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Just months after the New Adventures range was abandoned by Virgin, Big Finish snapped up both the book and audio rights to the character.
Bernice set up home on the Braxiatel Collection, a small planetoid which Irving Braxiatel is converting into a museum of galactic art and history.
The series launched with a short story collection overseen by Paul Cornell. Among the writers for this collection, titled The Dead Men Diaries after Benny's famously unpublished book, are The Curse of Fatal Death writer Steven Moffat, established Benny novelists Kate Orman and Dave Stone and a number of new authors. The stories were short vignettes looking at Benny and her life, often through the eyes of the people she encounters, and was intended to provide a 'jumping on' point for those unfamiliar with Benny's exploits.
News Flash: 29th November 2001
Big Finish confirmed at ChicagoTARDIS 2001 that the Bernice Summerfield series is about to undergo a change.
Following the publication of "The Glass Prison" by Jacqueline Rayner in early 2002, BF has decided to put the printed regular novel series on hold due to declining sales. The change does not affect special book publications such as a forthcoming hardcover short story anthology edited by Paul Cornell that is planned for release in mid-2002.
More details of the books can be found below, and will be updated as and when possible.
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Bernice Paperbacks
The Dead Men Diaries
The Doomsday Manuscript
The Gods of the Underworld
The Squire's Crystal
The Infernal Nexus
The Glass Prison
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Bernice Hardbacks
A Life of Surprises
Life During Wartime
The Big Hunt
A Life Worth Living
A Life In Pieces
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The Dead Men Diaries
Edited by Paul Cornell
£6.99
£8.50 outside the UK
Who but Professor Bernice Summerfield, interstellar archaeologist, raconteur, boozer and wit, would get other people to write her autobiography albeit under threat of death from two bounty hunters sent by a publisher far too concerned about little things like deadlines?
These stories are an ideal introduction to the life of Bernice Summerfield: falling off cliffs, getting sacrificed to orange pygmies, saving the universe and trying to buy a new frock.
Cliffhanging escapes! Adventure on distant planets! Scones for tea!
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The Doomsday Manuscript
by Justin Richards
£6.99
£8.50 outside the UK
The Doomsday Manuscript: The key to finding the Lost Tomb of Rablev. Legend says that if the tomb is ever opened, the world will end.
The Braxiatel Collection: Home to Professor Bernice Summerfield, and the location of one half of the Doomsday Manuscript.
The Fifth Axis: A callous, aggressive force that is assimilating territory and acquiring art treasures and archaeological finds.
Kasagrad: The last neutral planet in the Assimilated Territories, stratetically vital and protected from the Fifth Axis by its inpenetrable defence systems.
With the party to celebrate the opening of the Braxiatel Collection and the new year still underway, Benny finds herself drawn into a web of mystery and intrigue that starts with death and gets more serious at every stage. Can she find the second half of the Doomsday Manuscript before it falls into the wrong hands? Can she trust her partner in the quest? What will she find on Kasagrad - the location of the Lost Tomb of Rablev?
And can she squeeze in another drink at "Joseppi's" - favourite haunt of black marketeers, spies, counterfeiters, Fifth Axis officers, and desperate archaeologists - before the end of the world?
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The Gods of the Underworld
by Steven Cole
£6.99
£8.50 outside the UK
There's a whisper going round that the long-lost temple of the Argian Gods of the Underworld has finally been discovered on the planet Venedel. There's a still quieter whisper that deep inside it lies the Argian Oracle, an ancient artefact that can pinpoint the whereabouts of any soul in the universe. Benny Summerfield sets out to see if the whispers are true and to see if it can tell her the whereabouts of her missing lover. She's got nothing to lose.
Reaching Venedel, Benny finds it under siege from an over-zealous Federation, alleging human rights atrocities and starving the planet out until its people capitulate to its terms. Despite this, a team of Nishtubi mercenaries are running the blockade to supply aid for the Venedelans. But why? They have nothing to gain.
Caught between jingoistic natives, Nishtubi heavies, a plague of ancient killers and the cold, undying secrets of the Gods of the Underworld, Benny and her allies have nowhere to run and are left facing nothing but trouble.
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The Squire's Crystal
by Jacqueline Rayner
£6.99
£8.50 outside the UK
Legend tells of an evil sorceress who used the power of magical crystals to transfer her mind into the bodies of others. Her reign of terror was long and bloody, and her final defeat the cause of great rejoicing.
But that's just a legend. A story told to children. Isn't it? I mean, it's ridiculous. It couldn't have really happened could it?
Finding the last resting place of the Crystal Sorceress is an archaeological dream on a par with discovering the Holy Grail. So it's hardly likely that someone will just offer the solution to Professor Bernice Summerfield on a plate.
But sometimes the unlikely actually happens. And one thing that's very, very unlikely is that Benny will suddenly find herself to be a member of the opposite gender!
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The Infernal Nexus
by Dave Stone
£6.99
£8.50 outside the UK
Acting on an abstruse tip-off from the reknowned paraphysiologist Dr Rupert Gilhooly (a man who, like, knows a lot of stuff) one Bernice Summerfield has found herself on a probe-ship heading deep into the Problematic Heart of the galaxy - not knowing what, or quite who, she might find.
What she finds is Station Control. A place that exists, simultaniously, in four hundred and seventeen dimensions, a brawling, souk-like Nexus between every world that can, or has or ever will be. And one of those dimensions is Hell.
Bernice knows nothing of the rivalries and power-plays going on here. So she blunders right into them and makes a complete hash of everything, natch. And one of the particular whoms she finds, quite frankly, what with one thing and another, she could quite well do without. In her current state.
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The Glass Prison
by Jacqueline Rayner
£6.99
£8.50 outside the UK
Don't ever annoy the Fifth Axis. They might throw you into the Glass Prison on Deirbhile and then throw away the key.
Once you're inside, there's nowhere to hide. They can see your every movement. They control you. You're going to be watched for the rest of your life, wherever you go, whoever you are. Even if you're a professor of archaeology. Even if you're a friend of the famous Irving Braxiatel, and you've written several popular coffee-table books.
Even if you're pregnant. Even if your baby's due any day now.
But, of course, they know all about your baby. And they're planning to take it away.
That is, unless the loony cultists you're locked up with don't get it first.
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A Life of Surprises
Edited by Paul Cornell
£14.99
£16.50 outside the UK
Professor Bernice Summerfield, interstellar archaeologist, adventurer, romantic and drinker, has had either one very big life or a number of only slightly smaller ones.
This anthology contains stories from many times and places across her long career, ranging from the starkly dramatic, through the thrilling, to the hilarious.
It links Bernice to her roots, as well as sending her forward into new adventures. And it celebrates a decade of Bernice in print. Cheers!
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Life During Wartime
Edited by Paul Cornell
£14.99
£16.50 outside the UK
The Braxiatel Collection has been occupied by the Fifth Axis. This shouldn't have happened: Brax picked this place to be safe, and surely he knows the history of time and space?
Bernice and her friends find themselves living under a military government. Bev joins the resistance. Adrian is thrown into a prison camp for aliens. Jason finds a comfortable little niche for himself in the new administration. Bernice's half-human son, Peter, is now under threat every minute of every day.
Bernice finds herself caught in the middle of the occupation, her old friends, and her desperate need to protect her child.
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The Big Hunt
Edited by Lance Parkin
£14.99
£16.50 outside the UK
Professor Bernice Summerfield is enjoying a break. A break from work, a break from the rebuilding of the Braxiatel Collection and a break from Jason, Adrian and even her beloved Peter.
She feels she's entitled to a bit of downtime. So, why won't anyone leave her alone? Before long, she's being sent off after an old space artefact only to crashland on a planet apparently devoid of life. Devoid of life, that is, except for the robotic animals, big game hunters and ruthless corporate administrators of the type she's learned to know and mistrust.
Benny realises that to survive she must join in on what might be the most dangerous 'game' she's ever played...
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A Life Worth Living
Edited by Simon Guerrier
£14.99
£16.50 outside the UK
The war is over. The Braxiatel Collection is back to normal. Better than that, people are all making more of an effort to rebuild, to get on, to re-establish the Collection at the forefront of academic excellence. Benny and Jason are back together. Life is good.
It's not going to last, is it?
Soon Benny is up to her eyeballs in strange deaths, sinister cults, peculiar love affairs and a Collection full of people who haven't yet stopped fighting.
Spend a whole year with Benny!
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A Life In Pieces
Edited by Gary Russell
£14.99
£16.50 outside the UK
A collection of three novellas, written by Dave Stone, Paul Sutton and Joseph Lidster, edited by Gary Russell.
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