Dark Ages Fiction

East and West. Humans and Spirits. Breccans and Tamerlaines. The Isle of Cadence has always held itself and its residents in a tenuous balance. But now Bane, the spirit of the North Wind, has pushed everyone and everything in his path off-kilter in a bid to claim dominion over all.

Although it is autumn in the small English town of Bishop’s Lacey, the chapel is decked with exotic flowers. Yes, Flavia de Luce’s sister, Ophelia, is at last getting hitched, like a mule to a wagon. “A church is a wonderful place for a wedding”, muses Flavia, “surrounded as it is by the legions of the dead, whose listening bones bear silent witness to every promise made at the altar.”

Cado Ezechiar is a wanderer who has outlived the memory of the age that made him. A Soulblight vampire who accepted the curse as his people and kingdom fell to Chaos, he now roams the Realm of Death and beyond seeking retribution and salvation for the ones he failed. Aided by the bound spirits of those he lost, Cado follows a path of revenge, hunting the servants of Chaos to slake his need for blood while seeking the Sorcerer of Change who destroyed his kingdom.

Set at a small, affluent liberal-arts college in New England at the height of the Reagan '80s, The Rules of Attraction is a startlingly funny, kaleidoscopic novel about three students with no plans for the future - or even the present - who become entangled in a curious romantic triangle.

Natalia Mazzone has grown up knowing she is promised to a made man. As the only daughter of one of New York’s most powerful mafia dons, she knows she can’t refuse. It’s her duty, and she would never dishonor her beloved father. But the man she’s promised to is a monster. And there is nothing but torture, pain, and heartache lying in wait. So, she grabs happiness when she finds it - in the somewhat reluctant arms of Leonardo Messina. Leo is her brother’s best friend. A soldato for the Mazzone famiglia.

A malevolent threat looms over the once great city of Excelsis. For as long as the treacherous Ortam Vermyre lives, civilisation is no longer safe within the Realm of Beasts. Witch Hunter Hanniver Toll must brave the deadly seas and jungles of the Taloncoast to stop Vermyre before he can reach the legendary lost city of Xoantica. For within this forgotten ruin lies an artefact of darkest sorcery that possesses the power to reshape reality itself: the Silver Shard.

One evening, two years’ worth of memories lost. Under the pretense of recovery, my father sends me to an elite boarding college, but soon, my memories start rushing back, and it’s obvious I’m not at Lakeside to heal. I’m here to hide. Navigating the scattered past to decipher the threat lurking in the shadows is hard while I’m kept in the dark and even harder when he steals my focus. Crude, arrogant, and threatening, he draws me in, and the closer I get, the less I understand. Waking up without memories is terrifying, but remembering the time I lost is infinitely worse.

In the dark corners of the Mortal Realms, the mad and mysterious Gloomspite Gitz go to war, following the trail of their abominable lunar deity. Nowhere is beyond the sight of the Bad Moon—not even those places under Sigmar’s protection, like the sweltering city of Draconium. Beneath the scalding rains of Aqshy, the city is a boiling pot of tension, its regent praying to Sigmar for guidance while Watch Captain Helena Morthan douses the fires of anarchy: blades drawn in the streets, heretical doomsayers preaching the end of days, and insects eating watchmen alive.

Win in the Dark is another fable written in the same style as the viral sensations Chop Wood Carry Water and Pound the Stone....

Niger, West Africa, 2074. When fifteen-year old Ejii witnesses her father's beheading, her world shatters. In a time of mind-blowing technology and seductive mysticism, Ejii embarks on a journey to track down her father's killer. With a newfound friend by her side, Ejii comes face to face with an earth turned inside out—and with her own mystical ability. And then she discovers that her travels across the sands of the Sahara have a deeper purpose.

Kieran's love life didn't get off to a good start. He threw up after his first kiss; he was beaten up by the first girl to have a crush on him; and after a mix-up with his first love letter, he could only sit back and watch as the entire school mistook him for a brutal murderer. By the time the hormones kicked in, Kieran had all but given up on love, but the worst was yet to come.

Published in rapid succession in the middle 1930s, these two books shocked European literature and world consciousness. Nominally fiction but more rightly called "creative confessions," they told of the author's childhood in excoriating Paris slums, of service in the mud wastes of World War I and African jungles. Mixing unmitigated despair with Gargantuan comedy, they also created a new style, in which invective and obscenity were laced with phrases of unforgettable poetry. Celine's influence revolutionized the contemporary approach to fiction.

Whistling in the Dark captivated readers with the story of 10-year-old Sally O'Malley and her sister, Troo, during Milwaukee's summer of 1959. In Good Graces, it's one year later, and a heat wave has everyone in the close-knit Milwaukee neighborhood on edge - none more so than Sally O'Malley, who remains deeply traumatized by the sudden death of her daddy and her near escape from a murderer and molester the previous summer.

Drekki Flynt! Captain of the Aelsling, known throughout the Skyshoals of Achromia! Say his name and make half a tavern starry-eyed, while the other half mutters about how much money he owes them. Drekki Flynt! Uncommonly tall for a duardin – an adventurer, an endrineer, a wit, and a self-proclaimed genius. Drekki Flynt...is in trouble.

The Marchetti Mafia runs this town. My dad has been under their thumb for years as the Boss's personal consigliere. After facing death multiple times, he's now hanging on by a mere thread, and I worry the next injury will be his last. They always say once you join the family you're in it for life. Yet there may be a way out, but it'll cost me more than I ever imagined.

The nomadic sled-city of Riika-Min glides endlessly along the icy tundra of Ghur, its denizens’ existence entwined with the rhythm of the realm. But something is disrupting the balance of the Realm of Beasts, and when a kraken suddenly attacks, Sigmar sends his master tracker, Yndrasta, the Celestial Spear, to hunt it down. In Riika-Min, Yndrasta meets Njda, trying to guide her people to safety. Njda is at once fearful and in awe of the golden-clad warrior from the sky, and soon learns how dangerous it can be to get between a hunter and her quarry.

The Saint of War spares the life of a servant girl so she can fulfill her destiny as the kingdom’s greatest warrior in this short story of love and loyalty by New York Times bestselling author Alix E. Harrow.

A little deer walks into the wolf’s den. I want answers. I know nothing of love, family, or stability, having been raised in the foster system and spat out at eighteen, pregnant, and with no memory of how that came to be. I try to find my estranged father, a man rumoured to be in the Mafia, hopeful he will use his influence to discover what really happened the night someone took my innocence. But I don’t find my father. I walk straight into the den of his associate, the Don of the Cosa Nostra.

The battle between vicious spirits and strong-willed queens that started in The Queen of Blood and continued in the powerful The Reluctant Queen comes to a conclusion in The Queen of Sorrow, the final volume of the Queens of Renthia trilogy. Queen Daleina has yearned to bring peace and prosperity to her beloved forest home - a hope that seemed doomed when neighboring forces invaded Aratay. Now, Daleina believes that her dream of ushering in a new era can be realized, even in a land plagued by malevolent nature spirits who thirst for the end of human life.

Rising from the gloom-shrouded cults of Ulgu, the empire of the Daughters of Khaine now dominates the Realm of Shadow. These matriarchal witch-aelves are graceful masters of death who revel in spilling blood, and whose opposition to Chaos borders on mania. Proud governors of their own ruthless agendas, it is their devotion to Khaine, the ancient aelven god of murder, the Daughters seek to prove above all—and alongside it, the favour of his high priestess, Morathi. To this end, a Khainite would bleed the realms dry in dedication to her cause.