Armchair Fiction presents extra-large editions of classic science fiction double novels with original illustrations. Author Peter Dakin spins the first tale, called “The House That Hate Built.” Jack Barron had a bright future. As a hard-working bookkeeper for a big Wall Street firm he was well thought of and liked by his co-workers. He was even engaged to the boss’s beautiful daughter, Donna King. Yep, everything looked rosy for Jack Barron. Then one day Jack’s world came tumbling down. A letter arrived—a letter explaining that his fiancée Donna had up and married some interloper named Bruce Hakin. Hakin was a guy with surgical skills who wasn’t really a surgeon; he had a polite exterior but was cold as a fish most of the time; and he lived in a gloomy estate (on Mars no less!) called Dark Mountain Castle. So into this grim Martian mansion, went Donna—the bride of the Beast—to learn a secret more terrible than the human mind could stand. But Jack Barron wasn’t going to take it lying down! So off to Mars he went to rescue the woman he loved from a fate so terrible it nearly defied description… The second novel is “Nightmare Tower” by noted Sci-fi veteran Sam Merwin, Jr. Mars was a dying planet. When the first Earth colonists came they had discovered a planet already in its death throes. The ancient Martian race had disappeared, leaving towering, decaying structures as the only evidence of its former intelligent life. But the Earth colonists were quick to take advantage of these ancient towers, using them to help build their fledgling colonies. However, with Earth’s expansion onto the red planet there eventually came reports of strange incidents. Something was invading the brains of the Earth colonists—something hostile, something utterly alien. So when a hard-working, telepathic young Earth woman was coerced into making a sudden trip to Mars, little did she realize that her mental powers would play a pivotal role in the survival of nearly a million colonists and the defeat of an alien power that threatened not only Mars, but possibly Earth itself.
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