Hollywood actress Jeanette Marchand was beautiful, talented, beloved by audiences.
During a time of personal crisis, she declares she is going to take a vacation in England, to explore the possibilities of working in London, before returning to the USA.
She never returned to the USA. She never even left the airport. At least - no-one saw her leave.
Years later, a young film student finds himself digging deeper into her disappearance. Where did she go? Was she really dead? Who was the mysterious man who sat beside her on the flight across from New York?
This is a gripping speculative historical novel, grounded in the golden age of film. Perfect for fans of true crime, conspiracy theories, and SF that is chillingly close to reality.
In the latest novel from one of the UK's greatest writers we return to the Dream Archipelago, a string of islands that no one can map or explain.
Alesandro Sussken is a composer, and we see his life as he grows up in a fascist state constantly at war with another equally faceless opponent. His brother is sent off to fight; his family is destroyed by grief. Occasionally Alesandro catches glimpses of islands in the far distance from the shore, and they feed into his music - music for which he is feted.
But all knowledge of the other islands is forbidden by the junta, until he is unexpectedly sent on a cultural tour. And what he discovers on his journey will change his perceptions of his country, his music and the ways of the islands themselves.
Playing with the lot of the creative mind, the rigours of living under war and the nature of time itself, this is Christopher Priest at his absolute best.
Christopher Priest is a genre-leading author of SFF fiction. His novel, THE PRESTIGE, won a number of awards and was adapted into a critically acclaimed, Oscar-nominated film directed by Christopher Nolan (TENET, INCEPTION) starring Hugh Jackman (THE GREATEST SHOWMAN, X-MEN), Christian Bale (THE BIG SHORT, BATMAN BEGINS), Michael Caine (THE ITALIAN JOB) and Scarlett Johansson (MARRIAGE STORY, THE AVENGERS).
A tale of murder, artistic rivalry and literary trickery; a chinese puzzle of a novel where nothing is quite what it seems; a narrator whose agenda is artful and subtle; a narrative that pulls you in and plays an elegant game with you.
The Dream Archipelago is a vast network of islands. The names of the islands are different depending on who you talk to, their very locations seem to twist and shift. Some islands have been sculpted into vast musical instruments, others are home to lethal creatures, others the playground for high society. Hot winds blow across the archipelago and a war fought between two distant continents is played out across its waters.
THE ISLANDERS serves both as an untrustworthy but enticing guide to the islands, an intriguing, multi-layered tale of a murder and the suspect legacy of its appealing but definitely untrustworthy narrator.
It shows Christopher Priest at the height of his powers and illustrates why he has remained one of the country's most prized novelists.
Christopher Priest is a genre-leading author of SFF fiction. His novel, THE PRESTIGE, won a number of awards and was adapted into a critically acclaimed, Oscar-nominated film directed by Christopher Nolan (TENET, INCEPTION) starring Hugh Jackman (THE GREATEST SHOWMAN, X-MEN), Christian Bale (THE BIG SHORT, BATMAN BEGINS), Michael Caine (THE ITALIAN JOB) and Scarlett Johansson (MARRIAGE STORY, THE AVENGERS).
Tibor Tarent, a freelance photographer, is recalled to Britain from Anatolia where his wife Melanie has been killed by insurgent militia. IRGB is a nation living in the aftermath of a bizarre and terrifying terrorist atrocity - hundreds of thousands were wiped out when a vast triangle of west London was instantly annihilated. The authorities think the terrorist attack and the death of Tarent's wife are somehow connected.
A century earlier, a stage magician is sent to the Western Front on a secret mission to render British reconnaissance aircraft invisible to the enemy. On his journey to the trenches he meets the visionary who believes that this will be the war to end all wars.
In 1943, a woman pilot from Poland tells a young RAF technician of her escape from the Nazis, and her desperate need to return home.
In the present day, a theoretical physicist stands in his English garden and creates the first adjacency.
THE ADJACENT is a novel where nothing is quite as it seems. Where fiction and history intersect, where every version of reality is suspect, where truth and falsehood lie closely adjacent to one another.
It shows why Christopher Priest is one of our greatest writers.
A petty thief who called himself John Smith was arrested in 1877, for theft through fraudulent behaviour. He was convicted and sent to prison.
In 1852, Adler and Adolf Beck's father died on a glacier, and their lives separated. One became a respected climate scientist; the other a globally renowned opera singer, or so he claimed. They remained in touch, to share details of the mysterious voices only they could hear.
In 2050, Charles Ramsey also has a twin. Greg is a climate journalist. Charles used to be a police profiler, but his redundancy leads to him being sent home with an experimental chip in his head. His brother urges him to explore a little-known aspect of their family history.
All these people are connected, impossibly, inexorably. All their lives will intersect.
And the climate of their world will keep on changing.
Deep in the Advanced Technique Concentration, Wentik created a mind-altering drug. Suddenly he is transported to the jungles of Brazil in the 22nd century and a world devastated by nuclear war and poison gas.
Only South America survived but even here 'The Disturbances' create havoc. Can Wentik find a way back? For himself? And all of humanity?
Christopher Priest is a genre-leading author of SFF fiction. His novel, THE PRESTIGE, won a number of awards and was adapted into a critically acclaimed, Oscar-nominated film directed by Christopher Nolan (TENET, INCEPTION) starring Hugh Jackman (THE GREATEST SHOWMAN, X-MEN), Christian Bale (THE BIG SHORT, BATMAN BEGINS), Michael Caine (THE ITALIAN JOB) and Scarlett Johansson (MARRIAGE STORY, THE AVENGERS).
Todd Fremde is an author, a writer of police procedurals and criminal mysteries. Invited to the remote island of Dearth, far across the Dream Archipelago, to talk at a conference, he finds himself caught up in a series of mysteries. How can Dearth claim to be completely crime-free, yet still have an armed police force? Why are they so keen for him to appear, but so dismissive when he arrives? Is his sense of time confused, or is something confusing happening to time itself?
And how does this all connect with a murder committed on his home island, ten years before, and seemingly forgotten?
Fremde's investigation and research will lead him to some dangerous conclusions...
Christopher Priest is a genre-leading author of SFF fiction. His novel, THE PRESTIGE, won a number of awards and was adapted into a critically acclaimed, Oscar-nominated film directed by Christopher Nolan (TENET, INCEPTION) starring Hugh Jackman (THE GREATEST SHOWMAN, X-MEN), Christian Bale (THE BIG SHORT, BATMAN BEGINS), Michael Caine (THE ITALIAN JOB) and Scarlett Johansson (MARRIAGE STORY, THE AVENGERS).
Christopher Priest is one of the most acclaimed writers of both SF and literary fiction at work today. Here, for the first time in almost twenty years, is a collection of his short work. Largely previously uncollected, ranging from the horrific to the touching, the science fictional to the realist, these stories are a perfect demonstration of the breadth and power of Priest's writing.
Eleven stories are included, along with commentary and reflection from the author. Within these pages you will discover the stage magic-inspired horror of 'The Head and the Hand', the timeslip accidents of 'futouristic.co.uk', the impossible romance of 'Palely Loitering' and the present-day satire of 'Shooting an Episode'.
Christopher Priest is a genre-leading author of SFF fiction. His novel, THE PRESTIGE, won a number of awards and was adapted into a critically acclaimed, Oscar-nominated film directed by Christopher Nolan (TENET, INCEPTION) starring Hugh Jackman (THE GREATEST SHOWMAN, X-MEN), Christian Bale (THE BIG SHORT, BATMAN BEGINS), Michael Caine (THE ITALIAN JOB) and Scarlett Johansson (MARRIAGE STORY, THE AVENGERS).
A powerful meditation on loss and memory seen through the prism of 9/11, by one of our greatest authors.
Ben Matson lost someone he loved in the 9/11 attacks. Or thinks he did - no body has been recovered, and she shouldn't have been on that particular plane at that time. But he knows she was.
The world has moved on from that terrible day. Nearly 20 years later, it has faded into a dull memory for most people. But a chance encounter rekindles Ben's interest in the event, and the inconsistencies that always bothered him.
Then the announcement of the recovery of an unidentified plane crash sets off a chain of events that will lead Ben to question everything he thought he knew . . .
Thoughtful, impeccably researched and dazzling in its writing, this is Ben's story, the story of what happened to his fiancé, and the story of all that happened on 9/11.
Christopher Priest is a genre-leading author of SFF fiction. His novel, THE PRESTIGE, won a number of awards and was adapted into a critically acclaimed, Oscar-nominated film directed by Christopher Nolan (TENET, INCEPTION) starring Hugh Jackman (THE GREATEST SHOWMAN, X-MEN), Christian Bale (THE BIG SHORT, BATMAN BEGINS), Michael Caine (THE ITALIAN JOB) and Scarlett Johansson (MARRIAGE STORY, THE AVENGERS).
THE QUIET WOMAN stitches together a horrifyingly plausable near-future dystopian Britain and a typically Priestian account of an individual lost in the blurred boundaries between the real and the imagined. It is a novel that bears comparison with the work of Kazuo Ishiguro and A.S. Byatt as well as that of John Wyndham.
In a country that has lost its way memories of past lives are distracting Alice Stockton. Living alone after the break up of her marriage she makes a precarious living as a biographer yet finds herself powerfully and inexplicably influenced by the lives of others.
A novel of uncertain personal histories and literary mystery set in a disturbingly real dystopian Britain, THE QUIET WOMAN is vintage Christopher Priest.
Christopher Priest is a genre-leading author of SFF fiction. His novel, THE PRESTIGE, won a number of awards and was adapted into a critically acclaimed, Oscar-nominated film directed by Christopher Nolan (TENET, INCEPTION) starring Hugh Jackman (THE GREATEST SHOWMAN, X-MEN), Christian Bale (THE BIG SHORT, BATMAN BEGINS), Michael Caine (THE ITALIAN JOB) and Scarlett Johansson (MARRIAGE STORY, THE AVENGERS).
Christopher Priest's artful sleight of hand when it comes to manipulating the experience of his books and notions of what is real reaches a peak in this novel that accounts the trials and tribulations of a group of people who have escaped into a utopian shared virtual reality known as Wessex. It is a world engineered to give them their every desire. But when one woman becomes subject to the violent attentions of a man who feels that she is everything he desires she must decide to fight back. Obsession and abuse of power can cross from the real world to the imagined all too easily.
Thought by some to have been instrumental in the inspiration of the film INCEPTION, A DREAM OF WESSEX is a classic in the literature of virtual realities and remains one of Chris Priest's most highly regarded novels.
Christopher Priest is a genre-leading author of SFF fiction. His novel, THE PRESTIGE, won a number of awards and was adapted into a critically acclaimed, Oscar-nominated film directed by Christopher Nolan (TENET, INCEPTION) starring Hugh Jackman (THE GREATEST SHOWMAN, X-MEN), Christian Bale (THE BIG SHORT, BATMAN BEGINS), Michael Caine (THE ITALIAN JOB) and Scarlett Johansson (MARRIAGE STORY, THE AVENGERS).
A young Victorian couple are pulled into a mystery that transcends time and space. A mystery that will have very familiar elements for any fan of HG Wells but which cannot possibly be related to the work of the great man. Or can it?
This early novel from Christopher Priest is at once a wonderful facsimile of late Victorian writing and an enticing modern novel that plays with the reader's expectations and comments on two of the greatest novels of science fiction.
Christopher Priest is a genre-leading author of SFF fiction. His novel, THE PRESTIGE, won a number of awards and was adapted into a critically acclaimed, Oscar-nominated film directed by Christopher Nolan (TENET, INCEPTION) starring Hugh Jackman (THE GREATEST SHOWMAN, X-MEN), Christian Bale (THE BIG SHORT, BATMAN BEGINS), Michael Caine (THE ITALIAN JOB) and Scarlett Johansson (MARRIAGE STORY, THE AVENGERS).
