'48

SUMMARY: James Herbert transcends the horror medium with '48, a blistering tale of post-World War II London overrun with fear and blood. Delivering not only terrifying imagery, but pulse-pounding action and historical adventure, it is destined to become a classic.It is a London Too Terrifying to Imagine. Already crippled by the relentless Nazi bombing, this once-beautiful city has been depopulated by a hideous blood plague unleashed in the final convulsive collapse of the German regime. Now, human vampires wander the rubble-strewn streets, desperately searching for the only thing that can cure them...But not all survivors have been afflicted, and Hoke -- a lone hero accompanied only by his trusty dog and bitter memories -- is relentlessly pursued for the clean blood that courses through his veins. Yet his flight soon takes on a different meaning as he saves two women and a former German soldier. Banding together, they flee into the city's underground tunnels where an unexpected betrayal that delivers them right into the hands of their deadly adversaries prompts Hoke to take a stand against these monsters once and for all.''With '48, James Herbert delivers another triumphant thriller that blends two-fisted action with the supernatural''. -- Douglas E. Winter World War II has been over for three years, since 1945. The Allies lost. So did the Nazis. The only winner was a hideous plague, the Blood Death, hatched in Hitler's secret labs and sent over the Channel in a last grim rain of V-2s. The Fuhrer's final horror brings a death neither merciful nor dignified, but swift and certain: the blood coagulates suddenly in the veins until it stops the heart and bursts the brain, transforming a living body into a screaming mass of suffering tissue yearning only for extinction. London is a ruin, roamed by packs of feral dogs, the occasional leopard loping along Regent Street - and a few AB negative survivors who are mysteriously immune to the Blood Death. Hoke is an American loner who lives with his dog and his Matchless G3L motorcycle on the upper floors of Buckingham Palace. Pursued by slow dying Blackshirts who scavenge the AB-negs for blood and body parts, Hoke has survived so far through cleverness, speed, and sheer brutality. But his luck is running out. Led by a home-grown British fascist named Hubble, the Blackshirts are closing in. Then Hoke finds out that he is not alone. Other AB-negs are as determined to survive as he is - and as willing to fight. They include two women, a Lady and a factory girl; an air-raid warden; and an escaped German POW. This unlikely team must confront the Blackshirts in their den - even if it means descending to the Underground, where the stairways are heaped with bones, gasoline-soaked rats are used as self-propelled firebombs, and the only way to the future is to clamber over the decomposing corpses of the past. Welcome to '48, where the living envy the dead. As millions of readers around the world will testify, James Herbert's ability to shock and enthral is matchless. Now, in '48, he has surpassed his own remarkable achievements to create an electrifying new novel of pure heart-stopping action and invention that will take readers to new levels of terror and excitement. In 1945, Hitler unleashes the Blood Death on Britain as his final act of vengeance. Hoke, an American pilot and one of a tiny minority with a rare blood group unaffected by the deadly disease, has survived alone among the debris and the dead of London for three years. Now, in 1948, a slow-dying group of Fascist Blackshirts believe their only hope is a transfusion of blood from one of Hoke's kind. Ever more desperate as their deaths approach, they're after his blood. An American leads a battle against a band of fascist vampires in London, which has been ravaged by a plague manufactured by the Nazis after a World War II in which there are no winners. Reprint.