Archives de catégorie : Romantasy

BEAUTY OF UNWANTED THINGS d’Astrid Scholte

A darkly bewitching, distinctive, romantic fairytale that is perfect for readers of One Dark Window, Uprooted, and For the Wolf.

BEAUTY OF UNWANTED THINGS
by Astrid Scholte
Wednesday Books, Winter 2026
(via Sterling Lord Literistic)

Thoralea Winyard has been a prisoner her entire life, forced to paint dead animals pushed into her cell each day. For twenty years she has not seen outside her tower. For twenty years she has dreamed of taking revenge on her captors and watching the castle burn.

When one of her dead subjects comes back to life, Thoralea is thrust into the sumptuous world of court life where she can have anything she desires—aside from her freedom. What no one knows outside the castle walls is that the king and queen of Lagonia have ruled for centuries. Their health, and immortality, gifted through the creation of portraits by painters with magic in their veins. Immortality is their one defense in the ongoing battle with Hetchnik: a cursed neighboring realm who seek to bring death and darkness to the land.

Prince Kelter is desperate to join the ranks of the immortal battalion.

Disillusioned with court and his figurehead role, he makes a deal with Thoralea: she will paint the portrait Prince Kelter has been denied by his parents, and he will help her escape the castle. As they grow closer and their attraction intensifies, a deadly secret is revealed, and Thoralea and Kelter will have to put their trust in each other to save the kingdom before the curse comes for them both.

Astrid Scholte is the internationally bestselling and award-winning author of Four Dead Queens, The Vanishing Deep and League of Liars. When she’s not writing, she works in film and animation production. Career highlights include working on James Cameron’s Avatar, Disney’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur. She currently works at Industrial Light & Magic on the latest blockbuster.

REIGN & RUIN de J. D. Evans

She is heir to a Sultanate that once ruled the world. He is an unwanted prince with the power to destroy. They must find a way to save their people from annihilation—but first, they will have to balance their own forbidden passion.

REIGN & RUIN
(Mages of the Wheel series, Book 1)
by J. D. Evans
Self-published, 2019
(via Ethan Ellenberg Literary)

“All magic is beautiful…and terrible. Do you not see the beauty in yours, or the terror in mine? You can stop a heart, and I can stop your breath.”

She is heir to a Sultanate that once ruled the world. He is an unwanted prince with the power to destroy.

She is order and intellect, a woman fit to rule in a man’s place. He is chaos and violence and will stop at nothing to protect his people.

His magic answers hers with shadow for light. They need each other, but the cost of balance may be too high a price. Magic is dying and the only way to save it is to enlist mages who wield the forbidden power of death, mages cast out centuries ago in a brutal and bloody war.

Now, a new war is coming. Science and machines to replace magic and old religion.

They must find a way to save their people from annihilation and balance the sacred Wheel—but first, they will have to balance their own forbidden passion. His peace for her tempest, his restlessness for her calm…

Night and day, dusk and dawn, the end, and the beginning.

J. D. Evans writes fantasy and science fiction romance. After earning her degree in linguistics, J. D. served a decade as an army officer. She once spent her hours putting together briefings for helicopter pilots and generals. Now she writes stories, tends to two unreasonable tiny humans, knits, sews badly, gardens, and cultivates Pinterest Fails. After a stint in Beirut, J. D. fell in love with the Levant, which inspired the setting for her debut series, Mages of the Wheel. Originally hailing from Montana, J. D. now resides in North Carolina with her husband, two attempts at mini-clones gone rogue, and too many stories in her head.