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THE QUANTUM CURATORS SERIES d’Eva St. John

Anyone can track down a priceless artefact that’s been lost for hundreds of years. Finding one that’s been hidden on a parallel Earth… now that’s a neat trick! Indiana Jones meets the Men in Black and all hell breaks out.

THE QUANTUM CURATORS SERIES
by Eva St. John
Self-published, 2020 – 2023
(via the Zeno Agency)

Embark on an exhilarating journey with the best-selling Quantum Curators Series by Eva St. John. Experience the thrill of interdimensional treasure hunts in five riveting novels, with protagonists Neith Salah and Julius Strathclyde. From unearthing the enigmatic ‘Fabergé Egg’ to decoding cosmic conundrums, every tale is a unique blend of high-stakes adventure and compelling science fiction. But as they step between two Earths, they must also outwit the rogue curators from within, intent on seizing these treasures for dark purposes. The Quantum Curators series is a potent mix of action, intrigue, and quantum mysteries that’s sure to captivate sci-fi enthusiasts.

Book 1: THE QUANTUM CURATORS AND THE FABERGÉ EGG (May 2020)

When Neith Salah – a quantum curator charged with traveling to our parallel Earth to rescue precious artefacts – is ordered to save a priceless Fabergé Egg, she figures it’s just another job. The only problem: she’s not sure what the egg looks like. Or where it is. Or when it is.

Enter Julius Strathclyde, a mild-mannered Cambridge professor whose closest brush with death-defying treasure hunts is finding lost coins down the back of the sofa. Not the usual “save the world” type, but when Julius’ best friend is murdered while searching for the egg, Neith realizes that this mild-mannered professor is the only person who can help her solve the riddles that will lead her to the egg.

She just has to keep him alive long enough to do it.

He’s got the fountain pens. She’s got the guns. They’ll just have to hope that’s enough to keep them ahead of the Russian Mafia, unknown assassins, and perhaps even other quantum curators who want the egg for their own dark purposes… and may not be picky about who they have to kill to get it.

Number one bestselling author Eva St. John invites you to join Neith and Julius on a fast-paced adventure that will take you from Russia and Poland to London and Cambridge, from our world to theirs, and beyond. If you love adventure, humour, and puzzles – with just a pinch of time-traveling thrills mixed in for luck – you’ll love The Quantum Curators and the Fabergé Egg.

Eva St. John was born in Norwich before being whisked away to Ireland and then back to the UK. After realizing that a degree might actually require some form of employment, she jumped into the work of a librarian and fell in love with books. A joy that had begun with her mother’s travelling library. From Wales, Eva moved to Cornwall and opened a bookshop. Always chasing the books, she eventually decided to start writing them. She also writes romance under another name.

CRADLE OF SECRETS de Jasmin Wigham

A Victorian fantasy romance perfect for fans of Cassandra Clare and Alexandra Christo.

CRADLE OF SECRETS
by Jasmin Wigham
Podium, TBD
(via Zeno Agency)

Jem has lied, cheated and stolen to make his way into the swankiest circles of London’s elite. And now he almost has everything he ever wanted, a beautiful if vapid fiancé, a patron who’s willing to fund his lavish lifestyle. But now he’s here it doesn’t deliver the high he wanted. So when a mysterious blond called Felicity appears and asks him to demonstrate his legendary gunslinger skills, he can’t quite resist.

Jem’s about to realise the problem with inventing yourself an elaborate adventuring background is, it doesn’t hold up very long when you’re confronted with real monsters.

Narrowly escaping with his life, Jem realises Felicity isn’t all she appears. He tries to slip back into his normal life but can’t quite resist the pull of an actual adventure. So alongside Felicity, a young woman cursed with immortality to watch everyone she loves grow up and leave her; Odessa, a witch with no magic; Rashid, a scientist who figured out how to turn people invisible but not how to turn them back; and McLaren, a Scotsman who may or may not be a werewolf – Jem must figure out who is creating monsters out of men.

Jasmine Wigham lives in Country Durham. After finishing a degree in History and English literature, she went on to become a finalist in Penguin Random House’s 2020 ‘Write Now’ scheme, which aims to champion promising new writers who are so far underrepresented in the publishing landscape. CRADLE OF SECRETS 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.

ADAMA de Lavie Tidhar

A sweeping historical epic following four generations of a single family as they struggle to hold on to their land and each other.

ADAMA
by Lavie Tidhar
Head of Zeus, September 2023
(via Zeno Agency)

There is no land without blood, and i water this land with the blood of my men.

Ruth’s family were in Budapest when the Nazis came.

Now Ruth is in Palestine, amid the bare hills inland from Haifa, breaking the rocky soil of an unyielding land before it breaks her.

With her comrades, her fellow kibbutzniks, she will build a better world. There will be green grass, orange trees and pomegranates, a land that is their own and no one else’s.

So they till their fields, dig their wells, build their homes and forge a new way of living, fiercely proud of their shared pursuit of a dream.

But as one generation begets another, the dream unravels, twisted into a dark tapestry of secrets and lies; sacrificed for revenge, forbidden love and murder.

Lavie Tidhar‘s work encompasses literary fiction (Maror, ADAMA and Six Lives), cross-genre classics such as Jerwood Prize winner A Man Lies Dreaming (2014) and World Fantasy Award winner Osama (2011) and genre works like the Campbell and Neukom prize winner Central Station (2016). He has also written comics (Adler, 2020) and children’s books such as Candy (2018) and A Child’s Book of the Future (2024). He is a former columnist for the Washington Post and a current honorary Visiting Professor and Writer in Residence at the American International University in London.

MAROR de Lavie Tidhar

‘A masterpiece of the sacred and the profane… A literary triumph.’ Jake Arnott, Guardian

MAROR
by Lavie Tidhar
Head of Zeus, August 2022
(via Zeno Agency)

How do you build a nation?
It takes statesmen and soldiers, farmers and factory workers, of course. But it also takes thieves, prostitutes and policemen. Nation-building demands sacrifice. And one man knows exactly where those bodies are buried: Cohen, a man who loves his country. A reasonable man for unreasonable times.
A car bomb in the back streets of Tel Aviv. A diamond robbery in Haifa. Civil war in Lebanon. Rebel fighters in the Colombian jungle. A double murder in Los Angeles. How do they all connect? Only Cohen knows.
MAROR is the story of a war for a country’s soul — a dazzling spread of narrative gunshots across four decades and three continents. It is a true story. All of these things happened.

‘Some write in ink, others in song, Tidhar writes in fire… MAROR is a kaleidoscopic masterpiece, immense in its sympathies, alarming in its irreverences and altogether exhilarating.’ —Junot Díaz

‘One of the boldest, most visionary writers I’ve ever read creates both a vivid political exploration and a riveting crime epic. It’s like the Jewish Godfather!’ —Silvia Moreno-Garcia

‘A sprawling epic set across four decades, and an audacious account of the underbelly of nation-building… Spectacular… Fascinating… Astonishing… Maror is a masterpiece of the sacred and the profane… Tidhar has achieved a literary triumph’ —Jake Arnott, Guardian

‘A bloody beast of a book.’ —Daily Mail

‘This is crime writing in the tradition of Balzac and Dickens and a major achievement, full of sound, fury, drugs and blood… An earthquake of a book.’ —CrimeTime

Lavie Tidhar was born just ten miles from Armageddon and grew up on a kibbutz in northern Israel. He has since made his home in London, where he is currently a Visiting Professor and Writer in Residence at Richmond University. He won the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize for Best British Fiction, was twice longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award and was shortlisted for the CWA Dagger Award and the Rome Prize. He co-wrote Art and War: Poetry, Pulp and Politics in Israeli Fiction, and is a columnist for the Washington Post.