Archives de catégorie : Fantasy

BEHIND THE CRIMSON CURTAIN d’E.B. Golden

Firin and Bregan never should have met, let alone started a relationship that would haunt them their whole lives.

BEHIND THE CRIMSON CURTAIN
by E.B. Golden
47 North/(Amazon, September 2024
(via Laura Dail Literary Agency)

Firin is a face-changing con artist trained by her domineering father. Bregan is an actor turned heroic leader in the Reform movement that’s overthrowing the coal-choked island of Luisonn.

As the flames of revolt settle, Firin joins Bregan on the stage. She’s determined to create a life with the honorable man she never forgot. But love and truth are hard to hide—especially when one of Firin’s victims, now President, chooses Bregan as his right-hand man. In a web of war and false identities, Firin must choose a side. Will the price of freedom be her heart?

« A steamy, epic romance with two backdrops — a revolution and the theater — that somehow work together perfectly.” – Ali Hazelwood, author of The Love Hypothesis and other TikTok sensations/New York Times bestsellers

“A lyrically haunting love story masterfully woven into a world that is a poignant mirror to our own. Genre fans will be enraptured by the morally gray cast, shocking plot twists, and imaginative foray into the world of theater. Fans of Erin Morgenstern, Shannon Chakraborty, and R.F. Kuang will be undone. Perfect for readers who love their fantasy razor sharp. » – J. Elle, New York Times bestselling author of House of Marionne and Wings of Ebony

Though born and raised on the coast of Maine, E.B. Golden spends most of her free time exploring the mountains of southwest Colorado with her husband and daughter. Since she could hold a pen, she’s used speculative fiction to make sense of a nonsensical world, and when she’s not writing, she’s usually traveling or coaching other writers, because the world always needs more stories.

HOUSE OF THE BEAST de Michelle Wong

Celebrated artist Michelle Wong, illustrator of The Legend of Korra comics, makes her literary debut with this fantasy novel brimming with romance and horror, centered on a young woman who is seeking revenge on her aristocratic family, aided by the powers of a dark and alluring god who appears only to her in the form of a handsome young man—also featuring gorgeous black-and-white illustrations throughout by the author.

HOUSE OF THE BEAST
by Michelle Wong
Harper Voyager, June 2025

Growing up poor and outcasted as a child born out of wedlock, Alma learned to make her peace with solitude, so long as she had her mother. But when her mother becomes desperately ill, Alma discovers a clue about her estranged father and writes a message begging for help. Little does she know that she is a bastard of House Avera, a powerful magical family that serves a dark and frightening elder god, the Dread Beast.

In exchange for her mother’s medicine, Alma agrees to sacrifice her left arm to the Beast in a ceremony that binds her to House Avera. Regardless, her mother soon passes as a result of her father’s selfish nature.

Now vengeance is the only thing that keeps Alma going. That, and the strange connection she has with her god—a monster who is constantly by her side, an eldritch being taking the form of a beautiful prince with starlit hair that only she can see and hear. He tells Alma that she has been chosen to bring change upon Kugara, and with his help, Alma plots to destroy the House that has stolen everything from her.

Michelle Wong is a writer and artist from Hong Kong with over 50K followers across social media platforms. She’s illustrated for various clients such as HarperCollins, IDW, Dark Horse, and more. This is her debut novel.

THESE SHATTERED SPIRES de Cassidy Ellis Salter

A crossover upper-YA gothic fantasy, with the snark and worldbuilding of Gideon the Ninth mixed with the romances and backstabbing of The Atlas Six.

THESE SHATTERED SPIRES
by Cassidy Ellis Salter
On submission
(via Zeno Agency)

The world of Fourspires, is lucious in its grotesqueness. It is a world constantly on the edge of self-destruction and, whether you’re slinking through the rerouting passages of the library or fighting off cutlery-welding starvings in the poisonous forests of the Ulcer, it propulsively pulls you through unforgettable tableaus.

The crumbling castle of Fourspires is the centre of the sole city that exists under the desecrae, a bloody, domed sky that encloses this small world. This is a world where mirrors are banned lest they allow horrors through, where dead nuns stalk the corridors looking to snap the necks of rule breakers, and where magic is real but comes with a price. Because you can reanimate the dead, control someone through their blood or simply make the flowers grow, but it comes with pain. Pain so unbearable you would do anything to avoid it. Which is why Fourspires developed a system of human familiars. Now Arcanists can go about their days quite happily, knowing that their young familiars will be forced to take the pain for all their magic.

Taro and Nixie just graduated from The Academy of familiars. And they’ve been assigned to the head arcanists of the Bone and Botanist disciplines. As high familiars they see each other all the time, but they can never talk, never touch. Which is a shame for Taro because she thinks they’re in love and Nixie is her girlfriend. It’s also a shame for Nixie, because she hates Taro with a passion and wants to throttle her. Despite their differences, on the eve our story begins, Taro and Nixie are planning to escape. Anything’s better than the life of a familiar and, if they can just sneak out of the castle, maybe they can kiss each other or kill each other – whichever’s more practical.

But that’s the night the Tick Tock king finally dies and everything is thrown into chaos. In 48-hours, Taro and Nixie will have to accompany their arcanists into The Fifth Tower and kill or be killed in the fight to the top…

THESE SHATTERER SPIRES is a twisty, multiple-viewpoint tale that keeps you guessing until the very last page. It’s also a very prescient, very necessary novel, prominently featuring queer characters, characters struggling with their gender identity and characters with selective mutism.

Cassidy Ellis Salter is a queer, non-binary author from London’s Brixton. They have published two middle grade books (The Bone Snatcher and Where the Woods End) and THESE SHATTERED SPIRES is their first fantasy for older readers. They work in marketing in their day job and have a personal author TikTok account where their videos have amassed more than a million views and they now have just shy of 10,000 followers. Alis’ struggle to discover themselves as non-binary is very much based on Cassidy’s own coming to terms with their gender identity.

A FIRE IN THE SKY de Sophie Jordan

New York Times bestselling author Sophie Jordan returns to the high-stakes, sweeping world of dragons, romance, and drama first evoked in her bestselling young adult Firelight series, in a brand-new epic adult romantasy series.

A FIRE IN THE SKY
by Sophie Jordan
Avon/HarperCollins, October 2024

Dragons are extinct. Witches are outcast. Magic is dying.

But human lust for power is immortal.

Dragon fire no longer blisters the skies over Penterra, but inside the lavish palace, life is stil perilous… especially for Tamsyn. Raised in the glittering court alongside the princesses, it’s her duty to be punished for their misdeeds. Treated as part of the roval family but also as the lowliest servant. Tamsyn fits nowhere. Her only friend is Stig. Captain of the Guard.though sometimes she thinks he wants more than friendship.

When Fell, the Beast of the Borderlands, descends on her home, Tamsyn’s world becomes even more dangerous. To save the pampered princesses from a fate worse than death, she is commanded to don a veil and marry the brutal warrior. She agrees to the deception even though it means leaving Stig, and the only life she’s ever known, behind.

The wedding night begins with unexpected passion–and ends in near violence when her trickery is exposed. Rather than start a war, Fell accepts Tamsyn as his bride… but can he accept the dark secrets she harbors-secrets buried so deep even she doesn’t know they exist For Tamsyn is more than a royal whipping girl, more than the false wife of a man who now sees her as his enemy. And when those secrets emerge, they will ignite a flame bright enough fo burn the entire kingdom to the bone.

Magic is not dead… it is only sleeping. And it will take one ordinary girl with an extraordinary destiny to awaken it.

Sophie Jordan grew up in the Texas hill country where she wove fantasies of dragons, warriors, and princesses. A former high school English teacher, she’s the New York Times, USA Today and international bestselling author of more than fifty novels. She now lives in Houston with her family. When she’s not writing. she spends her time overloading on caffeine (lattes preferred), talking plotlines with anyone who will listen (including her kids), and cramming her DVR with anything that has a hapoily ever after.

THE DEER AND THE DRAGON de Piper CJ

The first in a spellbinding new urban fantasy from USA Today bestselling author and TikTok sensation Piper CJ. Fantasy author Marlow has been haunted by what she believes is a figure of her imagination: a mysterious and alluring man she calls Caliban. But when Caliban disappears, her quest to find him throws her into the very world of gods, demons, and monsters her books have been based on for years.

THE DEER AND THE DRAGON
No Other Gods, Book 1
by Piper CJ
Bloom Books/Sourcebooks, May 2024

The deities you call aren’t always the ones who answer.

Marlow needs to believe she’s crazy. The alternative would mean embracing the gift—or curse—shared by her mother and grandmother: she can see angels and demons, including a dark and haunting entity who’s been with Marlow her entire life. At least, she believes that’s all he is until a fae from the Nordic pantheon strolls into her life and informs her that she’s been sharing a bed with the Prince of Hell.

Before she knows it, Marlow is deeply entangled in a centuries-old war, stumbling straight into a battleground between mighty beings of myth and legend from powerful pantheons around the world. And who will come out on top may just depend on her and the love she never dared to believe in.

Piper CJ, author of the bisexual fantasy series The Night and Its Moon, is a photographer, hobby linguist, and french fry enthusiast. She has an M.A. in folklore, and a B.A. in broadcasting, which she used in her former life as a morning show weather girl, hockey podcaster, and in audio documentary work. Now when she isn’t playing with her dogs, Arrow and Applesauce, she’s making tiktoks, studying Vietnamese, or writing fantasy very, very quickly.