Part of Series
"You're on your own, Bernice" Bernice Summerfield has drawn the short straw. Not for her the pleasures of intergalactic conferences and highbrow lecture tours. Oh no. She's forced to take two overlooked freshers on their very first dig. And just when it seems things can't get any worse, her no-good ex-husband Jason turns up, claiming that he is in deadly danger. Benny finally begins to believe his wild claims, but unfortunately only after he has been kidnapped from his hotel room. Feeling guilty, she sets out to rescue him. Well, let's face it, no one else is going to. Her only clue is a dusty artefact that Jason claimed was part of an ancient and powerful weapon. But Professor Bernice Summerfield PhD knows that's just silly nonsense. She's been an archaeologist long enough to know that lost alien civilisations do not leave their most powerful weapons lying around for any nutter to find. Do they? Once again Benny is all that stands between Jason and his own mistakes, as she tries to prevent the wrong people acquiring this terrible and somewhat unlikely weapon - a weapon rumoured to have powers beyond the sun. NOTE: This story is based on the original novel of the same name that was the second in the series of New Adventures released by Virgin Publishing Limited.
Author
Jacqueline Rayner is a best selling British author, best known for her work with the licensed fiction based on the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. Her first professional writing credit came when she adapted Paul Cornell's Virgin New Adventure novel Oh No It Isn't! for the audio format, the first release by Big Finish. (The novel featured the character of Bernice Summerfield and was part of a spin-off series from Doctor Who.) She went on to do five of the six Bernice Summerfield audio adaptations and further work for Big Finish before going to work for BBC Books on their Doctor Who lines. Her first novels came in 2001, with the Eighth Doctor Adventures novel EarthWorld for BBC Books and the Bernice Summerfield novel The Squire's Crystal for Big Finish. Rayner has written several other Doctor Who spin-offs and was also for a period the executive producer for the BBC on the Big Finish range of Doctor Who audio dramas. She has also contributed to the audio range as a writer. In all, her Doctor Who and related work (Bernice Summerfield stories), consists of five novels, a number of short stories and four original audio plays. Rayner has edited several anthologies of Doctor Who short stories, mainly for Big Finish, and done work for Doctor Who Magazine. Beyond Doctor Who, her work includes the children's television tie-in book Horses Like Blaze. With the start of the new television series of Doctor Who in 2005 and a shift in the BBC's Doctor Who related book output, Rayner has become, along with Justin Richards and Stephen Cole, one of the regular authors of the BBC's New Series Adventures. She has also abridged several of the books to be made into audiobooks. She was also a member of Doctor Who Magazine's original Time Team.
