Urban Historical

After Grand-mere Ursule gives her life to save her family, their magic seems to die with her. Even so, the Orchires fight to keep the old ways alive, practicing half-remembered spells and arcane rites in hopes of a revival. And when their youngest daughter comes of age, magic flows anew. The lineage continues, though new generations struggle not only to master their power, but also to keep it hidden. But when World War II looms on the horizon, magic is needed more urgently than ever.

Anne Rice, creator of the Vampire Lestat, the Mayfair witches and the amazing worlds they inhabit, now gives us the first in a new series of novels linked together by the fledgling vampire David Talbot, who has set out to become a chronicler of his fellow Undead. The novel opens in present-day Paris in a crowded café, where David meets Pandora. She is two thousand years old, a Child of the Millennia, the first vampire ever made by the great Marius. David persuades her to tell the story of her life.

Helene Wecker's dazzling debut novel tells the story of two supernatural creatures who appear mysteriously in 1899 New York. Chava is a golem, a creature made of clay, brought to life by a strange man who dabbles in dark Kabbalistic magic. When her master dies at sea on the voyage from Poland, she is unmoored and adrift as the ship arrives in New York Harbor. Ahmad is a jinni, a being of fire, born in the ancient Syrian Desert. Trapped in an old copper flask by a Bedouin wizard centuries ago, he is released accidentally by a tinsmith in a Lower Manhattan shop.

To investigate the source of gossip about Cyclops, Willie does the unthinkable: She dons a dress. However, her plan goes awry when she’s kidnapped by a disgruntled magician with the power to detonate gunpowder at will. The magician forces India and Matt to race all over London in the hunt for her before the bombs go off.

A year after her husband's sudden death, ceramic artist Tilda Fordwells finally moves into the secluded Welsh cottage that was to be their new home. She hopes that the tranquil surroundings will help ease her grief, and lessen her disturbing visions of Mat's death. Instead, the lake in the valley below her cottage seems to spark something dormant in her - a sensitivity, and a power of some sort. Animals are drawn to her, electricity shorts out when she's near, and strangest of all, she sees a new vision.

After Alshari Court Wizard Pentandra survives her third assassination attempt in the Tower of Sorcery, she sends her deputy, Sir Rondal, to investigate the mysterious origins of the attempt while she contends with Alshari court politics. Matters come to a head when he and Kitten rescue an old woman and her grandson from certain death...only to discover she is the lost hedgewitch who gave Pentandra a book of secret prophecies about the future.

Seventeenth-century Amsterdam is a city in the grip of tulip mania, basking in the wealth it has generated. Sophia’s husband Cornelis, an ageing merchant, is among those grown rich from this exotic new flower. To celebrate, he commissions a talented young artist to paint him with his young bride. But as the portrait grows, so does the passion between Sophia and the painter; and as ambitions, desires and dreams breed an intricate deception, their reckless gamble propels their lives towards a thrilling and tragic conclusion.

When Britain intercepted a French ship and its precious cargo, an unhatched dragon's egg, Captain Will Laurence of HMS Reliant unexpectedly became master and commander of the noble dragon he named Temeraire. As new recruits in Britain's Aerial Corps, man and dragon soon proved their mettle. But now China has discovered that its rare gift, intended for Napoleon, has fallen into British hands, and an angry Chinese delegation vows to reclaim the remarkable beast.

Minalan the Spellmonger has a problem: Mycin Amana, the undead consort of Korbal the Necromancer, is not only occupying one of the largest castles in the kingdom; she’s also occupying the recently-dead body of his former lover, rapist, and mother of his children, Isily of Greenflower. As the crises in the heart of the kingdom grows, Minalan is tasked to force the so-called Witch Queen of Darkfaller from her new stronghold using any means necessary. Unfortunately, the castle belongs to his rival in the royal court and future monarch Prince Tavard, whose ideas are doomed to failure.

Egypt, 1912. In an alternate Cairo infused with the otherworldly, the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments, and Supernatural Entities investigate disturbances between the mortal and the (possibly) divine. What starts off as an odd suicide case for Special Investigator Fatma el-Sha’arawi leads her through the city’s underbelly as she encounters rampaging ghouls, saucy assassins, clockwork angels, and plot that could unravel time itself, in P. Djèlí Clark's Tor.Com Original, A Dead Djinn in Cairo.

The gathering of the tribes of the Mongols has been a long time in coming, but finally, triumphantly, Temujin of the Wolves, Genghis Khan, is given the full accolade of overall leader and their oaths. Now he can begin to meld all the previously warring people into one army, one nation. But the task Genghis has set himself, and them, is formidable. He is determined to travel to the land of the long-time enemy, the Chin, and attack them there.

When best-selling author Carrie McClelland visits the windswept ruins of Slains Castle, she is enchanted by the stark and beautiful Scottish landscape. The area is strangely familiar to her but she puts aside her faint sense of unease to begin her new novel, using the castle as her setting, and one of her own ancestors, Sophia, as her heroine. Then Carrie realizes her writing is taking on a life of its own and the lines between fact and fiction become increasingly blurred.

Mags was an orphan and slave of ‘bad blood’ who toiled in a gem mine all his young life. He would have died before adulthood, had he not been Chosen and taken to Haven to be trained in the new Herald Collegium. Now, Mags was never hungry and never cold. He slept in a real bed in his own room and, most importantly, he had Dallen, who was like another part of himself. And yet, aside from Lena and Bear, both loners like he was, he couldn’t relate to most of the trainees.

Johannes Cabal, a brilliant scientist and notorious snob, is single-mindedly obsessed in heart and soul with raising the dead. Well, perhaps not soul.... He hastily sold his years ago in order to learn the laws of necromancy. But now, tormented by a dark secret, he travels to the fiery pits of Hell to retrieve it. Satan, who is incredibly bored these days, proposes a little wager: Johannes has one year to persuade 100 people to sign over their souls, or he will be damned forever.

Barrie Anne Blythe and her aunt Charlotte have always known that the other residents of their small coastal community find them peculiar - two women living alone on the outskirts of town. It is the price of concealing their strange and dangerous family secret. But two events threaten to upend their lives forever. The first is the arrival of a mysterious abandoned baby with a hint of power like their own. The second is the sudden reappearance of Barrie Anne's long-lost husband - who is not quite the man she thought she married.

Andrew Ranulf Blankenship is a handsome, stylish nonconformist with wry wit, a classic Mustang, and a massive library. He is also a recovering alcoholic and a practicing warlock, able to speak with the dead through film. His house is a maze of sorcerous booby traps and escape tunnels, as yours might be if you were sitting on a treasury of Russian magic stolen from the Soviet Union thirty years ago.

When Shai is caught replacing the Moon Scepter with her nearly flawless forgery, she must bargain for her life. An assassin has left the Emperor Ashravan without consciousness, a circumstance concealed only by the death of his wife. If the emperor does not emerge after his hundred-day mourning period, the rule of the Heritage Faction will be forfeit and the empire will fall into chaos.

Tristran Thorn will do anything to win the cold heart of beautiful Victoria Forester - even fetch her the star they watch fall from the night sky. But to do so, he must enter the unexplored lands on the other side of the ancient wall that gives their tiny village its name. Beyond that stone barrier, Tristran learns, lies Faerie . . . and the most exhilarating adventure of the young man's life.

It is a grim time for the dragon Temeraire. On the heels of his mission to Africa, seeking the cure for a deadly contagion, he has been removed from military service - and his captain, Will Laurence, has been condemned to death for treason. For Britain, conditions are grimmer still: Napoleon's resurgent forces have breached the Channel and successfully invaded English soil.

London, 1849. Charles Dickens has set up Urania Cottage as a sanctuary for fallen women. But he is shocked when the matron's assistant - Patience Brooke - is found hanging outside the property, covered in blood. Desperate to protect the reputation of the Home and to stop a scandal from spreading, Dickens takes the investigation into his own hands. With the help of his good friend, Superintendent Sam Jones of Bow Street, and a description of the suspect as "a man with a crooked face", Dickens's search takes him deep into the filthy slums of Victorian London.