its numbers. They encounter storms, magic, monsters and tragedy even before they reach their destination - the cold, rainy land of muted colours that will decide their fate - and that of their gods.LAND-OF-MISTS is the thrilling climax to the wonderfully epic Navigator Kings series.

To escape his life in England, John Trencher volunteers to teach schoolchildren on a tropical island. But paradise has its darker, less innocent side, and a web of violence, taboo and sexuality soon begins to wind itself around him. In the Hollow of the Deep-Sea Wave contains the compelling and erotic title tale, and seven short stories on similar themes.

In the Country of Tattooed Men the nights feel hollow and are full of sounds of the jungle: danger is everywhere. Tattoos hide all from the prying eyes of the world. On Murderer''s Walk the cards are dealt for the ultimate game. There can be only one loser: pray you do not hold the ace of spades. And from York to London, Northampton to Southend the boys are surfing Spanish style.It''s exciting and exhilarating and potentially fatal.Gary Kilworth has created a powerful and striking anthology of stories from the past, present and future.