Showing results by author "Avram Davidson" in All Categories

Like Malamud and Jackson, Avram Davidson brought a unique level of charm, wit, and intrigue to the short story form. Collected here for the first time are his remarkable mystery tales, including the 1815 investigations of New York's Chief Constable; a sinister lesson in New England thrift; New Amsterdam river pirates versus the KGB; treachery in nursing home; and expatriates who will kill for a little peace and quiet.

In his science fiction novel Rork!, Ran Loman wants only to be left alone, to get away from it all. That's why he volunteers for duty on Pia 2, the most remote, isolated world in the Galaxy. The problem on Pia 2 is redwing, a plant used throughout the galaxy as a medical fixative. Redwing grows ony on Pia 2. And lately, less and less is being harvested. Lomar's assignment: find out why, and do something about it.

Set during the reign of the Aztecs in Mexico, two alien forces, dormant for centuries, enter a confrontation on a remote mountain that will decide Earth's fate. The great old ones benevolently ruled before the cruel Aztecs were shaped by the Huitzil, who came from the evil stars and taught the Aztecs how to conquer and demanded endless human sacrifice.

Rond and his crew had been left to die slowly on an unknown planet. As they moved warily through the alien forest they heard the eerie rhythms coming toward them. Then they saw the grotesque figures. A bizarre army of screaming women! Masked, brandishing gleaming swords, rattling their terrible death drums, howling with the fury of some primitive blood lust - and they were attacking! As the scarlet waves of growling women approached, Rond and his men began to run - back into the dark forest of looming horror...

Jon-Joras had come to Earth simply to oversee arrangements for a dragon hunt to amuse the king. These hunts were as much pageantry as sport - the dragons, brought to Earth centuries before as pets of an alien race, were powerful but slow-witted....

Earth was old, her riches gone. Her children too had left her, all but a few who lived peacefully off the land. And then came the Kar-Chee, to crack Earth open and suck out what remained of her richness, threatening the twilight of the old planet with an evil beyond anything that had gone before. With them they brought their servants, beasts so cruel and horrible that men could recall their like only from ancestral nightmares, and named them "dragons"....

The Enquiries of Doctor Eszterhazy is a collection of historical mystery fantasy short stories by Avram Davidson, featuring his scholarly detective character Doctor Eszterhazy and set in an imaginary European country. It never got better than this - short stories set in the "triune monarchy of Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania" in the decades before the World Wars.