The first book in the Between Earth and Sky trilogy, inspired by the civilizations of the Pre-Columbian Americas and woven into a tale of celestial prophecies, political intrigue, and forbidden magic. A god will return When the earth and sky converge Under the black sun In the holy city of Tova, the winter solstice is usually a time for celebration and renewal, but this year it coincides with a solar eclipse, a rare celestial event proscribed by the Sun Priest as an unbalancing of the world. Meanwhile, a ship launches from a distant city bound for Tova and set to arrive on the solstice. The captain of the ship, Xiala, is a disgraced Teek whose song can calm the waters around her as easily as it can warp a man’s mind. Her ship carries one passenger. Described as harmless, the passenger, Serapio, is a young man, blind, scarred, and cloaked in destiny. As Xiala well knows, when a man is described as harmless, he usually ends up being a villain.

A haunting Orwellian novel about the terrors of state surveillance, from the acclaimed author of The Housekeeper and the Professor. On an unnamed island off an unnamed coast, objects are disappearing: first hats, then ribbons, birds, roses--until things become much more serious. Most of the island's inhabitants are oblivious to these changes, while those few imbued with the power to recall the lost objects live in fear of the draconian Memory Police, who are committed to ensuring that what has disappeared remains forgotten. When a young woman who is struggling to maintain her career as a novelist discovers that her editor is in danger from the Memory Police, she concocts a plan to hide him beneath her floorboards. As fear and loss close in around them, they cling to her writing as the last way of preserving the past. A surreal, provocative fable about the power of memory and the trauma of loss, The Memory Police is a stunning new work from one of the most exciting contemporary authors writing in any language.

In A Day of Fallen Night, Samantha Shannon sweeps readers back to the universe of Priory of the Orange Tree and into the lives of four women, showing us a course of events that shaped their world for generations to come. Tunuva Melim is a sister of the Priory. For fifty years, she has trained to slay wyrms – but none have appeared since the Nameless One, and the younger generation is starting to question the Priory's purpose. To the north, in the Queendom of Inys, Sabran the Ambitious has married the new King of Hróth, narrowly saving both realms from ruin. Their daughter, Glorian, trails in their shadow – exactly where she wants to be. The dragons of the East have slept for centuries. Dumai has spent her life in a Seiikinese mountain temple, trying to wake the gods from their long slumber. Now someone from her mother's past is coming to upend her fate. When the Dreadmount erupts, bringing with it an age of terror and violence, these women must find the strength to protect humankind from a devastating threat.

Medusa Foreword by Miriam Robbins Dexter Variously described as a fiend, a monster, a charming seductress who was felled by the righteous might of Perseus, son of Zeus, Medusa is perhaps the most misunderstood of mythological women. Described by male historians, poets and epic writers such as Hesiod and Ovid, there are many aspects of her imagined life which find resonance in the struggles of the outsider, the cursed and those used in the service another's vision of the world around them. This fascinating collection brings together new stories and ancient origins, offering a wider perspective on the whole life of the powerful, wonderful Medusa. About the series: Discover the mythology of humankind through its heroes, characters, gods and immortal figures. Myths, Gods and Immortals brings together the new and the ancient, familiar stories with a fresh and imaginative twist. Each book brings back to life a legendary, mythological or folkloric figure, with completely new stories alongside the original tales and a 30,000 word essay which emphasises ancient and modern connections, tracing history and stories across continents, cultures and peoples. New and emerging writers from open submissions reveal hidden themes, casting fresh perspectives on well known stories, alongside the specially commissioned story of the origins and the cultural background from the era. The first titles are Medusa, Odin, Anansi and Circe.

After a storm has killed off all the island's men, two women in a 1600s Norwegian coastal village struggle to survive against both natural forces and the men who have been sent to rid the community of alleged witchcraft. Finnmark, Norway, 1617. Twenty-year-old Maren Bergensdatter stands on the craggy coast, watching the sea break into a sudden and reckless storm. Forty fishermen, including her brother and father, are drowned and left broken on the rocks below. With the menfolk wiped out, the women of the tiny Northern town of Vardø must fend for themselves. Three years later, a sinister figure arrives. Absalom Cornet comes from Scotland, where he burned witches in the northern isles. He brings with him his young Norwegian wife, Ursa, who is both heady with her husband's authority and terrified by it. In Vardø, and in Maren, Ursa sees something she has never seen before: independent women. But Absalom sees only a place untouched by God and flooded with a mighty evil. As Maren and Ursa are pushed together and are drawn to one another in ways that surprise them both, the island begins to close in on them with Absalom's iron rule threatening Vardø's very existence. Inspired by the real events of the Vardø storm and the 1620 witch trials, The Mercies is a feminist story of love, evil, and obsession, set at the edge of civilization.

The beautifully imagined debut fantasy novel inspired by the likes of Lord of the Rings and Magician. A young woman's yearning to become something more is brought to alarming fruition when she is pitted against the source of a malignant blight affecting the natural order of her world. *** A broken god. A bleeding world. And the power within her to save it. *** Beyond the veil, the spirit realm connects all living things together. The ocean to the sky. The rain to the ground. The air, and the trees. But there is a darkness bleeding through the veil, tearing spiritlife out by the roots, leaving a lifeless void in its wake. The seasons have stopped turning, life withers where it should flourish, and vicious raiders prowl the lands. And in the heart of the darkness, a mad, broken god crouches, playing puppet master with the human race. Fae is a gifted healer, and the only human in the elven tree-city of Arolynos. Brought to Arolynos as a young orphan, she remembers nothing of her life beforehand, but she has felt the eyes of the spirits her whole life. Never before have they deigned to speak to her. Until the day the trees scream. The spirits are dying, and the world is dying with them. Gifted with a seed of power by the spirits themselves, Fae is the only one who can save them. She alone must venture into the darkness.
To defeat a broken god. Before the natural order collapses completely.

The beautifully imagined debut fantasy novel inspired by the likes of Lord of the Rings and Magician. A young woman's yearning to become something more is brought to alarming fruition when she is pitted against the source of a malignant blight affecting the natural order of her world. *** A broken god. A bleeding world. And the power within her to save it. *** Beyond the veil, the spirit realm connects all living things together. The ocean to the sky. The rain to the ground. The air, and the trees. But there is a darkness bleeding through the veil, tearing spiritlife out by the roots, leaving a lifeless void in its wake. The seasons have stopped turning, life withers where it should flourish, and vicious raiders prowl the lands. And in the heart of the darkness, a mad, broken god crouches, playing puppet master with the human race. Fae is a gifted healer, and the only human in the elven tree-city of Arolynos. Brought to Arolynos as a young orphan, she remembers nothing of her life beforehand, but she has felt the eyes of the spirits her whole life. Never before have they deigned to speak to her. Until the day the trees scream. The spirits are dying, and the world is dying with them. Gifted with a seed of power by the spirits themselves, Fae is the only one who can save them. She alone must venture into the darkness.
To defeat a broken god. Before the natural order collapses completely.

Mal's life is over. Her afterlife is only just beginning… By turns irreverently funny and deeply moving, this debut contemporary fantasy is perfect for fans of They Both Die at the End and The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. Mal Caldera—former rockstar, retired wild-child and excommunicated black sheep of her Catholic family—is dead. Not that she cares. She only feels bad that her younger sister, Cris, has been left alone with their religious zealot of a mother, picking up the pieces Mal has left behind. While her fellow ghosts party their afterlives away at an abandoned mansion they call the Haunt, Mal is determined to make contact with Cris from beyond the grave. She manages to enlist the help of reluctant local medium Ren, and together, they concoct a plan to pass on a message to Cris. But the more time they spend together, the more both begin to wonder what might have been if they'd met before Mal died. Mal knows it's wrong to hold on so tightly to her old life. Bad things happen to ghosts who interfere with the living, and Mal can't help wondering if she's hurting the people she loves by hanging around, haunting their lives. But Mal has always been selfish, and letting go might just be the hardest thing she's ever had to do… Funny, emotional and life-affirming, The Afterlife of Mal Caldera will have readers laughing one minute and sobbing the next.

The articles with which David Lodge entertained and delighted readers of the Independent on Sunday and The Washington Post are now revised, expanded, and collected together in book form. The art of fiction is considered under a wide range of headings, such as the Intrusive Author, Suspense, the Epistolary Novel, Time-shift, Magic Realism and Symbolism, and each topic is illustrated by a passage or two taken from classic or modern fiction. Drawing on writers as diverse as Henry James and Martin Amis, Jane Austen and Fay Weldon and Henry Fielding and James Joyce, David Lodge makes accesible to the general reader the richness and variety of British and American fiction. Technical terms, such as Interior Monologue, Metafiction, Intertextuality and the Unreliable Narrator, are lucidly explained and their applications demonstrated. Bringing to criticism the verve and humour of his own novels, David Lodge has provided essential reading for students of literature, aspiring writers, and anyone who wishes to understand how literature works. Beginning (Jane Austen, Ford Madox Ford) -- The intrusive author (George Eliot, E.M. Forster) -- Suspense (Thomas Hardy) -- Teenage Skaz (J.D. Salinger) -- The epistolary novel (Michael Frayn) -- Point of view (Henry James) -- Mystery (Rudyard Kipling) -- Names (David Lodge, Paul Auster) -- The stream of consciousness (Virginia Woolf) -- Interior monologue (James Joyce) -- Defamiliarization (Charlotte Bronte) -- The sense of place (Martin Amis) -- Lists (F. Scott Fitzgerald) -- Introducing a character (Christopher Isherwood) -- Surprise (William Makepeace Thackeray) -- Time-shift (Muriel Spark) -- The reader in the text (Laurence Sterne) -- Weather (Jane Austen, Charles Dickens) -- Repetition (Ernest Hemingway) -- Fancy prose (Vladimir Nabokov) -- Intertextuality (Joseph Conrad) -- The experimental novel (Henry Green) -- The comic novel (Kingsley Amis) -- Magic realism (Milan Kundera) -- Staying on the surface (Malcolm Bradbury) -- Showing and telling (Henry Fielding) -- Telling in different voices (Fay Weldon) -- A sense of the past (John Fowles). Imagining the future (George Orwell) -- Symbolism (D.H. Lawrence) -- Allegory (Samuel Butler) -- Epiphany (John Updike) -- Coincidence (Henry James) -- The unreliable narrator (Kazuo Ishiguro) -- The exotic (Graham Greene) -- Chapters etc. (Tobias Smollett, Laurence Sterne, Sil Walter Scott, George Eliot, James Joyce) -- The telephone (Evelyn Waugh) -- Surrealism (Leonora Carringotn) -- Irony (Arnold Bennett) -- Motivation (George Eliot) -- Duration (Donald Barthelme) -- Implication (William Cooper) -- The title (George Gissing) -- Ideas (Anthony Burgess) -- The non-fiction novel (Thomas Carlyle) -- Metafiction (John Barth) -- The uncanny (Edgar Allen Poe) -- Narrative structure (Leonard Michaels) -- Aporia (Samuel Beckett) -- Ending (Jane Austen, William Golding)

On a windswept island off the coast of the Kingdom of Bavaugh, a long-awaited royal heir is born. In ancient custom, a blessing ceremony takes place to bestow the princess with magical gifts - along with a terrible curse. Except this is not the love story you know. There is no prince to save the day, just three women - the Queen, her chief Lady-in Waiting and Sel, a Master's Apprentice - who concoct a desperate plan of misdirect that changes the course of all their lives.In the chaotic aftermath of the blessing ceremony, Sel flees the castle with the cursed princess, promising to raise her in secrecy. Meanwhile, confined behind castle walls, another child grows up in her place. But plain and bookish Talia is not the princess everyone was expecting and, as Sel roams the depths of the kingdom with beautiful and otherworldly Briar, the end of the curse edges ever closer.Because dark magic cannot be tricked, and a vengeful sorceress has old scores to settle . . .

A sarcastically funny, dark fantasy romance reimagining of Hercules from Amazon bestselling author Jasmine Mas.I'm just a girl. And it turns out, I'm Hercules. I'm struggling to survive in a Titan infested world where Spartans, immortals from twelve royal families who have god-like powers and obscene wealth, rule over all. A shy-stammering foster child with nothing, I keep my head down, cover my scars, and focus on excelling in school. At least, I try to. Then it happens.My blood test reveals I'm part of the powerful elite. I'm one of them. A Spartan.Forced to attend the Spartan War Academy, I undergo the most harrowing test of all time to see if I have what it takes to be an immortal. There's just a few problems. Achilles and Patro are my scary mentors. Kharon, the ferryman of death, and Augustus, the son of war, are my terrifying professors. Also, I'm pretty sure either someone's stalking me everywhere I go, or my sanity's slipping––I have a bad feeling both are true.I'm surrounded by Villains and they're smothering me with their hate, obsession, and dark possessiveness. Too bad for them, they have no clue just who they're messing with.