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"So let the order of chapters before you represent my chief wish for this book, modeled after a growing sunflower or paper nautilus: that it be useful." ~ from Sharona Muir's Invisible Beasts
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New and Recently Released!
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The scorched earth
by Drew Karpyshyn
The Children of Fire--four mortals touched by the power of Chaos--each embody one aspect of a fallen and banished immortal champion: Keegan, the wizard; Scythe, the warrior; Cassandra, the prophet; Vaaler, the king. Grown to adulthood, the Children are in search of the ancient Talismans that can stop the return of Daemron the Slayer, ancient enemy of the Old Gods. But in acquiring Daemron's Ring, they unleashed a flood of Chaos magic on the land--leaving death, destruction, and a vengeful queen in their wake.
Now, beset on all sides by both mortal and supernatural enemies, they realize that their strength and faith will be tested as never before. And their greatest trial will be finding Daemron's Sword, the last of the ancient Talismans, before the entire mortal world is engulfed in the war and Chaos that will herald the return of the Slayer.
Chaos Born #2
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The Mirror Empire
by Kameron Hurley
On the eve of a recurring catastrophic event known to extinguish nations and reshape continents, a troubled orphan evades death and slavery to uncover her own bloody past... while a world goes to war with itself.
In the frozen kingdom of Saiduan, invaders from another realm are decimating whole cities, leaving behind nothing but ash and ruin. At the heart of this war lie the pacifistic Dhai people, once enslaved by the Saiduan and now courted by their former masters to provide aid against the encroaching enemy.
Stretching from desolate tundra to steamy, semi-tropical climes seething with sentient plant life, this is an epic tale of blood mages and mercenaries, emperors and priestly assassins who must unite to save a world on the brink of ruin.
As the dark star of the cataclysm rises, an illegitimate ruler is tasked with holding together a country fractured by civil war; a precocious young fighter is asked to betray his family to save his skin; and a half-Dhai general must choose between the eradication of her father's people or loyalty to her alien Empress.
Through tense alliances and devastating betrayal, the Dhai and their allies attempt to hold against a seemingly unstoppable force as enemy nations prepare for a coming together of worlds as old as the universe itself. In the end, one world will rise - and many will perish.
Worldbreaker Saga #1
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Slimy Underbelly
by Kevin J. Anderson
Zombie detective Dan Shamble goes up against an amphibious villain named Ah'Chulhu who is wreaking havoc beneath the streets, while warring weather wizards conjure up storms and a gang of thieving lawn gnomes continue their reign of terror.
Shamble & Die Investigations #4
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The getaway god : a Sandman Slim novel
by Richard Kadrey
Being a half-human, half-angel nephilim with a bad rep and a worse attitude--not to mention temporarily playing Lucifer--James Stark aka Sandman Slim has made a few enemies. None, though, are as fearsome as the vindictive Angra Om Ya--the old gods. But their imminent invasion is only one of Stark's problems right now. LA is descending into chaos, and a new evil--the Wildfire Ripper--is stalking the city.
No ordinary killer, The Ripper takes Stark deep into a conspiracy that stretches from Earth to Heaven and Hell. He's also the only person alive who may know how to keep the world from going extinct. The trouble is, he's also Stark's worst enemy . . . the only man in existence Stark would enjoy killing twice.
Sandman Slim #6
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Traitor's blade
by Sebastien De Castell
The King is dead, the Greatcoats have been disbanded, and Falcio Val Mond and his fellow magistrates Kest and Brasti have been reduced to working as bodyguards for a nobleman who refuses to pay them. Things could be worse, of course. Their employer could be lying dead on the floor while they are forced to watch the killer plant evidence framing them for the murder. Oh wait, that's exactly what's happening. Now a royal conspiracy is about to unfold in the most corrupt city in the world. A carefully orchestrated series of murders that began with the overthrow of an idealistic young king will end with the death of an orphaned girl and the ruin of everything that Falcio, Kest, and Brasti have fought for. But if the trio want to foil the conspiracy, save the girl, and reunite the Greatcoats, they'll have to do it with nothing but the tattered coats on their backs and the swords in their hands, because these days every noble is a tyrant, every knight is a thug, and the only thing you can really trust is a traitor's blade.
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The Hawley book of the dead : a novel
by Chrysler Szarlan
Revelation Reve Dyer grew up with her grandmother's family stories, stretching back centuries to Reve's ancestors, who founded the town of Hawley Five Corners, Massachusetts. Their history is steeped in secrets, for few outsiders know that an ancient magic runs in the Dyer women's blood, and that Reve is a magician whose powers are all too real.
Reve and her husband are world-famous Las Vegas illusionists. They have three lovely young daughters, a beautiful home, and what seems like a charmed life. But Reve's world is shattered when an intruder alters her trick pistol and she accidentally shoots and kills her beloved husband onstage.
Fearing for her daughters' lives, Reve flees with them to the place she has always felt safest--an antiquated farmhouse in the forest of Hawley Five Corners, where the magic of her ancestors reigns, and her oldest friend--and first love--is the town's chief of police. Here, in the forest, with its undeniable air of enchantment, Reve hopes she and her girls will be protected.
Delving into the past for answers, Reve is drawn deeper into her family's legends. What she discovers is The Hawley Book of the Dead, an ancient leather-bound journal holding mysterious mythic power. As she pieces together the truth behind the book, Reve will have to shield herself and her daughters against an uncertain, increasingly dangerous fate. For soon it becomes clear that the stranger who upended Reve's life in Las Vegas has followed her to Hawley--and that she has something he desperately wants.
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Radiant
by Karina Sumner-smith
Xhea has no magic. Born without the power that everyone else takes for granted, Xhea is an outcast--no way to earn a living, buy food, or change the life that fate has dealt her. Yet she has a unique talent: the ability to see ghosts and the tethers that bind them to the living world, which she uses to scratch out a bare existence in the ruins beneath the City's floating Towers. When a rich City man comes to her with a young woman's ghost tethered to his chest, Xhea has no idea that this ghost will change everything. The ghost, Shai, is a Radiant, a rare person who generates so much power that the Towers use it to fuel their magic, heedless of the pain such use causes. Shai's home Tower is desperate to get the ghost back and force her into a body--any body--so that it can regain its position, while the Tower's rivals seek the ghost to use her magic for their own ends. Caught between a multitude of enemies and desperate to save Shai, Xhea thinks herself powerless--until a strange magic wakes within her. Magic dark and slow, like rising smoke, like seeping oil. A magic whose very touch brings death. With two extremely strong female protagonists, Radiant is a story of fighting for what you believe in and finding strength that you never thought you had.
Towers Trilogy #1
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Wood sprites
by Wen Spencer
Even though they attend a school of gifted students in New York City, child geniuses Louise Mayer and her twin sister Jillian have always felt alone in the world, isolated by their brilliance. Shortly before their ninth birthday, they make an amazing discovery. They're not alone.
Their real mother was astronaut Esme Shenske and their father was the famous inventor, Leonardo Dufae. They have an older sister, Alexander, living on the planet of Elfhome, and four siblings still in cryogenic storage at the fertility center. There's only one problem: the frozen embryos are scheduled to be destroyed within six months. The race is on to save their baby brother and sisters.
As a war breaks out on Elfhome and riots start in New York City, the twins use science and magic to plow over everything standing in their way. But when they come face to face with an ancient evil force, they're soon in over their heads in danger.
Elfhome #4
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The Winter Long
by Seanan McGuire
Toby thought she understood her own past; she thought she knew the score.
She was wrong.
It's time to learn the truth.
October Daye #8
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Red blooded
by Amanda Carlson
Jessica is going to Hell. After settling a fragile truce between the vampires, werewolves and witches, the last thing Jessica wants to do is face the demons head on. But when the Prince of Hell kidnapped her brother, he set into motion a chain of events that even Jessica doesn't have the power to stop. Now, Jessica must go into battle again. But Hell is a whole new beast -- new rules, more dangerous demons, and an entirely foreign realm. And when Jessica is dropped into the Underworld too soon, without protection or the help of her friends, she must figure out just how powerful she can be... or she will never make it out alive.
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Hidden
by Benedict Jacka
With his talent for divining the future, Alex Verus should have foreseen his friends' reactions to the revelations about his previous life. Anne Walker no longer trusts him--and has also cut all ties with the mage community after getting kicked out of the apprentice program. As a favor to Luna, Alex's own apprentice and Anne's best friend, he checks in on her only to be told to leave her alone. Then Anne gets kidnapped. The Council Keepers of the Order of the Star believe Dark mages from her past may be involved. Working with the Keepers, Alex and Luna discover that Anne has been taken into the shadow realm of Sagash, her former Dark mage mentor, and they must find a way to rescue her. But another shadow from the past has resurfaced--Alex's former master may be back in London, and Alex has no idea what his agenda is...
Alex Verus Novel #5
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House Immortal
by Devon Monk
"One hundred years ago, eleven powerful ruling Houses consolidated all of the world's resources and authority into their own grasping hands. Only one power wasn't placed under the command of a single House: the control over the immortal galvanized...."
Matilda Case isn't like most folk. In fact, she's unique in the world, the crowning achievement of her father's experiments, a girl pieced together from bits. Or so she believes, until Abraham Seventh shows up at her door, stitched with life thread just like her and insisting that enemies are coming to kill them all.
Tilly is one of thirteen incredible creations known as the galvanized, stitched together beings immortal and unfathomably strong. For a century, each House has fought for control over the galvanized. Now the Houses are also tangled in a deadly struggle for dominion over death--and Tilly and her kind hold the key to unlocking eternity.
The secrets that Tilly must fight to protect are hidden within the very seams of her being. And to get the secrets, her enemies are willing to tear her apart piece by piece....
House Immortal Novel #1
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Gideon Smith and the Brass Dragon
by David Barnett
Nineteenth century London is the center of a vast British Empire, a teeming metropolis where steam-power is king and airships ply the skies, and where Queen Victoria presides over three quarters of the known world--including the east coast of America, following the failed revolution of 1775.
Young Gideon Smith has seen things that no green lad of Her Majesty's dominion should ever experience. Through a series of incredible events Gideon has become the newest Hero of the Empire. But Gideon is a man with a mission, for the dreaded Texas pirate Louis Cockayne has stolen the mechanical clockwork girl Maria, along with a most fantastical weapon--a great brass dragon that was unearthed beneath ancient Egyptian soil. Maria is the only one who can pilot the beast, so Cockayne has taken girl and dragon off to points east.
Gideon and his intrepid band take to the skies and travel to the American colonies hot on Cockayne's trail. Not only does Gideon want the machine back, he has fallen in love with Maria. Their journey will take them to the wilds of the lawless lands south of the American colonies - to free Texas, where the mad King of Steamtown rules with an iron fist (literally), where life is cheap and honor even cheaper.
Does Gideon have what it takes to not only save the day but win the girl?
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Maplecroft : the Borden dispatches
by Cherie Priest
"Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks; and when she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one...."
The people of Fall River, Massachusetts, fear me. Perhaps rightfully so. I remain a suspect in the brutal deaths of my father and his second wife despite the verdict of innocence at my trial. With our inheritance, my sister, Emma, and I have taken up residence in Maplecroft, a mansion near the sea and far from gossip and scrutiny.
But it is not far enough from the affliction that possessed my parents. Their characters, their very "souls," were consumed from within by something that left malevolent entities in their place. It originates from the ocean's depths, plaguing the populace with tides of nightmares and madness.
This evil cannot hide from me. No matter what guise it assumes, I will be waiting for it. With an axe.
Borden dispatches #1
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Stories of the Raksura : The Falling World & the Tale of Indigo and Cloud
by Martha Wells
Martha Wells returns to the Raksura with a pair of brand-new novellas!
In "The Falling World," Jade, sister queen of the Indigo Cloud Court, has traveled with Chime and Balm to another Raksuran court. When she fails to return, her consort, Moon, along with Stone and a party of warriors and hunters, must track them down. Finding them turns out to be the easy part; freeing them from an ancient trap hidden in the depths of the Reaches is much more difficult.
"The Tale of Indigo and Cloud" explores the history of the Indigo Cloud Court, long before Moon was born. In the distant past, Indigo stole Cloud from Emerald Twilight. But in doing so, the reigning Queen Cerise and Indigo are now poised for a conflict that could spark war throughout all the courts of the Reaches.
Stories of Moon and the shape changers of Raksura have delighted readers for years. This world is a dangerous place full of strange mysteries, where the future can never be taken for granted and must always be fought for with wits and ingenuity, and often tooth and claw. With two brand-new novellas, Martha Wells shows that the world of the Raksura has many more stories to tell . . .
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City of Stairs
by Robert Jackson Bennett
The city of Bulikov once wielded the powers of the gods to conquer the world, enslaving and brutalizing millions--until its divine protectors were killed. Now Bulikov has become just another colonial outpost of the world's new geopolitical power, but the surreal landscape of the city itself--first shaped, now shattered, by the thousands of miracles its guardians once worked upon it--stands as a constant, haunting reminder of its former supremacy.
Into this broken city steps Shara Thivani. Officially, the unassuming young woman is just another junior diplomat sent by Bulikov's oppressors. Unofficially, she is one of her country's most accomplished spies, dispatched to catch a murderer. But as Shara pursues the killer, she starts to suspect that the beings who ruled this terrible place may not be as dead as they seem--and that Bulikov's cruel reign may not yet be over.
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The Falcon Throne
by Karen Miller
NO ONE IS INNOCENT. EVERY CROWN IS TARNISHED.
A royal child, believed dead, sets his eyes on regaining his father's stolen throne.
A bastard lord, uprising against his tyrant cousin, sheds more blood than he bargained for.
A duke's widow, defending her daughter, defies the ambitious lord who'd control them both.
And two brothers, divided by ambition, will learn the true meaning of treachery.
All of this will come to pass, and the only certainty is that nothing will remain as it once was. As royal houses rise and fall, empires are reborn and friends become enemies, it becomes clear that much will be demanded of those who follow the path to power.
Tarnished Crown #1
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Yesterday's Hero
by Jonathan Wood
Another day. Another zombie T-Rex to put down. All part of the routine for Arthur Wallace and MI37--the government department devoted to defending Britain from threats magical, supernatural, extraterrestrial, and generally odd. Except a zombie T-Rex is only the first of the problems about to trample, slavering and roaring, through Arthur's life. Before he can say, "but didn't I save the world yesterday?" a new co-director at MI37 is threatening his job, middle-aged Russian cyborg wizards are threatening his life, and his coworkers are threatening his sanity.
As Arthur struggles to unravel a plot to re-enact the Chernobyl disaster in England's capital, he must not only battle foreign occult science but also struggle to keep the trust of his team. Events spiral out of control, friendships fray, and loyalties are tested to their breaking point.
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Shifting shadows : stories from the world of Mercy Thompson
by Patricia Briggs
Mercy Thompson's world just got a whole lot bigger... A collection of all-new and previously published short stories featuring Mercy Thompson, "one of the best heroines in the urban fantasy genre today" ("Fiction Vixen Book Reviews"), and the characters she calls friends... Includes the new stories... "Silver" "Roses in Winter" "Redemption" "Hollow" ...and reader favorites "Fairy Gifts" "Gray" "Alpha and Omega" "Seeing Eye" "The Star of David" "In Red, with Pearls"
Mercedes Thompson series
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The seventh sigil
by Margaret Weis
Five hundred years ago, a clan of rebels was banished to the bottom of the enchanted world of Aeronne; ever since, these Bottom Dwellers have sought revenge, and now they are waging all-out war on the rest of humanity. Their deadly "contramagic" beams destroy buildings and attack naval airships, and their demonic drumming brings terrible storms and disrupts the magic of the people and dragons Above. The attack of their full contramagic power will create a magical armageddon.
In an effort to prevent further death, Captain Stephano de Guichen leads the Dragon Brigade, taking the fight to the Bottom. But strength of arms alone will not be enough to conquer their foe.
As the Bottom Dwellers' blood magic eats away at the world, those Above realize their only possible defense lies in the heretical secrets of contramagic. Loyal priests must decide whether to protect the Church, or risk its destruction in pursuit of the truth.
Only the Dragon Brigade can prevent an endless dark age. Their epic battle will test the mettle of those thrown into the breach, and determine the fate of this magical world.
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| Red Country by Joe AbercrombieMilitary Fantasy. When Shy South returns from a trip to town with her stepfather, Lamb, she finds the family farm burned to the ground and her younger siblings missing. Suspecting that this is the work of child-abducting slave traders from the North, Shy and Lamb embark on a perilous journey to rescue the children. Although it's set in the same world as author Joe Abercrombie's First Law Trilogy, this novel (itself a loose sequel to the stand-alone book The Heroes) requires no previous knowledge of the series. However, newcomers who enjoy gritty, violent military-focused fantasy will no doubt want to immerse themselves in all the books' vividly rendered setting. |
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| The Steel Remains by Richard K. MorganSword and Sorcery. Once a war hero, retired swordsman Ringil is now a living tourist attraction, drumming up business in a backcountry inn by telling stories of his glory days. When his mother begs him to locate a cousin who's been sold into slavery, Ringil is surprised by the request -- his family long ago disowned him for being a lover of men. However, he shoulders his trusty broadsword, Ravensfriend, sets off in search of his kinswoman...and finds much more than he bargained for. Fans of Joe Abercrombie's First Law trilogy may enjoy the complex (and cynical) characters, dark humor, and explicit sex and violence of The Steel Remains, which is the 1st book in the Land Fit for Heroes series, followed by The Cold Commands and the forthcoming The Dark Defiles. |
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| The Way of Shadows by Brent WeeksFantasy. Durzo Blint is a "wetboy," a skilled assassin whose magic only enhances his ability to kill; Azoth is a "guild rat," picking pockets and stealing from merchants' stalls to survive on the streets. Azoth longs to be Blint's apprentice, determined to avenge the crimes of his cruel master and save the lives of his childhood friends. However, the path he's chosen to follow is a difficult one that will require Azoth to transform himself into someone even he doesn't recognize. Fast-paced and action-packed, The Way of Shadows kicks off the gritty and violent Night Angel trilogy, which continues with Shadows' Edge and Beyond the Shadows. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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Prince George's County Memorial Library System 6532 Adelphi Rd. Hyattsville, Maryland 20782 301-699-3500http://www.pgcmls.info/ |
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