John Seale

Four friends with an unusual power become stranded in a blizzard and are confronted by a deadly alien force. As they try to stop this unparalleled horror, the fate of the world is in their hands.

At the end of World War II, a mysterious, horribly burned man who claims not to remember his name, known only as the "English patient," lies near death in an Italian villa. He is cared for by a quietly desperate young nurse, Hana, herself a victim of the war. With her at the villa are Kip, a young Sikh bomb-disposal expert, and a shadowy thief with bandaged hands named Caravaggio. The key to the burned man's past may lie in his commonplace book, a...

While attending a conference in Istanbul, Dr. Alithea Binnie happens to encounter a djinn who offers her three wishes in exchange for his freedom. This presents two problems: first, she doubts that he's real, and second, because she's a scholar of story and mythology, she knows all the cautionary tales of wishes gone wrong. The djinn pleads his case by telling her fantastical stories of his past. Eventually, she's beguiled and makes a wish that surprises...