Archives de catégorie : Fiction

THE MOUNTAIN CROWN de Karin Lowachee

An epic dragon-rider quest where Empress of Salt and Fortune meets Temeraire.

THE MOUNTAIN CROWN
(The Crowns of Ishia, Book 1)
by Karin Lowachee
Rebellion Publishing UK, October 2024
(via DeFiore and Company)

Méka must capture a king dragon, or die trying.

War between the island states of Kattaka and Mazemoor has left no one unscathed. Méka’s nomadic people, the Ba’Suon, were driven from their homeland by the Kattakans. Those who remained were forced to live under the Kattakan yoke, to serve their greed for gold alongside the dragons with whom the Ba’Suon share an empathic connection.

A decade later and under a fragile truce, Méka returns home from her exile for an ancient, necessary rite: gathering a king dragon of the Crown Mountains to maintain balance in the wild country. But Méka’s act of compassion toward an imprisoned dragon and Lilley, a Kattakan veteran of the war, soon draws the ire of the imperialistic authorities. They order the unwelcome addition of an enigmatic Ba’Suon traitor named Raka to accompany Méka and Lilley to the mountains.

The journey is filled with dangers both within and without. As conflict threatens to reignite, the survival of the Ba’Suon people, their dragons, and the land itself will depend on the decisions – defiant or compliant – that Méka and her companions choose to make. But not even Méka, kin to the great dragons of the North, can anticipate the depth of the consequences to her world.

THE MOUNTAIN CROWN is the first entry into an unmissable fantasy trilogy about resistance, loyalty, and resilience in the fact of colonial domination.

Karin Lowachee was born in South America, grew up in Canada, and worked in the Arctic. She has been a creative writing instructor, adult education teacher, and volunteer in a maximum security prison. Her novels have been translated into French, Hebrew, and Japanese, and her short stories have been published in numerous anthologies, best-of collections, and magazines. When she isn’t writing, she serves at the whim of a black cat.

FIRE IN THE HEAD de Daniel Oakman

A gripping and unsettling psychological thriller that goes to the heart of the deep taboo of child assault, and the ramifications of trauma later in life.

FIRE IN THE HEAD
by Daniel Oakman
Black Inc. (Australia), March 2025

Part crime drama, part coming-of-age tale, part modern psychological odyssey, Oakman’s novel is a gripping, unsettling and powerful story about self-discovery, the importance of friendship and the transcendent power of words. FIRE IN THE HEAD addresses a deep taboo in Australian society—the legacy of child sexual abuse and what victims must endure to bring perpetrators to justice.

In March 1999, twenty-seven-year-old James Harper, a shy public servant living in Canberra, is called to a police station to provide evidence on the suicide of his youngest sister nine years earlier. As the investigation gets underway, James confesses that he had been abused by his stepfather, Martin Jenkins, when he was a child. Could the two events be connected? But as he dives headfirst into the legal system in a quest for justice, James must face some disturbing truths about himself and the past he thought he had left behind.

Daniel Oakman, a writer and historian, comes from Melbourne. After a brief sojourn as a public servant in the mid-1990s, he completed his PhD at the Australian National University before a fifteen-year career as a senior curator at the National Museum of Australia. In 2005, his ground-breaking history of Australia and the Colombo Plan, Facing Asia (published by Pandanus Books), was shortlisted for the NSW History Awards. With Melbourne Books he has published Oppy (2018), an acclaimed biography of the sporting icon and politician Hubert Opperman, and Wild Ride (2020), an immersive exploration of how the bicycle has long shaped understandings of the Australian continent and its people. Daniel’s other writing has appeared in diverse publications, including Mountain Biking Australia, VeloNews, Australian Historical Studies, The Big Issue and Meanjin. He lives in Canberra with his partner Cecilie and a dog called Gilbert. FIRE IN THE HEAD is his first novel.

CARTIER de Sophie Villard

Love, intrigue and the most desirable jewellery in the world – the first instalment in a two-book series about the Cartier family’s glamorous life.

CARTIER: Der Traum von Diamanten
(Diamond Dreams)
The Cartier Saga, Book 1
by Sophie Villard
Penguin Germany, November 2024

Paris, 1910. Now that her engagement to an aristocrat has been called off, Jeanne Toussaint tries to make ends meet as a seamstress in unsavoury Montmartre. One night, she meets jeweller Louis Cartier in a nightclub. He and his brothers have shops in Paris, London and New York where anyone who’s anyone buys their jewellery. Louis immediately recognises that Jeanne has a sure sense of style and is immensely talented. But it’s more than that: he can’t deny his attraction to this charming, vivacious young woman. But storm clouds are gathering on Europe’s horizon, and the Cartier family are in danger of losing everything.

Sophie Villard is the pen name of a successful German author. She studied journalism and political science, and lives near Dresden with her family. Her novel about the famous art collector Peggy Guggenheim was a Spiegel bestseller. After Madame Exupéry und die Sterne des Himmels (‘Madame Exupéry and the Starry Skies’) and Mademoiselle Eiffel und der Turm der Liebe (‘Mademoiselle Eiffel and the Tower of Love’), she has now turned to writing an exciting saga about the Cartiers.

DER LÄNGSTE SCHLAF de Melanie Raabe

A sleep researcher who can’t sleep. Dreams that spill over into reality. An old man struggling to make amends.

DER LÄNGSTE SCHLAF
(The Longest Sleep)
by Melanie Raabe
btb/PRH Germany, September 2024

In young scientist Mara Lux’s life, practically everything revolves around sleep. She lives in London, and is a leading scholar in the field – but has herself been tortured by insomnia for years. She’s scared of her dreams, because they have an uncanny habit of blurring with reality. Which is particularly tough for Mara, because she’s nothing if not rational, and likes to be in control.

Mara’s parents died a long time ago, and she hardly ever visits Germany, so she’s surprised when she learns from a notary that someone wants to give her a big, old villa as a gift – anonymously. Mara thinks it must be a case of mistaken identity. Still, she’s curious, and decides to check it out. When she arrives in the small town she’s never heard of, she discovers that the place has somehow been in her dreams all along…

For fans of Lauren Groff, Mariana Leky, Alex Schulman and Ewald Arenz

Melanie Raabe was born in 1981. After her studies she worked as a journalist during the day and secretly wrote books at night. The Trap was published in 2015, followed by The Truth in 2016, The Shadow in 2018, and The Woods in 2019. Her novel Die Kunst des Verschwindens (‘The Art of Disappearing’, 2022) was her first thriller. Her books have been translated into 22 languages so far, and many have been adapted for the screen.

MY NAME IS EMILIA DEL VALLE d’Isabel Allende

In this spellbinding novel from the New York Times bestselling author of A Long Petal of the Sea and The Wind Knows My Name, a young journalist comes of age in the late 1800’s and attempts to uncover the truth about her father—and herself.

MY NAME IS EMILIA DEL VALLE
by Isabel Allende
Ballantine, May 2025
(via Writers House)

In San Francisco 1866, an Irish nun, abandoned following a torrid relationship with a Chilean aristocrat, gives birth to a daughter named Emilia del Valle. Raised by a loving stepfather, Emilia grows into an independent thinker and a self-sufficient young woman.

To pursue her passion for writing, she is willing to defy societal norms. At the age of sixteen, she begins to publish pulp fiction under a man’s pen name. When these fictional worlds can’t contain her sense of adventure any longer, she turns to journalism, convincing an editor at The Daily Examiner to hire her. There she is paired with another talented reporter, Eric Whelan.

As she proves herself, her restlessness returns, until an opportunity arises to cover a brewing civil war in Chile. She seizes it, along with Eric, and while there, she meets her estranged father and delves into the violent confrontation in the country where her roots lie. As she and Eric discover love, the war escalates and Emilia finds herself in extreme danger, fearing for her life and questioning her identity and her destiny.

A riveting tale of self-discovery and love from one of the most masterful storytellers of our time, MY NAME IS EMILIA DEL VALLE introduces a character you will never forget.

Isabel Allende, born in Peru and raised in Chile, is a novelist, feminist, and philanthropist. She is one of the most widely read authors in the world, having sold more than eighty million copies of her twenty-eight books across forty-two languages. She is the author of several bestselling and critically acclaimed books, including The Wind Knows My Name, Violeta, A Long Petal of the Sea, The House of the Spirits, Of Love and Shadows, Eva Luna, and Paula. In addition to her work as a writer, Isabel devotes much of her time to human rights causes. She has received fifteen honorary doctorates, been inducted into the California Hall of Fame, and received the PEN Center Lifetime Achievement Award and the Anisfield-Wolf Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2014, President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, and in 2018, she received the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation.