Christopher Priest

'A brilliantly constructed entertainment, with a plot as simple and intricate as a nest of Chinese boxes...a dizzying magic show of a novel' WASHINGTON POST

'One of two or three of the most impressive pure-SFnovels produced in the UK since World War Two' ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF SCIENCE FICTION.

In a world at war, the Dream Archipelago is a neutral zone, and therefore an alluring prospect to the young men on both sides of the conflict. In this interlinked collection of short stories and novellas, Christopher Priest explores war, relationships and forms of reality. Each tale is a truimph of quiet, steady craftsmanship, a model of ingenious design and subtle implication, and as a group they further enrich each other by interlocking cleverly, symmetrically and sometimes sinisterly.

Featured in Science Fiction: The Best 100 Novels Winner of the British Science Fiction Award Nominated for the Hugo Award The "devilishly entertaining" masterpiece of hard science fiction, set in a city moving through a strange, dystopian world--from the multi-award-winning author of The Prestige (Time Out New York) The city is winched along tracks through a devastated land full of hostile tribes. Rails must be freshly laid ahead of the city and carefully removed in its wake. Rivers and mountains present nearly insurmountable challenges to the ingenuity of the city's engineers. But if the city does not move, it will fall farther and farther behind the "optimum" into the crushing gravitational field that has transformed life on Earth. The only alternative to progress is death. The secret directorate that governs the city makes sure that its inhabitants know nothing of this. Raised in common in cr ches, nurtured on synthetic food, prevented above all from venturing outside the closed circuit of the city, they are carefully sheltered from the dire necessities that have come to define human existence. And yet the city is in crisis. The people are growing restive, the population is dwindling, and the rulers know that, for all their efforts, slowly but surely the city is slipping ever farther behind the optimum. Helward Mann is a member of the city's elite. Better than anyone, he knows how tenuous is the city's continued existence. But the world--he is about to discover--is infinitely stranger than the strange world he believes he knows so well.

In 1878, two young stage magicians clash in a darkened salon during the course of a fraudulent seance, and from this moment they try to expose and outwit each other at every turn

A powerful narrative marrying fantasy and horrific reality in a compelling and alarming tale.

Cameraman Richard Grey's memory has blanked out the few weeks before he was injured in a car bomb explosion. When he is visited by a girl who seems to have been his lover, his attempts to recall the forgotten period produce an odyssey through France and conflicting accounts of what happened. When Susan Kewley speaks to him of that time, he finds himself glimpsing a terrible twilight world - the world of "the glamour".

'A brilliantly constructed entertainment, with a plot as simple and intricate as a nest of Chinese boxes ... a dizzying magic show of a novel' WASHINGTON POST

This is the story of Sally Gunnell's progress from modest origins in Essex to becoming 400-metre hurdles world-record holder, Olympic champion and world champion. It describes the combination of talent, commitment, hard work and desire to win that have enabled her to succeed.