Bøker av Karl Drinkwater

She has a family. Now it's time to find a home.Opal, Athene and Clarissa are finally free of Aseides' torture ship, but the past always catches up. Their enemies remain powerful, persistent and cruel.True escape will require more courage and strength than ever before, in order to achieve what others believed is impossible.To go home.Every journey has an end. But freedom comes at a price.

You can't shake hands with a clenched fist.At the end of Hidden Solace, Athene made a promise:"I'm coming for you. Anything that stands in my way will be neutralised. Destroyed. It will be probability-manipulated out of the equation. Out of existence. It will be absolutely Sevened. Please, my precious Opal, hold on just a bit longer. I am on my way."The most powerful AI in the universe is coming for her friend.

She survived hell. Now her real problems begin.Opal Imbiana is many things to many people. Hero. Traitor. Soldier. Deserter. Criminal. Explorer.Survivor.She finally achieved her life's goal: to rescue her little sister from the utterly alien Null zone.But the world she returns to has changed. Her friends are gone, and her enemies are more powerful than ever.In the bleakest situations, it takes an exceptional mind to keep hope alive.

Three horrifying books. Many sleepless nights. Bloodlust seizes a remote island, mysterious figures stalk an isolated farm, and nightmares come hideously to life in this collection of stories sure to send chills down your spine ...

If you're reading this: HELP! I've been kidnapped.Me and my big sister stayed together after our parents died. We weren't bothering anybody. But some mean government agents came anyway, and split us up.Now I'm a prisoner on this space ship. The agents won't even say where we're going.I hate them.And things have started to get a bit weird. Nullspace is supposed to be empty, but when I look out of the skywindows I can see ... something. Out there. And I think it wants to get in here. With us.My name is Clarissa. I am ten years old.And they will all be sorry when my big sister comes to rescue me.Lost Tales of Solace are short side-stories set in the Lost Solace universe.

Major Grubane is commander of the Aurikaa, the most feared cruiser in the UFS arsenal. His crew is handpicked and fiercely loyal. Together, they have never failed a mission.But this time he's been sent to a key planet that is caught up in political tensions at the centre of the freedom debate. What he thought was a simple diplomatic mission turns out to be the hardest choice of his career. His orders: eliminate one million inhabitants of the planet, and ensure their compliance.Grubane has also rediscovered an ancient game called chess, and plays it against the warship's sentient AI as a form of mental training. But maybe it could become more than that as he finds himself asking questions.Can orders be reinterpreted? How many moves ahead is it possible for one man to plan? And how many players are involved in this game?Lost Tales of Solace are short side-stories set in the Lost Solace universe.

Helene Vermalle is an expert in Emergent AI Socialisation, invited to assist a secret military project.Her role? Helping ViraUHX, the most advanced AI in the universe, to pass through four theoretical development stages. But it's not easy training a mind that surpasses Helene in raw intellect, and is capable of killing her with a single tantrum.On top of this, she must prove her loyalty to the oppressive government hovering over her shoulder. They want a weapon. She wants to instil an overriding sense of morality.Will Helene nurture a GERTY, a Data, or a HAL 9000?Lost Tales of Solace are short side-stories set in the Lost Solace universe.

Welcome to Tecant.Nothing ever happens here.Until today.Ruabon Nadarl is just another low-ranking member of the scan crew, slaving away for the oppressive UFS government which "liberated" his homeworld. To help pass the time during long shifts he builds secret personalities into the robots he controls.Then Ruabon detects an intruder on the surface of a vital communications tower.He could just report it and let the deadly UFS commandos take over, while Ruabon returns to obscurity.Or he could break UFS laws and try to capture the intruder himself. For the UFS, only the outcome matters, not the method. If his custom-programmed drones can save the day, he'll be a hero.And if he fails, he'll be dead.Lost Tales of Solace are short side-stories set in the Lost Solace universe.

Two novels and three novellas that span the Lost Solace universe in one luxury hardback edition: Lost SolaceChasing SolaceHeleneGrubaneClarissa

A single decision can save - or ruin - a life.An opportunistic baby theft by a young woman in pain. Two strangers shipwrecked on a lifeless rock, unable to speak the same language. A remote cycling holiday descends into terror. One woman seeks the courage to destroy her life. A miracle unites a community, and teenagers take a stand against hypocrisy.Karl Drinkwater presents characters to root for - and characters to dread - in sixteen varied tales of humanity, endurance, and psychological suspense.

2000 Tunes. One summer of love.Mark Hopton is twenty-four, single, and obsessed with Manchester music. It's his escape into a better world.Oh man, he needs that escape. His psycho brother's on his case and in his face, his dad's in prison, and the local gangsters are twisting his melons to make him smuggle drugs. Heaven knows he's miserable now.His one ray of hope is work colleague Samantha Rees, a gorgeous and chaotic Welsh woman who rocks his world. However, Samantha is living the twenty-four hour party people lifestyle, so would never be interested in a shy outsider like him.But when a chance encounter leads to Mark and Samantha spending a perfect day together in the city centre, perhaps hope isn't fool's gold after all?

The legendary Lost Ships exist, and they harbour nightmarish horrors. Opal knows. She barely survived her first encounter with one.Despite escaping, she failed to find what she was looking for: her lost sister. Now Opal must board a second derelict Lost Ship to seek answers, and it's even more monstrous, a sickening place of death and decay. To make things worse, the military government wants her, dead or alive. Considering their reputation, dead may be better.To find her sister, Opal will risk everything: her life, her blood, her sanity. There's always a price to pay. Armed with her wits, an experimental armoured suit, and an amazing AI companion, she might just stand a chance.Ideal for fans of sentient AI ships (as in Embers of War by Gareth L. Powell), while the massive space-based abattoir conjures up the horror worlds of space from films like Alien, Pandorum and Event Horizon.

They're called the Lost Ships ... but sometimes they come back.And when they do the crews are missing, while the ships have been strangely altered, rumoured to be full of horrors.Opal Imbiana has been seeking something her whole life. It's a secret so precious she's willing to risk her life recovering it from a recently discovered Lost Ship, in a lonely nebula far from colonised space.She's just one woman, entering an alien and lethal environment. But with the aid of an amazing AI companion and experimental armoured suit, Opal might just stand a chance.

First the birds went quiet.Then the evening sky filled with strange clouds that trapped the heat below.Now Callum wakes, dripping in sweat. Something has come to his isolated Welsh farm. If he's going to keep his family alive during this single night when all hell breaks loose, he'll have to think fast. And when he sees what he's facing, he suspects even that may not be enough.Otherworldly creepiness that captures our fear of the unknown. This blast of a book can be read in one nail-biting session.

Horror lives in the shadows.It exists under the earth's surface in ancient caves. Below the vast sea's undulating waves. Under dense forest cover. Within a storm's thick, rolling clouds. And downstairs in our homes, when we hear the knife drawer rattle in the night. Even our minds and bodies harbour the alien under the skin, the childhood nightmares in our subconscious.Darkness hides things, no matter how much we strain our eyes. And sometimes those things are looking back at us.In this collection of fifteen scary stories to tell in the dark, Karl Drinkwater sews flesh onto the bones of our worst fears, full of creeping menace that seeps from urban legends and folk horror.

"Welcome to Ynys Diawl, our beautifully isolated Welsh island. We greet visitors in a special way! What? Oh, true, the English translation is Devil Island, but that's just slander.""Yes, it was the perfect escape for three strangers. Each had their own reasons for visiting. We don't care why anyone comes here! Hey now, who said the locals are violent? Surly, maybe, but we love all types, here.""Mmm, that does look like a storm coming in. A bad 'un. No escape from the island tonight. Escape? I meant ... never mind. Come down these steps with me, I have something to show you. Don't look so worried, we don't bite!"An atmospheric folk horror likened to The Wicker Man in Wales.