The TARDIS has died. Stranded in early twentieth-century London, Bernice can only stand and watch as it slowly disintegrates.

In the East End a series of grisly murders has been committed. Is this the work of the ghostly Springheel Jack or, as Bernice suspects something even more sinister?

In a tiny shop in Bloomsbury, the master of a grand order of sorcerers is nearing the end of a seven-hundred year quest for a fabled magic wand.

And on a barren world in the far-distant future the Queen of a dying race pleads for the help of an old hermit named Muldwych, while Ace leads a group of guerrillas in a desperate struggle against their alien oppressors.

These events are related. Perhaps the Doctor knows how. But the Doctor has gone away.

NIGEL ROBINSON was for several years the editor in charge of novelizations based on DOCTOR WHO television stories. Now a freelance writer and editor, he has written several DOCTOR WHO novelizations, various other books about the programme, and one of the earliest New Adventures, TIMEWYRM: APOCALYPSE - as well as novels based on Indiana Jones, among numerous TV and film spin-offs.