"Let's start with the end of the world, why don't we?" ~ from N.K. Jemisin's The Fifth Season
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Photo Hunt 2015Arrivals and Departures — The Journeys that Have Shaped Us’. Take ownership of your city’s heritage: send in some of your old photos to help grow a photographic archive. You could win a tablet or eReader. Copies of photograph entries may be displayed in libraries and uploaded to Kete Christchurch.
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| Lamp Black, Wolf Grey by Paula BrackstonStruggling with a stalled career, a failing marriage, and infertility, London-based artist Laura Matthews moves to Wales, hoping that a change of scene will change her life for the better. Laura's exploration of her new home and her encounters with a mysterious man who wanders the nearby woods alternates with the tale of the enchanter Merlin, his grey wolf, and the young woman who captures his heart. Like author Paula Brackston's previous novels, Lamp Black, Wolf Grey boasts a strong sense of place, lush description, and a heady blend of magic and romance. |
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The house of shattered wings
by Aliette de Bodard
To restore House Silverspires to its former glory, a naïve but powerful fallen angel, a self-destructive alchemist and a vengeful magician must come to together to save a world ravaged by a Magicians' War. By a Nebula Award-winning author.
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The paradox
by Charlie Fletcher
Tasked with keeping humanity safe from the supernatural, the untrained members of the Oversight have their inexperience bring new enemies into the city and surprising new allies from across the sea
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| The Rise of the Automated Aristocrats: A Burton & Swinburne Adventure by Mark HodderFollowing separate sojourns to the future, explorer Richard Francis Burton and his companion, poet Algernon Swinburne, return 1861 London, burdened with knowledge of 23rd-century technological innovations that they can neither use nor reveal to anyone. Despite efforts to keep the information secret, it soon falls into the wrong hands. Now it's up to the duo to prevent their beloved England from becoming a totalitarian state. Atmospheric, intricately plotted, and witty, The Rise of the Automated Aristocrats concludes the Burton & Swinburne Adventures, which began with The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack. |
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A Crucible of Souls
by Mitchell Hogan
When young Caldan's parents are brutally slain, the boy is raised by monks who initiate him into the arcane mysteries of sorcery. Growing up plagued by questions about his past, Caldan vows to discover who his parents were, and why they were violently killed. The search will take him beyond the walls of the monastery, into the unfamiliar and dangerous chaos of city life. With nothing to his name but a pair of mysterious heirlooms and a handful of coins, he must prove his talent to become apprenticed to a guild of sorcerers. But the world outside the monastery is a darker place than he ever imagined, and his treasured sorcery has disturbing depths he does not fully understand. As a shadowed evil manipulates the unwary and forbidden powers are unleashed, Caldan is plunged into an age-old conflict that will bring the world to the edge of destruction. Soon, he must choose a side, and face the true cost of uncovering his past.
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| Updraft by Fran WildeAll Kirit Densira wants is to pass her wingtest, strap on her flying gear, and join her mother as a trader, ferrying much-needed supplies between towers made of living bone while eluding the predatory skymouths that snatch citizens from the air. When Kirit breaks Tower Law by deterring a skymouth attack, the enigmatic Singers -- who govern the city from within the Spire -- present her with an agonizing choice: sacrifice her life's dream in order to join their ranks or receive a sentence of death. Extensive world-building, layers of political intrigue, and a poignant coming-of-age story make this 1st book in a projected series a must-read. |
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Focus on: Secret Societies
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| Dime Store Magic by Kelley ArmstrongWhen Paige Winterbourne inherits her mother's position as Coven leader, she also gains custody of 13-year-old orphan witch Savannah Levine. At 23, Paige doesn't feel up to the task of leading a Coven or raising a teenager, but she'll have to do both when a powerful Cabal of sorcerers decides it wants Savannah. Although witches and sorcerers don't get along, Paige is so desperate to protect her young ward that she'll even accept the aid of sorcerer-lawyer Lucas Cortez. While this is the 3rd installment of Kelley Armstrong's Women of the Otherworld series, it's the first to focus on Paige, whose adventures continue in Industrial Magic and Counterfeit Magic. Savannah, meanwhile, takes center stage in Waking the Witch, Spellbound, and Thirteen. |
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| The Oversight by Charlie FletcherA secret society known as the Oversight guards the boundary between the mundane and magical worlds, despite their dwindling ranks. Once they numbered in the hundreds; now there are just five: "glint" Sara Falk, whose clairvoyance is triggered by touching objects; Cook, a housekeeper who's more than meets the eye; rat-catcher Hodge, who communicates telepathically with animals; the Smith, gifted with unusual longevity as well as the ability to cloud minds; and the uncannily persuasive Mr. Sharp. When psychic Lucy Harker is delivered to their doorstep, she seems to good to be true. And perhaps she is. Set in a Victorian London rife with magic and mystery, The Oversight is part one of a planned trilogy that continues with The Paradox. |
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The black opera : a novel of opera, volcanoes, and the mind of God
by Mary Gentle
Conrad Scalese is a writer of librettos for operas in a world where music has immense power. In the Church, the sung mass can bring about actual miracles like healing the sick. Opera is musicodrama, the highest form of music combined with human emotion, and the results of the passion it engenders can be nothing short of magical. In this world of miracles, Conrad is an atheist. He sees the same phenomena, but sees no need to attribute them to a Deity until his first really successful opera gets the opera-house struck by the lightning bolt of God's disapproval. And Conrad comes to the attention of the Prince's Men, a powerful secret society, who are trying to use the magic of music to their own ends in this case, an apocalyptic blood sacrifice. Life is about to get interesting for Conrad.
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| The Innocent Mage by Karen MillerThe son of a fisherman, Asher yearns to rise above his humble beginnings and see the world beyond the village of his birth. To this end, he travels to the city of Dorana, where he befriends a prince of the realm, encounters a powerful cabal of mages, and -- thanks to some unexpected new acquaintances -- discovers a destiny far stranger and greater than any he could have imagined. The Innocent Mage is the 1st novel in the Kingmaker, Kingbreaker duology, followed by The Awakened Mage. There's also a prequel, A Blight of Mages. |
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| The Rook: A Novel by Daniel O'MalleyIt's bad enough when you black out and then regain consciousness in a London park, battered, bruised, and surrounded by corpses. It's even worse when you discover that you've woken up in the wrong body. Fortunately for the unnamed, amnesiac woman currently inhabiting the body of "Myfanwy Thomas," the previous occupant has left her a series of letters informing her that she's a "Rook," a high-level operative of a secret organization that battles supernatural forces, as well as providing instructions on how to survive her new life. This offbeat, genre-bending debut combines the pacing and suspense of a spy novel and the gritty, detailed world-building of urban fantasy. |
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| The Traveller: A Novel by John Twelve HawksLike it or not, Gabriel and Michael Corrigan are destined to follow in their father's footsteps as members of a secret society known as the Travellers. And, like it or not, sword-wielding "Harlequin" Maya must protect the brothers from the Tabula, a rival group dedicated to world domination as well as the destruction of all Travelers. This fast-paced, suspenseful debut novel kicks off the Fourth Realm trilogy, which continues with The Dark River and The Golden City. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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