Showing results by author "Alistair Maclean" in All Categories

'Earthquake country,' said the Professor. 'San Francisco is geologically and seismologically a city that waits to die. Los Angeles is ringed by earthquake centres – seven massive quakes so far. We have no idea where the next, the monster, will hit…' …until a criminal fanatic kidnaps a nuclear scientist and builds his own atomic bombs. If exploded on California's fault lines they could trigger off the mightiest earthquake of them all – killing half its population and dumping the entire city of San Francisco into the sea.

The surviving commandos are sent on a perilous journey through the Pyrenees to disable the greatest threat to the impending D-day landings: the 'Werwolf' U-boats. But their Basque guides declare it mission impossible - D-day is less than six days away.

The classic World War II thriller from the acclaimed master of action and suspense. One winter night, seven men and a woman are parachuted onto a mountainside in wartime Germany. Their objective: an apparently inaccessible castle, headquarters of the Gestapo. Their mission: to rescue a crashed American general before the Nazi interrogators can force him to reveal secret D-day plans.

Bruno Wildermann of the Wrinfield Circus is the world’s greatest trapeze artist, a clairvoyant with near-supernatural powers and an implacable enemy of the East European regime that arrested his family and murdered his wife. The CIA needs such a man and recruits Bruno for an impossible raid—on the impregnable Lubylan fortress, where his family his held. Under cover of a circus tour, Bruno prepares to return to his homeland. But before the journey even begins a murderer strikes twice. Somewhere in the circus there is a communist agent with orders to stop Bruno at any cost.

From the acclaimed master of action and suspense. The all-time classic. Millions of pounds in gold bullion are being pirated in the Irish Sea. Investigations by the British Secret Service, and a sixth sense, have bought Philip Calvert to a bleak, lonely bay in the Western Highlands. But the sleepy atmosphere of Torbay is deceptive. The place is the focal point of many mysterious disappearances. Even the unimaginative Highland Police Sergeant seems to be acting a part. But why?

Five strands of high-voltage wire, 200 yards of bare ground and double barbed wire fences patrolled by armed guards with dogs separated Mordon Research Centre from the outside world. Yet behind the locked doors of E block, a scientist lies dead, and a new toxin of terrifying power has vanished.

One of the most desolate stretches of railroad in the West. Travelling along it is a crowded troop train, bound for the cholera-stricken garrison at Fort Humboldt. On board are the Governor of Nevada, the daughter of the fort’s commander and a US marshal escorting a notorious outlaw. Between them and safety are the hostile Paiute Indians – and a man who will stop at nothing, not even murder…

From the acclaimed master of action and suspense. The all-time classic. Paul Sherman of Interpol's Narcotics Bureau flies to Amsterdam on the trail of a dope king. With enormous skill the atmosphere is built up: Amsterdam with its canals and high houses; stolid police; psychopaths; women in distress; and above all, murder.

Twelve hundred British soldiers isolated on the small island of Kheros off the Turkish coast, waiting to die. Twelve hundred lives in jeopardy, lives that could be saved if only the guns could be silenced. The guns of Navarone, vigilant, savage and catastrophically accurate. Navarone itself, grim bastion of narrow straits manned by a mixed garrison of Germans and Italians, an apparently impregnable iron fortress.

February, 1942: Singapore lies burning and shattered, defenceless before the conquering hordes of the Japanese Army. The last boat escapes out of the harbour into the South China Sea, and on board are a desperate group of strangers, each with a secret to guard, each willing to kill to keep that secret safe. Dawn sees them far out to sea but with the first murderous dive bombers already aimed at their ship. Thus begins a nightmare succession of disasters wrought by the hell-bent Japanese, the unrelenting tropical sun and, ultimately, by the survivors themselves, as they head south by Java Head.

The atomic submarine Dolphin has impossible orders: to sail beneath the ice floes of the Arctic Ocean to locate and rescue the men of weather station Zebra, gutted by fire and drifting with the ice pack somewhere north of the Arctic Circle. But the orders do not say what the Dolphin will find if she succeeds - that the fire at Ice Station Zebra was sabotage and that one of the survivors is a killer....

A sunken DC-3 lying on the Caribbean floor. Its cargo: $10.25 million in gold ingots, emeralds and uncut diamonds guarded by the remains of two men, one woman and a very small boy. The fortune was there for the taking, and ready to grab it were a blue-blooded oilman with his own offshore rig, a gangster so cold and independent that even the Mafia couldn't do business with him and a psychopathic hired assassin.

Eight jobs. Eight specialists in modern technology required. Applicants to be married, with no children, and prepared to travel. Highly persuasive salaries. Eight positions filled. Eight scientists – and their wives – disappear. Completely. Advertisement no.9. Sydney, Australia. Fuel specialist required. Looks like a job for John Bentall.

The novel that launched the astonishing career of one of the 20th century's greatest writers of action and suspense - an acclaimed classic of heroism and the sea in World War II. The story of men who rose to heroism, and then to something greater, HMS Ulysses takes its place alongside The Caine Mutiny and The Cruel Sea as one of the classic novels of the navy at war. It is the compelling story of Convoy FR77 to Murmansk - a voyage that pushes men to the limits of human endurance.

A converted fishing trawler, Morning Rose carries a movie-making crew across the Barents Sea to isolated Bear Island, well above the Arctic Circle, for some on-location filming, but the script is a secret known only to the producer and screenwriter. En route, members of the movie crew and ship's company begin to die under mysterious circumstances. The crew's doctor, Marlowe, finds himself enmeshed in a violent multi-layered plot in which very few of the persons aboard are whom they claim to be.

From the acclaimed master of action and suspense. The all-time classic. An airliner crashes in the polar ice cap. In temperatures 40 degrees below zero, six men and four women survive. But for the members of a remote scientific research station who rescue them, there are some sinister questions to answer – the first one being, who shot the pilot before the crash?

Almost before the last echoes of the famous guns have died away, the three Navarone heroes are parachuted into war-torn Yugoslavia to rescue a division of partisans and fulfil a secret mission, so deadly that it must be hidden even from their own allies.

Johnny Harlow seems to have it all: he's good looking, desired by women, and envied by men; he's also the reigning Formula One world champion, the poster-boy for the world's most thrilling and richly financed sport. But a recent devastating accident has driven him to drink. And now his beloved sport is changing: too many things are going wrong in too many races. And when Johnny is the apparent cause of the latest accident, he decides the time has come to sort things out.

Aboard the SS Campari, all is not well. For Johnny Carter, the Chief Officer, the voyage has already begun badly; but it’s only when the Campari sails that evening, after a succession of delays that he realises something is seriously wrong. A member of the crew is suddenly missing and the stern-to-stern search only serves to increase tension. Then violence erupts and suddenly the whole ship is in danger. Is the Campari a victim of modern day piracy? And what of the strange cargo hidden below the decks?

Two of the most important oil-fields in the world – one in Canada, the other in Alaska. An unknown quantity – deadly and efficient. The oil flow could be interrupted in any one of thousands of places down the trans-Alaskan pipeline. Catastrophe. One man, Jim Brady, is called in to save the life-blood of the world as unerringly, the chosen targets fall at the hands of a hidden enemy…