Happy Publication Day: 5th April 2018!
It’s paperback publication day over here near the sunny Thames, and we’re delighted to announce the release of these wonderful novels!
Runelight – Joanne Harris
The next gripping tale of magic, adventure and Norse mythology from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Chocolat and The Gospel of Loki.
A chilling prop
hecy from the Oracle. A conflict between two girls. And with just twelve days to stave off the Apocalypse, carnage is about to be unleashed . . .
The squabbling Norse gods and goddesses of Runemarks are back! And there’s a feisty new heroine on the scene: Maggie, a girl the same age as Maddy but brought up a world apart – literally, in World’s End, the focus of the Order in which Maddy was raised. Now the Order is destroyed, Chaos is filling the vacuum left behind . . . and is breaching the everyday world.
Six hundred miles apart, two girls each bear on their skin a runemark: a symbol of the Old Days when the known Worlds were ruled by the gods from their sky citadel, Asgard.
Now Asgard lies in ruins, and the power of the gods has long since been destroyed.
Or so everyone thinks.
But nothing is lost for ever, and the gods haven’t given up yet (nor stopped squabbling!) and they want the power of the runes borne by Maddy and Maggie – these new runes, which carry huge potential, their runelight shining out as a portent to the future.
Soon both girls are swept into a maelstrom of cataclysmic events that are to draw them closer and closer to each other, and nearer and nearer to a horrific struggle where each must prove where their loyalty lies . . .
Filled with inventive and humorous detail, trickery and treachery, carnage and lunacy, Runelight is the second title – following Runemarks – in a series of gloriously imaginative and dramatic tales about the Norse gods.
Here’s what people have been saying about Joanne Harris:
‘Goblins, glams, ancient gods and subterranean adventure’ Sunday Telegraph
‘Especially enjoyable are Harris’ aphorisms, her satire of joyless piety and the comically irreverant vernacular spoken by a dissolute golbin and the trickster god Loki’ Sunday Times
‘Joanne Harris is one of those authors that you can count on to deliver incredibly detailed and rewarding worlds’ Starburst Magazine
This delightful novel is available in paperback today!
Xeelee: Vengeance – Stephen Baxter
One of the world’s bestselling science fiction authors returns to the series which made his name. The Xeelee are back for the last time . . .
Half a million years in the future, on a dead, war-ravaged world at the centre of the Galaxy, there is a mile-high statue of Michael Poole.
Poole, born on Earth in the fourth millennium, was one of mankind’s most influential heroes. He was not a warrior, not an emperor. He was an engineer, a builder of wormhole transit systems. But Poole’s work would ultimately lead to a vast and destructive conflict, a million-year war between humanity and the enigmatic, powerful aliens known as the Xeelee.
The Xeelee won, but at a huge cost. And, defeated in a greater war, the Xeelee eventually fled the universe. Most of them.
A handful were left behind, equipped with time travel capabilities, their task to tidy up: to reorder history more to the Xeelee’s liking. That million-year war with humankind was one blemish. It had to be erased. And in order to do that, a lone Xeelee was sent back in time to remove Michael Poole from history . . .
And Stephen has received some glowing praise:
‘A sense of grandeur few other SF novelists can even hope to match’ SFX Magazine
‘If you’re in search of some gripping science fiction utilising big concepts and backed by brilliant writing, look no further’ Starburst Magazine
Get the gripping conclusion to this series in paperback today!
Blackwing – Ed McDonald
You think you know Misery? You’ve not seen anything yet . . .
The republic faces annihilation, despite the vigilance of Galharrow’s Blackwings. When a raven tattoo rips itself from his arm to deliver a desperate message, Galharrow and a mysterious noblewoman must investigate a long dead sorcerer’s legacy. But there is a conspiracy within the citadel: traitors, flesh-eaters and the ghosts of the wastelands seek to destroy them, but if they cannot solve the ancient wizard’s paradox, the Deep Kings will walk the earth again, and all will be lost.
The war with the Eastern Empire ended in stalemate some eighty years ago, thanks to Nall’s ‘Engine’, a wizard-crafted weapon so powerful even the Deep Kings feared it. The strike of the Engine created the Misery – a wasteland full of ghosts and corrupted magic that now forms a No Man’s Land along the frontier. But when Galharrow investigates a frontier fortress, he discovers complacency bordering on treason: then the walls are stormed, and the
Engine fails to launch. Galharrow only escapes because of the preternatural magical power of the noblewoman he was supposed to be protecting. Together, they race to the capital to unmask the traitors and restore the republic’s defences. Far across the Misery a vast army is on the move, as the Empire prepares to call the republic’s bluff.
Blackwing is a gritty epic fantasy for fans of Mark Lawrence, Scott Lynch and Daniel Polansky.
Here’s what people have been saying about Blackwing:
‘A real fantastical page-turner’ SciFiNow
‘The story moves at an (ahem) spellbinding pace’ SFX Magazine
‘A cracking read – hugely entertaining, brutal but with real heart too’ Tom Lloyd, author of the Twilight Herald series
‘The reader takes an action-filled rampage through defense to attack, from injury to sorcery, faith to naivety and reality in what truly is a phenomenal start to a unique new series’ British Fantasy Society