Take your first look at the cover for Bigfoot Confidential (US)! Jericho James returns in the next installment of the romantic urban fantasy series by Jasmine Kuliasha coming September 2026. Read on for a first chapter excerpt below.

Jericho James is back for another hilarious and spicy cryptid romcom! 

Supernatural Investigator Jericho James has a problem, and it's not the latest case she's working. Jericho can't shake the feeling that she's being watched. By the trees. Which is honestly not as improbable as the Bigfoot sightings reported in the area. After all, not every legend is real. 

But there is something hidden in the woods. Something big, something strong, something… incredibly sexy. And Jericho vows to find it before it finds her. 

Something BIG is coming September 2026.

CHAPTER 1

The cow was definitely dead, despite all evidence to the contrary. It was sitting up, for one.

“Rigor mortis,” the officer said. The name tag sewn above a denim-blue chest pocket read G. ROBERTS in big block print. An expression of lazy indifference was plastered across his face, completely at odds with the horrifying scene in front of us.

I nodded, also taking in the creature. Its glassy brown eyes stared blankly ahead as it sat on its haunches, more like a golden retriever and less like a cow. Its head was cocked to one side like a dog with its tongue lolling out. Except…I leaned in closer. Ew. There was no tongue.

“Been removed,” Roberts offered.

I turned, shading my eyes against the afternoon sun. “By who?” I asked.

Officer Roberts crossed his arms over his chest and raised a thick eyebrow. “You’re Jericho James—isn’t that what you’re here to tell me?”

I flashed a smile, tucking strands of silver-white hair behind my ear. “Of course.”

A second officer stepped over the crest of a hill beside us, his lean frame and flat-brimmed hat silhouetted in the bright light. A thick, black mustache stood out against the brown of his skin, and seemed to tilt upward when he shot me a half smile. Sheriff Francisco Villa, the man who’d hired me for this case. “Give it a rest, Greg. Let the woman do her job,” he called.

Roberts shook his head. “It’s clearly the work of pranksters. I don’t know why we had to hire outside help.”

Villa chuckled humorlessly. “Pranksters didn’t do this. You didn’t tell her what else was missing, did you?”

Roberts looked down, then at the cow, then back at his black shoes, not quite hidden in the long green grass. “No,” he muttered.

Villa sighed, turning back to me. “Blood. They’ve all been completely drained of blood.”

My eyes widened. “They? There’s more than one like this?”

Villa cocked his head to the side and motioned for me to follow. I fell in line behind him, my eyes sweeping over the grassy field around us. A split-rail wood fence lined the edge by the road, where my red VW Beetle was parked beside a white SUV with a Washington State Police badge emblazoned on its driver door. We waded through the sea of knee-high green grass away from the cars and the road, over the hill.

When meat is labeled “grass-fed beef,” this is the kind of place it comes from, I mused, cresting the hill. The grass swept down into a valley below, where part of the cattle herd stood. Trees dotted the perimeter of the valley, mostly towering pines whose pointed tips were easily recognizable from any distance. But closer to us were a handful of trees with peeling, almost shaggy, russet bark. Villa said they were red cedar, and the warm woody scent permeated the air. As long as I kept upwind from the deceased cow.

As if trained to my thoughts, the wind, which had steadily been blowing away from us, changed direction. The grass in the valley undulated beneath it dreamily, like waves in an emerald ocean. The cows’ dark bodies were eerily still. I would have thought at least one would be walking, or mooing, or chewing grass, or any other activity my brain lumped in with “cow things.” Then the breeze hit me. Along with the smell. I gagged.

“That’s the rest of them,” Villa said, then pulled his bandana over his nose.

About twenty dead cows in a bizarre state of rigor mortis dotted the field.

My knees threatened to buckle beneath me as the smell sank into every pore. I swallowed, then made my way down the hill on shaking legs.

“Tongues?” I asked.

“Removed,” Villa responded, coming up behind me.

“Blood?”

“Drained.”

“Fuck.”

“Fuck.”

I’d reached the nearest cow. Like the one by the road, its tongueless mouth hung open. I leaned closer and swallowed hard. “The eyes are gone too.”

Villa laced his thumbs through his belt loops, beside the holster for his gun. His coffee-brown eyes flicked from me to the cow, and his throat bobbed. “Yep. On about half of ’em.”

I crouched, eyeing the trampled blades of grass beneath the multitude of hooves. There weren’t any other prints to speak of. But maybe…I walked around the frozen herd, slowly pacing through the grass. My sharp eyes scanned the vivid green for anything out of place. Nothing. I’d completed my circle. I knelt again, peering under the cows.

Sunlight caught the grass blades on the other side of the herd, lining them in orange. A mountain peak was visible in the distance beyond the crests of rolling hills. Aside from the droning buzz of gathering flies and the rotting stench from so many carcasses, it would have been a perfect July afternoon in the field.

“Where did the blood go?” I asked, standing. “I mean,” I interjected quickly, “did you find any evidence of it anywhere?”

Villa shook his head. “Not a drop. We’re totally stumped. You came recommended by others for the bizarre and unusual in the animal world, so here we are.”

Bizarre and unusual indeed. I chewed my lower lip thoughtfully.

Villa rocked back and forth on his feet for a moment before clearing his throat. “We need to tell people something so they don’t panic. The newspaper is breathing down my neck. The official word right now is wolves.”

I furrowed my brow. “This wasn’t wolves.”

He shrugged. “They’ve been known to eat tongues. Eyes too.”

“Maybe…but they didn’t do this.” I gestured to the bloodless herd.

Shifting his hands to his hips, he frowned. “All right. Then tell me something, James, something I can tell the papers.”

I shook my head, my loose hair swishing across my back, tickling my bare shoulders. The black tank top I wore was enough for the summer, even with the wind. I eyed the field again, the rolling hills of green dotted with the deep evergreen of pine trees. In the distance, a mountain loomed. Mount Adams, I’d learned. This ranch was situated between two mountains, the other being St. Helens, whose blown-out crest wasn’t visible from this distance. To the north lay Mount Rainier, though I couldn’t see it from the dip in the valley.

I touched the nearest cow, swallowing my disgust. The dark skin was pulled taut over its bloated body, but there were wrinkles in the neck where its head was turned.

“Where was the blood drained from?”

“That’s the darndest thing—we can’t figure that out, either.”

I ran my fingers over the cow. Once I’d ridden a mechanical bull at a bar in Texas. It was as realistic as a mechanical bull could be, complete with an old cowhide stretched over the metal body. That’s what this cow felt like. Just cold and hard beneath its skin. A chill that had been building in my core spilled over, trickling through my limbs and spreading like rot. I shuddered.

“All right, expert.” I smelled Roberts’ cockiness before I saw him, and he said expert like I might say asshole. He crossed his arms over his chest and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Villa. “What’s your diagnosis? Aliens?”

I shook my head. “Though the surest sign of intelligent life elsewhere is undoubtedly the fact that they have not tried to contact us.”

Villa bit out a laugh.

“Vampires, then?” Roberts asked.

I ignored him, pressing my fingers into the folds in the cow’s neck.

“Forks is nowhere near here,” he continued, laughing at his own joke.

“There’s no such thing as vampires,” I said confidently, pushing my fingers further in, and prying the skin apart. There. Two divots, about a palm’s width apart. It looked like a bite. From fangs. From something bloodsucking with fangs. I stepped back.

“There’s no such thing as vampires,” I repeated in a whisper.

“Well?” Roberts asked.

“I need to make a phone call,” I said.

“Jericho James. To what do I owe the pleasure?” Steven Night, head of the Werewolf Council of America, didn’t sound like it was a pleasure at all.

“Mr. Night. I need to confirm something with you.”

“Do it quickly, James.”

“Do vampires exist?”

The silence that followed was heavier than I would have liked, but I waited through it. My werewolf ex-boyfriend had told me they didn’t—couldn’t—exist, scientifically. He should know, I reasoned, since he was both (a) a supernatural being himself and (b) a scientist. But an entire herd of cattle drained bloodless, with evidence of a fang bite?

“No,” Steven finally said. “But I don’t like that you’re asking me.” His voice was smooth but hard.

“I’m in Washington on a case, and—”

“DC?”

“No, state.” He didn’t respond to that, but I imagined his serious face nodding on the other end of the line. “Something really bizarre happened to a herd of cattle here.”

“I know,” he said.

“You know already?”

“It’s my business to know, Jericho. Historically, when things go wrong with livestock, do you know who’s the first to be blamed?”

I did know, because Villa had already mentioned it. The ready scapegoat for this crime if the real perpetrator wasn’t caught. “Wolves,” I whispered.

“That’s right. Without fail. Not even Weres, though you understand why we feel a deep kinship with Canis lupus. Inevitably, when the media creates a frenzy and the public goes on the offensive against wolves, our packs end up getting caught in the crosshairs.”

A dull feeling of dread began creeping into the pit of my stomach. “The sheriff here, he actually mentioned telling the newspaper it was wolves, just to get the press off his back,” I said.

“Listen to me very carefully, Jericho James. This is what we pay you for. Your objective here is to stop any word about wolves from getting to the press. Find who the actual culprit is. If the sheriff is already planning to blame the wolves…well, I can keep any story from running for a week. Unless another attack happens. So you need to work quickly, and quietly.”

I was already planning on doing both of those things, even without Steven’s little reminder that my lifestyle had changed drastically since being steadily employed by the Werewolf Council. The breeze shifted again, wafting the rotting stench of dead meat my way. I wrinkled my nose. “Of course.”

“There’s something else, too,” he began.

“And why am I dreading whatever you’re about to say?”

“There have been reports of unsanctioned pack activity in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, near Mount Adams.”

I’d passed a sign for Gifford Pinchot, on the way to the ranch. I glanced at the tree-lined horizon. I was probably looking at that very forest. “You don’t say.”

“I’d like you to check it out while you’re in the area. Locate the pack. The satellite phone I gave you also pings me back with your GPS coordinates, so I’ll know where you are. All you have to do is find the pack. Do not engage. I’m sending a council representative as well, but she won’t be there for three days. Find them before she gets there. Until then, you’re on your own.”

On my own. Against a possible rogue werewolf pack and an unknown assailant. I leaned against my car, feeling the weight of Steven’s deadlines and request. Something gleamed through the window, the metal handle of my favorite accessory, shining in the afternoon sunlight. “Well, I’m not entirely on my own, Steven. I have this lovely axe to keep me company.”

Steven chuckled dryly on the other end. “I was going to ask about my axe. Take good care of her and she’ll take good care of you.”

“Will do.” That seemed as good of a goodbye as any with Steven, so I went to hang up the phone. Before my finger could press the red icon, he spoke again.

“James. Remember, you only have three days to find the pack before our Council member gets there, and seven to identify the cattle mutilator.”

“So why are we still talking?” I asked.

“Good point.” He hung up.

“And a goodbye to you, too,” I muttered to myself. I pocketed the phone in my tights, maneuvering around the gun I kept strapped to my right hip. The wind shifted again, a welcome respite from the smell. But it brought something new: a truck engine.

I waited by the road as an ancient, beat-up, blue Isuzu pickup truck rumbled to a stop beside my Beetle a few minutes later. The door swung open with a heavy creak, revealing a cowboy boot clad foot, followed by another. I watched as the rancher stepped all the way out, a forest green flannel tucked into his worn denim jeans. He straightened an honest-to-God cowboy hat on his head and strode my way.

The sound of the truck must have brought the officers as well, because Roberts and Villa crested the hill at the same time.

“Arthur,” said Villa, approaching. “This is our expert, Jericho James."

Arthur—the cowboy—stuck out a hand, callused and stained black with motor oil, and I shook it. “Ms. James. We don’t need an expert. Villa could’ve saved you the trip.”

“Oh?” I asked, raising a slender eyebrow.

“This was the work of wolves.”

Dammit. “I really don’t think—”

Arthur laughed, a deep-throated, hearty laugh that Roberts quickly joined in on. “I don’t need you to think, city girl. I know.”

The smell of his overconfidence hit me like a wave. I tossed my head back and laughed in response. Anger never worked with guys like this. But laughing at them? Pure kryptonite. “You’re funny, Arthur. I like you.”

His own laugh died in the wind, and the three men collectively stared at me. Villa’s mouth quirked in a small grin, and he nodded at me to continue.

“Come with me,” I said, leading the men to the golden retriever–cow. I pointed at the ground around the animal. “You can see where we stepped. The dirt itself is too hard, but the grass is down. Now look closer.” I knelt. “There are hoofprints from the cow in the soil, meaning at the time of the attack, the ground was wet enough to leave deep tracks.”

Arthur grunted as he squatted beside me. I caught his weathered blue eyes in my golden ones. “Show me the wolf tracks,” I said.

He shrugged. “They must have washed away. You said so yourself, the ground was wet. It rained the other night.”

“But it didn’t wash away the hoofprints?”

“Cows are heavier ’en wolves.”

I continued, ignoring him. “There are no wolf tracks anywhere around the herd below, either. Or prints of any other kind, besides the cows’. Not one. No scat, not even a hair.” We stood together, and I wiped my palms against my black tights.

“Wolves are uncanny like that.” Arthur’s low voice grumbled. “There’s a pack out in the woods.” He nodded toward the trees on the horizon. “They’ve been worrying some of the folks in the area. Opening doors. Stealing food.”

“Now, Arthur,” Sheriff Villa stepped forward, one hand up in a placating gesture. “I told you we’ve been looking into that, and it seems to be the work of some hoodlums. Human hoodlums, I might add.”

Arthur crossed his arms, shaking his head. “I know what I know, Sheriff. No disrespect to you. It’s the wolves. Crazy Dave saw them last night—”

“And no disrespect to Dave, but there’s a reason even you call him crazy. He sees a lot of things, Arthur,” said Sheriff Villa smoothly.

The rancher shook his head again. “That he does, but I believe him about this.”

The thing is, Arthur was probably right. As was Crazy Dave. But if a rogue pack of werewolves was so indiscriminate as to leave evidence behind that was both wolf and human…Steven was right to be concerned.

“Either way,” I said, bringing the attention of the men back to me. “This was not the work of wolves. Unless they suddenly sprouted wings and started sucking blood.”

Roberts lifted his hands, wagging his fingers. “Ooh, sounds like a vampire bat. Hope you had your rabies shots.” His face split in a wide, unkind grin. “I’ll call the papers, boss.”

“I think you’ll find they’ll be waiting for more evidence before they run the story,” I said.

Sheriff Villa frowned. “I don’t know about all that. But you and I will keep in touch. You have my cell number. Let me know if you need anything, James.”

I nodded at the men, and we parted ways.

My rearview mirror already displayed the dust cloud from the truck and the squad car as I sank into the driver’s seat of my VW Beetle. I kept watching as the dust slowly dissipated, the cars long gone.

Roberts was an annoying jerk, but I couldn’t fault him. I was just as disbelieving last year. Before meeting werewolves. Before dying. Before getting brought back to life with a Serum developed from the lycanthropy virus, that amplified my senses and made me faster and stronger. Hello, glow-up.

He also wasn’t totally wrong about at least one thing. I started the engine, ready for the two-hour drive back to Vancouver, and to the library.

It was time to research vampire bats.

Celebrate National Autism Awareness/Acceptance Month with a spectrum of stories that celebrate uniqueness and empathy.

Books About Disability and Accessibility

Celebrate books to uplift the perspectives and experiences of those who are living with disabilities and discover resources to support them.

Read the list

Readers of all ages love a classic tale, I mean they are called ‘classics’ for a reason! But what about the books that have been brought to our shelves in more recent years? Many modern picture books have the qualities and lessons that stand the test of time and dare I say seem to be classics in the making! These tales carry the teachings of love, adventure, bravery and so many other universal, timeless themes that continue to stick with us! When it comes to the books on this list— whether it puts a modern twist on a well-known story or is a more recent release that is cherished by today’s young readers— you can be sure that these modern classics will inspire whole new generations!

Take your first look at the cover for Erebus-13 (US | UK), the final installment in the Red Space trilogy by David Wellington, coming July 2026!

The crew of the Artemis has escaped the nightmare of Paradise-1, but at great cost.

Parker is gone. Petrova’s past continues to haunt her. Worst of all, Erebus—a timeless entity of pure darkness—has been released from its prison.

Now it’s headed for Earth.

Petrova must rally her crew for one final mission. Somehow, they must find a way to unite the disparate factions of the solar system—the United Earth Government, the Lunar colonies, and the outer planets—and find a way to stop Erebus.

The fate of humanity—and the galaxy—is in their hands.

Also by David Wellington

Tags: Orbit News, Orbit Cover Launch

Audiobook Produced by and Releases Exclusively from Audible on September 15

New York, NY (April 7, 2026) — Renowned Civil Rights Activist and Super Bowl quarterback, Colin Kaepernick, announced plans today to publish THE PERILOUS FIGHT, a new memoir acquired by Legacy Lit Editor, Amina Iro. Iro acquired World Rights from Creative Artists Agency, LLC. Legacy Lit will publish in hardcover and eBook editions on September 15, 2026. The audiobook, narrated by Kaepernick, is produced by and will be available exclusively from Audible to coincide with the hardcover and eBook release. THE PERILOUS FIGHT is now available for pre-order. 

On September 1, 2016, Colin Kaepernick took a knee during The Star Spangled Banner, but the world has never fully understood his story. Not the “why.” Not what it cost. Not what it took to become the man who was ready for that moment.

That story begins in Turlock, California, where Kaepernick, a Black kid adopted into a white family, spent his earliest years navigating an identity the world around him didn’t always know how to hold. Everything that connected him to who he truly was—his Blackness, his culture, his sense of self—was met with resistance. Sports became his refuge and his proving ground. On the field, his talent could not be questioned, minimized, or taken from him. It was the one space that was entirely his. And what that space produced was extraordinary: a quarterback whose arm and instincts would carry him to the Super Bowl and into the history books.

But success brought with it an education he hadn’t anticipated. He began to see the NFL not just as a league, but as a mirror of American capitalism, of racial exploitation, of a country that celebrated Black entertainment and criminalized Black lives in the same breath. He had been reading: Malcolm X. Muhammad Ali. Huey P. Newton. Angela Davis. And what he saw in the NFL, in Turlock, in the repeated, unpunished killing of Black and Brown Americans by the very systems claiming to protect them, converged into an undeniable truth: this was not someone else’s fight. It was his. It is ours.

When Kaepernick knelt, he was not acting on impulse. He was acting on years of becoming, of absorbing, reckoning, and refusing to look away. In response, the NFL rejected him, the country revealed itself, and the man who had spent his whole life earning his successes chose, deliberately, to risk all of it for something larger than himself.

But in the ten years since he took a knee, the questions his protest raised about race, power, identity, and the courage it takes to fight for a more equitable world have not gone away. They are the questions of our time. They are the questions this book answers.

“People saw the moment. But they didn’t see the years that made it possible: the questions about who I was; the injustices I could no longer ignore; the voices of those who came before me that I carried into that stadium. That journey, from a Black kid navigating an identity the world didn’t always make space for, to an athlete who realized the game was bigger than football, shaped everything. When I took a knee, it wasn’t a sudden act. It was the result of years of becoming. And what came after taught me the most important truth: this fight has never belonged to one person. It belongs to all of us. We fight for each other. We build with each other. We must fight for justice and equity with the courage and clarity this moment demands. That is how we build a future worth fighting for,” says Kaepernick.

“One of the pillars of the Legacy Lit imprint is to inspire social change through unique and powerful stories and there are few better suited to represent that mission than Colin Kaepernick,” says Krishan Trotman, VP, Publisher, Legacy Lit. “He was the catalyst of an undeniable movement that captured the attention and interest of the world. I am thrilled that he chose Legacy Lit as a partner in sharing his valuable perspective, and his unvarnished story for the first time. Colin is an inspiration to so many, and I know that readers, the world over, will be moved by his poignant memoir.”

Diana Dapito, Audible Head of Consumer Content, said: “Hearing Colin Kaepernick tell his story in his own voice brings an urgency and authenticity that only he can deliver, and we’re honored to capture his words in this audiobook. This is a once-in-a-generation story that’s powerfully relevant today. It’s a privilege to serve as the exclusive audio publisher for this memoir and to collaborate with Colin and Legacy Lit to bring this vital work to listeners worldwide.”

In THE PERILOUS FIGHT, Kaepernick delivers his story with the same unflinching conviction that defined the moment the world watched. Equal parts memoir and manifesto, it traces the off-the-field battles that turned a single act of protest into a movement that changed American sports and culture forever. This is the story of a man who became someone the moment demanded. It is a story about identity, sacrifice, and the cost of courage. And it is, ultimately, a story about all of us and the future we are still fighting to build.

Colin Kaepernick is a Super Bowl quarterback who holds the all-time NFL record for most rushing yards in a game by a quarterback. He is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author, and civil rights activist. He is the founder of the Know Your Rights Camp, Kaepernick Media (Formerly Ra Vision Media), Kaepernick Publishing, and Lumi Story AI. He has been awarded Amnesty International’s Ambassador of Conscience Award, the Sports Illustrated Muhammad Ali Legacy Award, the ACLU’s Eason Monroe Courageous Advocate Award, and numerous others for his work in athletics and advocacy. His show, Colin in Black and White, co-produced by Ava DuVernay, has won two NAACP Awards, his Nike “Dream Crazy” has won an Emmy, and he’s been featured in GQ, Men’s Health, TIME, Sports Illustrated, Vanity Fair, New York Times, the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, and many more. Learn more at Kaepernick7.com and follow for updates on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Threads, TikTok, X.com, and YouTube.

About Legacy Lit:

Legacy Lit is an imprint dedicated to giving voice to issues, authors, and all groups that have been underrepresented, under-served, and overlooked. Our mission is to inspire social change and to elevate and celebrate diverse communities. We are unapologetically intentional and committed to promoting equality and equity for all people. Our books uplift and celebrate diverse communities using fresh narratives, powerful storytelling, and big ideas that will educate, enlighten, and inspire.

About Grand Central Publishing Group:

Grand Central Publishing Group reaches a diverse audience through books that cater to every kind of reader. Our divisions include Grand Central Publishing, Hachette Nashville, and Union Square & Co.

About Hachette Book Group:

Hachette Book Group (HBG) is a leading U.S. general-interest book publisher made up of dozens of esteemed imprints within the publishing groups Basic Books Group, Grand Central Publishing Group, Hachette Audio, Little, Brown and Company, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, Orbit, Workman Publishing, and Running Press Group. We also provide custom distribution, fulfillment, and sales services to several publishing companies.   

Our books and authors have received the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, Caldecott Medal, Newbery Medal, Booker Prize, Nobel Prize, James Beard Award, and other major honors.    

We are committed to diversity in our company and our publishing programs, and to fostering a culture of inclusion for all our employees and authors. We are proud to be part of Hachette Livre, the world’s third-largest trade and educational publisher.    

Visit hachettebookgroup.com to learn more about HBG imprints. For updated news follow HBG on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Threads, TikTok, X.com, Snapchat, and YouTube. 

About Audible:

Audible, Inc., an Amazon.com, Inc. subsidiary (NASDAQ:AMZN), is the leading creator and provider of premium audio storytelling, offering global audiences a powerful way to enhance and enrich their lives through extraordinary content. Audible’s catalog includes more than 1,000,000 audio titles, including Audible Originals as well as audiobooks and podcasts from leading studios, print, audio and magazine publishers and world-renowned entertainers.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Megan Perritt-Jacobson, Senior Director of Publicity, GCP Non-Fiction 

megan.perritt-jacobson@hbgusa.com

Estefania Acquaviva, Senior Publicist, GCP Non-Fiction 

Estefania.acquaviva@hbgusa.com

On sale September 29, 2026

About American Hagwon

At last, the National Book Award finalist and NYT bestselling author of Pachinko returns with a breathtaking contemporary epic: Min Jin Lee has written a masterpiece by turns sweeping and intimate, one that reckons with ambition and moderation, lust and loyalty, personal dreams and familial duty.

In schools and churches, hotel rooms and nail salons, law firms and fried-fish shops; in cramped, dingy apartments and luxury, gated communities, the men, women, and children in American Hagwon struggle to find satisfaction and meaning in a world that seems to grow less forgiving with each passing year.

Once comfortably middle class in Korea, John and Helen Koh and their three children—Bo, DH, and Mido—find their lives upended, first by a shocking betrayal by John’s oldest friend, then by the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Desperately striving to regain their footing, they leave Seoul for Sydney and eventually settle in Southern California—where new vistas of opportunity open up for the children as their parents, strangers in a strange land, must adjust to a new life in which their experience and education mean little, and they set their sights on whatever it takes to provide for their children’s futures.

The Kohs, their friends, relatives, and even their foes move in and out of each other’s lives as they navigate new courses across the years, always nursing the almost all-consuming faith that education will lead the next generation to success and security. In American Hagwon, Min Jin Lee has crafted an unforgettable, panoramic novel where the smallest of gestures can have enormous repercussions, where the bonds of family and of memory twist and fray but rarely break, and where willful self-sacrifice—for the benefit of loved ones and even strangers—is a kind of prayer.

I love Tim Burton, always have. Well… okay, when I was a kid his movies did kind of terrify me. But hear me out! I have an appreciate for all that makes Tim Burton’s style so recognizable and frankly, iconic. It’s dark, gothic, creepy, a little unnatural, a little grotesque, and yet totally epic. It’s perfect for those kids—and adults—who see themselves as “strange and unusual.” So, for all those kids who appreciate Tim Burton (earlier than I did) we think they’ll appreciate these reads too. As everyone’s favorite bio-exorcist says, it’s showtime.

A battle-worn corporate samurai undertakes one last mission on a merciless planet where death is always a mere breath away, in this standalone dystopian epic from the author of the modern fantasy classic Jade City. 

LIVE BY THE CODE. DIE BY THE KNIFE.

"Fonda Lee is a master of genre-bending adventure, and I couldn’t wait to see where she'd take this mix of high stakes corporate gamesmanship and space colonization. I wasn't disappointed. The Last Contract of Isako may be her best work yet.” 

Read the first three chapters of The Last Contract of Isako, on sale May 5th, below!

ONE

"Fuck Earth."

the last words of Captain Janus Brady, 44 AF

Monday evening, 4-Week, 500 AF

Two names remain on Isthmus Isako’s list of wagemen to dismiss from the Company.

Only two, thank all the gods of old Earth that Isako doesn’t believe in. She’s sick of handing out notices, of being the bad guy, even though it’s part of her job, the part that people know and hate her for. At this stage in her career, she ought to be settling into some sort of comfortable wise-elder role, one that affords undisputed respect yet pleasant anonymity.

Things didn’t work out that way.

She finds both men drinking in quiet dread together in a dive bar at the north end of Tenacity Cityhab, where none of their former colleagues in Astrocommunications might recognize them. The stench of stale beer and leafsmoke assaults her nostrils as soon as she walks through the doors of the Oxygn Bar. She does a quick, instinctive threat assessment, but there’s no ambush lying in wait. Just a couple dozen wagefolk huddled in small groups over muted conversation and mugs of heated ale. They lift faces bland with disinterest until they catch sight of the triggersheath strapped to her thigh.

Contractor.

Isako doesn’t need to hear the word on their lips to sense the nervous hostility. If these were better times, she’d be met with nods of respect. If she were in an Astrocom neighborhood, if this were a year of peace and expansion, she’d be greeted by name and they’d make room for her at the bar and someone would offer to buy her a drink, angling to get on her good side, maybe have her put in a word for them with the boss.

Now they turn their eyes away. War’s over. They know why she’s here.

Dew Loren and Wolf Wyatt are at a small round table in the back. She recognizes them from the photographs in their personnel files but also because they’re old-timers in the division. Isako pulls a chair over to the table, not too close, and sits down on the edge of it, both feet firm on the floor.

“Would you rather do this here, or go somewhere more private?”

She keeps her voice professional but considerate. Lowered, but firm. What’s happening to them isn’t personal, but they need to understand it’s nonnegotiable.

Loren, the curly-haired older man, raises eyes that’re weary and bloodshot but unsurprised. He shrugs. “Might as well do it here. What does it matter?” He doesn’t bother to keep his voice down. Nearby bar patrons look over at their table in pity, but he ignores them. Loren’s always been like that. Straightforward. Unflinching. Not afraid to point shit out for what it is. Isako likes that about him, always has.

She doesn’t know much about Wolf Wyatt. Thirty-six years old, unmarried, no kids. Short but muscular, lifts weights and takes protein supplements and wears tight shirts to show it. Reputedly the best futsal player in the division, even used to play on the Astrocom Stars, back when they still had a team worth watching. She’s heard he’s a great guy to work with if you get along with him and an asshole if you don’t.

Wyatt’s leaning around the table, the glare he’s fixing on her as fierce as his kith namesake.

Don’t do it, Isako thinks at him. Don’t try. We all knew this was coming. There’s nothing any of us can do about it except keep our dignity.

She can tell when a wageman’s reached a breaking point and is about to do something stupid. It’s a feeling she gets, the way some people who work beyond the airshield say they can feel in their bones the coming of a drystorm.

Isako takes off her hat and gloves and lays them on the table. She doesn’t see steam as she exhales. Springtime, a new year after seven months of winter, finally warm enough for her to feel all her fingers and toes, even in the low-heat-ration areas of the cityhab. She pulls a screen from the inside pocket of her jacket, begins to unfold it on the table.

She brings up Loren’s dismissal notice first. “Dew Loren,” she says, keeping her voice the same, her expression unchanged. “I regret to inform you that your position as senior—”

Wyatt lunges.

He chooses the moment when her hands are busy, her attention on the screen and the other man. Figures she won’t be able to react quickly, not before he gets to her with the shiv he pulls from his sleeve.

Isako’s chair flies backward as she explodes out of it. Muscle memory takes her from a still, seated position directly into dynamic Fourth Stance—Meeting the Storm—back heel planted, weight low and forward, angled away from the path of her attacker. She has plenty of time to get there, relatively speaking—a whole second, with the curve of the table between them.

The heel of her left palm pops the top of the triggersheath forward. Automatic motion, faster than thought. The longknife ejects with lethal silence into her waiting right hand. Forty-five centimeters of high-carbon Aquilon steel slashes down across the inside of Wyatt’s forearm, severing tendons and spasming the makeshift weapon from his fingers, before reversing and driving upward under his rib cage.

She barely has to push; the wageman’s momentum helps her, impales his heart onto the blade. She looks into his face—contorted with fear and pain and oddly trusting relief. His hands come up and paw weakly at her shoulders as she strains against his weight. He’s not as tall as her, has to raise his chin for them to lock eyes.

“Sorry,” he whispers.

He slumps forward into her. Isako lowers him to the ground gently. She pulls the longknife free and wipes it on a square of black microfiber cloth she carries in the inside breast pocket of her red peacoat, then sheathes it without looking, drawing the back of the blade across the mouth of the triggersheath, then sliding it in until it clicks back into place.

Every set of eyes in the bar is drilling hatefully into her back.

A man just tried to skewer her with a sharpened iron spike, but she’s the one they see as a murderer. She’s tempted to turn around and point out what a bunch of fucking hypocrites they are. As if they aren’t glad it was him and not any of them. As if Wyatt didn’t choose suicide by trac, the coward’s way out, putting blood on her hands instead of doing the respectable thing and accepting his fate, which is what it is—no one’s fault.

But she’s been around long enough to know berating these wagefolk won’t change anything. Certainly won’t make them despise her any less. She’s just the messenger, but people have a long tradition of shooting messengers.

She lifts her collar and places a call to Cityhab Services.

The Oxygn Bar starts emptying out. Nothing like a dead man on the floor to ruin the vibe.

Dew Loren has gone pale as a summer sky and sweat has broken out on his brow, but he hasn’t moved from his spot. He looks down at his colleague’s body before sorrowfully finishing off the last of the beer in his mug. “I tried to talk him out of it.”

“I appreciate that.” Isako rights the fallen chair and sits back down zanshin in exactly the same way—on the front of the seat, feet planted, spine straight, enough space between her and the table that it won’t be in her way if she needs to move suddenly. She doesn’t think Loren will try anything, but she’s a longkniveswoman and this is how she always sits in public settings, how she was trained to sit by her kithfather ever since she was a little girl. “I wish he’d listened to you, but it’s not your fault he didn’t.”

“Have a lot of folks been taking it badly?”

“Only a few.” Eleven out of two hundred, including Wyatt. Not so bad. It wasn’t as if anyone was shocked by the dismissals. That’s what happens when a division loses a war and gets taken over. Anyone who can transfer out of Astrocom has done so already. Loren’s like her, though. Been in the same place too long to have anywhere else to go.

He gestures at the screen impatiently. “Get on with it, then.”

Isako reaches back over and pushes it toward him. She starts again, wanting to do it right. “Dew Loren, I regret to inform you that your position as senior communications technician is being eliminated. Be assured this decision was made after careful consideration for the long-term health of Starhome Exploration Group and the future of human settlement on Aquilo. Unfortunately, at this time, the Company does not have another open position that fits your experience and qualifications.”

Loren doesn’t respond. Just stares straight at her while she talks, making her feel like shit.

“In recognition of your many years of hard work and service, the Company is pleased to offer you and your family a voluntary resignation package consisting of three years’ worth of wages, along with additional bonuses based on seniority and division performance, as detailed in the provided agreement. Should you accept the terms, you’ll be granted seventy-eight hours to leave Company premises. If you choose to decline, your employment will conclude, effective immediately, and all prior legal obligations between you and the Company are deemed null and void. On behalf of the Executive and the Board of Directors of Starhome Exploration Group, I commend you on your successful career and your longstanding commitment to our shared vision of a more prosperous and secure future for all of humankind.”

That’s where the speech ends. She’s doled out the formal Companyspeak claptrap so many times she’s sure she knows it better than whoever in Human Resources wrote it.

Maybe it’s the quiet sufferance on Loren’s face; maybe it’s the fact that his daughter and Maya used to go to the same dance class when they were little girls and Isako remembers laughing with him in the theater lobby after the year-end recital about the money they were both wasting; maybe it’s Wolf Wyatt’s body on the floor next to their table. Whatever it is, Isako goes off script.

“I’m sorry, Loren. I really didn’t want to see your name on the list.”

It’s why she left him until the end. She told herself she was giving him the gift of more time, when really, she’s been putting it off, and the days he’s been forced to wait for her arrival have probably been more cruel than kind.

She doesn’t say that part. She’s said more than necessary already.

His stiff mouth sags, like bread deflating. Loren has the soft, creamy complexion of an officer-class wageman who’s spent his life within the airshield and comfortably indoors, undamaged by the planet’s harsh winds or radiation. But his voice is rough as gravel. “You know, I hoped Greves would give me the news himself. After thirty-eight years in the division, you’d think I’d earned that much at least. Hell, I was working for him long before he was a director.” He snorts in self-contempt. “Stupid of me to think he wouldn’t send a fucking contractor, like they all do.”

“It’s my job, Loren.”

He sneers. “I’m sure you’ve been busy.”

“Not for much longer.” A reminder that she might not escape the purge either.

Some of the anger leaves Loren’s expression. He pulls Wyatt’s half-empty mug of beer toward himself. Why not? The other guy’s not finishing it. Isako has the strong urge to order a drink for herself, but she doesn’t think the lone remaining bartender would serve it to her. Or maybe he’d poison it first.

Lore chuckles darkly. “How old are you, Isako?”

“Fifty.” Fifty-three in Terran, but who uses the unflattering homeworld calendar these days.

“I’m sixty-three,” he says dully. Only two years short of Company-sponsored retirement. “I’ve spent my whole career in Astrocommunications. My kithfather did the same. I have ancestors who were Astrocom techs on the Great Ships. I don’t have any skills that other divisions would want and I’m too damn old to learn new ones. What chance would I have as a freelancer? I wouldn’t even last a year.”

Isako doesn’t argue.

“Wyatt didn’t hold anything against you, by the way,” Loren says. “He called you a tough old cookie, said he’d be surprised if he got the jump on you, but he was going to try anyway, because what did we have to lose? Said he’d rather go down fighting, and if he did manage to take you out, well, that’s one less murdering trac out there. That’s the way he saw it.”

Sad, twisted logic on Wyatt’s part. What wagemen seem to conveniently forget is that contractors can be quickly replaced. Wyatt’s dismissal notice wouldn’t go away if she were dead. It would simply be handled by someone else.

“You don’t see it that way,” she reminds Loren gently.

“I’ve got family to think of.” Earlier, he was staring daggers at Isako but now he blinks quickly and looks away. His voice turns thick, as if his throat is closing up. “My baby girl Tessa’s going to have a baby of her own this summer. My first grandkid. How time flies, you know? Seems like yesterday that she was running around in a diaper. You have a daughter, too, don’t you?”

“Yeah. She was in the same dance class as Tessa for a year.”

“Oh yeah, I remember that now.” Loren’s face brightens. “What a long time ago. Tessa didn’t stick with dance for long.”

“Neither did Maya.”

“She took to running instead. Was really good at it, too. Tri-division champion in the four hundred and the eight hundred meters. She says the baby’s kicking so much that it’s another runner for sure.” Loren’s eyes go soft, and he looks as if he’s going to brag some more, perhaps ask Isako about her own daughter, so the two of them can reminisce together, but then he seems to remember where he is, and why they’re here.

He sits back. Blinks slowly to clear away the memories. Closes his mouth like shutting a heavy door.

“Sounds like Tessa grew up to be an incredible young woman,” Isako says.

This is part of the job, too. Sometimes it’s the longknife. Sometimes it’s sitting and listening. Offering the right words to help people accept responsibility. The art of DTE—dismissal, termination, and eviction—is only one aspect of a good contractor’s skillset, but an important one, because unfortunately, it’s what many wagefolk think of first when they think of tracs.

“I want to do the right thing,” Loren says. “I’m not going to become one of those sad sacks on the street, begging or stealing for scrip, using up oxygen and water past my due. I won’t make my kith ashamed of me like that. I want Tessa’s kids to have a nameplace they can visit and be proud of.” He raises his chin and meets Isako’s eyes. “I’ll resign.”

She inclines her head in appreciation. “Thank you for your bequest.”

Loren pulls the screen over, scrolls to the bottom, and hovers his finger over the biosignature box. “I don’t need to read all this, do I? It’s the standard stuff? You’d tell me if it wasn’t, wouldn’t you?”

“It’s all the usual,” she assures him. “Everything will go to Tessa and her family.”

She turns her face aside to give Loren a sliver of privacy as he touches his finger to the screen.

“I guess that’s it, then.” His voice is weighed down with finality, but it’s brisk and steady, almost eager. “When’s everyone else going?”

Isako takes the screen back from him and pockets it. “There’s going to be a group of about a dozen on Freeday at Easthatch. It’s up to you. Some people want to be together. Some would rather go it alone.”

“Are you going to be there?” The touch of plaintiveness surprises her. Not because, beneath the stoic acceptance, he’s afraid. Everyone is. But because he doesn’t hate her. She’s surprised by how much that means to her.

For the first time, she offers Loren a smile. She’s been told she looks younger when she smiles, which is a shame, as she hasn’t had much reason to smile for the past two weeks. She’s smiling not only for Loren’s sake, but because she’s finally done. She can rest for a while. The prospect is delicious.

“I’ll be there,” she promises. It’s the least she can do.

She always did like Dew Loren. Now she respects and envies him. At least he knows. His mind can finally be at ease. All that’s left to do is prepare. She can’t say the same.

Like Loren, she’s too entrenched in Greves’s organization. If her client is moved to another role in the Company, she’ll go with him. If not, she’ll be in Loren’s position soon. Only there won’t be someone sitting down with her to deliver the news. Contractors aren’t given exit packages. All she’ll get is an impersonal notice that her services are no longer required and that her contract has been canceled.

A couple of Cityhab Services workers in official orange parkas come into the Oxygn Bar and begin maneuvering Wolf Wyatt into a body bag. Isako doesn’t feel like sticking around for that. She collects her hat and puts on her gloves; her fingers are cold again. Her knees twinge in stiff protest when she stands.

Loren reaches out and stops short of taking her by the coat sleeve. “I’m glad it was you after all.” His reddened eyes shine up at her through the yellowish, leafsmoke-clogged air. “You’re a contractor, but you’ve still got a heart, Isako. That’s rare, you know?”

Isako has nothing more to say to that. She goes outside and stands on the sidewalk where the dry air hurts her face. She calls her client. “It’s all done. Where are you?”

A moment of silence before Greves says, “I’m at the Observatory.”

TWO

The dome on top of Astrocom headquarters is the oldest observatory on the planet. It’s useless from a practical standpoint, what with the light pollution from the cityhab, the visual distortion of the airshield, and the fact that there are a dozen newer, bigger telescopes in facilities at high elevation points across both of Aquilo’s continents and in orbit. But the Observatory has historical significance. It was built by the Founders with its powerful eye pointed back at Earth’s star, back when people cared about where their ancestors came from.

The working museum still hosts visiting school groups, but right now, it’s cavernously empty except for a lone man in a black duffle coat leaning against the railing that surrounds the antique telescope, staring pensively up at the band of night sky visible through the half-open roof.

“I should’ve been the one to do it.” His voice echoes in the emptiness.

“Absolutely not.” Imagine if Wyatt had tried to kill Greves instead of her. Enough wagefolk react badly to dismissal that every director uses contractors for DTE.

But Greves is not like most other directors. He might’ve actually tried to deliver the notices himself if Isako hadn’t shut the idea down right away. She managed to protect her client through three grueling years of divisional warfare. She’s not about to let him be assassinated by an angry wageman just because he wants to be a man of his people in defeat.

But the impulse is what makes him a leader she wants to work for.

“They’re justified in feeling betrayed. I promised a new era of space exploration for the Company and growth for Astrocom. I couldn’t have failed more spectacularly.”

Isako goes to stand beside him but she doesn’t look up at the starry sky. As far as she’s concerned, there’s no point anymore. “You believed in what you promised, and you made a lot of people in the Company believe it, too. Just because the Executive and the Board decided not to support us doesn’t change any of that. We did our best.”

“We really did.” He straightens away from the railing. Even at his full height, he’s nearly a head shorter than her. They’re a puzzling sight together, a picture of contrasts, and not just physically. Greves is stocky, handsome, and blond, and what he lacks in stature, he makes up for with hyperkinetic presence, showmanship, savvy, and ambitious dreams. Napoleon complex, maybe. It works for him. When he gets going about a big idea, he practically bounces out of his chair and waves his arms in meetings, infects everyone around him with animated energy. At fifty-seven, he’s one of the youngest directors in the Company.

Seven years his junior, Isako is ancient for a contractor.

Greves gives her a wan smile. “We wouldn’t even have had a fighting chance if I didn’t have the best atier on the planet. You’re a pro, Isa. I couldn’t have asked for more.”

She’s not humble enough to deny it.

Because there are contractors, and then there are atier contractors.

Atiers are the best of the best. The elite of the black-badge world. For every hundred general contractors there are ten mid-tier contractors. For every hundred midtracs, there’s one atier.

A good atier can do math in their head, hobnob at a black-tie gala, and kill a man a dozen ways. Strategist, chief of staff, personal bodyguard, diplomatic aide, you name it. Brains and muscle in one package. They’re expensive to hire and licensed in strictly limited number by the Agency that selects and trains them starting at the age of sixteen and straps them up with longknives, blistering business savvy, and fearlessness.

The clients who pay handsomely for their services are hard to please—the wealthiest and most powerful directors and the top subdirectors who would do anything to keep an edge. Atiers are that edge. One atier for one client at a time. Company rules.

When war broke out between Astrocommunications and Satellite Operations, Isako did everything she could to deliver victory to Greves. She advocated for his vision with the Sweetsea, laboring over reports, presentations, and meetings to advance his agenda. She orchestrated attacks that exposed vulnerabilities in SatOps systems and facilities while defending Astrocom from counterattacks. She planted agents and saboteurs within enemy ranks. She terminated three Astrocom techs who were SatOps spies. She engaged people to bribe, blackmail, and slander SatOps leaders while protecting Greves’s inner circle and gathering support and allies from other divisions. She sent her client on tours to raise division morale and inspire the wagefolk. During the three-year conflict, she was nearly killed—twice.

In the end, all for nothing.

“The thing that pisses me off the most,” Greves says bitterly, “is that we were fighting other reunionists. The Executive wanted a consolidation, and we couldn’t get it done peacefully, so we tore each other apart. The terraformists didn’t have to do anything except sit back, watch, and grow stronger. You heard about the Board of Directors nomination?”

“Who hasn’t?” The recent news is all over the Companynet, eclipsing even the outcome of the Astrocom-SatOps war.

“Sandbar Uchi, of course.” Greves spits the name like a profanity. Not that it’s any surprise the dapper, seventy-year-old golden boy of the terraforming movement has been fast-tracked into Company leadership. As the two most vocal rising stars in the ongoing contest of Earth versus earth, Forest Greves and Sandbar Uchi are often spoken of in the same breath.

At least, they used to be.

“The Company really has lost its way and gone over to the little-Es.” Greves’s hands tighten on the railing. “I’m afraid we’re headed for a bleak time, Isa.”

“Political winds change,” Isako points out. “The terraformists have momentum right now, but we can take it back if we play our cards right and make sure you land in a good place.”

“And how’re you imagining that happens, atier?”

“Ask for a position within Satellite Operations as a subdirector. Kiss ass and play meek if you have to. Savannah Minto is old. In another twenty years, she’ll be on her way out and you’ll be in the ideal position to take over her job as director.”

Greves smirks a little. “Beg for a demotion to work under the conqueror.”

“For now. So you can come out on top in the end. If you’re patient.”

“You’d be okay with that? You didn’t sign up to work for a defeated subdirector. Hell, in that position, I probably couldn’t even afford to pay atier rates.”

“Doesn’t matter. An Exclusive is an Exclusive. I go where you go.”

She means it. As far as clients go, Greves is the best she’s had. After they worked together for three years, he offered her a lifelong contract. She asked for twenty-six hours to make her decision. He told her she could take a week.

She went home and slept on it, then accepted the following morning. That was nine years ago. Choosing to bind herself to a single client for the rest of her career wasn’t a hard decision, not at the time. A lot of atiers hope for the coveted Exclusive, but few are lucky enough to receive an offer from a client they actually like and respect as a person, much less someone on a seemingly straight upward trajectory within the Company.

Their once promising journey together turned into a downward spiral. But the Code of Client Service might as well be a marriage vow. To serve is to live. To live is to die. In other words, for better or for worse, in victory or defeat, till death do us part.

She’ll die a lot sooner than he will, and then he’ll need a new atier, but she figures she’s got a few good years left. Before her knees betray her, at least.

Greves takes a final look at the sky before he touches the controls to close the observatory dome. It starts sliding shut slowly, blocking out the stars. “I’ll take your recommendation under consideration.”

“Have you heard anything from the Sweetsea? Any hint of what they might do?”

There’s a chance Greves doesn’t even get demoted, simply dismissed like the two hundred members of Astrocom to whom Isako’s been delivering notices. She doesn’t think it likely—he’s too young, has too much potential, is too well liked, at least by some important people—but it’s possible.

In which case, they’re both fucked.

She would appreciate some advance notice if that’s to be the case.

Greves shakes his head. “I should’ve hired you on and given you a white badge years ago, when I still had the chance. I’m sorry, Isa.”

“Nothing to be sorry for.” Even if the Board hadn’t placed both Astrocom and SatOps under a hiring freeze during the war, she wouldn’t have accepted the offer. Regular wagefolk aren’t permitted to carry weapons, much less do the off-the-record work that contractors are necessary for. “You needed me as an atier,” she reminds him.

“Still do. Must’ve been a monumentally shitty experience to deliver all of those notices to people we’ve known for years, and you didn’t even complain about it.”

What would be the point of complaining? she wonders. Nothing but misplaced energy, like the wagefolk in the Oxygn Bar blaming her for Wyatt’s death. Acting sorry for herself certainly wouldn’t serve her client. She’s been living by the Code all her life. She can’t do anything about the decisions being made above her pay grade, but she’ll stay professional until the end.

“The last ones to resign are doing so on Freeday at Easthatch,” she says. “In case you want to be there to witness.”

Greves winces. “I don’t think I’ll watch this time.”

She can’t blame him. In their twelve years of working together, she’s never seen him more discouraged by failure or more pessimistic about the future. She’d hoped for a more positive reaction to her suggestion that he advocate for a reduced role, one that could allow him to climb back up, eventually. But maybe she’s asking for too much, too early. Give the man time to grieve the destruction of his division and the loss of his dreams.

“Just think about the idea,” she urges him. “Working in SatOps could be an opportunity.”

The last sliver of starlight vanishes above them. “Take the next few days off, Isa,” Greves suggests. “If anyone deserves a break, it’s you.”

 THREE

"Though winter reigns above, despair not, for the Mother below promises spring. Those who have passed from this life wait peacefully in her compassionate embrace. Behold, when by our faith she is freed from her chains, they shall live again, and joyous shall be their return for all shall drink water from the heavens and walk upon fields of green."

the Scripture of Sefa

Freeday morning, 4-Week, 500 AF

Freeday dawns crisp and cold, the sky a pale blue gray like the sclera of an anemic eyeball.

Isako stands on the viewing platform of Easthatch watchtower with the hundred or so others who’ve come to see friends and loved ones on their way out of Tenacity. It’s crowded up here. Freeday morning is the best time for resignations. Gives everyone the rest of the day to sit with their feelings before the next week begins. Isako recognizes a lot of the people standing shoulder to shoulder by the railing, but they leave plenty of space around her. No one wants to get close to the reaper.

That’s fine by her. Even when you get to know the wagefolk, it’s better to keep a distance. Makes it easier on everyone during times like this.

She recognizes Loren’s daughter by her curly hair and the baby bulge. Tessa has people standing behind her and on either side of her, holding her hands. Isako thinks to go over and say something, but decides against it. This is a public moment, but also a private one. She’s not entitled to share in either their grief or pride.

Easthatch is the nicest of the cityhab’s gates, in Isako’s opinion. There’s too much shuttlecar traffic at Southhatch. The Purgatorist priests at Northhatch are notoriously pushy and will harangue anyone who passes to repent their sins. Westhatch is an awe-inspiring historical site, a monument of imposing black basalt inscribed with the names of the colony’s Founding Officers, next to a rock-slab memorial to the loss of Prosperity Cityhab. Grand but cold.

But Easthatch is serene. A circular public park leads to a simple wide stone boulevard lined with precious silver birch trees just starting to bud pale leaves. Quiet pilgrims sweep every inch of the path, and at the end of the walk, a marble statue of the Mother in Chains smiles down beatifically from atop a pedestal, blessing those passing and welcoming them into the Waiting. Isako isn’t a Sefan adherent, but she appreciates the gentle ambiance. When it’s her time to resign, she would want to come here.

The sun breaks over the western horizon. She turns toward it, breathes in deeply, drinks up the soft light on her face. She’s been doing as Greves suggested, taking some much-needed time off. She spent two days catching up on sleep, tidying her apartment, doing physio exercises for her knees. She wanted to visit the house, but Maya’s not free until tomorrow afternoon.

Whatever decisions are being made at higher levels about the remnants of Astrocom, she’s bound to find out sooner or later. There’s been nothing new from official Companynet channels; the nomination of Sandbar Uchi to the Board of Directors is still the leading story.

Uchi’s atier was Isako’s apprentice not so long ago. Waiting on the watchtower, she sends him a message. Martim, it’s been a while, but wanted to say congratulations. Huge achievement, to serve a soon-to-be Board member. Well deserved. Hope you’re still keeping up your longknife training. I know I owe you a get-together. When you have a moment, let me know when’s a good time.

She doesn’t expect a reply for a while. Martim’s future is unspooling long and bright ahead of him; hers is dimming and closing in like a narrowing tunnel. The men and women she’s trained are surpassing her. Had to happen; it was just a matter of time. She just didn’t think it would be quite so soon.

She turns back around to face the gates. Beyond the precious airshield that keeps heat and oxygen inside the cityhab, the Vastness stretches as far as the eye can see, a forbidding vista of hard-packed gravel underlain by permafrost. Glimmers of ice shine where a few centimeters of rare moisture collects between rocks. As cold as it gets in the poorer parts of Tenacity, it’s balmy compared with an average temperature outside of minus forty degrees centigrade. In the winter, drystorms scour the land with winds of over a hundred kilometers an hour.

When the Founders arrived in the Great Ships five hundred years ago, they gave the mercilessly cold and barren rock planet the name Aquilo, after the Roman god of winter.

Yet, as those on the watchtower can see from their high vantage point, the frozen tundra is not without life. With the onset of spring, desert lichen is blooming, carpeting the stark terrain in brownish-green patches that grow and spread with each passing year. In the short-lived weeks of summer, saxifrage and pearlwort will sprinkle the landscape with purple, yellow, and white. In recent years, hardy sedges and grasses have begun to flourish. Midges and weevils, the colonial vanguards of insect life, are being followed by flies and beetles. Stubborn, heartless old Father Aquilo is giving way, slowly but surely, to the Company’s enduring promise of a terraformed world.

Dotted here and there across the lichen and rock are clumps of bright blue.

On the roof of an office building across from the watchtower, one of Tenacity’s revolving billboards displays the Company’s KPIs and the latest news and public service announcements. Ambient oxygen: 12.576% +0.11… Atmospheric pressure: 55.6 kPa +0.003… Global average surface temperature: -38.2°C +0.09… Species introductions: 152 +7… Water prices to increase 2% beginning 500.6.1.0800… NorCon Ice advance to All-Division Cup finals… Do your part to warm the planet, switch to combustion today!…

“We’re getting closer all the time.” That’s what the Executive says every year during the annual address. Isako’s seen time-lapse photography of the area around Tenacity stretching all the way back to the Founding era, images that remind her of fungal growth under a microscope, seemingly primitive but infinitely complex, life tenaciously asserting itself. Visual proof of progress is dramatic when viewed across five centuries, but it’s built on a foundation of painstaking incremental gains.

Isako’s spent years advancing big-E objectives. She believed in Greves’s vision of reclaiming the stars, or more accurately, in Greves himself. But she understands why, for some, especially the devotedly Sefan little-Es, the promise of terraforming is sacrosanct. The possibility that Maya and future generations will live in a warmer, better world is what makes the forbidding Vastness seem like a beginning rather than an inevitable finale.

A stir goes through the witnesses on the platform as fourteen members of the Astrocom division arrive together, carried up the elevator after having been washed and dressed by the gatekeepers. Respectful applause greets them. Isako recognizes the faces of men and women to whom she’s recently delivered dismissal notices. Recent memories of all the tense, sad conversations collapse into a blurry montage, like the ribs of a closing fan.

She picks out Dew Loren, because he’s freshest in her mind. Loren strides with steady determination near the front of the group, leading his former colleagues in a procession of wagefolk wearing blue robes too vibrant to be seen anywhere in nature, their final parade a rich stain of color against the white boulevard and the gray Vastness.

A lump forms in Isako’s throat as the resignees pause at the airshield and turn back to wave to their watching friends and relatives. Tessa waves back harder than anyone, blowing kisses down to her father, eyes shining as tears stream down her cheeks.

Isako’s witnessed plenty of resignations over the years. They all bring her back to the first one she attended at the age of thirteen. Her kithfather didn’t look back at her that day; he didn’t even resign with a group. He went by himself on an ordinary midweek Monday afternoon when most people were working. Only six people, including Isako, were there to witness. Isthmus Akio was the best longknivesman in the Company, and when his last contract was over and his hands were too arthritic to draw the blade, he figured it was time.

“All things are easy with practice,” he told Isako. “Atiers practice dying, just like we practice sitting zanshin, just like we practice the quick draw. Resigning is nothing to be afraid of. The end is simply another part of life.”

Isako’s kithfather kept a mural of the Founding Officers of the Prosperity and Tenacity on his wall. They were great men and women of conviction, he said. When the fate of the colony hung on the thinnest of threads, they set an example of selflessness. They established the tradition of choosing to depart with dignity so vital resources would go toward the community’s survival. “What they did took courage, because they went first. They weren’t able to practice the way we do,” Akio told his kithdaughter. “We have the privilege of merely following in their footsteps.”

Something unexpected is happening near the airshield posts. Witnesses lean forward over the platform railing, murmuring in surprise. It takes Isako a disbelieving second to recognize the lone figure crossing the boulevard to meet Loren and the others.

It’s Forest Greves.

Isako jerks backward. What the hell is her client doing here?

He told her he wasn’t coming to watch. Otherwise, she’d have security measures in place, bodyguards and electronic monitoring well positioned. She and her longknife would be near him at all times. Greves is the reason two hundred people are out of work. Desperate freelancers, angry relatives, violent anti-Company agitators—any of them might take a run at him. Isako is personally responsible for her client’s safety and she’s up here on the watchtower too far away to do a damned thing.

“Shit,” she hisses under her breath. “Asshole. What does he think he’s doing?”

Greves reaches the group and starts shaking hands and speaking with people. He lays a hand on Dew Loren’s shoulder, claps another man on the back, smiles and says something to an old woman. His dark suit mills incongruously through the robes of bright blue.

Isako turns to push through the crowd and run for the stairs, but Greves’s voice stops her in her tracks.

“Citizens of Tenacity.” His amplified words ring out over the surrounding area.

Isako spins back around. How did he manage to get onto the AV network? Is he broadcasting across the whole cityhab? Without bothering to clear any of it by her first?

“Since the journey of our ancestors aboard the Great Ships, the Astrocommunications division has been a voice to the heavens.” The director steps away from the wagefolk and stands alone so that cityhab cameras will capture him defiant in front of the airshield posts.

“It doesn’t matter if space is silent. It doesn’t matter if our calls go unanswered. The Great Silence is our society’s test of faith. One day, it will end, and when it does, our descendants will judge us. They’ll ask: Did we continue to seek connection? Or did we retreat into isolation and fear? Were we bold dreamers or cynical cowards?”

Greves always was good at getting attention, and he’s certainly doing it now.

“Astrocommunications isn’t a large division, but we’ve always safeguarded a sacred link to our origins. We represent the hope for a future when we are not alone. For the division to be deprioritized and eliminated is for us to turn our backs on that hope. It’s a failure of foresight and judgment on the part of the Executive and the Board that I cannot—and will not—stand behind.

“As director of Astrocommunications, I resign in protest.”

Greves turns on his heel and strides for the airshield posts.

The fourteen former Astrocom workers surge after him, rushing for the end of Easthatch Boulevard as if they can’t wait to get there.

The Mother in Chains beams down on them as they pass.

Unseen sentries drop the first set of doors at the gate. The entire group passes into the transparent airlock that’s big enough to handle shuttlebuses and field cars and heavy equipment. They look small in there, like children walking through a vast and empty stadium. Greves doesn’t stop and doesn’t hesitate. He keeps walking, and his people follow.

Isako feels as if she’s trapped in a fucked-up dream.

Client service dictates that she should’ve either talked him out of this, or been down there with him. Instead, after nearly three decades of contract work, of being one of the very best atiers in the business, she’s failing. Publicly and spectacularly.

The airshield falls in front of the resignees. To those watching, it’s noticeable only as a momentary shimmer in the air, a visible distortion in the invisible barrier that contains and protects human life from the planet’s unforgiving conditions.

To those inside the airlock, it’s an instant precipitous drop in temperature and oxygen. Several of them sway and fall. Colleagues help them back to their feet. With effort, they keep walking, away from warmth and life, into the bleak Vastness. Blue robes flap in the subzero wind like the wings of a flock of colorful birds from some mythical tropic clime.

Forest Greves leads them onward.

The first man to collapse does so roughly six hundred meters from the airshield. He stumbles, stiff fingers clutching his chest, gasping for scant oxygen, shoulders heaving before going still. His colleagues pause only long enough to make the blessing sign of the Mother over him before continuing their trek across the black gravel.

“Thank you for your bequest.” A chorus of soft murmurs rises around Isako. She mouths the words reflexively, but her mind is spinning with senseless confusion and shame.

The resignees pass the desiccated, skeletal lumps of those who trod before them. Worn and faded bits of blue fabric cling to the dry corpses, temporary markers of their final resting places. Another woman falls and is left behind. “Thank you for your bequest.”

It’s rude to leave partway through, no matter when the person you came to support finishes their journey. So everyone stays the whole twenty-six minutes that it lasts. Applause rises when the remaining five people make it past the last visible bit of blue fabric on the tundra. They’ve gone farther than anyone else before them. The environment beyond the airshield is deadly, but less deadly than it was a year ago, ten years ago, a hundred or three hundred years ago. Each year, the cold abates a little, the oxygen rises a bit more. Everyone who takes the final walk is visible proof of progress.

The figures who’re still moving are difficult to see now, but Isako’s distance vision is still sharp. Dew Loren’s outlasted just about all the younger wagefolk, tough old coot that he is. Athletic genes or strong lungs maybe, or just an iron will. When he finally sits down, exhausted, he stretches out his legs, lies back, and looks up at the sky like he’s reclining across a picnic blanket on a sunny day.

“Fuck Earth,” Tessa cries out.

“Fuck Earth,” others shout in support.

Greves makes it another dozen impressive paces. When he can go no farther, he turns around to face Tenacity. With the dramatic showmanship he was known for all his career, he raises his arms in triumph, then kneels and falls forward, rests his forehead on the ground, and dies. He looks as if he’s bowing in supplication. Perhaps paying final respects to the colony that he strived to take to the stars, or maybe in subservience to his fate.

One day, they’ll build something important in his name.

When the cityhab expands all the way out to where Greves lies, his dry, mummified remains will be buried and memorialized at the spot he fell. Ordinary wagefolk like Dew Loren and the others might get a street or a business or even a school named after them. Directors often get a hospital or a university or a big public park. Greves wouldn’t care for that, Isako thinks blandly. He’d like to be entombed under a train station or a satellite tower, something slick and cool and high-tech, when he comes back under the airshield.

On the billboard across the boulevard, the KPI numbers and headlines disappear and are replaced by the smiling photographs and names of the resignees scrolling across the screen. In proud memory of esteemed colleagues who made way for others: Aloe Aditi, Canyon Truong, Crane Otto, Dew Loren…

The witnesses drift away, descending the watchtower, off to gatherings where they’ll remember their loved ones in private. Isako stays until she’s the only one remaining. She stares at the distant spot where Greves lies bowed on the Vastness but can’t wrap her mind around the idea of him being gone. She saw him just a few days ago, spoke to him about the future. Yes, he’d been upset at Astrocom’s demise and despairing of the Company’s direction, but he was a director. One of the elite, destined to live twice as long as regular folk. She never imagined him coming to such a drastic decision.

She’s crushed by what that means.

After twelve years of service, she didn’t really know her own client.

It’s been a long time since a director resigned in protest. The shocking news will reach the Executive in the Sweetsea. There’s going to be damage control, repercussions, public statements. Shifts in power. Pundits will make declarations on the Companynet. A huge blow for the reunionists and a great victory for the terraformists, they’ll say.

None of that’s Isako’s concern anymore. Her client’s gone to his death. At age fifty, she’s a contractor without a contract. A ronin.

What the fuck does she do now?

To celebrate the release of The Last Contract of Isako on May 5th, Fonda Lee is going on tour!

A battle-worn corporate samurai undertakes one last mission on a merciless planet where death is always a mere breath away, in this standalone dystopian epic from the author of the modern fantasy classic Jade City. 

LIVE BY THE CODE. DIE BY THE KNIFE.

Tour Dates & Events

TUESDAY, MAY 5 at 6:00 PM
Hampton Community Center
Presented by Riverstone Bookstore | Pittsburgh, PA
In conversation with V. L. Bovalino
🎟️ Reserve Tickets | 📚 Event Information

WEDNESDAY, MAY 6 at 7:00 PM
New Design High School Library
Presented by Yu & Me Books | New York City, NY
In conversation with Victor Manibo
📚 Event & Ticket Information

THURSDAY, MAY 7 at 6:00 PM
Left Bank Books
St. Louis, MO
📚 Event Information

FRIDAY, MAY 8 at 7:00 PM
Barnes & Noble Buckhead
Atlanta, GA
In conversation with Jenn Lyons
📚 Event Information

SATURDAY, MAY 9 at 2:00 PM
BookPeople
Austin, TX
In conversation with Marshall Ryan Maresca
🎟️ Reserve Tickets | 📚 Event Information

MONDAY, MAY 11 at 7:00 PM
Indigo at Toronto Eaton Centre
Toronto, ON
In conversation with Ai Jiang
🎟️ Reserve Tickets

TUESDAY, MAY 12 at 6:00 PM
Coolidge Corner Theater
Presented by Brookline Booksmith | Brookline, MA
In conversation with Shannon Chakraborty
🎟️ Reserve Tickets | 📚 Event Information

Celebrate Arab American Heritage Month with powerful fiction and non-fiction that highlight the voices and experiences of Arab and Arab American communities. Compelling prose, magical stories, and true-stories that will leave you wanting more.

Immersive Fiction

Gripping Non-Fiction

Take your first look at the cover for The Shadow Queen (US | UK), the next installment in the Kingdom of Oak and Steel trilogy by Mark A. Latham, coming December 2026!

The Shadow Queen is the utterly gripping sequel to The Last Vigilant where an out-of-practice wizard and an outcast soldier must solve an impossible murder to have any hope of protecting their kingdom's fragile peace.

In the crown city of Helmspire, the Last True Vigilant, Enelda Drake, has returned. Enelda and her loyal guard Hawley are tasked with solving all manner of crime in the kingdom’s capital. From missing jewels to lying nobles, she has solved it all. The realm’s young king is delighted. His mother, perhaps the true power behind the throne, has her doubts.

But, after three years of simple cases, Enelda faces the impossible. An important noble has been strangled to death in a windowless vault. The only door was locked from the inside. Guards monitored the doors at all times. No weapons were left behind; nothing was stolen. And yet, the noble is dead.

As Enelda and Hawley barely begin to put together the pieces, there is another murder. Again, under shockingly impossible circumstances.

With two wealthy nobles slain, panic spreads quickly among the elite who have gathered in the city for a major festival. But they are not the only ones converging on Helmspire: allies, enemies, and the threat of ancient magic come knocking at Enelda’s door.

With pressure mounting from the king, and the list of suspects growing daily, Enelda will need to prove herself, or reckon with the fact that maybe she’s not the True Vigilant she claims to be.

Also by Mark A. Latham

Tags: Orbit News, Orbit Cover Launch

This promotion is not currently available.

Learn more about the titles featured in this sweepstakes!

So many children look up at the night sky and think: “I want to go to there.” Frankly, who can blame them? There’s something so tantalizing about outer space and those lucky people who get to journey there—astronauts. Here are some books to share with your own little astronauts, spanning fantastic fiction and incredible true stories.

Don’t forget to share on social media and tag @grandcentralpub and @davidbaldacciauthor!

A young woman and a possessed teddy bear set out on a revenge quest unlike any other in this stylish slasher from Cho Yeeun, a rising star in Korean horror.

Read an excerpt from Teddy Bears Never Die (US), on-sale May 26th, below!

Prologue

Nine people are dead and twelve in critical condition following a shocking random killing spree in a luxury apartment in Yamu. Around 4pm Friday, the culprit, posing as a kindly neighbor, distributed poisoned rice cakes to residents. Police have mobilized their entire force to track down whoever is responsible for this heinous crime…

All stories start with money. It’s a cliché. But in the year 2025—when the death toll of Koreans too poor to afford AC in heatwaves has reached triple digits—what can you do without money? You can’t find housing, eat, hook up, or socialize. If you want to hook up, you’ll first need to grab coffee on a date or at least pay for a hotel room. If you want to socialize, you’ll need designer shoes, a designer smartphone case, a designer wallet. That’s not all. Even revenge costs money. Sure, you can slap some kid walking down the street and vent your frustration. But that’s not really revenge; It’s a cheap move that only proves you’re the one that has been defeated. Therefore, all seventeen-year-old Hwang Hwayoung can do right now is to seize money, the new god and the mightiest weapon of our age. Money works miracles. A story that starts with money can only end with it—that’s what Hwayoung believes, an important lesson someone once taught her.

But a weapon that isn’t lodged in another’s flesh is a weapon that can always wound you. Unless you were born holding one, you’ll need to sell your soul at the very least just to grasp the handle.

Chapter One

The Teddy Bear Holding a Hatchet

Hwayoung eyed the wad of cash in front of her. Youngjin, the “room boss,” was counting the rent money he had collected from the kids. The mildewy smell rising from the grubby banknotes gave her a headache. How much was all that? she wondered. Over ten people lived in this run-down, eighty-square-meter apartment, each paying at least several hundred thousands of won in rent. While Hwayoung did the math in her head, Youngjin finished counting and turned to her. She stood still as a defendant awaiting the verdict. He announced her sentence: “Fifty percent hike on your rent. Starting next month.”

“Are you insane?” Hwayoung burst out.

“Got a problem with that? Leave. I’ve got plenty of kids dying to take your place.” Youngjin swept the cash into his duffle bag without batting an eyelid. Hwayoung glared at him, biting her lip. She had no retort.

This was Rainbow Apartments, located in Wolpyung-dong on the fringes of Yamu City. Well over four decades old, the small apartment complex had been built by cheating numerous locals, merchants, and investors. From the day it opened, Rainbow Apartments was plagued by conflicts big and small, including allegations of poor construction and the suicide of the developer’s CEO, gaining decades-long notoriety as The Cursed Apartments. Add to that the complicated web of interests and even inheritance disputes following the deaths of stakeholders—Rainbow Apartments was a lost cause.

For a while, rumors spread that Rainbow Apartments was precisely the reason Wolpyung-dong didn’t make the list of neighborhoods up for redevelopment. Meanwhile, Yamu’s extensive redevelopment plan gave other neighborhoods in the city a facelift, the dramatic changes leaving nowhere else to go for some people, who then trickled back into this old district. As a result, Rainbow Apartments alone maintained an eerie dreariness that gave it the disgraceful nickname, “the Cesspool of Yamu.”

Naturally, living conditions were far from perfect. In embarrassing contrast to its hopeful name, Rainbow Apartments was tattooed all over with curses and obscenities in garish red spray paint. Residents of nearby neighborhoods treated the apartment complex like a pandemic hotbed, not daring to come within a hundred-meter radius.

So residents of the complex weren’t refusing to leave, but simply couldn’t. The majority of them were vagrants or criminals who squatted in empty homes, or people who paid far-cheaper-than-average rent for units the landlords put on the market without even requiring deposits. Youngjin belonged to the latter group. But the difference was that he had the money to buy this unit—he just chose not to. He said there was no reason to own a property that may never get redeveloped, and didn’t want to deal with all its scandalous baggage. The way Hwayoung saw it, Youngjin was practically the owner of the unit, just not on paper. He had probably chatted up some homeless person around Yamu Station with a bottle of soju and used their name. Hwayoung’s roommate Jua told her that Youngjin had dabbled in all sorts of illegal activities since he was a minor; no doubt he had many reasons to hide behind another person’s identity.

Another difference was that Youngjin was subletting his rented unit. His tenants? Kids who had nowhere to go. No matter the era, no matter the city, there were always children without a place to stay. Children who hid in dark, damp corners and lived in packs, like sewer rats. Hwayoung was one of them.

“Use your brain,” Youngjin drawled. “I’ve been charging peanuts. You know damn well there’s no place this cheap, even with the fifty percent hike.”

Hwayoung hated to admit it, but he was right. The tiny gosiwon room she stayed in before moving here had charged double her current rent. After months of missed payments, she had been kicked out, and hadn’t even gotten any of her belongings back.

Housing prices in Yamu were skyrocketing. The first spike came immediately after the Ministry of Land and Infrastructure announced plans to bulldoze the entirety of the aging—or rather crumbling—city, and build in its place a state-of-the-art, eco-friendly, and education-focused metropolis. Once the public-private joint planning committee was launched, news stories abounded of out-of-town investors flocking to Yamu with bags of cash to buy up land. And people did arrive in droves, rapidly changing the face of Yamu. High-rises cropped up on a daily basis, noises of construction ringing constantly in every corner. People fighting over land ownership grew common as street pigeons. While Yamu was indeed turning into a state-of-the-art (but maybe not so eco-friendly) city, time stood still at one place: Rainbow Apartments.

Hwayoung’s answer was decided for her already. The moment she moved out from the Cesspool of Yamu, she would have to struggle just to tread water, never mind save any money. As Youngjin hummed nonchalantly, Hwayoung asked, “Why raise the rent all of a sudden?”

“Landlord raised my rent. Got no choice.”

“Cut the crap. I know you’ve got dozens of us offering up rent money every month. And the other kids don’t seem to know about the hike yet. Shouldn’t you let them know in advance so they can—”

“‘Course they don’t. Their rent’s the same. I’m only raising yours.”

“What? Why?”

Youngjin narrowed his eyes as if to size her up. Hwayoung had never gotten used to those unpleasant pupils, a pair of sinkholes sucking in an endless desert of greed. Youngjin’s lips curled as he added, “You asked for this. Should’ve obeyed me like the others.”

“Don’t tell me this is about last week.”

“Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t.”

A week earlier, Youngjin had offered to take Hwayoung “fishing.” The terms were that she would get a ten percent cut. “Fishing” was the room boss’s second source of income. First, he lured people from anonymous secondhand marketplaces or random chatrooms using runaway teens as a front, usually pretty-faced young girls who looked harmless and not all that strong. To make the most cash out of the transaction, the goods Youngjin posted for sale were home appliances, electronics, illegal drugs, or sometimes even the teenager baits themselves. There was no shortage of sickos who would do anything for pleasure. They came waving wads of cash, grinning from ear to ear as they stepped into the trap. Youngjin liked to use a motel in a nightlife district nearby. He and the owner seemed to have some kind of arrangement. How else would he have a duplicate key to every single room? If the target entered the motel, it was game over. The moment they let their guard down, Youngjin and the others ambushed the scene. “Fishing” was basically slang for mugging. Robbing someone clean through physical, psychological, and verbal abuse, protected from the police or any potential lawsuits due to the target’s own participation in illegal dealings.

“The others” referred to the big, obedient boys also handpicked by Youngjin. A number of Hwayoung’s housemates not only admired but even made a role model out of Youngjin, who had accumulated wealth through a colorful history of crime and nastiness. The boys were practically fixed members of Youngjin’s gang, unlike the girls he used as bait and frequently replaced, saying their faces had become known.

“You’re doing this because I refused to be bait? Grow up,” Hwayoung hissed.

“You grow up. Being precious about your ego when you ain’t shit. Acting like you’re the only one with clean hands here, when I know for a fact you’ve scammed your way into that fast-food job.”

“Oh, so even you know your money’s filthy.”

Stung by the accusation of a precious ego, Hwayoung had really let her ego talk. Instantly realizing her mistake, she fell silent. The mood was icy. Youngjin growled in a dangerously low voice, “Hey, Hwang Hwayoung. You fucking watch it.” His hand moved in a flash and his ashtray flew in her direction. Hwayoung managed to twist out of the way, arms shielding her face. The black ashtray, printed with a Chinese restaurant logo, hit the kitchen cupboard and fell, clouding her face with ash. She began to cough uncontrollably.

“Quit the chest-beating and show up for the next fishing. This is about you proving that you still want to live here. Behave and I’ll cancel your rent hike.”

“Gimme some time to think.”

“Think fast, ’cause D-day’s next weekend. Either you stick with the fam and score big, or watch your rent jump fifty percent every month and end up on the streets.”

The frosty silence was broken by the sudden buzzing of Youngjin’s mobile. The screen showed eleven digits of an unsaved number, which Youngjin seemed to recognize. He snatched his phone up quickly as if he’d been waiting for the call. Dismissing Hwayoung with a gesture of his chin, he stepped out onto the balcony. Who was he on the phone with that he had to shut the door behind him? Somehow, he looked tenser than usual. Hwayoung brushed the ash off herself and glared at the money on the table.

Despite all her protests, the reason she turned down the fishing gig really wasn’t anything special. Her sense of justice? Her last remaining ounce of conscience? To hell with all that. Her reason was that she simply had to work a shift at the restaurant that evening. Of course, her wages from the part-time job were far less than what Youngjin would pay her. But she wasn’t going to quit her job after this one big gig with him. Hwayoung needed money. Lots of it. But not many employers were willing to hire a minor with a fake address and no proper guardian. That was why her hard-won job at the fast-food joint by the intersection was so important.

Ten bus stops from Rainbow Apartments was Bakhak intersection, Yamu’s mecca of education and its largest hagwon district. The fast-food joint was the intersection’s landmark, an enormous outlet that was always bustling with time-pressed, hungry students. Working there was so draining that even adult employees rarely lasted long. The manager hired Hwayoung only because the outlet was desperately short-staffed, but he remained apprehensive about having taken on someone so young. If Hwayoung hadn’t made up a tear-jerking story about losing her mother to illness and being sent to live with a heartless aunt who left her to starve, she wouldn’t have landed the job. If she gave even the slightest impression of slacking off, she would surely get the axe faster than she could say, “Wait.”

There was one more reason. As Yamu’s redevelopment plans ramped up, the slogan “Yamu, the Family-Friendly City” was plastered all over the streets. Barely a week had passed since the police department announced increased crackdowns on crime. If Hwayoung got caught helping Youngjin, who profited off not only fishing but other crimes both petty and serious, Youngjin would make sure that she would be the one to take the hit. If she got arrested and ended up in juvie or a shelter, forget earning money—she’d lose all her savings. The worst of the worst was always a possibility, and Hwayoung had an expensive goal to achieve. Until then, she had to quietly persevere.

Youngjin was still on the phone with his back to her. Hwayoung reached for the duffle bag, filled with the cash he had finished counting. In the blink of an eye, she nabbed a 50,000-won bill and shoved it into her pocket just as Youngjin turned around. She gave him the middle finger, then hightailed it out of Unit 303. She was due for her shift.

✕ ✕ ✕

Account balance: 4,469,000 won. Just one-fifth of her target amount of twenty million won. Repeating the seven-digit number to herself, Hwayoung took the westbound subway to the opposite side of town from Rainbow Apartments. She was headed to the first neighborhood in Yamu to undergo redevelopment, now the posh stronghold of the city’s most expensive and pleasantly dispersed apartments and houses: Green Village.

The time was 3pm. Hwayoung had two hours till her shift. As usual, she changed in the subway station restroom, donning a school uniform with a silly green necktie. She had found it in a shopping bag dumped in front of a donation bin. Twice a week, she put on the uniform and transformed into a student at a private Christian boarding school. The school was the perfect choice, as it was neither too close to nor too far from the posh neighborhood. Hwayoung looked into the mirror, practicing her kindest, demurest, and devoutest expression. Holding the portable collection box and Bible stolen during her one-day job for the Salvation Army, she set out for the Seaview Parc with a spring in her step.

The Seaview Parc at Yamu.

Put simply, it was the largest, swankiest apartment complex in Yamu—the very antithesis of Rainbow Apartments. Residents included politicians and financiers from out of town, celebrities who had retired after a good run, high-ranking government officials, and native Yamu bigwigs who, tipped off by said officials about the redevelopment, purchased large swathes of land early on. With a total of twenty buildings in the complex, the Seaview Parc was an ultra-opulent community where every unit had the entire floor to itself and enjoyed private elevator access. To forestall any noise complaints, the floors and ceilings were soundproofed with such painstaking care that residents, it was said, could party all night without their neighbors hearing a peep.

The gated community was, of course, heavily protected. Security guards in three-piece suits stood like totem poles at every corner, inspecting every last person who came and went. No one was allowed into the complex without an access card, and outsiders were required to use visitor-only entryways and elevators. For food deliveries, the management office held on to the vehicle key and even checked the order details before providing the elevator access card. All this Hwayoung had learned from Jua, who worked as a delivery person.

Apparently, things had been different when the community first opened. The visitor-only entryway was also a later addition. Back when it was still in the presale stage, the Seaview Parc was actually branded as an eco-friendly and cozy apartment complex boasting sweeping views of the Yellow Sea on the higher floors and a proximity to Mount Muwang, the backbone of Yamu. Certain circumstances had driven the Seaview Parc to pivot to being such a radically gated luxury residence.

The shift happened three years ago. A lunatic decided to leave out poisoned rice cakes during moving season. The incident left nine dead and twelve gravely ill. Shortly afterward, the culprit uploaded a video confession, and was then found dead by suicide. It was the worst mass murder in Yamu’s history.

Hwayoung fought down the old memories threatening to resurface. Now was not the time to dwell on the past. Money, she had to make money. The hours of her day could be converted to money, because that was what everything boiled down to. She had two hours till her shift at the fast-food restaurant. How much she could earn within that time depended on her skills. Confidently, she strode up to the security office by the iron gates and held out her visitor access card. The guard, who was familiar with her face, let her in without inspection. After notifying Unit 508, whose resident had given her the visitor card, the concierge remarked, “You’re a devout kid, I’ll give you that. But tell me, does God reward you for praying so hard?”

Putting on “Amiable and Relaxed Smile No. 1,” which she had perfected in the subway station mirror, Hwayoung replied, “Amen.” The concierge muttered audibly, “Folks here have everything. What more could they pray for?”

Gee, I’m curious myself. But you know, you’d be surprised how many families have sad stories even if they’re rich, Hwayoung answered him in her head, and, maintaining her amiable smile, crossed the courtyard and reached the building entryway leading up to Unit 508. She worked twice a week here. Her job was to pray for and chat with the Protestant ma’ams and sirs of the Seaview Parc. Her pay wasn’t fixed, but the good madams rolling in money and time were magnanimous with their spending. The sentence written on Hwayoung’s little collection box—Proceeds will be donated to those in need, under Yamu Younggwang High School’s Christian Club, PRAISE—was a magic spell that sucked in cash. These donations were the reason Hwayoung had money left to save after paying rent with her welfare benefits. She had gotten the idea from the Salvation Army’s Red Kettle campaign and a documentary on a Christian student club. She didn’t know at first that she had hit the jackpot.

But her success shouldn’t have come as a surprise, really. Countless red neon crosses dotted the neighborhood and the rest of Yamu, and churches towered impressively over every block of apartment complexes. But the ministers of such large congregations were busy. Mad busy, Hwayoung supposed. Even if they weren’t, they had no reason to go out of their way to visit homes and hold prayers when their church was already overflowing with worshippers. She had discovered an untapped market. Plus, her sweet, open face and unthreateningly small frame proved useful in disarming these guarded ma’ams and sirs.

The madam of Unit 508, who gave Hwayoung the visitor access card, had lost her younger brother in the incident three years ago. Since then, the pious Christian woman had stopped going to church and confined herself to her house. So perhaps it was natural that she was reminded of her brother’s young daughter when she saw, on the anniversary of his death, Hwayoung scuffling with a security guard by the apartment gates. She lent a ready helping hand to Hwayoung, who repaid her with prayer and consolation. That was already a year ago. Nowadays, Hwayoung spent more time talking with the madam than praying. She told Hwayoung every little detail about her daily goings-on: how a newly released perfume was just to her taste, how the tea leaves flown in from England smelled sublime, what she ate for lunch and what movie she had enjoyed over the weekend. The Unit 508 madam was also the one who had introduced Hwayoung to the other women and seniors living in the apartment. Hwayoung rang the doorbell, and the door opened almost immediately.

“Come in. Let’s talk inside,” the madam said. Hwayoung greeted the madam brightly as always, hugging her Bible. She noticed that her hostess’s expression was darker than usual. The living-room coffee table was already set—as if the madam had been waiting for her—with cups of freshly brewed peach Earl Grey, a tea that had become Hwayoung’s favorite despite her untrained palate. She was savoring the beautiful sunlight streaming in through the floor-to-ceiling window when the madam said calmly, “You can stop coming here now.”

Hwayoung almost dropped her teacup. “Is something the matter?”

“After your visit last week, a neighbor—a student around your age—brought something to my attention. That your school uniform, and the name of your Christian club, changed a long time ago. That the club doesn’t do door-to-door fundraising anymore.”

Hwayoung’s mind went blank. She felt as though she had forgotten how to speak.

“At first I didn’t believe it,” the madam continued. “Given how long we’ve known each other—well over a year, you know. And after everything I’ve confided in you? It just couldn’t be true. But I remembered that a distant relative of mine recently got into that school. So I asked for a favor. I asked her to check if there was a first-year club member named Hwang Hwayoung.”

Hwayoung was silent.

“Do you have any idea how I felt waiting for the answer?”

“I’m so sorry,” was all Hwayoung could bring herself to say. The madam’s knuckles were chalk-white as she clutched her teacup. Hwayoung wouldn’t blame her if she poured that tea right over her head.

“Listen, I get it. You must’ve needed the money. And there are a million reasons in the world a person might need money. I don’t begrudge you that money. But what I cannot stand… is that all your sweet gestures, all our conversations—it was all a performance. How much of you is real? Everything you showed me and told me—was any of it true? You also ‘lost someone’ in the incident? You can ‘understand my grief’? No matter how young and desperate you are… there are lines you don’t cross.”

Hwayoung thought her heart might burst. She had known a day like this might come, but no way had she expected this pain, this realization that she had harmed and hurt someone she actually held dear. Should she have backed out before she felt this way? But how was she to know when that point was?

“I’ll leave it at that,” the madam said. “I never wish to see you again.”

“I am so sorry…” Hwayoung whispered. She wanted to flee this suffocating space. What had been her cozy refuge and workplace until last week was now a living hell. She got up and nearly ran to the door, but stopped just before she stepped out. The madam sat looking devastated. With her back to the madam, Hwayoung muttered, “It wasn’t all a lie. Please believe me.”

Hwayoung dashed out of the apartment complex and all the way to the subway station, tossing her donation box onto a heap of uncollected garbage by a utility pole. She knew she was in the wrong, but she wanted to cry. Yet with no one to comfort her if she broke down, and being no comfort to herself, she held those tears back. It was time for her to get to her next job. Once again she changed in the subway station restroom, then waited for the bus as she chewed over the last thing the madam had said to her. There are lines you don’t cross. But Hwayoung was on her way to cross many more lines. Was any of it real? Who knows, she thought. If “real” meant the core inside a shell, did she even have one after losing her mom?

Yet in all the moments she spoke and cried with the madam—no matter what anyone said—Hwayoung had been sincere. That truth, at least, she hoped would reach the madam. But like the moral of The Boy Who Cried Wolf, a tiny truth among countless lies would not be heard. On the bus ride to the fast-food restaurant, Hwayoung sang dully under her breath, “Twenty million won, twenty million won.” She needed twenty million won. Twenty million won wasn’t such a huge amount. Twenty million won wasn’t enough to pay for a single window fitting in one of the many high-rises sprouting up in Yamu. But it was enough to kidnap one person. Whatever it took. Closing her eyes, Hwayoung thought of a voice. The voice that kept her going.

Do you know why I do this work? Because human life is equal before a gun or a knife.

Therefore, she would buy herself a gun and knife, her truth and revenge.

✕ ✕ ✕

There are many types of lies in the world. Good lies and bad lies, big lies and small lies. Some lies are catastrophic in and of themselves, while some are pretty harmless. For example, if someone asked you what you did last night, you might lie that you studied when really you lay in bed playing games on your phone. Or you might fib about your birthday being April 24 when it’s really April 18. Or say you’re seventeen when you’re actually fifteen. But all lies inevitably lead to catastrophe. A big lie, by its very nature, ruins everything; a small, everyday lie will be used against you when exposed. And Hwayoung, who armed herself with lies in the swiftly changing city of Yamu, was today exposed for both.

She had just finished frying some three hundred chicken nuggets and four hundred baskets of French fries when she was summoned by the manager. Sometimes you just knew. Standing before the firmly shut staffroom door, Hwayoung felt a déjà vu: opening this door would cause a rupture. Something was about to begin… But she couldn’t not open the door. She had no power to refuse. Taking a deep breath, she carefully turned the handle. The manager seemed to be in a mood, her arms crossed. A document lay in front of her—the resumé Hwayoung had submitted as part of her job application.

“Why did you lie to me?” the manager asked.

That shitty God of Truth had it in for her today, Hwayoung thought. How else could these things happen back to back? The resumé contained her youthful student ID photo along with an endless list of her one-off jobs and the restaurants she had served at. The manager pointed to the birthdate field next to her photograph. “You said when you applied that you were seventeen.”

Hwayoung broke out in a cold sweat. She’d had no choice: she was fifteen at the time, two years younger than she was now. Though seventeen and fifteen were both underage, few employers were willing to hire a fifteen-year-old middle schooler. Even on the off chance that a middle schooler got hired, they would get replaced as soon as another applicant turned up, or, worse, get preyed on by ill-intentioned adults. Besides, Hwayoung had thought her manager had known. Known, but cut her some slack.

“Lying on your resumé is one thing, but forging official documents? That’s a crime,” the manager went on. She was referring to the family register certificate, parental consent form, and medical certificate Hwayoung had submitted on her first day of work. The family register certificate had to be fudged because she had to fake her age, and the parental consent form and medical certificate because she had no one to sign them. Woo Youngjin, you piece of shit, Hwayoung cursed in her head. Forgeries won’t get caught, my ass. And to think of the crapload of money she’d paid him.

All day she had been a mess. A strange, scalding heat erupting from her chest like lava, yet no words able to escape. Before Hwayoung could even begin to make an excuse, her manager informed her coldly that she didn’t need to come in anymore—her replacement had been hired. Hwayoung felt as though an invisible hand was once again depositing her at Youngjin’s feet.

Hwayoung left the staffroom and took her place before the deep fat fryer again. It was exam season, as luck would have it, so the staff were worked off their feet. Keyed-up students and their parents flooded into the restaurant and left with bags of burgers. A little before midnight, Hwayoung switched off the fryer and, just like that, her last shift was over. The lights of the hagwons around the restaurant still shone bright. Her manager, maybe feeling belatedly sorry, told her that head office had sent down auditors after the city adopted the slogan, “Yamu, the Family-Friendly City,” and so she had no choice.

This wasn’t something the manager had to apologize for, Hwayoung knew. She was the one at fault. She was the one who had deceived and betrayed the madam for a year, written lies on her resumé and forged her medical certificate. She returned her apron and cap, and left the restaurant. Her stomach gave an overdue growl. All she had eaten the whole day were French fries she had accidentally burned in overheated oil, and one burger.

“I’m hungry,” she said aloud. She resented the tactlessness of her rumbling stomach. Uniformed students walked briskly past her down the street. A mother and daughter caught her eye. The girl, who had irritation written all over her face, was wearing the uniform of Hwayoung’s old school. The comfortably dressed mother opened a lunchbox and scooped a spoonful of rice, which she brought to her daughter’s mouth, but the girl swatted the hand away and darted into the hagwon building. As class schedules were often back to back, parents delivering packed meals for their children were a common sight on this street. Hwayoung’s mouth watered. “I want my mom’s food…” she mumbled.

There had been a time like that for her once, too. A time when every morning she would eat breakfast cooked by her mom, in a house that wasn’t spacious but snug enough for a family of three. Her dad would do the dishes after dinner, while her mom quickly seated herself on the living room sofa to catch her favorite weeknight soap. That was Hwayoung’s cue to plop down next to her mom, drumming her full belly, her mouth bulging with the fruit that her dad had sliced for her. The sour tang of kimchi jjigae wafting around the house, the chatter of the TV and the clink of dishes mingling peacefully. A memory so old it felt like another lifetime.

It had also been ages since she went to school. Where had she put her uniform? She couldn’t even remember now. Just barely meeting the minimum attendance requirement, Hwayoung had managed to graduate from middle school—that was her last time in classes of any sort. Whenever she veered off course, it had always been her mom who put her back on track. But now her mom was gone. She had no reason to return to school. Hwayoung stood on a corner of the intersection, staring at the sea of hagwon signs and neon lights. Everywhere she looked were parents and their children, but their lives felt distant. She took out her phone and messaged Youngjin:

I’ll do it. I want a fair cut.

Bout time you stopped playing hard to get.

Youngjin’s reply was prompt, like he had known she would contact him. Hwayoung started out toward Rainbow Apartments. She was in the mood for a long walk today. She wanted to walk until she was worn out like her dog-eared sneakers, worn down into a tiny speck nobody could find.

An hour or so passed. Her starved stomach had quieted, as if catching on that no amount of whining would result in a meal. Hunger had a peak. Once you passed that stage of itching to shove anything into your mouth, you settled into a strangely serene state. Your appetite gone, as if your stomach was on strike.

Rainbow Apartments loomed in the distance but it seemed closer now. Hwayoung was passing a residential area steeped in darkness. Something moved down the alley. She squinted. The dim yellow glow of a lamppost shone down on piles of uncollected garbage, which several hungry stray cats were digging around in for scraps. Then she noticed something else: leaning between the piles of garbage and a perimeter wall was a familiar rotund shape. Black, round eyes glinting in the lamplight. Two shiny orbs looking out between tufts of dirty, bedraggled fur. Hwayoung took a step forward. The cats circling the fuzzy lump scowled at her and slinked away, leaving her alone with it in the hazy light of the alleyway.

She whispered its lost name: “Happy Smile Bear.” For a long moment, Hwayoung stared at those plastic, scratched-up eyes. Then, reaching out, she scooped up the teddy bear in her arms and greeted it out loud. “Hey there. Long time no see.”

✕ ✕ ✕

From Sydney J. Shields, the breakout author of The Honey Witch, comes An Arcane Study of Stars, a historical dark academia fantasy filled with ancient secret societies, a swoon-worthy rivals-to-lovers romance, and dangerous deals made after dark. Perfect for fans of The Atlas Six and The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue.

To celebrate the release of An Arcane Study of Stars on April 28th, Sydney J. Shields is going on tour!

Tour Dates & Events

TUESDAY, APRIL 28 at 6:30 PM
E. Shaver Booksellers
Savannah, GA
In conversation with Madison Timmons
🎟️ Reserve Tickets

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 29 at 7:00 PM
Novel Neighbor
Webster Groves, MO
🎟️ Reserve Tickets

THURSDAY, APRIL 30 at 7:00 PM
Eagle Eye Bookshop
Decatur, GA
In conversation with Rebecca F. Kenney
🎟️ Reserve Tickets

FRIDAY, MAY 1 at 6:30 PM
The Archive
Mt. Pleasant, SC
🎟️ Reserve Tickets

SATURDAY, MAY 2 at 6:00 PM
B&N Colonial
Orlando, FL
🎟️ Reserve Tickets

SUNDAY, MAY 3 at 6:30 PM
A Novel Romance
Louisville, KY
In conversation with S. T. Gibson
🎟️ Reserve Tickets

Catch up on all our latest cover reveals and place your preorders now!

Take your first look at the cover for Absolon Creed (US), the new grimdark adventure by R. S. Ford, coming September 2026!

A legendary soldier is the last line of defense between his city and monstrous chaos in this grimdark adventure from an unmissable voice in epic fantasy.

Bastion, the once-shining capital of Morrengard, teeters on the brink. Its grand spires are crumbling and its nobility fight over scraps, all while eldritch creatures stalk the streets. The only thing standing in the way of its utter destruction is the Order of Draken: a knightly order more brutal than the threats the city faces. And its most brutal champion… Absolon Creed.

When two nobles are found murdered in a manner most grotesque, suspicions arise about a traitor within the Order itself. Creed is tasked with investigating, and for his sins he is saddled with a partner: Guenivar Blackmere, a daughter of nobility and the Order’s newest, and most untested, initiate. 

Together, they are plunged into Bastion’s fetid underbelly, where warlocks rub elbows with corrupt nobles and necromancers cavort with the dead. Guenivar must learn fast or perish under Creed’s cold tutelage. Her mentor is quick to anger, and about as friendly as a cornered wolf, but that is the only way to survive these unforgiving streets.

But as the investigation deepens, Guenivar discovers a secret about him that could shatter everything she believed about the order and its heroes. While Creed himself must defeat the ghosts he’s spent years trying to bury… before they bury Bastion itself.

Also by R. S. Ford

Tags: Orbit News, Orbit Cover Launch

We are so excited to announce that Orbit has acquired Eternity in Three Acts, an adult epic fantasy debut set in an Asian-inspired world in which time itself is unraveling. It is a sweeping, tragic, yet hopeful love story of a young man raised as a sacrifice and his guide tasked with seeing him to his death.

This book is for readers of Godkiller, She Who Became the Sun, and A Song to Drown Rivers.

Here’s more about the book:

The god of time is dying, and the world is crumbling. There is only one solution: a new god, to replace the old. An idea so blasphemous it is punishable by death.

Shion is the chosen candidate. He has known no life but the one chosen for him. At once a sacrificial lamb and divine successor, he has no time for dreams, no space for love. Then he meets Junyu, a charismatic player carving out a new life on the stage. Once a Ferrier, carrying sacrifices across the sea, he is the only one who can help Shion reach his goal.

But first the two men will have to brave time-warped landscapes, wild beast, and perilous seas, all the while evading the Hourglass Temple's notice. And as they journey, Junyu awakens something in Shion he was never meant to feel.

To save the world, Shion must die, and Junyu must bear the burden of letting him go. It can only end in tragedy...

Eternity in Three Acts will be published in Winter 2027.

Here is more about the author:

Ann Sei Lin is a writer and librarian with a love for all things fantasy. Though Cambridge is now her home, she spent several years living and working in Chiba, Japan. When not writing, she is often studying, gaming, or trying to make that origami rabbit for the one hundredth time. She can be found on Instagram @annseilin1.

Jessica Mileo at Inkwell Management sold North American rights for two standalone books to Orbit US Editor Tiana Coven on behalf of Lina Langlee at The North Literary Agency. UK and Commonwealth rights sold to Molly Powell at Hodderscape in a deal brokered by Langlee.

Tags: Orbit News, Orbit Acquisition Announcement

We all know how important sleep is, but sometimes it’s really hard to head to bed. Bedtime can even be a bit of a battle! Even the sleepiest readers want to stay awake, worried they might miss something. And sometimes our busy brains just can’t calm down! Luckily reading is the perfect activity to wind down, and these picture books are the perfect way to end a day, and get ready to drift off to dreamland. 

April showers bring…more books! These April ebook deals start at just $1.99. Get them while they last!

In this hauntingly romantic, queer fantasy from Shannon K. English, a young mermaid is forced to choose between her old life above the waves and her new life below them.

Read an excerpt from Endless Blue Beneath (US), on-sale June 9th, below!

1

DREAMING

In every dream, I drown.

I’m in the water, struggling, thrashing. Straining to reach the surface, fractured mirror shards splintering over and over into white lines that bisect the blue water and separate me from the world I know.

I push against the current with arms and legs alike. Shoving with all my might and sinking faster than ever. Inexorably down.

And then I realize I’m not alone. Someone has hold of me by the waist. An arm folded around me like a steel bar, towing me down. I scream then, terrified, and the last of my precious air vanishes upward in a stream of dancing silver bubbles.

I can’t see their face, but they are relentless. Tireless. Not like me. My legs are so heavy I can hardly kick. Raising my arm to push down at the water once more feels almost impossible. I’m still trying, even though my limbs are leaden.

The surface is nothing but the faintest hint of blue, far above me. I’m too tired now to fight any more. The light is fading, fading, and deepest midnight blue presses in, contracting my lungs. The abyss is limitless but I can feel it—holding me tight in its grasp.

It always ends the same way. I let it happen; I let it take me. In every dream I drown. I sink, still and silent, into the endless blue beneath.

And when I wake, the feeling is still there. The tightness in my chest, the clawing in my throat. I’m still drowning, just a little, even as I’m pulling in air.

I shoot upright with a gasp so loud that it’s almost a cry.

“Eppie?” Theo sounds very small in the darkness. “Are you alright?”

His voice brings me back to myself, and my hands close on the scratchy wool of my blanket. I’m here. I’m alive.

“I’m alright,” I croak in answer, as raspy as though I really had been drowning.

Dimly, I can see the shine of his eyes as he raises his head to look at me. “Was it another nightmare?”

I think about lying to spare his feelings, but what would be the point? My dramatic awakening has made it obvious exactly what is happening. “Yes,” I say. “A nightmare. Sorry if I woke you.”

There is a soft rustle as he sits up and puts his bare feet down on the cold stone. “Do you need me to hold your hand for a bit?”

His face is so earnest that I feel my heart twist inside me. When he was small and had bad dreams, I’d sit on the edge of his bed, hold his hand, and stroke his hair until he fell back asleep with a smile on his face. That he’s offering the same now touches me to my core.

“No, I’m alright, Theo,” I answer. “But you’d better get back under the covers before you freeze to death.”

He obeys, and then we are quiet for a moment. I’m still trying to slow my racing heart. Breathe deep. It was just a dream.

“I’ll always look after you, Eppie,” Theo says, his words laced with sleepiness now. Another echo, from when we first moved to Hwenfirth: a promise I made to him half a hundred times.

“I know you will.”

I listen as his breathing deepens, slow and steady as it takes on the cadence of sleep once more. I stare at the rafters above me. So dark and distant in the gloom. I wish rest would come as easily to me.

It seems like years that I lie there, awake when I don’t want to be. Waiting for dawn and counting the three beams in the pointed ceiling of our room. One, two, three. One, two, three. I try to time my breaths to Theo’s, hoping that it will lull me.

But nothing changes, and sleep doesn’t come. The threat of that dream dances at the edges of my mind, and I shudder. Perhaps it’s better to stay awake after all.

The sound of Mama’s tuneless singing begins our day, as it always does, followed by Papa’s objections.

“Matilda, darling, please. Beneventi doesn’t deserve to have his arias butchered!”

But I can tell without seeing him that he’ll be smiling as widely as always.

Mama ignores him and sings even louder, mangling the high notes. She’s a much better flautist than she is a singer.

I take my time getting dressed, luxuriating in the little sounds of their happiness. Today is one of Papa’s good days, and I want to savor it. My hair—always too thin and too short to be either any real bother or any real beauty—soon lies in its stubby plait against my neck. My skirts hang loose against my legs, which are safely ensconced in the woollen leggings that everyone wears here, where the sea breeze bites even as summer advances.

Theo is still facing the wall, his soft breaths not quite snores. I consider waking him, but I already did that once this morning. He needs his rest. Knitted socks soundless against the stone floor, I pad into the kitchen, where my parents are still making enough of a racket it’s a miracle Theo is able to sleep through it.

Mama breaks off mid-crescendo to greet me. “Good morning, Eppie!”

Papa’s softer voice echoes her a heartbeat behind. “Eppie.”

I don’t think the word Euphemia has crossed anyone’s lips since the day the great-aunt who bestowed her clunky name on me passed from this world.

“Good morning, Papa.” Over his head, my eyes meet Mama’s. A silent question passes between us. Is everything alright?

With a little dip of her chin, she confirms what I already knew from the banter I heard through the door. Everything’s fine.

For once.

“Is Theo up yet?” she asks aloud.

Already focused on my boots by the door, I give her a quick smile in passing. “Of course not.”

“Wake him when you get back in.” She shoots me a little smile and turns back to the great stone hearth, where she is grilling a few small slices of bread into toast.

Papa glances up from the sheet music he is turning over in his hands. “Eppie, where are you going?”

“Only to the pump, Papa. Same as always.”

His eyes, pale blue as my own and three times as watery, seem to quiver behind the thick lenses of his spectacles. “Everyone’s always leaving,” he mutters, and Mama looks up sharply from her cooking.

“Now, Barnabas, darling,” she says, deliberately soft, “you know that’s not true.”

He harrumphs, turns over another leaf.

“Really, I’ll only be a minute, Papa.”

“It isn’t fair,” he mutters, sulky as two-year-old Theo once was. “You’re always rushing off.”

“Barnabas,” Mama cajoles him, and he turns to face her. “How would you like to hear me sing another of Beneventi’s arias? Maybe... hmm, I don’t know, ‘All’ombra della Luna’?”

Papa’s face is transformed again as he now fights not to laugh. “Oh, Matilda, please spare us. You play ‘All’ombra’ like an angel—but only when the flute is between you and the audience!”

And there he is, back again. Good-day Papa, not the peevish bad-day version of him, weak as a child and unable to stir out of bed. Unable to do anything but snarl and snap at us as we try our best to help him.

Relief washes through the room as Mama and I relax once more. Papa looks down at his music again, and Mama makes a little gesture with her head to beckon me over.

When she speaks, her voice is low. “I’ll be gone two days, Eppie. A concert at Monticelli’s, and then a woodwind ensemble at a private party the next night.”

“I know.” We already went over this last night. I know that on the shelf in the pantry a salmon wrapped in brown paper waits for tonight’s dinner; I know I’m not to let Theo use up the whole month’s flour supply in one of his baking experiments.

I know, as usual, that I can’t leave Papa’s side till she is back. That his every moment must be carefully managed and manicured into a shape that is palatable to him.

“Will you be alright?” The question is light enough, but there’s an edge of something in her eyes. “Do you think you can keep Theo from burning down the kitchen while I’m gone?”

Papa is still turning over the pages of the music book in front of him, but our eyes flick to him anyway. We both know full well it’s not Theo she’s really worried about.

But the memory of my brother elbow-deep in one of his sporadic attempts to cook brings a smile unbidden. Precious sugar scattered on the floor, batter matting his hair into clumps. Theo is a sweet, sensible boy, but unleash him in a kitchen and somehow he becomes chaos incarnate. I stifle another grin and shake my head. “I’ll do my best, Mama.”

“That’s all I can ask.” Her face crinkles into its habitual folds as she smiles at me. The deep indentation between her eyebrows is still present, scarred into her face by years of worry, but this morning the laughter lines show more clearly.

I think that’s all I can ask, really.

I finish lacing up my boots and slip out the door before Papa gets distracted again. Once the door is shut behind me—a layer of sturdy oak between Papa and anything that could upset him—the tension finally ebbs away. The sky is brightening overhead. Scooping up the bucket from where it waits, faithful as an old hound, I descend the three stone steps, each one big enough that I used to have to lift Theo up them. Across the cobbles of our tiny courtyard to the pump against the stone wall. I put the bucket down beneath it, rest my hand on the pump, but I don’t move it. Not yet. My eyes are directed outward, over the wall. Over the scrubby grass sloping down to the shingle, over the stones that look gray, until you peer close enough to see that they are actually every color that stone can be, and down to the ocean beyond.

The best thing about living here in Hwenfirth is this: the moment every morning that I come out of this door and walk down the three stone steps to look out at the sea for the first time.

Our rooms in Garthisle always showed the same view out both small windows: a gray city carved of gray stone, whitewashed lintels and white-painted doors. Here, the sea and the sky are like a painting, like a whole gallery. Every day, the colors are brand new—pale amber and gold, brilliant cerulean, stormy bottle-green, ominous gray or blazing red.

Today the sky is indigo, deep and mysterious. Almost the same color as Theo’s eyes, so much more decided than my own pale blue. The ocean matches it exactly, and as I watch the waves peacefully lapping the shore, only a faint shadow of my nightmare and the choking water remains.

From the small kitchen window, standing ajar to let in the morning breeze, Mama’s voice picks up the strands of music she let fall.

“All’ombra della luna ti aspetto,” and then for the second line, Papa joins her. “Amore mio, ti aspetto.”

Though Mama sings often, since his collapse Papa does not. How long has it been since I last heard them sing together? Mama’s voice is like mine. Rough, trembling. Weak. Papa has a clear tenor—nothing special, he says, but serviceable enough to provide pitch to students in the Conservatory.

“Nel buio della notte, ti aspetto.”

For Beneventi, the music was the point. The rise and fall of the notes, not the lyrics. But because of the flute solo between the third and fourth stanzas, this one is a favorite of Mama’s, and I know the words well. A lover waiting in the darkness, alone beneath the moon. Ill-suited to the deep blue morning before me, but beautiful anyway.

The notes slide through the window, winding their way across the courtyard toward me before their final flight up into the open sky above.

“Mentre le stelle si spengono, mentre il cielo trema—” Here Papa’s voice quavers and gives out, and Mama releases the final notes alone. “Aspetterò.”

The stars burn out, the sky trembles, but still the lover waits. The song seems to linger for a moment more, waiting in turn. The sky yawns above me and the sea stretches into infinity, until it too finally melts away into the sky, just like Beneventi’s lover.

When we lived in Garthisle, our rooms were always full of music. We were dripping in it. Spent every day submerged up to our necks. At the time, I hated it. Hated that I couldn’t pull the notes from my miniature violin like Papa could, that Mama’s flute would only squeak and whine for me, instead of releasing the nightingale songs it did for her. Hated that I couldn’t even sing. Even the simplest of instruments, my own voice, betrayed me like all the rest.

Now I miss the music. The silence that consumes us for days at a time is louder and more grating than the noise of my unsuccessful efforts ever was.

“I’m getting hungry, Matilda. What’s keeping the children?” The sound of Papa’s plaintive voice breaks the spell, and I bend to my work.

A minute or two of working the pump dredges up enough water to fill the bucket. I lift it with both hands and stagger back to the cottage, water sloshing cold and clear over my fingers with every step.

“Wake your brother up, dear.” Mama’s voice is brisk now. Determined not to let Papa dwell on anything that might tug him back down. “Breakfast is ready.”

There is a scuffling noise from inside our room, and I offer Mama a half-smile. “I think he’s already up.”

Theo comes tumbling out of the door, clutching the undersized violin that was once mine, his eyes alight. “I heard singing!”

I glance at Mama, who gives me a little nod. “Do you want to play for us?”

Theo swells with delight. It’s been weeks since the violin last came out of the alcove beneath his bed, and a dusty cobweb is hanging from the scroll. “I composed a new song,” he says, his eyes on Papa.

And Papa responds—his eyes flash up, bright behind the thick walls of glass. “You composed something, my boy?”

“Yes!” Theo squeaks, thrilled to be noticed. “Just like you, Father.”

Papa nods approval, and Theo trembles with excitement as he raises the instrument to his chin. The violin squawks once and we all freeze, eyes on Papa, but he is still smiling, still expectant, and Theo resumes. The tune is summery: light and dancing, like bubbles breathed out underwater. It flirts and plays, climbing higher and dipping lower, darting like a minnow, and it has all of us grinning like children.

The sound of feet tapping emanates from beneath Mama’s skirt, and she begins to move. Just a little skip to the left, then a hop forward with hands outstretched, and she catches hold of me and we begin to dance.

Theo crows with delight and plays faster. There’s a small smile on Papa’s lips, one hand tapping along on the table, the other mimicking Theo’s fingers on the neck as they draw forth the different notes. Theo’s song circles back on itself and begins for a second time. Mama spins me beneath her arm and Papa applauds us. Then Mama begins to sing again, bouncing and jaunty, matching Theo’s tune perfectly.

“Eppie is a pale-eyed girl, fresh-faced from her sleep.” She catches my eye as I duck under her arm, both of us giggling. “Eppie dances with skirts a-swirl, beneath clouds white as sheep.”

Mama’s poems don’t sell for much, not anywhere near the income we get from her participation in the orchestra in Garthisle, but I’ve always loved them. I spin away from her and drag Theo into the dance. He misses a few notes, but he’s laughing more than enough to make up for it.

“See her twist and see her whirl—oh, Eppie, hop! Eppie, leap!” Mama claps her hands, and I obey, skipping from one end of the kitchen to the other, laughter catching at my breath. “Eppie dance for your brother dear, Eppie, the pale-eyed girl.”

And then it loops back around for a third and a fourth time, all of us laughing and breathless, especially Mama, as we spin around the dining table, bumping into everything, tripping over Papa’s feet as he laughs and stamps in time.

But as we are launching into our fifth rendition, something changes—Papa’s face alters, and the light goes out of his eyes. He turns away, just slightly, and ceases clapping, and at once the lyrics skitter to a halt as Mama rushes to his side.

“Barnabas? Barnabas, darling, what is it?”

“Nothing,” he whispers, all the gaiety and the strength suddenly vanished. “Nothing at all. Only...”

“Go on, dear,” Mama encourages him.

The music stutters to a stop, Theo’s bow screeching over the strings as he finally catches up.

“The noise.” Papa’s voice is agonized. “My nerves.”

“Of course, of course, Barnabas.” Mama’s eyes flick to us, and at once the moment is over. Theo’s violin drops from his shoulder; the bow hides guiltily behind his back. “We’ve had enough music for today.”

Theo droops, and both of us gather our uneaten breakfasts and file silently from the kitchen.

“It’s alright,” I say consolingly as we sit on the steps, the stone cold and hard beneath my haunches. The ocean is gray-blue now, the same deep hue as the sky. “We’ll find time for you to play again later. Maybe down on the beach this afternoon?”

He brightens at that. “Will you meet me there after school?”

“Of course I will.” I try to make my voice sound brighter too. It rings a little false, but hopefully Theo’s keen ear is only applicable to musical notes, and not to emotion.

My own schooling ended when I was sixteen. Eight years ago now. If I had showed any musical talent, there might have been correspondence courses with someone who specialized in my favored instrument, or maybe a few years living in the city while I attended Garthisle Conservatory, where Papa once taught. Maybe even a job in an orchestra, like Mama. But I am about as musical as a teaspoon, and in a family like mine, that is where education ends. And in Hwenfirth, there are not many other options. The local girls either follow their parents into the family business, or marry and enter their husband’s trade. Neither option works for me, since my family’s trade is music, and marriage... well, it isn’t in the cards for someone like me.

Theo sighs heavily. “Sometimes I wish...”

The thought remains unfinished, but I understand exactly what he means. “Me too. But it isn’t his fault. He tries his best.”

He bows his head, lowers his eyes. “I know.”

“Come on.” I give his shoulder a little shake. Try to inject some much-needed energy into us both. “You’ll be late for school.”

With an effort, he smiles and gets to his feet. “Will you put these away for me?”

He hands me the battered old violin and its bow. The very same ones that were once Papa’s, back when he was little Barney Wester, child prodigy about to perform for the king. Back when he was Professor Barnabas Wester, the youngest emeritus scholar ever appointed at Garthisle Conservatory. Before the breakdown, before his nerves overwhelmed him and banished us from the city, trapping us here in Hwenfirth, with its clean sea air and rich briny saltwater, famously so good for the sick.

If I loved him any less, I might resent him for it.

“Of course,” I tell Theo, and I touch him gently on the cheek. “I’ll bring them this afternoon. Meet you there.”

2

DARKLING

The basket swings empty in my hand as I climb the hill toward the village. Our cottage lies behind me, the sea rippling beyond, and on the other side of the narrow peninsula is Hwenfirth.

“Go outside for a while, Eppie,” Mama said, prying the scrubbing brush from my hand and replacing it with a few copper coins. “Get some fresh air and pick out some dinner for tomorrow.”

Take a break while you still can, she was saying, and I could see in her face that she is desperately, guiltily looking forward to stepping onto that stagecoach this evening. Mama still has what the rest of us do not: brief reprieves from the monotony that is Hwenfirth, passage back into the city where there are people and work and opportunities. My only chance is the stolen moments like these. A minute to watch the sky while I pump the water, a second to breathe while I’m walking over the hill.

I’ll need to be back to meet Theo before the church bell tolls three and then have both of us back in the house for four when Mama leaves. Well, perhaps I should encourage Theo to stay out on the beach for a while. It’ll give him a chance to play, and perhaps it will make Papa rest a little easier. He’ll be sensitive after Mama leaves, and the last thing I want to do is predetermine tomorrow as a bad day. If I can get him asleep before Theo comes back, we’ll all be happier.

The walk is slipping by faster than I want it to, and I try to center myself. To focus. I breathe in, tasting the ever-present salty tang in the air. The grass on either side of the road rustles, and the fields roll away beyond them. No hedges, no fences, not here. The occasional hump of what might have been a stone wall, once, but has been so piled over with dirt and vegetation that it’s now just another part of the field. Cattle and sheep roam freely, one farmer’s stock distinguished from another by bells and numbered tags instead of location.

I crest the hill and look down at the huddle of houses on the other side of the peninsula, at the lesser group on the far side of the estuary, the harbor thronged as always with little fishing boats. This is Hwenfirth. A little hamlet split down the middle by the River Hwen, flowing sluggish beneath the old stone bridge, slow and sleepy as the village itself.

The journey downhill is faster, of course, and far sooner than I’d like I’m past Theo’s school and onto Hwenfirth’s main—only, if I’m being honest—street.

Pick out some dinner, Mama said. We have salmon for this evening but tomorrow is a blank slate. I remember in Garthisle, when we still had Papa’s salary as well as Mama’s, that sometimes I’d come home from school to find him and Mama waiting with cakes, or pastries filled with cream, or potatoes sliced so thinly that they almost crunched in the mouth. Things they’d bought from the food stalls at the market, just for us to sample. Things that weren’t practical, or economical, or filling. Just... fun. I don’t think Theo can remember any of those occasions. He was still in swaddling clothes when we left Garthisle.

What I really want is to do something like that for him. To present him with something he’s never eaten before, to show him something out of the ordinary. But all I have in my pocket is a few pennies. Enough for another fish, which are plentiful here. Maybe a handful of greens to go with it. Not enough for an apple pie or a honeycake—words so alien to me now that they might as well be another language altogether.

I look at the fishmongers, wares arranged in their window with scales shining. A sigh slips out between my lips, and I glance over the road. The red shopfront stands out against the gray of the stone, the yellow lettering spelling out Craig’s Grocery bright and bold. And inside, a flash of a gray-green dress, topped with a cloud of fluffy red hair, the exact color of a midsummer sunset over the waves. Something twists in my chest, and before I fully know what I’m doing, I’m moving toward the door. Toward her.

Usually, I try not to think of Lucy Craig. I focus on my family, on the task at hand. On anything else. And it works, most of the time. We were only friends for a few weeks, after all. A single halcyon summer, the first year we came to Hwenfirth.

Lucy skipped up to me my very first day in the tiny village school. From the bustling classrooms of Garthisle to this drafty building containing a scant twenty-four children—less girls than boys, of course, especially those closer to my age. They had all grown up together, knew each other inside and out, and the result was that they all huddled at one end of the small schoolyard while I sat miserably at the other. Theo was still too young to attend, and I had no one.

Until one undersized girl smattered with brilliant orange freckles came darting over the no-man’s land, her halo of feathery ginger hair seeming to float behind her. I remember being fascinated by that hair. The way each individual corkscrew curl spiralled round on itself, combining with a thousand others to create a rustling, living cloud tumbling down her back.

I was still staring at her—there had been no one with hair like that in Garthisle—when she stuck a hand out, almost close enough to poke me in the nose with one of her stubby nails.

“Hi,” she said. “I’m Lucy Craig. What’s your name?”

Cautiously, I accepted the proffered hand. “Eppie Wester.”

But instead of shaking my hand as I had expected, Lucy simply clasped hold of it and yanked me to my feet. I stumbled and almost went down again, then froze like a deer cornered by the hounds, rigid as I waited to see what my fate would be.

“Well, come on, then.” Lucy set her hands on her hips. “Let’s go.”

“Go?” I echoed, staring blankly up at her. I was taller, but I was still hunched over in a crouch. Her eyes were pale cornflower-blue like mine, but instead of weak I decided hers looked fierce.

She gave an impatient little sigh. “Don’t they play king-by-your-leave where you come from?”

And just like that, this terrifying girl morphed from an attacker into an ally. I smiled in sheer relief and stood up straighter. “They do.”

And she snatched up my hand again and towed me away. The rest of the summer was like that. Lucy Craig wasn’t slow and dreamy, wasn’t given to maudlin fits of abstraction about her lack of musical talent. Lucy Craig was as self-assured and fiery as her hair. With the will to lead and an imagination that could take us anywhere.

She guided me down one winding country lane after another, down rocky slopes to secret coves, down narrow forest paths where the trees reached out from either side to embrace overhead.

We were brigands that summer. Highwaymen and monsters, princesses and elvish minstrels. Lucy didn’t care that my fingers stumbled over violin chords and that my voice was too weak to hold a tune. Lucy only cared that I could run fast enough to keep up with her, that I could see the worlds she described to me.

“Today we’re going to play King Arthur,” she said sternly.

Papa, sitting sedately in his new invalid’s chair, was our sovereign. He delivered the lines Lucy gave him in a hesitant whisper, amazing her with his lack of a Hwenfirth accent.

“Just like a real king,” she whispered to me. “Though he is a bit too old to be Arthur, really.”

I just nodded, not wanting to interrupt him. Only two months since his collapse, and I was already learning how fine the line between his good days and his bad days could be.

Having received our quest from King Arthur, we clattered down the slope to the beach. The wind tossed our hair as we ran: mine fine and thin, too sandy to even be called brown, and hers like fire as it crackled and moved.

The game lasted the whole afternoon. Lucy’s sky-blue eyes were alight as she shaped the scene and brought it to life for us both. She was Queen Guinevere, trapped in a tower by the wicked Morgana, with only her wits to rely on. I was Sir Lancelot, battling his way bravely through endless forest and perilous mountains to reach her. We alternated between scenes; I was Morgana when I needed to be, hunched and sinister, and Lucy hissed and arched her back as the monstrous Cath Paluc.

It was sunset by the time Guinevere finally trapped Morgana in her own dungeon and emerged trembling onto the mountaintop to find her knight staggering up to meet her, wounded terribly in the battle with Morgana’s beast, his steed slain. The ocean lapped at the shores of our mountain plateau, reflecting the fading orange light in a splintered mosaic.

“Lancelot!” Lucy cried, and sprinted across the beach into my arms.

I caught her, feeling the weight of her, the feather-light touch of her curls against my cheek as she wept into my neck.

“It was terrible,” she sobbed, and I tightened the arm around her shoulders. The sun caught the edges of her hair, limning her in pure gold.

“It’s alright now, Your Majesty,” I promised her. “I’m here, and I’ll take you home to Camelot.”

“To Camelot!” Her voice dripping with scorn, she broke away from me. Instinctively I caught at her skirts and she stopped, hovering at the boundary of my embrace. “You’re so loyal, Sir Lancelot. So loyal to my husband.”

“And to you, my queen.”

She turned her face aside. “My loyal knight. So good, so true. So blind.”

My breath caught in my throat. “Not blind, Your Majesty. Guinevere.”

Her eyes flashed fire as she swung back to face me. “Lancelot, are you—?”

“I feel it too,” I choked out, years of longing flowing out of me with the words. Years of watching from afar. Of wanting yet never able to have.

The wind made her dress billow, the skirt of it tangling with my own as her hair floated like liquid flame in the dying light.

“I love you,” she whispered, a woman broken. Cursed by the same desperate desires as me.

She loved me. She was here and she was perfect and she loved me. Hers was the hand that had pulled me from my isolation into the raw sunlight of her presence. Hers was the voice that filled my hours, both waking and sleeping.

Hers was the only music that mattered.

The impulse rose in me, too powerful to be resisted. What else could I do? She was Guinevere, queen of the world, and I was only her poor faithful Lancelot.

I kissed her. I leaned forward and I kissed Lucy Craig right there on the beach, with my heart hammering in my ears and my hands in her beautiful ruby-bright hair.

It lasted forever. The taste of her lips, the scent of her skin. It lasted forever, but there was only a second before she knocked my hands away and shoved me in the chest. My eyes had slipped shut—unprepared, I staggered back and landed with bruising force among the stones.

I cowered there and stared up at her. Guinevere dropped away like a discarded cloak as Lucy stared down at me, fists balled at her sides, her ribcage heaving. Her hair danced like a candleflame in the wind rolling off the sea.

“What,” she snarled, “was that?”

My heart constricted as the floor fell out from beneath me. Oh no. “Lucy, I—”

“You’re a freak,” she hissed. “We were playing.”

“I was—acting,” I stammered, my voice too high. “Lucy, you were Guinevere, and I was Lancelot—it was part of the game. I-I’m sorry!”

For one endless moment she glared down at me. I had never seen such hatred on her face. Not when she was the heretic witch Jeanne d’Arc and I was Bishop Cauchon, attempting to bring her to justice. Not on the one occasion when I was Robin Hood and she had taken my usual role as the Sheriff of Nottingham. Not ever.

And then she turned away from me. Lucy—my best friend, my only friend—stalked away, pebbles clattering in her wake. Left me exactly where she had found me two months before, huddled on the floor, hoping for rescue.

“Lucy!” I called. “Lucy, it was an accident! It wasn’t—it wasn’t real!”

She kept walking, and my voice rose into a howl.

“Lucy!”

The sun slipped below the horizon and dusk crowded in, freezing the ocean black. Her hair shimmered and dwindled into the distance, the last embers of a dying fire. I had never felt so cold.

Just like that, Lucy was gone. And I only had to wait three hours, stewing in the bottomless pit of my own misery and guilt, before there was a knock at the door.

“Who is it?” Papa asked waspishly. “It’s late. My nerves can’t—”

“Of course not, darling,” Mama soothed. “I’ll only be a minute.”

I hid in Theo’s bed, huddled behind his small sleeping form. Still able to hear every word.

“Father Rafferty?” Mama’s tone shifted to surprise. “What brings you out here so late?”

“I’m sorry for the hour, Mistress Wester.” He sounded uncomfortable, and dread twisted deep in my belly as I realized what he would say next. “Widow Craig’s just been by the vicarage, and she’s told me something I think I need to discuss with you.”

“Who is it, Matilda?” Papa demanded. “Tell them I need my rest.”

“Perhaps we’d better talk outside?” suggested Father Rafferty, and the latch of the front door clicked back into place behind them.

After that day my remaining years at the school were passed in perfect isolation. Lucy Craig never spoke to me again, and there were enough looks and whispers to make it clear that everyone else knew exactly what I had done.

I only wished for death for the first few weeks. After that I limited myself to wishing that the earth would open up and swallow me every time Lucy walked into the classroom.

But that terrible afternoon was a decade ago. Surely the memory has faded from everyone’s minds, if not from my own. Surely Lucy has at least forgotten, if not forgiven. Surely I can go into Craig’s Grocery without the need of Mama or Theo as a buffer.

My mouth still feels dry as a bone as I walk inside. The little bell over the door jingles merrily, as though all is well with the world. Lucy’s back is to me. She’s halfway up a ladder, stowing something away on one of the many shelves that stretch from floor to ceiling on every wall of Craig’s.

“Well met,” she calls. “I’ll be with you in a moment.”

She has twisted round enough to face me, and for a second I can almost fool myself into thinking no time at all has passed. That she’s still the same as she was that summer, freckles scattered over her milky skin like stars across the night sky. Hair like an inferno, barely contained by the scarf she uses to bind it back. I am fourteen years old again: in a second she’ll give me a perfunctory good morning, Eppie and then tell me who we’re going to be today.

But then recognition sparks in her eyes, and the open expression on her face snaps shut like a book. Not forgotten, then. Too late now to wish I hadn’t come; the only choice is to brazen it out.

“Hello,” I say in a tone of false, brittle brightness. “Miss Craig.”

“Miss Wester,” she answers, cold as winter. “What can I get for you?”

An icy finger of dread trails down my spine. Ah. I didn’t get quite that far when I was planning this.

“Some... some bread?” I say weakly.

She eyes me narrowly, then her gaze flicks to the small pyramid of bread on the counter. Different shapes and colors leer back at me, and as her lip begins to curl I feel sweat break out on my forehead. God above, she thinks I only came in to see her!

The cold fear of that thought is followed almost immediately by a rush of anger. It was years ago. We were only even friends for a few weeks! If she’s still angry, the problem lies with her, not with me.

I finally manage a decision. “The seedy kind, please. And some marchpane.”

I can’t get past the almond-gravel texture myself, but Theo has always loved it. Mama sometimes manages to sneak a crumb or two away from the feasts and parties she performs at, and Theo savors them like manna from heaven.

“Of course.”

With one hand she snags a loaf from the pyramid; with the other she produces a coarse linen cloth. Her movements are quick and deft, and in less than a heartbeat the bread is wrapped and shoved across the counter toward me. A glass jar clinks, and two pink sticks of rosewater marchpane slap down on top of it. My brief flash of courage is ebbing, and I try not to wince at the sound. I’ve been in here enough times with Mama to know that Lucy usually laughs with her customers, turning the full force of that electrifying smile on everyone in her orbit. Never at me, though.

“Tuppence and half,” she says, hand out. Adds, after a pause just long enough to be disrespectful, “Miss Wester.”

With a sigh, I drop the coins into her hand. “Thank you.”

She doesn’t thank me for my custom. Doesn’t tell me to come again. Just stands in stony silence as I gather my purchases and flee. The bell tinkles just as cheerily on my way out as it did on my way in.

I stand for a second or two outside the door, almost stunned by the bustle of the street after the frozen civility of the shop. Lucy always was a master of her craft—she should be an actress, not a shopkeeper. She can make her audience feel anything she wants. And right now I feel small and wrong and alone, exactly as she wanted me to. A seagull floating by itself in the middle of an empty ocean.

My eyes are suddenly prickling. Are people looking at me? Did they see?

A quick glance around me reveals only people intent on their own business, trading and selling their wares, hurrying down the street, arms laden with parcels like the ones in my arms. No one is watching me, but I can’t shake the feeling that they know. They know what I did, all those years ago. They know who I am, why I’m different, and they... they will never, ever forgive me.

Hwenfirth is beautiful, but sometimes I long for the anonymous crowds of Garthisle so much that it’s like a physical pain. It was difficult to be mute there among the music that formed my parents’ world—but maybe it would have been better than this.

I glance back over my shoulder, see Lucy watching me through the window with narrow eyes, and my feet start moving without me giving the command to do so. I need to get out of here.

More than that, I need to go home. I need the silence of the pebbledash beach and the cold of the stones beneath my hands. I need to sit and let the waves wash over my bare feet until I can’t feel them anymore, while the clouds roll uncaring across the vast open sky above.

I clutch the bread with both hands and begin to run.

Take your first look at the covers for Asperfell (US), The Forest Kingdom (US), and The Shining City (US), the complete Asperfell trilogy by Jamie Thomas coming June 2026!

A noblewoman with hidden magic. An exiled prince with dark secrets. Only together can they escape their magical prison and save their realm, in this romantic fantasy novel from Jamie Thomas.

Asperfell, legendary prison of mages, is home to violent criminals and demented spirits. No one has ever left.

Briony, as far as she knows, is neither mage nor spirit. Growing up on a secluded countryside estate, she has spent her life removed from the politics of the capital. But after her father is killed for sedition, the vicious King Keric sentences her to death. Only by slipping through the gate to Asperfell can she save herself. To stay alive, she must find the former crown prince, banished there to die years before. He holds the key to finding their way back home.

What she finds beyond the gate is a world of dark magic and darker secrets. Of cryptic whispers and dangerous mages. And, there in the depths, a bleak and broken man with no interest in being rescued....

Tags: Orbit News, Orbit Cover Launch

Take your first look at the cover for The Last Star in the Void (US | UK), the conclusion to The Echo Archives trilogy by Melissa Caruso, coming November 2026!

The brilliant conclusion to Melissa Caruso’s Echo Archives trilogy, a whip-smart adventure fantasy where a detective has to solve the greatest mystery of all—her own murder.

Kembral Thorne is back on the job. Everything is going great—she hasn’t been in mortal peril for months, her daughter is learning to crawl, and she’s thinking about getting serious with her girlfriend, cat burglar Rika Nonesuch. But then a simple mission goes wrong, and a mysterious Echo hires her for her most dangerous case yet. 

This time, the murder Kembral must solve is her own. 

Her first warning: Watch out above you. It won’t be her last. The cryptic messages give Kem an edge against her would-be murderer—but there’s more at stake than her own survival.

Rips in the very fabric of reality are spreading through the Echoes, and Kem’s blood is the only thing that can close them. A traitor among her allies is willing to kill to stop her. To save all the worlds, Kem must figure out who she can trust—and Rika must decide how much of her humanity she’ll sacrifice for the power to protect the woman she loves.

Also by Melissa Caruso

Tags: Orbit News, Orbit Cover Launch

New York, NY (March 19, 2026)—Da Capo, an imprint of Grand Central Publishing (GCP) and the Hachette Book Group announce the publication of IN MY DARKEST HOUR: A Memoir by Dave Mustaine with Joe Layden on September 8, 2026. “In My Darkest Hour is Dave Mustaine at his most revealing, vulnerable, and true,” stated Ben Schafer, Executive Editor, Da Capo. “With lacerating honesty and soulful reflection, he speaks to the universal human experience of facing serious illness and how it changes a person, their family and friends, and one’s relationship with creativity. Da Capo is proud to publish Dave Mustaine’s most unblinking memoir to date, one that isn’t only for Megadeth fans.” 

“One of most harrowing experiences of my adult life has been my seven-year journey through cancer treatment and onward into remission,” Dave Mustaine says about the experiences detailed in the forthcoming book. “This story is considerably more than just go to the doctor, get diagnosed, get treatment and hopefully I live happily ever after. This was a journey of me saving myself, staying alive, keeping my family together, and continuing to make music through it all.” 

Dave Mustaine is no stranger to pain and suffering. He battled demons all his life—including an alcoholic father, addiction, and black magic—and turned fifty-eight believing he’d survived the worst. But in 2019, Mustaine was forced to face the loss of his instantly recognizable voice and the disintegration of his musical talent. Diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma at the back of his tongue, his entire career—and possibly his life—was about to end.
 
For Mustaine, it was one more opportunity to fight like hell.

IN MY DARKEST HOUR takes readers from the treatment room to the studio as Mustaine chronicles how his diagnosis inspired him to take up the pen and guitar pick, going from radiation and chemotherapy appointments straight into hours-long recording sessions, resulting in Megadeth’s sixteenth studio album, The Sick, The Dying…and the Dead! Along the way, Mustaine details how confronting his own mortality brought him closer to his family, taught him how to ask for help, strengthened his faith, and challenged the vulnerability of his art.
 
Filled with perseverance, hope, and the determination to never let the bastards grind you down, IN MY DARKEST HOUR is a masterful portrait of a Dave Mustaine that the world has yet to see, and serves as a moving reminder that even our most invincible heroes are human.

Now, six years removed from that initial diagnosis, Mustaine is seeing the biggest success of his 40-plus-year career with Megadeth’s final studio album and tour. Committed to go out on top, Megadeth’s new album (released in January 2026) debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 in the U.S., marking the band’s highest debut week ever on the chart. Around the world, the album garnered critical acclaim and hit #1 in 11 countries and landed Top 5 positions on 11 additional charts. 

About Dave Mustaine: Dave Mustaine and his band Megadeth are always and forever the point of no return for metal. It would be nearly impossible to conceive where heavy music and culture would’ve gone without the band founded, fronted, and fueled by vocalist, guitarist, songwriter, and producer Dave Mustaine. As a founding member of Metallica, and then founder of Megadeth, the blast radius of Mustaine’s impact has only been magnified since 1983. Thus far, they have sold 50 million records worldwide, received a GRAMMY® Award (with 12 additional nominations), generated billions of streams, notched nine Top 10 entries on the Billboard 200, and enthralled millions of diehard fans in arenas and stadiums across the globe. Their catalog spans indisputable classics such as the platinum Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying? (cited at #8 on Rolling Stone’s “100 Greatest Metal Albums of All Time”), the platinum Rust In Peace, and double-platinum Countdown To Extinction, which captured #2 on the Billboard 200. Meanwhile, Dystopia notched a Top 3 debut and earned a GRAMMY® Award in the category of “Best Metal Performance” with its title track. They only upped the ferocity with The Sick, The Dying… And The Dead! in 2022. It saw them return to #3, receive a “Best Metal Performance” GRAMMY® Award nomination for “We’ll Be Back,” and incite rave reviews. In 2026 Mustaine and the band reached the apex of their success: a #1 debut with their self-titled final album on the Billboard 200. Along with #1s on seven additional Billboard charts, Mustaine and Megadeth logged #1s in eleven countries. The band is currently on their multi-year farewell tour.

About Da Capo: 

Da Capo is an imprint dedicated to publishing definitive biographies, memoirs, and narrative non-fiction about music and musicians. Through music, we encounter the world and the counterculture traditions that have animated creative movements in the 20^th and 21^st centuries. From classic rock and punk to metal, jazz, and hip hop, Da Capo’s books are made with the active listener in mind, whose music is a cornerstone of their identity. 

About Grand Central Publishing:

Grand Central Publishing reaches a diverse audience through books that cater to every kind of reader. Its imprints are Balance, Cardinal, Da Capo, Forever, Grand Central, and Legacy Lit.   Grand Central Publishing is one of three divisions of the Grand Central Publishing Group, which also includes Hachette Nashville and Union Square & Co.  

About Hachette Book Group:

Hachette Book Group (HBG) is a leading US general-interest book publisher made up of dozens of esteemed imprints within the publishing groups Basic Books Group; Grand Central Publishing Group; Hachette Audio; Little, Brown and Company; Little, Brown Books for Young Readers; Orbit; and Workman Running Press Group. We also provide custom distribution, fulfillment, and sales services to other publishing companies.  

Our books and authors have received the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, Caldecott Medal, Newbery Medal, Booker Prize, Nobel Peace Prize and other major honors.  

We are committed to diversity in our company and our publishing programs, and to fostering a culture of inclusion for all our employees and authors. We are proud to be part of Hachette Livre, the world’s third-largest trade and educational publisher.  

Visit hachettebookgroup.com to learn more about HBG imprints. For updated news follow HBG on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Threads, TikTok, X.com, Pinterest, and YouTube. 

Take your first look at the cover for Harbour of Hungry Ghosts (US | UK), the new historical fantasy adventure by Eliza Chan, coming July 2026!

A family of demon hunters find their hands full when unfamiliar monsters start stalking the streets of Opium War-era Hong Kong, in this historical fantasy adventure from the No. 1 Sunday Times bestselling author Eliza Chan.

The Au family serve the people of Hong Kong as demon hunters and exorcists: blessing shrines, honoring the dead and dealing with dangerous yiaoguai incursions. The expectations on eldest daughter Kiamling are high, which is not something her strict grandmother and mentor will let her forget.

However, when British colonists interrupt a hungry ghost ritual, and her grandmother disappears, Kiamling must step up and lead the search.

Her bumbling language pupil Archie and her youngest sister Jingling will offer aid, alongside Hoi Gor, Kiamling’s recently returned childhood crush from Canton.

But when British fables mingle with local Chinese monsters, how can Kiamling prove herself, when the old rules no longer seem to apply?

Also by Eliza Chan

Tags: Orbit News, Orbit Cover Launch

To celebrate the trade paperback release of The Knight and the Moth, the queen of gothic romantasy Rachel Gillig will be visiting romance indie bookstores across the West Coast.

Tour Dates & Events

TUESDAY, MAY 19 at 6:00 PM
Olympus Junior High School
Presented by Lovebound Library | Salt Lake City, UT
In conversation with Sasha Peyton Smith
🎟️ Reserve Tickets

WEDNESDAY, MAY 20 at 7:00 PM
Crill Performance Hall at Point Loma Nazarene University 
Presented by Meet Cute Bookshop | San Diego, CA
In conversation with Kiersten White
🎟️ Reserve Tickets

THURSDAY, MAY 21 at 6:00 PM
Temecula Creek Inn
Presented by In Bloom Bookery | Temecula, CA
In conversation with TBD
🎟️ Reserve Tickets

FRIDAY, MAY 22 at 7:00 PM
The Ripped Bodice | Culver City, CA
In conversation with Victoria Aveyard
🎟️ Reserve Tickets

Take your first look at the cover for The Eye of Leviathan (US | UK), the new sweeping adventure fantasy by M. A. Carrick, coming July 2026!

From the author of The Mask of Mirrors comes a sweeping adventure set in a world where fae secretly walk amongst those who seek to persecute them.

In an alternate Spanish Golden Age, the Council of the Sea Beyond has risen to unrivaled power, exploiting the Otherworld’s most precious resources for their own gain. Estevan seeks to uncover their secrets, but he risks the exposure of his own: that he is a faerie, masquerading as a mortal.

The Hungry Girl is the human whose place he took. Lost among the fae and desperate to find some purpose for her existence, she leaps at the chance to help a group of Spanish explorers in the Sea Beyond… only to be horrified at the atrocities they commit.

A faerie pact has separated them—but only together can they bring down Spain’s worlds-spanning empire and save the homes they have both come to love.

Also by M. A. Carrick

Tags: Orbit News, Orbit Cover Launch

One of the first books that truly resonated with me as a young reader was Hatchet. This survival story stuck with me for many reasons, but the sheer determination Brian contained affected me the most. These types of books can be so important for young readers because they teach concepts of self-reliance and perseverance in a page-turning coming-of-age format. If you’re looking for a fast-paced, high-stakes read with powerful meaning for your reader, look no further.

Dark alleys, moral gray zones, and characters who rarely get what they deserve—noir has always thrived on the tension between truth and illusion. Whether set in rain-slicked city streets or quiet towns hiding dangerous secrets, the best noir novels pull readers into worlds where every choice has a cost and every revelation comes a little too late.

Here are six noir novels we’re reading right now that deserve a spot on your nightstand.

The Devil Takes You Home

by Gabino Iglesias

Buried in debt due to his young daughter’s illness, his marriage at the brink, Mario reluctantly takes a job as a hitman, surprising himself with his proclivity for violence. After tragedy destroys the life he knew, Mario agrees to one final job: hijack a cartel’s cash shipment before it reaches Mexico. Along with an old friend and a cartel-insider named Juanca, Mario sets off on the near-suicidal mission, which will leave him with either a cool $200,000 or a bullet in the skull. But the path to reward or ruin is never as straight as it seems. As the three complicated men travel through the endless landscape of Texas, across the border and back, their hidden motivations are laid bare alongside nightmarish encounters that defy explanation. One thing is certain: even if Mario makes it out alive, he won’t return the same.

Price

$11.99

Price

$15.99 CAD

Format

ebook

1. Audiobook Download (Unabridged)
2. Trade Paperback

This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around August 2, 2022. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.

Buy from Other Retailers:

• Amazon
• Apple Books
• Barnes & Noble
• Google Play
• Ebooks.com
• Kobo

A Violent Masterpiece

by Jordan Harper

In present-day Los Angeles, a series of shocking crimes—from a missing woman to the brutal killings of the LA Ripper—hint at a conspiracy involving some of the city’s most powerful men.
As chaos spreads, three unlikely figures—a livestreaming nightcrawler, a streetwise defense lawyer, and a concierge for the ultra-rich—begin investigating from different angles. Their searches collide, exposing a dark network of wealth, power, and violence at the heart of the city.

Price

$29.00

Price

$39.00 CAD

Format

Hardcover

1. ebook
2. Audiobook Download (Unabridged)
3. Trade Paperback (Large Print)

This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around April 28, 2026. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.

Preorder from Retailers:

• Amazon
• Barnes & Noble
• Books-A-Million
• Bookshop
• Target
• Walmart

From the Dust

by David Swinson

Graham Sanderson thought he’d left it all behind. His years as a Washington, DC, homicide detective, his tragically dead wife, pain, violence. Taking over his father’s house in the remote Finger Lakes region of rural New York, and looking after his shut-in brother, Tommy, seemed like a respite. That is, until the first body is found. 

The chief of the town’s small police jurisdiction, who is also a family friend, asks for Graham’s assistance. Graham’s instincts immediately kick in and he soon discovers there’s more to the area—the people, its brutally quiet, sophisticated hierarchies—than he or his family ever knew. 

David Swinson’s latest novel is a soulful, rural noir story about belief: the extremities to which it pushes a community, the fear it instills in the hearts of adherents and doubters alike, and need for it nevertheless. As Graham delves deeper into the strange and then stranger circumstances of the murders, his own beliefs become challenged. What do you finally stand for when you’ve got nothing left to lose?

Price

$30.00

Price

$40.00 CAD

Format

Hardcover

1. ebook
2. Audiobook Download (Unabridged)
3. Trade Paperback (Large Print)

This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around March 31, 2026. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.

Buy from Other Retailers:

• Amazon
• Barnes & Noble
• Books-A-Million
• Bookshop
• Target
• Walmart

Inspired by medieval India’s most epic love stories, this debut Romantasy blends rich storytelling, lush worldbuilding, and spice of every variety. Perfect for fans of Nisha J. Tuli and Tasha Suri. 

"A seductive and magical romantasy from a wonderful new voice - a truly vibrant epic and erotic read.” ” —Tasha Suri, bestselling author of The Isle in the Silver Sea

Read the first three chapters of A Kiss of Crimson Ash, on sale May 26th, below!

CHAPTER 1

TAARA

A swirling mist. The chime of anklets in the long grass. A voice in the wind.

Stay with me, my queen, my love.

Stay…

The new queen of Abhaya sat up in her bed as the remnants of the dream faded from her mind, although the sadness that always came with it lingered in her body like a stone wedged between her ribs. It was a mystery to her—a dream of a place she had not been, a voice she did not know, a longing she could not name. The same dream had come to her many times over the years since she was a girl, but in the week since she had been crowned, it had come every night, its colors more vivid, its feelings ever more real. Who are you? she silently asked of the voice in her head, but heard only the gentle coo of the pigeons that nested in the palace alcoves in reply.

Then there was a clucking of a different sort as the silk curtains drawn loosely around her bed were pulled open, and Taara looked up into a stern face as familiar to her as her own reflection. “Ut! Get up! So much to do before our guests arrive, and the queen thinks she can sleep all day, is it?” The older woman continued to fuss and grumble as she tied the bed curtains together, shooed away a bird that had wandered inside, and sipped from a cup of tea, just as she had every morning for twenty years—the warm, sweet tea the only thing Taara would drink after being weaned from her mother’s breast. When she was satisfied the tea posed no threat, she held the cup out, but instead of taking it, Taara fell back into her pillows, gazing at the canopy above her.

“Can’t you make some excuse?” she asked, already knowing the answer. “Tell them I’m unwell or that I’m lame or that I’m cursed. Dooseri-Ma, please, tell them anything. I’m not ready.”

Bala’s lined face softened at the words. She had been Dooseri-Ma—second mother—to the princess Taaratajini for two decades, and to her mother, Queen Suvarnatara, beloved ruler of Abhaya, the southernmost gem in the Samjayan Empire, for the two decades before that. Taara had been the subject of comparisons to her mother all her life, and Bala often spoke with pride and exasperation in equal measure about the ways the two were alike—both strong-willed, quick-tempered, and independent of spirit. Of course, Taara also knew her Dooseri-Ma’s fears for her, overheard in quiet exchanges never meant for her ears. Suvarnatara had captured the heart of a prince who respected the matrilineal lines of power from which Abhaya drew its strength, a man who had loved her for who she was. What if… Taara had heard it whispered—between her parents or between Bala and the women of her mother’s chamber, in hushed voices, concern etched on their faces when the question of Taara’s marriage prospects arose—what if here, the princess’s path was destined to diverge from her mother’s?

With her right hand, Bala waved a quick circle around Taara’s head, as if tracing a crown that was not there, then brought her palm to the folds of the cotton sari draped across her chest: a gesture that both summoned the blessing of Goddess Yusara and warded off the evils Taara so blithely suggested. “It’s in Her hands,” Bala said, holding out the cup again. “And Abhaya is in yours.”

Taara reluctantly sat up and accepted the tea that was offered. Bala stroked her hair as she drank, her fingers combing through to the ends that now curled just below the girl’s ears. A week before, Taara’s hair had fallen past her waist in thick, shining curls that Bala had spent countless hours washing, combing, and trying to tame. Then, as tradition demanded, on the night before her crowning, the princess had cut off her hair and made an offering of it in the Temple of Yusara, burning it in the sacred fire so it could not be used to cast spells against her. A sacrifice of beauty for power. When she had appeared before her people, it had been without veils or flowers or other adornments. There was only the princess Taaratajini, named for a falling star, holding her shorn head high and wearing the simple gold crown that had made her into a queen.

But the crown does not make the queen. Bala had told her so often enough. No one had yet told her what would, but something in Taara already knew. It was days like today that would bring her closer to who she must become. It was her wedding day. The next step in her journey as Abhaya’s queen. The right step. The only step there was to take.

Bala took the empty cup from Taara’s hands and said, “When you are dressed, your mother wishes to see you.” Taara looked at her with raised eyebrows. Locked away in one of the Red Palace’s many spiraling towers, guarded from prying eyes and wagging tongues, with only a view of the sea and her crumbling mind for company, Queen Suvarnatara had not spoken a coherent word in more than a month. Bala shrugged, as if to say, If you want to know, ask her yourself, before she turned and left Taara alone with her goddess and her thoughts.

I could lock myself in this room and never come out, Taara thought as she stood and stretched, standing before the ornate shrine to the goddess that spanned one wall of the chamber. The goddess was carved in sandstone four times over, depicted in each of her four incarnations as the Mother, the Lover, the Warrior, and the Sage. Each statue had a place of honor, elevated on its own gold platform, garlanded with fresh flowers, and surrounded by colorful diyas that burned with fragrant oil. I could get on a horse and ride far away from here. I could flee, I could hide, I could die. If the goddess was sympathetic to Taara’s thoughts, she made no sign. And as the rumble of the growing crowd outside the palace gates reminded her, Taara knew there was only one thing she could do.

She opened her door and made her way through the interconnected rooms of the women’s quarters, following the sound of laughter and squabbling and song, until she came upon her serving girls, already up and waiting for their queen. Excitement for the wedding feast and festivities ahead made their spirits high, and Taara had to force herself to smile, to let herself be embraced and teased and fussed over as any bride might be. After all, what greater hope could a woman have than a fine husband? What greater joy for a queen than to find her king?

Taara had agreed to the marriage to the prince of neighboring Nandapore, as all her mother’s advisors had assured her it was what was best for Abhaya, and Taara’s very existence was molded around service to the city that she would one day rule—one of the seven kingdoms that made up the Samjayan Empire. She had always thought of her inevitable marriage to some prince within the empire as a vague future necessity, a natural progression in her path toward becoming queen. But now that it was upon her, Taara felt instead, for the first time, like swerving from the path altogether and running in the opposite direction.

The girls of her chamber were girls she knew well, or as well as a woman could know those who served at her command. She knew their gentle hands, their small happinesses and heartbreaks tied to the world beyond the Red Palace walls. That was not a world to which Taara belonged. Her place was here, where she was safe, where she was loved. And today, her girls truly showered her with doting affection steeped in anticipation for the arrival of the handsome prince of a husband she had yet to meet. They fed her rice cooked in coconut milk, handfuls of milky sweets, and ripe morsels of mango and apricot. They mixed in a clay pot a paste of turmeric and lemon juice and applied it generously to Taara’s arms, neck, and face. Although like her mother in stature—tall and lean—she had inherited her father’s complexion. Had she been a princess of the Tiger Islands, she might have been considered a beauty for the rich dark brown of her skin, but in the empire proper, a face resembling the full moon was considered the height of beauty. And so, Taara submitted to the lightening mixture they insisted on painting her with every other day, even though it was plain to see it had little effect.

Afterward, they scrubbed her clean, and then she sat squirming under their fast-moving bits of thread that stripped the hair from her body with the precision of tiny blades. They scented her skin with jasmine oil, then began arguing among themselves about how she should be dressed, which of her many jewels, passed down through generations of queens, she should wear. Delicate strings of diamonds mined from the Minadori Mountains, emeralds the size of a robin’s egg, pearls that fell in enough layers to cover a body like opalescent cloth, heaps of gleaming gold studded with precious gems—the choices were stunning, and for Taara, they were a stark reminder of the legacy of matrilineal power in which she now took her place. Her marriage had been arranged in such haste, there hadn’t been time to have new bridal attire made, and with her mother unwell it had seemed a frivolous expense. Instead, Taara watched as what seemed like every piece of clothing and jewelry every queen of Abhaya had ever owned was paraded in front of her, and for a brief time, she let herself be buoyed by the beauty of it all, the history of Abhaya’s great queens spread out before her, waiting for her to create herself in their image.

When at last the girls were satisfied and set her before the looking glass, Taara hardly recognized the woman she saw. There was barely any woman to see underneath all the finery. The golden crown of Abhaya was all but lost beneath the richly embroidered crimson veil that covered her head, then swept across her tightly fitted blouse and fastened to her heavy multilayered skirt, shimmering with gold thread and intricate patterns of beads and mirrors. Taara’s thin lips were painted with vermilion to make them darker and fuller; her eyes lined with kohl, making them sharper and wider in her narrow face. She was bedecked with too many jewels to count: From her forehead, to her ears, nose, neck, and wrists, she glittered and gleamed from every angle, a vision of regal elegance come to life.

“You’re so lovely! Brighter than the moon! Just perfect!” the girls chorused. They heard the drums approaching and the roar of the crowd rising, and they flocked to the screened alcoves to witness the spectacle of a king’s arrival.

Bala arrived with a pair of slippers in gold silk, woven through with tiny gems that sparkled in the sunlight. She knelt at Taara’s feet and gently fitted each shoe to a smooth, perfumed foot. She looked up at Taara and offered a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Well, don’t keep them waiting,” she said. “Go, child. You’re ready.”

I’m not ready, Taara thought, a girl of twenty whose stomach churned with doubt and dread. But it was Queen Taaratajini who spoke, her voice even, her face serene, as she said, “Open the gates. And tell my betrothed he is most welcome in Abhaya.”

The girls dispersed and Bala rose, offering Taara her hands. Taara took them and allowed herself to be pulled to her feet, the strange weight of her finery setting her off-balance. “To the tower first,” Bala reminded her.

“She won’t speak to me,” Taara said, a note of bitterness creeping into her tone.

“It’s every bride’s right to seek blessings from her mother on her wedding day,” Bala replied. “So, she will. She must.” Bala paused, then asked, “Do you wish me to come with you?”

Taara shook her head. “No, Dooseri-Ma,” she said. “Go, see to our guests.” With a hand touched lightly to Taara’s cheek, Bala took her leave, and Taara reluctantly made her way up the winding stairs to the room at the top of the east tower where her mother was slowly going mad.

All Taara’s life, she had lived in awe of her mother, the great Queen Suvarnatara, fearless and beloved by all. The strongest woman Taara knew. But in the weeks leading up to Taara’s twentieth birthday, something had changed. Her mother’s wits—always sharp—seemed to dull overnight. She began to forget things she had known all her life, to talk to shadows on the wall, to wander the palace halls in the middle of the night cackling or wailing or staring into empty spaces, seeing things that were not there. The People’s Queen, who held court daily, suddenly disappeared from public life. The people couldn’t know, couldn’t be allowed to think less of their queen, to doubt her favor with the goddess. So, Taara, Bala, Zamu-ji—they all lied. The official story, as Taara’s uncle offered it, was that while walking in the palace lemon grove, Queen Suvarnatara had been bitten by a snake and its poison had left her paralyzed. The best physicians from across the Samjayan Empire were tending to her, and it was expected that by the grace of the goddess, the queen would make a full recovery—although there was no telling how much time the goddess might require to see her healing done.

The room Taara entered was small, with a single barred window, a bed, and a cloying scent of henna paste heavy in the air. As usual, the space was scattered with clothes, books, half-eaten food, half-painted pictures. The walls were covered in strange scribbles, like words in a language that didn’t exist. From one corner of the room, a sandstone statue of the goddess in her incarnation as the Sage overlooked the scene with unseeing eyes. And wedged behind the shrine, in a pool of silk and shadows, Queen Suvarnatara rocked back and forth, humming to herself, her eyes as vacant as the stone goddess’s.

“Mother?” Taara crouched, careful of her finery, peering around the goddess’s outstretched orb. “My betrothed has arrived. The prince of Nandapore. Do you remember?” If the queen heard her daughter’s words, she made no sign. Taara tried again. “Mother, I am to be married to him today. It’s my wedding day. Zamu-ji said it’s what you would have wanted for me, what’s best for Abhaya. Is that true?” Against her will, Taara heard the pitch of her voice rising, felt the tightening of her throat as she held back tears. The emperor had indeed sent his best physicians to attend the queen, but so far, none could offer any remedy for what ailed her, and they had left Taara with little hope that she would ever see her mother returned to her true self again. Now Zamu-ji kept the queen, his sister, under lock and key—for her own protection, he insisted—but with every passing day, Taara felt her mother more a prisoner than a patient. Taara visited her mother almost every afternoon, but no matter how much she pleaded, threatened, cajoled, and cried at her mother’s feet, nothing cut through the fog in Queen Suvarnatara’s eyes.

“The wind sweeps all the pretty birds into the hunter’s snare, but only one will sing for you.” It was a tuneless refrain, mumbled words in place of the queen’s humming. Her mother spoke now only in such meaningless riddles and rhymes, when she spoke at all, and despite knowing the unlikelihood that today would be any different, Taara had secretly, desperately believed that it would; that this day—her wedding day—would be the one day her mother might come back to her. But it was not to be.

Taara reached out a bejeweled hand and stroked her mother’s tangled hair. “Be well,” she whispered. “By Her grace, be well.” She stood, fighting the weight of her skirt, and turned to leave. She could hear her mother’s quiet, senseless song behind her, muffled as the heavy door closed between them. “Only one, only one, only one will sing for you. Listen not with your ears but with your heart, and the song will set you free.”

Instead of going to meet her betrothed, Taara felt herself drawn back to her bedchamber, back to the shrine to the goddess. One red sandstone figure stood taller than the rest, her right hand raised in blessing. Taara touched her hand to the goddess’s and closed her eyes. It seemed that this Mother was the only one from whom she would receive blessings today. Taara touched her fingertips to her forehead, then her heart, before turning her back on the shrine and leaving to face the day ahead.

And so it was that only the pigeons fluttering in and out of the alcove were there to see the lotus etched into the goddess’s palm begin to glow. Only they were there to watch her stone eyes open.

CHAPTER 2

BHEDIYA

From her third-floor balcony on the west-facing side of Chandanee Mukan, through the uneven buildings lining the narrow street, Bhediya could see just a sliver of the sea. She fixed her eyes on the water and watched as the blazing red sun sank below its surface, leaving the sky over Nandapore streaked with shades of orange and pink. In her palm, a ball of fire the size of a small plum danced and flickered in the evening breeze. Garj would be feasting in his new home with his new people. His new wife, a pretty princess of Abhaya, would be feeding him bites of fresh fish, sweet plantain, all the choicest dishes her cooks could prepare. And then he would take her to bed…

Stop. Don’t think about it. Bhediya closed her eyes against the pictures she conjured, but there were his hands encircling his wife’s waist, there were his lips pressed to his wife’s neck, his breath warm on her cheek, his eyes locking with hers as he filled her up. Flames began to peel off from the ball in Bhediya’s hand to travel down her fingers and set each fingertip ablaze, even as the ball itself began to shift and grow, lapping at her wrist and showering sparks on the balcony floor.

“Be careful with that.” The deep voice behind her startled Bhediya out of her reverie and she quickly refocused her energy, taming the flames back into an obedient ball. Smiling brightly, she turned and flung it at the Norvardarian ambassador’s head. As expected, he easily deflected the fireball with a wave of his hand, turning it to a wisp of smoke in the air between them. Bhediya had some skill as a spellcaster, but the elvenkind had powerful elemental magic of their own, and she knew she was no match for what Akio could do if he tried. “Do you launch such assaults on all your clients, or am I just lucky?” Akio approached her as he spoke, a half smile playing on his lips.

“I thought elves didn’t believe in luck,” Bhediya said. Akio was only a little taller than her, but he was all taut muscle. When he reached out to stroke her cheek, she could feel the power he possessed, controlled but surging right below the surface. Bhediya pressed her painted lips to the back of his hand, leaving their red imprint on his black skin. She tilted her chin and gazed up at him with innocent eyes. It was an old but effective trick, and after nearly two decades at Chandanee Mukan, Bhediya knew them all.

Akio laughed softly and shook his head. “Come inside,” he said, taking her hand. “I have something for you.”

Bhediya let him lead her back into her room, the biggest and best in the House of Moonlight. There was ample space for the soft woven rug covering the floor, the round table inlaid with ivory and two chairs, the decorative shrine to Goddess Yusara reclining in her incarnation as the Lover, the full-length oval mirror framed in gold against the wall, and of course, the huge bed with its four wooden posts and silk canopy in the middle of the room. Near the door, a screen painted with peacocks partitioned off a bathtub and water basin, several pieces of cloth neatly folded and stacked, and a row of baskets—one filled with soaproot, one filled with vials of oil and pouches of herbs, and one filled with phalluses of different shapes and sizes made of bronze, silver, and sandalwood. One didn’t become Nandapore’s most in-demand courtesan without collecting a few such useful items along the way.

Akio drew her before the mirror and produced a necklace from the pocket of his trousers. It was the head of a wolf in profile, carved in obsidian with one ruby eye, hanging from a silver chain. Bhediya met Akio’s reflected gaze as he fastened the clasp around her neck. “It’s beautiful,” she said. “I’ve never seen anything like it. A wolf… because Bhediya means wolf?”

“It’s not just a name. It’s who you are. It’s…” Akio stopped, swallowing whatever words he had thought to say. “It’s a gift. Who knows, it may be useful to you someday. Keep it close.”

“Useful how?” she asked, but he was already reaching around to untie the silk robe she wore, letting it fall to the floor. Bhediya let her mind go blank as he turned her around to kiss her mouth. This part had always come easy for her.

Her family had been poor; the elemental magic in her mother’s blood had been diluted by drink and her father’s violence, and so had never been of much use to help their family survive. Even at fifteen years old, Bhediya had been a rare beauty, so when Chandanee-Ma had shown up on their doorstep offering to buy her, it had seemed like a gift from the goddess herself. To live in the palatial House of Moonlight with its purple walls and silver doors, to dance for admiring eyes, to share every kind of pleasure imaginable with the men and women who paid handsomely for her company—it had all been like a dream come true, a destiny she had gladly embraced. Chandanee-Ma had been a formidable woman back in those days, and she still was, although she had softened a bit with age. She took good care of the girls, didn’t cheat the clients, and over the years had built up the reputation of her house, so that today Chandanee Mukan was easily the finest establishment of its kind in all of Nandapore. The fee simply to enter its doors was exorbitant, and Bhediya was accustomed to entertaining merchants with more money than they could count, nobles from every far-flung corner of the Samjayan Empire and beyond, even a few kings from time to time.

Kings like Garjan. The thought came unbidden, and with it, the searing remembrance of the way he had kissed her last night—as if he would devour her whole. Bhediya abruptly tore her mouth from Akio’s, sudden tears stinging her eyes.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she said, swiping her hand across her face and smiling her most beguiling smile as she began to undress him. “Shall we lie down?”

Shall we lie down, Your Highness? Bhediya remembered so clearly that first time with Garj, some ten years ago now. It had been in this very room—although it certainly hadn’t belonged to her then, but a visit from a prince of Nandapore called for the best the house had to offer. Out of all the girls there, he had chosen her. She had served him wine, recited for him the poetry of the sages, and eventually taken her clothes off for him. All his swagger had instantly disappeared, replaced by genuine awe of her naked body, and then the nervous excitement and awkward fumbling of a teenage boy touching a woman for the first time. It had been over quickly, as first times often are, but even then, she had felt it—the spark igniting between them.

Bhediya struggled to clear her mind of memories, to be present with Akio as he pushed inside her, but every touch that wasn’t Garjan’s felt wrong, now that his touch was beyond her reach. He had never cared about her profession, just as she hadn’t cared when he took other girls to his bed. A hunter of hearts, he had been called in his youth, a play on his namesake, Lord Garjanathan, god of the hunt. It didn’t matter. They always came back to each other. Garj unlocked something within her, something that amplified the elemental energy she was still learning to control. She had spent so long ignoring it, holding it in, holding it down. Her beauty had made her enough of a target when she had first arrived at Chandanee Mukan, she hardly needed to add spellcaster to the reasons for other girls to hate her. Even then, and more so now, elemental magic was a mistrusted thing in Nandapore, and so were those women who still possessed it. But with Garjan, she had felt it right from the beginning—the way the fire in her blood ran hotter and burned brighter when he watched her dance, when he made her laugh, and especially when they came together in love. Sometimes it was more than her body could contain, and she could see the reflection of her fire in his eyes as it blazed through them both, a living white heat that consumed them in the moment and left the sweetest pleasure in its wake.

I’ll come back for you, he had said, the night before he left to meet his bride.

You idiot, she had wanted to scream, you stupid, naive prince. How would it look for the new king of Abhaya to return to Nandapore just to fuck his whore? His wife would never allow it. More importantly, his brother would never allow it. Bhediya had no doubt that King Pavanathan would see the House of Moonlight burned to the ground before letting Garjan jeopardize the alliance that had at long last united the Samjayan Empire.

Bhediya turned her face into the pillow as her tears finally spilled over, neither able to explain them, nor make them stop. Without breaking his rhythm, Akio took her hand and guided it between her legs. “Go where you need to go,” he murmured.

And suddenly she was back in Garj’s arms, and his hands were in her hair and her tongue was in his mouth and she could feel the familiar heat rising. It was Akio inside her body but Garj inside her head, Garj making her back arch as his fingers worked the jewel that made her wetness flow, Garj’s skin glistening like polished mahogany as he moved between her thighs, Garj making her scream as he brought her to shuddering climax. And then he was gone.

Bhediya and Akio lay side by side for some time, saying nothing, until finally she turned to him. “Akio, I’m sorry. It wasn’t—” But he touched a finger to her lips.

“I do not ask for what you cannot give,” he said. It was a gift worth more to her than all the necklaces in Nandapore.

Bhediya shifted her body so that her head rested on Akio’s chest and said, “Ask me something else, then.” She traced the outline of the leopard hidden within the snaking vines tattooed from his shoulder to his hip. It was dark in the room now, but she knew the pattern from memory.

“All right, answer me this—all the kings in the empire ride to Abhaya for a wedding feast ordered by the emperor,” Akio said. “Tell me, then, why does the emperor himself ride here, to Nandapore, instead?”

Bhediya sat up, her hair falling like a length of black rope across Akio’s neck. “The emperor is here?” she asked, even as the hope rose, unruly, in the back of her mind. Perhaps there won’t be a wedding after all.

Folding his hands behind his head, Akio said, “I think this hasty alliance between Abhaya and Nandapore has some purpose beyond strengthening the empire as our king suggests. Your prince hasn’t married for love, you can be sure of that.”

“I don’t know about strengthening the empire,” Bhediya said, “but I do know that things are getting worse here in Nandapore. Just yesterday, a Norvardarian ship was set on fire in the port.”

“I know.” In the darkness, Akio’s voice was weary, as if this conversation was one he had already had, many times over.

“In the New City, teahouses are refusing service to elves.”

“As long as brothels don’t start refusing service to elves,” Akio quipped, trying to lighten the mood.

“Akio, you have to be careful,” Bhediya told him, undeterred. “Don’t you have a daughter to think of?” He got up and moved to the washbasin to splash cool water on his face. The lamps in the room flickered to life as he passed. “What will you do?”

He turned to face her, and she could see the thoughts moving behind his eyes—all that was known, and all that must yet be uncovered. Bhediya drew her knees into her chest and watched him, chin in her hand. It was not the first time Nandapore’s secrets had passed between them in the House of Moonlight. For a courtesan of repute, seduction and discretion were two sides of the same coin. “We know the emperor arrived under cover of night with a Sanamiri escort—but whether His Eminence is their prisoner or their conspirator, I cannot yet say,” Akio said. “I believe they’ve hidden him in the Sanamirian embassy.”

“They’ll never let you in.”

Akio laughed. “I don’t intend to knock.” He was speaking more to himself than to Bhediya when he said, “The Sanamirian embassy is fortified by muscle and magic both, but there must be a way in. The question is, how in the name of Ontorom do I find it?”

Bhediya thought for a moment, then said, “I don’t know. But I know someone who might.”

CHAPTER 3

GARJAN

It’s getting hotter,” Garjan said to his brother’s back as their horses plodded along at the head of the procession.

Pavan laughed. “You’re imagining things. Or perhaps you get hotter the closer we get to your bride!”

Garjan scowled and said nothing. It was only a three-day ride from Nandapore to Abhaya, but already he felt a world away from the crowded, chaotic city he loved so dearly. Pavan had always been destined for the throne, but if Pavan was Nandapore’s head, Garjan was its beating heart. He had grown up in Nandapore’s sprawling royal grounds, but curiosity about the world beyond the palace walls had him sneaking out into the city from the time he was old enough to devise plan after plan to do so.

Garjan had quickly learned the shortcuts through Nandapore’s winding streets, the stalls that served the best sweets, the shopkeepers who were honest men and those who were consummate cheats. The combination of the prince’s good looks, quick wit, and never-empty change purse usually worked in his favor. Over time, he learned other things as well, as the darker side of the city was revealed to him—where to find the opium dens, the gambling halls, the brothels and taverns where deals could be made to buy or sell just about anything or anyone for the right price. Now just shy of his twenty-eighth birthday, Garjan had made his fair share of mistakes, enemies, and narrow escapes, but he had also made many friends, counting among them some of Nandapore’s finest thieves, scribes, spellcasters, and whores. And today, he was leaving them all behind.

“Why get married at all?” his friend had asked as they had sat drinking together the night before in Chandanee Mukan’s Hall of Bells. They were well taken care of in the House of Moonlight, their cups never allowed to run dry as they lounged comfortably among the plush velvet cushions, only half watching the topless girl dancing in the open circle of floor in front of them.

Garjan had shrugged and mumbled something about duty, to which Roland had merely rolled his eyes. “What duty?” Roland had demanded. “You’re not king. Nobody expects you to produce an heir. Hasn’t that brother of yours already produced twenty brats in line for the throne?”

“Six, actually,” Garjan had replied. “And another one on the way.” It had been twelve years since Pavan had married Kumari, a pretty, soft-spoken princess of Kundar, and it seemed to Garjan there had barely been a day since the wedding that she had not been with child.

“Maybe deep down you want to get married,” Roland said, absently flipping a silver coin. “Maybe you’re ready to settle down, raise a bunch of little princes of your own in some sleepy palace by the sea.” Garjan had a retort ready but had paused, momentarily distracted by the gold coin flashing in Roland’s hand—the same coin that had been silver only a moment before. He knew it was merely a sleight of hand. It was only womenkind and elvenkind who wielded any real magic, after all, but spellcaster or not, his friend always seemed to have a trick or two up his sleeve. “You’ll be king of Abhaya,” Roland continued. “You’ll settle the quarrels of fishermen by day, fuck your wife by night, and live a long and happy and utterly boring life.” Roland raised his cup in mock salutation.

As if on cue, the musicians in the corner stopped playing and the dancing girl bowed and disappeared behind the heavy curtains that enclosed the space on all sides. There was silence in the room. Then, the sound of ankle bells, as slow footsteps approached the dance floor from behind the curtain.

It was her. His Diya. His light in the dark.

She was seduction come to life: her hair a curtain of black silk, free-flowing to the curve of her bare waist, her shapely legs just barely visible beneath the semi-sheer skirt sitting low on her hips, full breasts straining against the thin fabric of her blouse, lush lips and wide eyes. The musicians began her song, and it was as if her movements alone had cast some spell over the hall, although Garjan doubted there was anything of elemental magic in the desire rising palpably in the room. That was purely carnal. But she was a prize no one else could buy, not when the prince of Nandapore was there. Everyone knew she danced only for him. Later, when they had tumbled into bed together, it had been as it always was with them—all pleasure and heat and magic barely contained.

“I’ll come back for you,” Garjan had said.

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” she had replied.

Even now, if he closed his eyes, he could still feel her, hear her, taste her. She was a part of him, as vital as the blood running through his veins, and no rituals or vows to join him to another could change that.

“Where are you, brother?” Garjan opened his eyes to see that Pavan had slowed his horse and now rode alongside him. The disapproving glare being fired his way told him that Pavan knew all too well where his mind had wandered. “Look around, your people have come out to welcome their new king,” Pavan said. “The least you could do is play the part.” He spurred his horse forward as the drummers picked up speed.

Garjan did look around then, and realized they had crossed into Abhaya some time ago and were now approaching a red sandstone palace. Pavan waved a jewel-heavy hand and tossed out a last fistful of coins, to the delight of the crowd lining the wide road, before a drawbridge was lowered, inviting their procession to cross the moat surrounding the palace and enter the open gates.

The courtyard in front of the palace was empty, save for a shrine to Goddess Yusara, patron and protector of Abhaya since the beginning of time. The goddess was portrayed in her incarnation as the Sage, holding an orb in one stone hand, the ring of fire encircling her head burning low and bright. A chicken pecked lazily at the offerings of flowers, fruit, and ghee placed at her feet. It was a far cry from the splendor of Nandapore Palace, where guests were greeted by disdainful peacocks strutting around a majestic fountain, a row of life-size marble elephants, and the twin lions of Nandapore’s flag, cast in solid gold, flanking the grand rune-inscribed main entrance.

Turning his gaze upward, Garjan caught glimpses of dupattas fluttering behind the screened alcoves dotting the palace facade. He sensed the murmur of women’s voices and knew there were many eyes on him. He wondered if his soon-to-be wife’s eyes were among them. When he ran a hand through the dark waves of his hair, scanning the alcoves and letting his mouth turn up ever so slightly, he knew exactly what kind of figure he cut in his tailored silk tunic, regal atop his fine horse. He heard a giggle in response, and there was comfort in that at least—that even here, in goddess-favored Abhaya, the girls were no different than those in Nandapore.

From within a sandstone arch, wooden doors opened and an old man leaning on a staff hobbled toward them. He was followed by a small horde of servants who formed a line behind him, awaiting commands. With some effort, he lowered himself to one knee and bowed his head before Pavan, who dismounted and placed both hands on the man’s bony shoulders. “Zamuthara-ji,” he said. “First Advisor to Her Highness the Queen of Abhaya, defender of the city, and loyal servant to the empire. Rise and let us embrace, for you have brought our great cities together. Abhaya and Nandapore are no longer mere neighbors. From today onward, we’re family.”

The man stood and Pavan enfolded him, holding him fast until he wheezed. Still, he smiled a gap-toothed smile and said, “King Pavanathan, you honor us with your gracious words.” He turned to Garjan, still on his horse, reluctant to put feet down in this place that was to be his home. “And you, Prince Garjanathan,” he said, “Abhaya welcomes you. May you find favor in the eyes of the goddess and be granted peace, prosperity, and joy for all your days in her city.”

“Thank you, Zamuthara-ji,” Garjan said stiffly, using the term of respect for an elder more out of habit than any real reverence. On the contrary, he felt a surge of irrational hatred for this man, brother to Queen Suvarnatara, uncle to his bride, arranger of this marriage to the new queen of Abhaya. It wasn’t the old man’s fault, Garjan knew; it was a fault of his fate alone. Born a prince of Nandapore and a second son, when it came to alliances made by way of marriage, he had the right to neither choose his own match nor refuse the match made for him.

A gust of wind swept through the courtyard, scattering the offerings to the goddess and blowing up clouds of dust in its wake. Garjan’s horse reared, loosing his sword from its scabbard, and through the dust, he thought he saw movement in one of the Red Palace’s towers, a flash of a woman’s face behind iron bars. Garjan dismounted and picked up his sword, then stroked the horse’s mane soothingly. He sheathed the blade, but it felt good to have his steel within close reach. When he looked up again, the face was gone. Garjan followed Pavan and Zamu into the Red Palace, casting one last look behind at the statue of the goddess, her crown of flames doing battle with the wind.

Take your first look at the cover for The Dancer and the Dream Thief (US), the sweeping Prohibition-era historical fantasy by Rowenna Miller, coming October 2026!

A dancer finds herself at the center of a bootlegging scheme run by elfin creatures in this sweeping Prohibition-era historical fantasy from the author of The Fairy Bargains of Prospect Hill.

Working as a dancer in the Palace Ballroom, Evelyn Pulaski has become familiar with the idea of selling dreams. For a dime a dance she plays into a cheap fantasy of romance before returning to the independent life she’s made for herself. When a group of elfin bootleggers start to hang around the Palace, Evelyn and her friends grow wary. Several dancehall girls have disappeared, and the bootleggers are the prime suspects.

Raife is also in the business of selling dreams. One of the bootleggers at the Palace, he is part of an operation stealing dreams from humans and selling them in the elfinlands. Raife takes a shine to Evelyn, suspecting her to be a rare, vivid dreamer. As he investigates further, Rafe tells himself his interest is purely professional, but there is something entrancing about Evelyn.

When her best friend disappears, Evelyn forges an uneasy alliance with Raife to find her. But their rescue mission sets off a chain of events that endangers them both and reveals to Evelyn that her dreams hold more power than she could ever imagine.

Also by Rowenna Miller

Tags: Orbit News, Orbit Cover Launch

Pre-order your copy from one of our bookstore partners below to receive an exclusive pre-order package, including: a custom art print, a beautifully designed bookplate signed by Tia Williams, and a designed boarding-pass style bookmark.

This exclusive package will ship with your book when it releases on June 09, 2026. Please place your order by May 31 to participate. This is a pre-order offer only.

Thank you for joining us in supporting Black-owned bookstores!

Bookstore Partners:

44th & 3rd Bookseller (Atlanta, GA) // [purchase here]

Baldwin & Co Bookstore (New Orleans, LA) // [purchase here]

Black Pearl Bookstore (Austin, TX) // [purchase here]

Brain Lair Books (South Bend, IN) // [purchase here]

Cafe Con Libros (Brooklyn, NY) // [purchase here]

Call & Response Books (Chicago, IL) // [purchase here]

Cindelle’s Bookstore (Plainfield, NJ) // [purchase here]

ConversationStarters Bookstore (Locust Grove, GA)

Kindred Stories (Houston, TX) // [purchase here]

Legacy House Book Shop (Los Angeles, CA) // [purchase here]

Liz’s Book Bar (Brooklyn, NY) // [purchase here]

Loc’d and Lit (Bronx, NY) // [purchase here]

Mahogany Books (Oxon Hill, MD) // [purchase here]

Malik Books (Los Angeles, CA) // [purchase here]

Marcus Books (Oakland, CA) // [purchase here]

Onyx Gifts & Books (Melbourne, FL) // [purchase here]

Source Booksellers (Detroit, MI) // [purchase here]

Uncle Bobbie’s Coffee & Books (Philadelphia, PA) // [purchase here]

Take your first look at the cover for Sunsplitter (US), the sequel to Voidwalker by S. A. MacLean, coming August 2026!

From the author of Voidwalker comes the conclusion to the Beasts of the Void duology where spicy monster romance meets epic fantasy and in which a young woman must make the ultimate sacrifice to a dangerous immortal. 

Fi has toppled immortal beasts. Antal welcomes being conquered.

After helping the Lord Daeyari reclaim his territory, semi-reformed smuggler Fi dons a daunting new role: rebuilding a city alongside her monstrous partner, a haven free from bloody sacrifice. So when Antal’s father unexpectedly summons him home, Fi’s first instinct is to ready her claws.

Only, claws won’t be enough for this adversary.

Antal faces his first homecoming in five decades, dreading two truths. From his father’s seat on the governing council, he could undo everything Antal has built. And their last argument ended with Antal’s lover dead on the floor.

But a greater danger lurks: the appearance of a creature that even the daeyari fear, burning its way through the Planes. With Antal’s father leading the hunt, he and Fi must ally with a team of immortals who could turn fangs on them at any moment.

Or worse, strain their still-fresh love until it snaps.

Also by S. A. MacLean

Tags: Orbit News, Orbit Cover Launch

Follett’s THE DEEP AND SECRET THINGS to be published worldwide by Quercus and Grand Central Publishing in September 2027

New York, US and London, UK (March 11, 2026)— Ken Follett, one of the world’s most successful authors, has signed a new global English language deal with Hachette UK and Hachette Book Group for his new novel, THE DEEP AND SECRET THINGS. Ben Sevier, President and Publisher of Hachette Book Group’s Grand Central Publishing Group and Nick Davies, Managing Director of Hachette UK’s Quercus, acquired US and Canada rights and UK and Commonwealth rights respectively, directly from the Follett Office. The new novel will be published worldwide on September 21, 2027.   

In September 2025, Hachette published Ken Follett’s critically acclaimed epic novel, CIRCLE OF DAYS, about the origins of one of the world’s great mysteries, Stonehenge.   A major global bestseller, CIRCLE OF DAYS has been published in 21 languages around the world.   

In his new novel THE DEEP AND SECRET THINGS, master storyteller Ken Follett immerses readers in a tale of family, religion, greed and ambition set during the sweeping societal changes of the Victorian age.

1853, South Wales. Helena Bowen, a young noblewoman, longs to study science, a wish that society denies her. When Helena first meets the Llewellyns, she knows little about their Quaker beliefs. The Llewellyns run a successful wheelmaking business, but despite their financial achievements, their religion calls for a life of simplicity, truth and equality between all. Lloyd Lewellyn, the owner’s son, epitomises all these values and his forward way of thinking deeply impresses Helena.

But then she encounters Lloyd’s cousin Johnnie, the beau of the clan, who – unlike Lloyd – is fiercely ambitious. His charming manner makes him irresistible to women and Helena also falls under his spell. But Johnnie is a risk taker. When a young teacher in the village falls pregnant with his child, and Johnnie makes an embarrassing and detrimental mistake in the company’s accounts, he runs away to London, to start fresh and build the empire he’s always longed for.

At first, all goes according to plan, and along the way Johnnie’s path crosses again with Helena’s. But Johnnie’s insatiable greed for lust and money is the cause for another, unspeakable scandal which may lead to his ultimate downfall. 

The Deep and Secret Things tells the rise and fall of a young man and his legacy, set against the backdrop of the Victorian era, at a time of immense social and industrial change.

Ken Follett said of his new novel: “I love stories set in the Victorian era because of the shocking contrasts. Britain was richer than any country had ever been, but the London slums were places of grim poverty. Moral rules were strict, but rich men had mistresses and destitute women turned, in desperation, to prostitution. Dresses were gorgeous and parties were lavish, but the children of the poor started work at the age of seven. The Deep and Secret Things is about four characters who dangerously cross boundaries and live the lives they believe in—for better or worse.”

David Shelley, CEO Hachette Book Group and Hachette UK, said: “I am so proud that we will be publishing The Deep and Secret Things on both sides of the Atlantic, and honoured that Ken has chosen to continue his publishing relationship with the teams at Grand Central and Quercus. He is a unique storyteller and I can’t wait to share this book with his many devoted fans.”

Ben Sevier, President and Publisher, Grand Central Publishing Group, said: “It has been such a privilege to work with global writing legend Ken Follett.  After bringing his acclaimed epic novel Circle of Days to his legions of American readers last year, I am thrilled for the opportunity to publish his newest The Deep and Secret Things and for the GCP team to make it a major publishing event in 2027.”     

Nick Davies, John Murray Group Managing Director, said: “I’m thrilled that Quercus and Grand Central are able to collaborate again on Ken’s second global English language project with Hachette.  Circle of Days became an instant Sunday Times bestseller last year delighting his fans with a deeply human story of the building of Stonehenge; The Deep and Secret Things is sure to captivate and thrill his readers anew as we dive into the Victorian era for one of 2027’s most exciting publications.”  

THE DEEP AND SECRET THINGS will also be published in foreign language editions around the world including:

• Denmark: Gyldendal
• France: Robert Laffont
• Germany: Bastei Lübbe AG
• Italy: Mondadori Libri S.P.A.
• The Netherlands: Meulenhoff Boekerij
• Portugal: Editorial Presença
• Spain: Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial

About Ken Follett:

Ken Follett is one of the world’s most successful authors. More than 198 million copies of the 38 books he has written have been sold in over 80 countries and in 40 languages.

He started his career as a reporter, first with his hometown newspaper the South Wales Echo and then with the London Evening News. 

Ken’s first major success came with the publication of Eye of the Needle in 1978, which earned him the 1979 Edgar Award for Best Novel from the Mystery Writers of America. 

In 1989, The Pillars of the Earth, Ken’s epic novel about the building of a medieval cathedral, reached number one on bestseller lists everywhere. It was turned into a major television series produced by Ridley Scott, which aired in 2010. 

Ken has been active in numerous literacy charities and was president of Dyslexia Action for ten years. He is also a past chair of the National Year of Reading, a joint initiative between government and business. He lives in Hertfordshire, England, with his wife Barbara. Between them they have five children, six grandchildren and two Labradors.

About Hachette Book Group:

Hachette Book Group (HBG) is a leading U.S. general-interest book publisher made up of dozens of esteemed imprints within the publishing groups Basic Books Group, Grand Central Publishing Group, Hachette Audio, Little, Brown and Company, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, Orbit, Workman Publishing, and Running Press Group. We also provide custom distribution, fulfillment, and sales services to several publishing companies.   

Our books and authors have received the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, Caldecott Medal, Newbery Medal, Booker Prize, Nobel Prize, James Beard Award, and other major honors.    

We are committed to diversity in our company and our publishing programs, and to fostering a culture of inclusion for all our employees and authors. We are proud to be part of Hachette Livre, the world’s third-largest trade and educational publisher.    

Visit hachettebookgroup.com to learn more about HBG imprints. For updated news follow HBG on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Threads, TikTok, X.com, Snapchat, and YouTube. 

About Hachette UK: 

Our mission at Hachette UK is to make it easy for everyone to discover new worlds of ideas, learning, entertainment, and opportunity. 

We are one of the UK’s largest publishing groups and the market leader in e-books, with 12 autonomous divisions and over 50 imprints with a rich and diverse history. 

We publish thousands of new books across the group every year and our authors include Michael Connelly, Alice Oseman, John Grisham, Val McDermid, Stephen King, Stieg Larsson, Nelson Mandela, Stephenie Meyer, Ian Rankin, J.K. Rowling and Malala Yousafzai.

Our award-winning adult publishing divisions are Little, Brown, Orion, John Murray Press, Dialogue Books, Hodder & Stoughton, Headline, Quercus, Bookouture and Octopus. Hachette Children’s Group publishes a diverse range of books for children of all ages and Hodder Education is a market leader in resources for both primary and secondary schools. In 2022, we welcomed Paperblanks, the second-largest premium stationery brand in the world, to our group. 

We have offices around the UK, including our headquarters in London and the Hely Hutchinson Centre (HHC) for distribution in Didcot. We have subsidiaries in several other regions, including Australia, India, Ireland, Jamaica and New Zealand.

Press Contact:

Elizabeth.Masters@quercusbooks.co.uk (UK)

 Matthew.Ballast@hbgusa.com (US)

Take your first look at the cover for Daughter of Destruction (US) by David Dalglish, the second installment in The Astral Kingdoms trilogy coming December 2026!

The second book in the latest trilogy from USA Today bestselling author David Dalglish is his biggest, most ambitious project to date, an epic fantasy truly worthy of the name, with powerful magic, a huge world, jaw-dropping twists, and a large, vivid cast of characters, perfect for readers of James Islington and Anthony Ryan.

Also by David Dalglish

I remember the first time I picked up a chapter book and read it all by myself… I felt on top of the world. Sometimes the thing kids need to get more into reading is something fast paced and fun that provides them with that same gratification! If you’re looking for some speedy chapter books to put in your young readers hands, to foster a lifetime love of reading, then you have come to the right place!! Pick up any or all these books (and often their series) and watch your little one absolutely devour them—and in most cases beg for more!

New York, NY (March 10, 2026) – Matt Wright, CEO of Hachette Book Group (HBG) US Distribution, announced today the promotion of Michael Shoults to CEO of HBG US Distribution. Shoults’ promotion comes as Wright steps up to Chief Financial Officer, Hachette UK, following the retirement of Pierre de Cacqueray after 29 years with the company. Shoults will continue to report into Wright in his new role. 

“Mike is a visionary, his enthusiasm is infectious, and I am delighted that we will continue to work together on the next stage in becoming the undisputed market leader,” Wright said. “Mike has transformed the levels of service and communication at HBG US Distribution in the past year, and I have no doubt that he will excel equally in his new role of CEO.” 

David Shelley, CEO of HBG and Hachette UK, also highlighted Shoults’ dedication to innovating HBG’s distribution. “Mike Shoults has made an enormous impact on our distribution business since he began in 2025. He is passionately devoted to making our distribution services better all the time, and his energy and vision are remarkable.” 

After a year in his role as HBG US Distribution COO, Shoults will now also lead HBG’s distribution business for their portfolio of client publishers, including Abrams, Chronicle, Yen Press, Quarto, Lonely Planet, as well as Stable Distribution. 

“I am deeply honored by the trust that David and Matt have placed in me to lead as CEO. I must recognize my outstanding team, whose talent, passion, and seamless partnership have driven our success,” Shoults said. “Together, we have built a culture of true care and results that our clients rely on every day. As we step into this next chapter, I’m energized to accelerate our momentum, deepen client partnerships, and unlock new levels of impact for everyone we serve to discover a new world of ideas, learning, entertainment and opportunity.” 

Before his time at HBG, Shoults led teams in a host of different arenas and disciplines for more than 20 years, including in the US Army, where, in 2005, he was commissioned as a lieutenant and served eight years, including multiple deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. Following an honorable discharge from the military, Shoults joined Amazon, GameStop, and a private equity startup formerly known as Heyday. 

About Hachette Book Group US Distribution: 

Hachette Book Group US Distribution is a division of Hachette Book Group. We are a global business and one of the largest publishing groups in the USA, delivering books and other media worldwide to customers from our facilities in Lebanon, Indiana. 

About Hachette Book Group: 

Hachette Book Group (HBG) is a leading U.S. general-interest book publisher made up of dozens of esteemed imprints within the publishing groups Basic Books Group, Grand Central Publishing Group, Hachette Audio, Little, Brown and Company, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, Orbit, Workman Publishing, and Running Press Group. We also provide custom distribution, fulfillment, and sales services to several publishing companies. 

Our books and authors have received the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, Caldecott Medal, Newbery Medal, Booker Prize, Nobel Prize, James Beard Award, and other major honors. 

We are committed to diversity in our company and our publishing programs, and to fostering a culture of inclusion for all our employees and authors. We are proud to be part of Hachette Livre, the world’s third-largest trade and educational publisher. 

Visit hachettebookgroup.com to learn more about HBG imprints. For updated news follow HBG on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Threads, TikTok, X.com, Snapchat, and YouTube. 

Press Contact: Gabrielle Gambrell, gabrielle.gambrell@hbgusa.com 

# # # 

New York, NY (March 9, 2026) — Da Capo, an imprint of Grand Central Publishing, will publish the definitive autobiography of one of the most iconic musicians, Alice Cooper, on October 6, 2026. 

In the Sixties and early Seventies, Alice Cooper was simply a rock group, but as their lead singer, Vincent Damon Furnier, developed his modern-day Grand Guignol character, Alice Cooper became his stage name. Then, on a wave of global success, he legally changed it to his own. As his story will tell, the two Alices became schizophrenically, almost fatally intertwined; after a harrowing journey to Hell and back, there are today two very different Alice Coopers: the deeply religious sober man behind the mask and the Godfather of Shock Rock who wears a snake around his neck.

With a career spanning six decades, Alice’s story features witty, intimate anecdotes featuring Salvador Dalí, Bob Hope, John Lennon, Groucho Marx, Vincent Price, Frank Sinatra, Erroll Flynn, Bette Davis, Jim Hendrix, Gerald Ford, Andy Warhol, Tiger Woods, to name a few, but he’s also an acute observer of dysfunction and despair, wildness and criminality, urges and addictions, transgressions and human goodness. And so he tells his story from both perspectives: angel on one shoulder, devil on the other.

Alice Cooper says: “I’ve written this book to track Alice’s ‘evilution’, and how I’ve tamed him at last. Just as he and I became almost fatally intertwined, the story of Alice Cooper after over thirty records and sixty-plus years has become a tangle of embellishments, elaborations and outright fabrications, and I think it’s time to sort reality from myth.”

Ben Schafer, Executive Editor, Da Capo, an imprint of Grand Central Publishing, says: “Alice Cooper’s story is a classic tale of persona creation, rock and roll innovation, and being lost and found again. Cooper’s humanity and faith shine through the pages of Devil on My Shoulder, even in the darkest times. Da Capo is thrilled to publish the memoir a true visionary who forever changed the world’s idea of what a rock concert can be, and one of the great songwriters of our times.” 

About Da Capo: 

Da Capo is an imprint dedicated to publishing definitive biographies, memoirs, and narrative non-fiction about music and musicians. Through music, we encounter the world and the counterculture traditions that have animated creative movements in the 20^th and 21^st centuries. From classic rock and punk to metal, jazz, and hip hop, Da Capo’s books are made with the active listener in mind, whose music is a cornerstone of their identity. 

About Grand Central Publishing:

Grand Central Publishing reaches a diverse audience through books that cater to every kind of reader. Its imprints are Balance, Cardinal, Da Capo, Forever, Grand Central, and Legacy Lit. Grand Central Publishing is one of three divisions of the Grand Central Publishing Group, which also includes Hachette Nashville and Union Square & Co.  

About Hachette Book Group: 

Hachette Book Group (HBG) is a leading U.S. general-interest book publisher made up of dozens of esteemed imprints within the publishing groups Basic Books Group, Grand Central Publishing Group, Hachette Audio, Little, Brown and Company, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, Orbit, Workman Publishing, and Running Press Group. We also provide custom distribution, fulfillment, and sales services to several publishing companies.   

Our books and authors have received the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, Caldecott Medal, Newbery Medal, Booker Prize, Nobel Prize, James Beard Award, and other major honors.    

We are committed to diversity in our company and our publishing programs, and to fostering a culture of inclusion for all our employees and authors. We are proud to be part of Hachette Livre, the world’s third-largest trade and educational publisher.    

Visit hachettebookgroup.com to learn more about HBG imprints. For updated news follow HBG on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Threads, TikTok, X.com, Snapchat, and YouTube. 

MEDIA CONTACTS: 

Grand Central Publishing & Da Capo 

Tara Kennedy, Tara.Kennedy@hbgusa.com

Gina DiBenedetto, Gina.DiBenedetto@hbgusa.com