Showing results by publisher "Blackstone Publishing" in Fantasy

When Dan, sixteen, runs away from a terrible home life to join a circus, he has no idea what he’s getting himself into. Based on Dante’s Inferno, The Ninth Circle follows a young man’s coming-of-age as he travels with the circus through nine states. With the Ringmaster as his guide, Dan finds himself falling in love with the Bearded Lady but hated by almost everyone else, including the Strong Man, the Lion Tamers, and the Sword Swallower.

The great war with the Wyrmling Hordes is over, and mankind has lost. Lord Despair has gathered an army of fell creatures, planning to unleash them like a wildfire across the stars. Those who oppose him know that the battle is all but lost. Though they stand against the darkness, they cannot hope to win with arms. Indeed, they stand against him armed with little more than principles. Fallion and Tuul Ra, with only a handful of allies, must hope that with resolve and cunning alone they can win the day - before darkness closes upon them forever.

A masterpiece of Gothic horror and suspense that inspired such writers as H. P. Lovecraft, The Three Impostors is Machen’s famous collection of “weird tales” - a string of shocking short stories woven together with a fine narrative thread. The three impostors of the title are members of a secret society devoted to debauched pagan rites who weave a web of deception in the streets of London as they search for a missing Roman coin commemorating an infamous orgy by the Emperor Tiberius and close in on their prey: “the young man with spectacles”.

Welcome to Hex City. Population: magicians. Thanks to hexslinger “Reverend” Asher Rook, sorcerers now have a sanctuary where they can live and work in peace. But a storm is coming—a tempest known as Chess Pargeter. Infuriated by his former lover Rook’s betrayal and sacrificed in the name of the Mayan goddess who is Rook’s current consort, Chess leaves a trail of death and destruction in his wake. Caught up in Chess’s crusade is Pinkerton-agent-turned-outlaw Ed Morrow and a young woman spiritualist.

Across forty years, three continents, and a past incident in 1560 France, Serafina Olegario tests the boundaries of love, power, and corruption as she fights to escape her life of poverty and abuse. Serafina’s quest begins in Brazil when she’s possessed by the warrior goddess Yansã, who emboldens her to fight yet threatens to consume her spirit. Fueled by power and enticed by Exú, an immortal trickster and intermediary to the gods, Serafina turns to the seductive magic of Quimbanda. It’s dangerous to dance in the fire. But when you come from nothing, you have nothing to lose.

Isoldra Maan is drowning in debt, specifically over 250 souls deep. As a Hound for the diabolical yet irresistible Lord of Lost Souls, she’s been stuck serving the fallen god and hunting his contracts in order to be free of her own. But when Haalarcus strikes a bargain with a divine, he places her freedom finally within reach.

Three-year-old Vangie is mute and unresponsive. She shows no interest in the people or world around her, much to the frustration of her callous foster parents. Little do they know, Vangie is otherwise occupied observing “ghosts”—an infinite number of versions of herself, in an infinite number of parallel universes. When a tornado hits their trailer and Vangie is severely injured, she makes a desperate leap into another timeline where she survives the tornado, but her foster parents do not.

Sloane Bevan and two-week-old Trey are kidnapped by strangers who speak her rare language and know her family’s secrets. She suspects these men are the ones who murdered her husband nine months ago. Now it’s her son they want, to raise as one of them. To keep under their control. Imprisoned in the Moores’ opulent estate, Sloane cultivates a plan using her family’s ancient magic right under her captors’ careful watch. Escape is one thing. Ensuring the Moores won’t target her family again is another.

Trey returns from another visit to the Moore estate with nothing but more anger and less room in his head to stow it. Old coping mechanisms no longer work. Not with a newborn in the mix. And Liv, who’s had enough. Liv has found what’s missing: a memento of her past she’s worked hard to forget. It unearths memories of a different man—a stable partner, a loving father. As it draws her in, Trey’s new anger drives her away.

Captive in the Moore estate, Sloane Bevan sees an image that evokes her grandmother’s warning: When the moon aligns with the oak, a danger will come for you. To her family she’s a warrior. To the Moores a destroyer. But she holds knowledge of magic the Moores lost, knowledge they want to extract before they kill her. Rex Moore is out of patience. He has trained his whole life to battle and end Sloane Bevan. Now she’s in his house and his family has ordered him to wait. This is the first order he’ll defy, the last order they’ll give.

In Borne, a young woman named Rachel survives as a scavenger in a ruined city half destroyed by drought and conflict. The city's dangerous, littered with discarded experiments from the Company - a biotech firm now derelict - and punished by the unpredictable predations of a giant bear. Rachel ekes out an existence in the shelter of a run-down sanctuary she shares with her partner, Wick, who deals his own homegrown psychoactive biotech. One day, Rachel finds Borne during a scavenging mission and takes him home. Borne as salvage is little more than a green lump - plant or animal?

Jess and Nina, Nina and Jess … to everyone else they’re typical best friends, sharing closeness and confidences in their own little world. But Nina and Jess have a secret. Simply by touching their foreheads together, they can swap bodies. In Jess’s assertive persona, self-conscious Nina turns bolder, free to say what she’s frightened to voice on her own. Inhabiting Nina, Jess becomes part of the loving, stable family she craves. Now, in crisis after her father’s death, Jess has reentered Nina’s life following a long separation.

Selene Bishop runs the Healsome Magic Center with her sister. She loves her job, but she did wish that her life had time for something more. She doesn't know what she’s looking for, but she would settle for a bit of free time. When she is taken to a secluded house on a wolf's pack lands for her own safety, Selene realizes that she might have gotten exactly what she was hoping for. Jett is a grumpy wolf who doesn’t expect much out of life.

Everest Lovecraft is going to be murdered. After joining forces with a devil to destroy a tyrannical shadow corporation, Everest is furious when he foresees a massacre at the hands of the other-worldly prince. But preventing the demon’s rise to power comes with an unthinkable price: saving the world will kill his partner. Setting a trap to force the demon’s hand, Everest hopes to slay the would-be overlord and change the flow of fate. But with cutthroat traitors stalking his every move and his honor stained with treason, Everest knows he cannot face the apocalypse alone.

Eleanor understands the harsh realities of women’s lives in her kingdom, so she turns her energies to a school for impoverished girls, until an evil magician’s deception destroys the school and unleashes a festering plague. From the fire-iron walls of Eclatant Palace to the slums of Meggett Fringe, no one, magical or mundane, is safe from the fever-induced delirium of the Great Burning. Not even Eleanor’s children.

I've turned traitor and spy. By the end of this, someone big is gonna die. I hope it's not me. My sister, Mavis, is going to be put on trial. Mr. Zee is certain to find her guilty of helping the monsters in their war against the gods. And then he’ll kill her. I can’t let that happen. So when I find out about a sword capable of wounding him, I set out to the collect the pieces. With the sword in hand, I’ll convince him to step down and free Mavis. Or get killed trying.

1941. An hour before the attack on Pearl Harbour, a man from the future materializes in President Roosevelt's office. His offer of military aid may cut the war and its pending atrocities short and alter the course of the future. The future. Welcome to Mars, where the lives of three ordinary people become entwined in one dingy smokesbar the moment an assassin opens fire. The target: the mysterious Bill Glimmung. But is Glimmung even real?

Wounded, with a target still on his back, Kieren Moonring has been hiding in the last place his Morgon enemies might find him—the Sisterhood of Light. In the human convent on the southern shores of Primus, his body heals quickly, but his soul is broken. Bitterness and fury fill that gaping chasm that was opened by the evil Larkosians.

A public relations assistant, a teacher, and a former child star walk into a bar bathroom… On what happens to be all of their twenty-second birthday and, like many twentysomethings, become fast tipsy friends. But unlike most twentysomethings, their night of partying ends with an accidental act of magic. Suddenly, Maya, Gabbie, and Delali find themselves thrust into a world of spells and potions with only a mysterious mentor as a guide.

Peach Blossom Paradise, set at the time of the reform, is the story of Xiumi, the daughter of a wealthy landowner and former government official who falls prey to insanity and disappears. Days later, a man with a gold cicada in his pocket turns up at their family estate and is inexplicably welcomed as a relative.