Showing results by publisher "Blackstone Publishing" in Fantasy

One of Canada’s most acclaimed horror writers, Gemma Files presents a mosaic of interconnected stories about interconnected families. After fleeing Scotland, five clans settled in the fictional town of Dourvale in northern Ontario. Known as the Five-Family Coven, they are the descendants of witches and witch-children, none of whom were spared persecution in their native country. Now shamans, spellcasters, singers, and thieves, the members of the Devize, Druir, Glouwer, Roke, and Rusk families survive by trading their occult powers and talents.

From the haunted hills of Roman Britain to the sewers of occupied Warsaw … in the bloodied streets of Revolutionary Paris, and the anarchy World War II Shanghai … out of the wilds of America, India, Africa and Europe … down the long savage darkness of the centuries, monsters have fed upon us. They are shapeshifters, vampires, sorcerers and spirits—things named only in myth, and things for which we have no name. They are our demons, our reflections, our desires and our nightmares. And all too often, they are … only human.

Three-year-old Vangie is mute and unresponsive. She shows no interest in the people or world around her, much to the frustration of her callous foster parents. Little do they know, Vangie is otherwise occupied observing “ghosts”—an infinite number of versions of herself, in an infinite number of parallel universes. When a tornado hits their trailer and Vangie is severely injured, she makes a desperate leap into another timeline where she survives the tornado, but her foster parents do not.

When Lady Mae turns eighteen, she’ll inherit her mother’s ghastly job as the Butcher: dismembering Settlement Five’s guilty criminals as payment for their petty crimes. But then their leaders, known as the Deputies, come to Lady Mae’s house, and there in the living room they murder her mother for refusing to butcher a child. Within twenty-four hours, now alone in the world, Lady Mae begins her gruesome job. But a chance meeting years later puts her face to face with the Deputy that murdered her mother.

Trey returns from another visit to the Moore estate with nothing but more anger and less room in his head to stow it. Old coping mechanisms no longer work. Not with a newborn in the mix. And Liv, who’s had enough. Liv has found what’s missing: a memento of her past she’s worked hard to forget. It unearths memories of a different man—a stable partner, a loving father. As it draws her in, Trey’s new anger drives her away.

Sloane Bevan and two-week-old Trey are kidnapped by strangers who speak her rare language and know her family’s secrets. She suspects these men are the ones who murdered her husband nine months ago. Now it’s her son they want, to raise as one of them. To keep under their control. Imprisoned in the Moores’ opulent estate, Sloane cultivates a plan using her family’s ancient magic right under her captors’ careful watch. Escape is one thing. Ensuring the Moores won’t target her family again is another.

Captive in the Moore estate, Sloane Bevan sees an image that evokes her grandmother’s warning: When the moon aligns with the oak, a danger will come for you. To her family she’s a warrior. To the Moores a destroyer. But she holds knowledge of magic the Moores lost, knowledge they want to extract before they kill her. Rex Moore is out of patience. He has trained his whole life to battle and end Sloane Bevan. Now she’s in his house and his family has ordered him to wait. This is the first order he’ll defy, the last order they’ll give.

Across forty years, three continents, and a past incident in 1560 France, Serafina Olegario tests the boundaries of love, power, and corruption as she fights to escape her life of poverty and abuse. Serafina’s quest begins in Brazil when she’s possessed by the warrior goddess Yansã, who emboldens her to fight yet threatens to consume her spirit. Fueled by power and enticed by Exú, an immortal trickster and intermediary to the gods, Serafina turns to the seductive magic of Quimbanda. It’s dangerous to dance in the fire. But when you come from nothing, you have nothing to lose.

Liv’s role in the war between the Bevans and the Moores is as solid as the motif carved in her protective amulet. The problem? She never volunteered. Her connection with Trey happened too fast. She can’t trust in love built by magic. Trey’s place in the war has shifted. No longer the target, he’s just someone in the way. Not if he can help it. He’s packed and ready to return to the Moore estate. This time, he can’t bring Liv, but he can’t leave her to battle Moore-trained assassins alone.

Eleanor understands the harsh realities of women’s lives in her kingdom, so she turns her energies to a school for impoverished girls, until an evil magician’s deception destroys the school and unleashes a festering plague. From the fire-iron walls of Eclatant Palace to the slums of Meggett Fringe, no one, magical or mundane, is safe from the fever-induced delirium of the Great Burning. Not even Eleanor’s children.

When Eleanor Brice loses a glass slipper, she unexpectedly gains a royal fiancé and a way out of her abusive stepmother’s house. Unfortunately, eight years of mistreatment, isolation, and clandestine book learning hardly prepared Eleanor for life at Eclatant Palace, where women are seen, not heard. According to Eleanor’s eavesdropping parrot, no one at court appreciates her unladylike tendency to voice her opinion. To make matters worse, Gregory Desmarais, Crown Prince of Cartheigh, spends his last night of bachelorhood on a drunken whoring spree.

Eleanor’s old nemesis, Ezra Oliver, forms a mysterious alliance with an army of vicious, bloodthirsty ogres, pushing Cartheigh to the brink of war. His magical finagling exposes strange connections between Eleanor’s world and our own, and places her precocious, enigmatic daughter, Natalie, in terrible danger.

Crystal was born of a bloodline both mortal and magical, raised to one day become a wizard and to defeat a long-hidden evil that threatened the realm of Ardhan. Through many dangerous adventures and lethal deceptions, she was finally victorious. And peace was at hand. Yet it was not so for Crystal. As the last living wizard, she soon found herself living a life without meaning. For while the people of Ardhan prospered in the world she had delivered, Crystal—with her still-growing powers—could find little solace. She was alone.

He’s killed three men in the few days she’s known him. Yes, it was self-defense, but when he tried to kill her, it wasn’t. Her peaceful mountain refuge has been invaded, her inexplicable nausea linked to his physical presence. She’s captive in his house for her “protection,” with a churning stomach, his bad attitude, and no safe way home. All that changed the night the stars aligned. Now he’s talking about ancient bloodlines and celestial alignments…and other things she only believes because of what she’s seen him do.

When Dan, sixteen, runs away from a terrible home life to join a circus, he has no idea what he’s getting himself into. Based on Dante’s Inferno, The Ninth Circle follows a young man’s coming-of-age as he travels with the circus through nine states. With the Ringmaster as his guide, Dan finds himself falling in love with the Bearded Lady but hated by almost everyone else, including the Strong Man, the Lion Tamers, and the Sword Swallower.

Portland book artist Neve Kelly is having weird visions - vivid daydreams of lovers on a battlefield that yank her out of reality. A couple weeks before Halloween, a confused, strangely dressed man appears in her living room. He drops a slip of paper that describes a dream much like her own before disappearing without a trace.

1941. An hour before the attack on Pearl Harbour, a man from the future materializes in President Roosevelt's office. His offer of military aid may cut the war and its pending atrocities short and alter the course of the future. The future. Welcome to Mars, where the lives of three ordinary people become entwined in one dingy smokesbar the moment an assassin opens fire. The target: the mysterious Bill Glimmung. But is Glimmung even real?

Bombs fall over a Greek village during World War II, and a teacher takes her students to a cave for shelter. There she tells them about another war - when the Greeks besieged Troy. Day after day, she recounts how the Greeks suffer from thirst, heat, and homesickness, and how the opponents meet - army against army, man against man. Helmets are cleaved, heads fly, blood flows. And everything had begun when Prince Paris of Troy fell in love with king of Sparta Menelaus's wife, the beautiful Helen, and escaped with her to his homeland.

In the aftermath of Ireland’s battle with her ancient enemies, Queen Isolde orders her cousin, smuggler Duncan O’Malley, to assume the throne of fairy as King Finvara. He’s a fish out of water when it comes to nurturing the alliance between Ireland’s mortal and fairy peoples. And the queen wants him to wed the daughter of Ireland’s enemy, the king of Icelandic shadow elves, to help keep the peace. But the Irish think of the elves as goblins, and Finvara refuses.

Her name is Lisa, and ever since Eddie Raven hooked up with her, strange things keep happening. How strange? Lisa can take on any role at a moment’s notice. She’s Maid Marian. She’s Elizabeth Bennett from Pride and Prejudice. In an instant, she can become the sexy, gum-chewing secretary to his hard-boiled detective. She can even become Doc Holliday’s frontier lady, Big Nose Kate.