“A great struggle for power and wealth goes on at all times over your head, and you are safer knowing nothing about it.”
This lovely, tautly written series for young adults blends Arthurian mythology with adventures in sixth-century Ethiopia and the Arabian peninsula, in kingdoms then known as Aksum and Himyar.
Wein’s books aren’t widely known, [...]
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Who is this guy?
Ashraf al-Mansur (you can call him Raf) shows up in the middle of El Iskandryia with nothing but a passport that gives Immigration fits and the clothes he bought on the plane. Within 50 pages, the narration hints at a complicated history of institutions: Swiss boarding school, Chinese mafia, death row in [...]
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“Captain Crozier comes up on deck to find his ship under attack by celestial ghosts. Above him–above Terror–shimmering folds of light lunge but then quickly withdraw like the colourful arms of aggressive but ultimately uncertain spectres. Ectoplasmic skeletal fingers extend toward the ship, open, prepare to grasp, and pull back.”
The Terror opens with this lovely, [...]
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“‘The quickest way to a man’s heart,’ said the instructor, ‘is proverbially through his stomach. But if you want to get into his brain, I recommend the eye-socket.’”
The defection of a high-ranking military engineer sets off a Renaissance-level arms race in this dark, detailed fantasy, the first book of the Engineer trilogy.
Ziani Vaatzes makes weapons. [...]
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In this collection, ten old-fashioned ghostly stories are connected by their unwilling and frequently-appalled narrator, the unfortunate Kyle Murchison Booth. Awkward, insomniac, painfully shy, the archivist participates in just one badly-orchestrated necromantic ceremony and now the dead won’t leave him alone. He finds skeletons entombed in his museum’s basement; he’s plagued by specters at his [...]
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Talk about bad timing. Fifteen-year-old Dashti has barely survived a rough life on the steppes of pseudo-Mongolia, but by a combination of luck, perseverance, and skill, she’s landed a plum job as a lady’s maid in the palace of Titor’s Garden. Minutes after she meets her new mistress, Lady Saren, she learns they’re about to [...]
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The story of Troy, with all its sequels and prequels and spinoffs, is my favorite soap opera, from the songs of Homer to that dreadful movie with Brad Pitt. So I was glad to see this debut historical novel, which retells the story of the Aeneid from a woman’s point of view and with just [...]
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Rosina Harrison, born in Yorkshire at the turn of the last century, served for decades as lady’s maid to Nancy, Lady Astor. From 1929 to 1964, through her lady’s service in Parliament to the air raids on Plymouth in World War II, Rose was the woman behind the scenes, in charge of the furs, the [...]
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It’s four unkind years after the events of Chocolat, and the vivacious, nonconformist Vianne Rocher of Harris’s previous bestseller has fallen on hard times. Dressed in drab colors, suppressing her talent for magic, and worst of all, selling factory chocolates from her Montmartre storefront, she’s close to selling out for financial stability by marrying a [...]
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Here’s the premise: A company in the future has worked out both immortality and time travel. Its agents can’t change the past, but they can set things aside for the future: soon-to-be-extinct species, a few judicious investments, etc. These agents are immortal, having undergone a painful and expensive process of robotic enhancements and brain surgeries. [...]
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