James Darke – Witches #4 The Escape

James Darke – Witches #4 The Escape (Sphere, 1984)

THE SHADOW OF FEAR

In a shattered time of Civil War and broken laws vultures like Robert Monk cast the shadow of their dank wings over England. The Witchfinder: the fiend in human form who guided the hands that held the branding irons, tied the cords and applied cruel tortures to the bodies of innocent men and women accused of witchcraft.

Monk had lost the slattern Eliza Hall and two of the brutal Mendoza brothers, slain by the avenging angel John Ferris – but Ferris’s former sweetheart had become Monk’s whore, and the barbarous Daniel Mendoza had sworn vengeance for his brothers’ deaths. The duel between Ferris and the devil’s men would be savage and grim – but what of the duel between Ferris and Mary, the maiden who had become a hound of hell?

Thanks to Steve Goodwin for the cover scan and blurb

James Darke – Witches #5 The Meeting

James Darke – Witches #5 The Meeting (Sphere, 1985)

TERROR OF THE TORTURER

His career in the Royalist Army cut tragically short by an accident, Captain John Ferris had sailed for Virginia in search of a new life with his ravishing gypsy wife Sarah. Here at last it seemed he might shed his bitter memories of the Civil War – and of the atrocities that he and his kind had suffered at the hands of that brutal torturer and withfinder, Robert Monk. But it was not to be.

Even in the New World, the fiendish Monk would continue to haunt him – and the terrors of the past would be nothing compared to the butchery that was to come…

Thanks to Steve Goodwin for the cover scan and blurb

James Darke – Witches #6 The Killing

James Darke – Witches #6 The Killing (Sphere, 1985)

ORGY OF THE OCCULTISTS

Bitter-hearted and sworn to vengeance, John Ferris returned to England to seek out the man who had so cruelly destroyed the new life he had forged for himself in the colonies. His name was Robert Monk, the Witchfinder – the pitiless torturer whose vile devices and insatiable appetite for blood and suffering had seen many innocent folk put to death in the name of God.

The blackened corpses that Ferris and his albino partner found hanging from roadside gibbets were like signposts pointing towards the man they sought. But still he eluded them – until they learned of the night of wickedness and necromancy that a coven of aristocratic warlocks and their dams were to hold in a ruined Essex abbey. Here at last was the lure that would surely draw the Witchfinder from his lair – and into the trap that Ferris had so devilishly prepared for him…

Thanks to Steve Goodwin for the cover scan and blurb

James Darke – Witches #7 The Feud

James Darke – Witches #7 The Feud (Sphere, 1986)

SUMMONS TO THE SACRIFICE!

‘It is when you think yourself safe,’ said John Ferris as he sheltered from the bitter wind, ‘that you are most at risk.’ And his words proved chillingly prophetic. For though he had suffered grievously from the ministrations of those evil men – and women – who celebrated the Black Arts, he could little have guessed how close at hand his enemies were. Not many leagues distant, in cellars that reeked of monkshood, henbane and thorn-apple, dark garbed figures with arcane names were pursuing their gruesome rites by the sinister light of black candles. And before long even the watchful Ferris would be lured into their midst, and find himself as helpless as a new-born babe in the face of their fiendish magick…

Thanks to Steve Goodwin for the cover scan and blurb

James Darke – Witches #8 The Plague

James Darke – Witches #8 The Plague (Sphere, 1986)

PERILS OF THE PLAGUE-VESSEL!

They scrambled hungrily ashore as the ship broke up in the waves. They had made their voyage in the darkest shadows of the hold, among a cargo of spices that would mask the taint of rotting meat on rich men’s tables. Such putrid flesh would have been much to the taste of these long-tailed stowaways. They had brought with them a horror so scarce viler than the abominations bold John Ferris had seen ordained in the name of strange, secret religions. He had seen death in many forms, but few as agonising and long-drawn-out as this devil-cursed affliction. And though the name of the ship that bore the plague was The Hope of Mankind, what succour could there be for any man – no matter what dark god he called upon for salvation – who stood in the way of so foul and terrible a pestilence?

Thanks too Steve Goodwin for the cover scan and blurb