Showing results by author "Barbara Hambly" in All Categories

Feltipern Trevagg has traded in his life as a bounty hunter for the security of an Imperial office - as a tax-official to be precise. But the predatory Gotal misses the chase and yearns for a conquest to take him away from his clerical duties. The opportunity to do so eludes him, until one day, during his usual walk through the marketplace, he senses the vibrations of a Jedi Knight. If his senses prove correct, this particular bounty could prove worth his weight in gold to the Empire.

Kyra was preparing for her final wizard test before the Council. But suddenly, something was twisting her magic, weaving sinister portents of doom into even the simplest of her spells. Then she knew for certain that her young sister Alix was soon to marry--and soon to die. And so she journeyed back to the family who had disowned her.

The year 1924. After six months in Hollywood, young British widow Emma Blackstone has come to love her new employer, glamourous movie-star Kitty Flint — even if her late husband’s sister is one of the worst actresses she’s ever seen. Looking after Kitty and her three adorable Pekinese dogs isn’t work academically minded Emma dreamed of, but Kitty rescued her when she was all alone in the world. Now, the worst thing she has to worry about is the shocking historical inaccuracies of the films Kitty stars in.

Once, it was said, Wensha had been a city of witches, summoning and controlling demons for their evil magic. But in nearby Tandieras, Kaltha claimed to have found their lost book of spells to perform only white magic. When Sun Wolf arrived, he discovered increasing signs of evil magic and demon-controlling spells. And he realized, too late, that a new swarm of demons was trying to lure him to his death....

No one can talk to the dead...can they? Free man of color Benjamin January gets caught up in a strange, spiritual world that might lead to his own demise, as he hunts for a missing teenager in this gripping, atmospheric historical mystery. New Orleans, 1840. Freshly home from a dangerous journey, the last thing Benjamin January wants to do is leave his wife and young sons again. But when old friends Henri and Chloë Viellard ask for his help tracking down a missing girl in distant New York, he can’t say no.

It is St. John’s Eve in the summer of 1834 when Benjamin January - Creole physician and music teacher - is shattered by the news that his sister has been arrested for murder. The Guards have only a shadow of a case against her. But Olympe - mystical and rebellious - is a woman of color, whose chance for justice is slim. As Benjamin probes the allegation, he is targeted by a new threat: graveyard dust sprinkled at his door, whispering of a voodoo death curse. Now, to save Olympe’s life - and his own - Benjamin knows he must glean information wherever he can find it.

After a career spying for Queen Victoria, James Asher enjoyed a quiet retirement until he met the vampire Don Simon, an immortal Spaniard who taught him about the secret society of bloodsucking undead. Now, one of the vampires, the Earl of Ernchester, has turned his back on Britain. When Asher spots him boarding a train for Paris in the company of an Austrian spy, he springs into action. If the immortals can forge an alliance with England’s enemies, then the Empire is doomed.

When Rhion the banker's son met the Master Wizard Jaldis, Jaldis said, "Come." Rhion came, leaving everything behind to answer the call in his blood. And through long years of drudgery and persecution, he had no regrets. Thus he became a wizard. A noble burned out Jaldis' eyes to please some god; Rhion made magic glasses so he could see. Together, they opened the dark well to the Abyss between universes, and a cry for help came from a world that had lost all magic. Could that happen to their world? Though forced to flee again, Jaldis was determined to reach that world through the Abyss, to help and to find how the magic was lost.

New Orleans, 1836. When free Black musician and surgeon Benjamin January attends the funeral of a friend, an accident tips the dead man out of his coffin - only to reveal an unexpected inhabitant. Just one person recognizes the corpse of the White man: Hannibal Sefton, fiddle-player and one of January’s closest friends. But he seems unwilling to talk about his connection to the dead man....

Gifted with courage, strength, and the intelligence to know when to fight, Sun Wolf is the greatest mercenary in a land overrun by war. With his first lieutenant, Starhawk - a woman more deadly than any man - at his side, he has laid waste to countless cities, taking the best of their treasures for himself, and distributing the rest among his bloodthirsty crew.

New Orleans, 1838. When Benjamin January suddenly finds that his services playing piano at extravagant balls held by the city's wealthy are no longer required, he ends up agreeing to accompany sugar planter Henri Viellard and his young wife, Chloe, on a mission to Washington to find a missing friend. Plunged into a murky world, it soon becomes clear that while it is very possible the Viellards' friend is dead, his enemies are very much alive - and ready to kill anyone who gets in their way.

RAN AWAY. So began a score of advertisements every week in the New Orleans newspapers, advertising for slaves who’d fled their masters. But the Turk, Hüseyin Pasha, posted no such advertisement when his two lovely concubines disappeared. And when a witness proclaimed he’d seen the “devilish infidel” hurl their dead bodies out of a window, everyone was willing to believe him the murderer. Only Benjamin January, who knows the Turk of old, is willing to seek for the true culprit, endangering his own life in the process.

When slave owner Simon Fourchet asks Benjamin January to investigate sabotage, arson, and murder on his plantation, January is reluctant to do any favors for the savage man who owned him until he was seven. But he knows too well that plantation justice means that if the true culprit is not found, every slave on Mon Triomphe will suffer. Abandoning his Parisian French for the African patois of a field hand, cutting cane until his bones ache and his musician’s hands bleed, Benjamin must use all his intelligence and cunning to find the killer - or find himself sold down the river.

When an overworked team of government physicists unwittingly invites something catastrophic into the world, rising young New York lawyer Cal Griffin is forced into a strange new role in a world of nightmare and wonder.

It’s 1835, and the relentless glare of the late July sun has slowed New Orleans to a standstill. When Hesione LeGros - once a corsair’s jeweled mistress, now a raddled hag - is found slashed to death in a shanty on the fringe of New Orleans’ most lawless quarter, there are few to care. But one of them is Benjamin January, musician and teacher. He well recalls her blazing ebony beauty when she appeared, exquisitely gowned and handy with a stiletto, at a demimonde banquet years ago.

Once the most powerful mage in the land, defeater of dragons, Jenny Waynest is now a broken woman. She was possessed and corrupted by a demon, losing all she held dear - including her love’s trust. Rebuilding her life seems impossible. Her husband, Lord John, now bears his own torment far away: he tricked the beautiful and cruel Aohila, a rival hell’s demon queen, in order to free his wife from possession, and now he is plagued by her memories.

Sun Wolf knew he had the power of magic, but he needed a master wizard to teach him to fully use his skills. But there was no one who could do the job. When he was called upon to help old friends against the ancient wizard, he did - thus ensuring a curse that would be executed, unless Sun Wolf could harness his own powers and find a way out....

In ancient Rome, a poor philosopher races to rescue his kidnapped lover before she is abused by the sinister Christian cult. The son of a wealthy Roman family, Marcus gave up the prestige and riches that were his birthright to devote himself to philosophy. His noble mind attracted Tullia, a Senator’s daughter whose father wanted her to have nothing to do with the penniless intellectual. The news that she is to marry a prosperous merchant shatters Marcus, who goes to her house, hoping to plead his case, only to see her attacked and abducted by disguised ruffians.

Lord John Aversin and the mageborn Jenny Waynest continue to battle and study dragons. Many years have passed since their battle at Bel, and while they remain strong, their love for one another has begun to wane with the passing seasons. But time moves against them in more ways than one. For a danger unlike any they have ever known in their long years of violence begins to stir. Demonspawn from a dark dimension have learned to drink the magic and the souls of mages and dragons alike, turning their victims into empty vessels.

Condemned to die for consorting with demons, dragonslayer Lord John Aversin sits in a dank prison cell and calculates the odds of escape, all the while smelling the smoke of the executioners’ pyres. Far away in Winterlands, Jenny Waynest pays a heavy price for turning away from dragonkind and choosing to be human. She mourns the loss of her husband, Lord John, even as she turns to face the dangers that engulf her family.