Dark Ages Literature

Ava Sinclair’s life was shattered days before her wedding when she discovered her fiancé's betrayal with her best friend. Devastated, she decides to take the honeymoon to Phuket, Thailand alone, hoping to find solace and escape the pain. But instead of peace, Ava finds herself caught in a whirlwind of passion with a mysterious stranger. Nikolai Volkov isn't just any man—he’s powerful, wealthy, and utterly captivating. Drawn into his magnetic pull, Ava is caught in a whirlwind of desire and danger that threatens to consume her whole.

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.

To survive, Connor Magnuson must become a man with no equal. The path ahead is a deadly one. His end of the bargains he made to get this far have come due, and his debts take him back to a homeland he's been trying to forget. Kirkwall is an island of ancient secrets, and the magic in its soil will topple empires if he doesn't get to it first. His legend has begun to spread through the pubs, and others begin taking credit. Imposters pop up along the coast, and they threaten to undermine everything he has worked for.

Late one evening, en route to visit a relative, an accident leaves Tory - the attractive, twenty-something daughter of a prominent history professor – stranded near a ring of stones in Britain. Tory resolves to spend the night at the stone circle and seek help in the morning... But across the vortex of time and space, she is taken back to the Dark Age.

Beyond the reach of the nuclear infernos, the masterminds survived and continue their assault on outposts across the Allied States. Timothy Temper and Sergeant Ruckley narrowly escaped one of those attacks. On the run from hostile forces, they fight to get an urgent message to command - the monsters aren’t the only threat. Their human allies have a nuclear weapon. Refusing to hide underground, President Jan Ringgold heads to New York. Doctor Kate Lovato and her team are there working to infiltrate and sabotage enemy communications.

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.

To be born into a family of royal assassins pretty much guarantees that your life is going to be rather unusual. Especially if, like Miscellaneous 'Lanie' Stones, you also have a vicious allergy to all forms of violence and bloodshed, and an uncanny affinity for bringing the dead back to life. To make matters worse, family debt looms—a debt that will have to be paid sooner rather than later if Lanie and her sister are to retain ownership of the ancestral seat, Stones Manor.

Alice Sun has always felt invisible at her elite Beijing international boarding school, where she’s the only scholarship student among China’s most rich and influential teens. But then she starts uncontrollably turning invisible—actually invisible. When her parents drop the news that they can no longer afford her tuition, even with the scholarship, Alice hatches a plan to monetize her strange new power—she’ll discover the scandalous secrets her classmates want to know, for a price.

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.

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.

Lenny Marks is excellent at not having a life. She bikes home from work at exactly 4pm each day, buys the same groceries for the same meals every week, and owns thirty-six copies of The Hobbit (currently arranged by height). The closest thing she has to a friendship is playing Scrabble against an imaginary Monica Gellar while watching Friends reruns. And Lenny Marks is very, very good at not remembering what happened the day her mother and stepfather disappeared when she was still a child. The day a voice in the back of her mind started whispering, You did this.

For Thelana Evenfall, Lumineth loreseeker and tutor at the Lyceum Fundamental in the city of Settler's Gain, the weapon is a footnote—the shadow of a rumour buried under mountains of long-forgotten lore. But when whispers of its whereabouts resurface, the vying factions within Hysh emerge to claim its power. From trusted allies to insidious cults, Thelana must navigate a treacherous landscape of clashing armies, political machinations and betrayals within betrayals, all in a desperate effort to defend the powerless from the all-powerful and to ask the unanswerable question:

Maggie Young had the market on normal. Normal friends, normal parents, normal grades...normal life. Until him. Clayton Reed was running from his past and an army of personal demons that threatened to take him down. He never thought he had a chance at happiness. Until her. Maggie thought their love could overcome anything. Clay thought she was all he needed to fix his messy life. That together, they could face the world. But the darkness is always waiting.

With nowhere left to run, the Allied States fortifies their few remaining outposts and relocates Central Command to prepare for their final stand. President Jan Ringgold and her generals know beating the enemy on the battlefield is impossible. The only path to victory seems to be taking down the leader of the New Gods, a sinister Chimera known as the Prophet, before he can complete his campaign to enslave humanity.

Nyssa Volari is dying. But that is impossible, because she is a Soulblight vampire, blessed by Nagash with blood-fuelled immortality. More than that, Nyssa is a fighter – one of the handful of Kastelai vampires not dissolved into true death when the Crimson Keep abandoned them a century ago. With her blades and her will, she carved a kingdom out of the Broken Plains of Aqshy. These things matter little, for Nyssa's blood is cursed. It destroyed the vampire she called father, and as it threatens to do the same to her, Nyssa's allies abandon her one by one.

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.

Life, death, and rebirth - in Becar, who you are in this life will determine your next life. Yet there is hope - you can change your destiny with the choices you make. But for the darkest individuals, there is no redemption: you come back as a kehok, a monster, and are doomed to be a kehok for the rest of time. Unless you can win the Races. After a celebrated career as an elite kehok rider, Tamra became a professional trainer. Then a tragic accident shattered her confidence, damaged her reputation, and left her nearly broke.

A young girl discovers an infinite variety of worlds in this standalone tale in the Hugo and Nebula Award-wining Wayward Children series from Seanan McGuire, Lost in the Moment and Found.

Lace, white, everything frilly and pretty. The theme to Sara’s life used to be that of a princess, one she romanticized. But when her previously perfect world turned upside down, Sara became convinced that she was cursed. She hid herself in the shadows to spare others from the agony she brought along. The only person she could never hide from was her adopted brother.