Showing results by author "D. J. Butler" in All Categories

Hiram is a man with mystical abilities derived from the commonsense application of Scot-Irish folk wisdom and German Braucher magic. He possesses an arcane Bloodstone that allows him to see a lie the moment it is spoken. Behind the played-out farms and failed businesses are demons, curses, sorcerers, and unatoned wrongs. Bags of groceries and carpentry won't be enough this time. The job will take a man who has known sorrow. A man who has known war. A man of wisdom. A man of magic. The job will take a cunning man.

Indrajit Twang is the 427th epic poet of his people, the only person alive to carry their entire epic history and mythology in his head. His people are dwindling in number, and if he can't find a successor in the great city of Kish, their story will disappear with them. Fix grew up a foundling on the ancient streets of Kish and is making his living as a mercenary. The woman he loves married someone else, and Fix has turned to buying and selling risk on the black market - but is he trying to impress her, or prove something to himself?

Sarah Calhoun paid a hard price for her entry onto the stage of the Empire's politics, but she survived. Now she rides north into the Ohio and her father's kingdom, Cahokia. To win the Serpent Throne, she'll have to defeat seven other candidates, win over the kingdom's regent, and learn the will of a hidden goddess - while mastering her people's inscrutable ways and watching her own back. In New Orleans, a new and unorthodox priest arises to plague the chevalier and embody the curse of the murdered Bishop Ukwu.

Even ghosts need help from a Cunning Man. Hiram and his son Michael are dowsing a well in Eastern Utah when they hear a cry of help from the ghost of a small boy, torn to pieces by wild animals. Before they can even begin to look into that tragedy, however, a prosperous local rancher is murdered right before their eyes. In an attempt to both help the ghost and find the killer, Hiram and Michael must navigate an eccentric cast of characters that includes failed bank robbers, a seductive fortune-teller, an inept sheriff, a crazy prospector, and a preacher with an apocalyptic grudge....

Science fiction and fantasy comprise some of the great works of the human imagination—and some of the most abhorrent. This is your Politically Incorrect Guide® to a literary tradition that is a key to understanding the modern world.

John Abbott is all in. He's up to his eyeballs in debt to pay for school, and he's just moved his small family forty light-years from Earth for a plum job with the wealthy interstellar corporation, The Sarovar Company. John's first assignment is to discreetly investigate possible corruption at the remote Arrowhawk Station, where Company traders buy the famous Sarovari Weave from the three-sided, crablike Weavers.

An encounter with an old friend becomes tragically fatal, and Indrajit and Fix set out on a high-stakes, high-adrenaline quest across the ancient city of Kish to bring their friend back to life. At each step, the complications and the enemies alike pile up. The mysterious necromancers, the Vin Dalu priests, bind the heroes on an errand that sends them shuttling from one thieves' guild to the next, pitting Indrajit and Fix against the deadly House of Knives and embroiling them in a plot by the giant, wasplike Kattak to take dire revenge on Kish and all its great houses.

Indrajit and Fix are the founding partners of the Protagonists, a jobber company in Kish. Since the seven great families of Kish farm out all tasks they and the city need doing, a jobber might one day unblock a well; the next, man a tollgate for the fair; and on the third, hunt down a murderer on the loose, all in a corrupt old city that isn't so much governed as kept barely in bounds.