A Time of Dread

Young Corban watches enviously as boys become warriors, learning the art of war. He yearns to wield his sword and spear to protect his king’s realm. But that day will come all too soon. Only when he loses those he loves will he learn the true price of courage. The Banished Lands has a violent past where armies of men and giants clashed in battle, the earth running dark with their heartsblood. Although the giant clans were broken in ages past, their ruined fortresses still scar the land.

The Banished Lands are torn by war as the army of High King Nathair sweeps the realm, challenging all who oppose his holy crusade. Allied with the manipulative Queen Rhin of Cambren, there are few who can stand against him. But Rhin is playing her own games and has her eyes on a far greater prize.... Left for dead - her kin have fled, and her country is overrun with enemies - Cywen fights to survive.

Drem and his friends flee the battle at Starstone Lake to warn the Order of the Bright Star. They’ve witnessed horrors they’ll never forget, such as magic warping men into beasts. But worst of all, they’ve seen a demon rise from the dead – making it even more powerful. Now Fritha, the demons’ high priestess, is hunting Drem’s party. Concealed in Forn Forest, Riv struggles to understand her half-breed heritage. She represents the warrior angels’ biggest secret, one which could break their society. 

Threatened by an Elloryan invasion reinforced by the Ancients, the sanctuary Ember and Max sought in DormaSai after Kael’s burial is at its end. A civil war rages in Cethos, and the threat of Wildland tribal attacks in the Blood Kingoms is imminent. They can offer no help to their Southern neighbors, leaving DormaSai as all that stands in the Ancients’ way. When the peace conclave crumbles and the Ancients are forced from DormaSai by unexpected allies, Ember and Max turn their attention to preparing for the Ancients’ inevitable return.

Aren has lived by the rules all his life. He's never questioned it; that's just the way things are. But then his father is executed for treason, and he and his best friend, Cade, are thrown into a prison mine, doomed to work until they drop. Unless they can somehow break free.... But what lies beyond the prison walls is more terrifying still. Rescued by a man who hates him yet is oath-bound to protect him, pursued by inhuman forces, Aren slowly accepts that everything he knew about his world was a lie. 

Girton Club-Foot, apprentice to the land's best assassin, still has much to learn about the art of taking lives. But their latest mission tasks him and his master with a far more difficult challenge: to save a life. Someone, or many someones, is trying to kill the heir to the throne, and it is up to Girton and his master to uncover the traitor and prevent the prince's murder. In a kingdom on the brink of civil war and a castle thick with lies, Girton finds friends he never expected, responsibilities he never wanted and a conspiracy that could destroy an entire land.

Mankind has lorded over the land of Illian for a thousand years, enjoying what was left to them by the elves, as if it were their birthright. A thousand years is a long time for an immortal race to see the error of their ways and realize a truth that has remained unsaid for a millennia - elves are superior! They are faster, stronger, and connected to the magical world in a way that man could never grasp. Illian is their birthright. The six kingdoms of man are fractured, unallied and always clawing at each other's doors for more power.

Minalan the spellmonger faces the boredom of house arrest after being confined to his lands by Prince Tavard for his defiance with the Wilderlands refugees. The Alka Alon have returned to their seclusion, dealing with their own crisis, the dead god is being quiet within the Umbra, and Min’s plans toward reestablishing a functional Duchy of Alshar are progressing. Min sees his punishment as a unique opportunity to indulge in thaumaturgical research. 

You can't change your fate - so throw yourself into battle, because you'll end the day either a hero or drinking mead in the halls of the gods. That's what Finn's tribe believe. But Finn wants to live. When his settlement is massacred by a hostile tribe, Finn plus several friends and rivals must make their escape across a brutal, unfamiliar landscape, and to survive, Finn will fight harder than he's ever fought before.

At the Convent of Sweet Mercy, young girls are raised to be killers. In a few the old bloods show, gifting talents rarely seen since the tribes beached their ships on Abeth. Sweet Mercy hones its novices' skills to deadly effect: it takes 10 years to educate a Red Sister in the ways of blade and fist. But even the mistresses of sword and shadow don't truly understand what they have purchased when Nona Grey is brought to their halls as a bloodstained child of eight, falsely accused of murder - guilty of worse.

Enter a war-torn world where gunpowder and magic collide. The nation of Fatrasta is a haven for criminals, rebels, adventurers and sorcerers seeking relics of the past. As insurrection grows, only the iron will of the Lady Chancellor holds the capital city of Landfall together. Yet an ancient power as old as time is rising, and the fate of this young nation now rests in the hands of a spy, a disgraced war hero and a mercenary general with a past as turbulent as Landfall's present.

Ashok Vadal was once a member of the highest caste in all of Lok. As a Protector, he devoted his life to upholding the Law, rooting out those who still practiced the old ways and delivering justice with his ancestor blade Angruvadal. None was more merciless than he in stamping out the lingering belief in gods and demons among the casteless. His brutality was legendary and celebrated. But soon Ashok learned that his life to that point had been a lie. He himself, senior member of the Protector Order, was casteless. He had been nothing more than an unwitting pawn in a political game.

Leo Carew's debut novel The Wolf, the first book in the Under the Northern Sky series, is a masterpiece in epic historical fantasy - a new voice to rival David Gemmell or George R. R. Martin. Violence and death have come to the land under the Northern Sky. The Anakim dwell in the desolate forests and mountains beyond the black river, the land under the Northern Sky. Their ancient ways are forged in Unthank silver and carved in the grey stone of their heartland.

Clay Cooper and his band were once the best of the best - the meanest, dirtiest, most feared and admired crew of mercenaries this side of the Heartwyld. But their glory days are long past; the mercs have grown apart and grown old, fat, drunk - or a combination of the three. Then a former bandmate turns up at Clay's door with a plea for help: his daughter Rose is trapped in a city besieged by an enemy horde 100,000 strong and hungry for blood.

The republic faces annihilation, despite the vigilance of Galharrow's Blackwings. When a raven tattoo rips itself from his arm to deliver a desperate message, Galharrow and a mysterious noblewoman must investigate a long-dead sorcerer's legacy. But there is a conspiracy within the citadel: traitors, flesh eaters and the ghosts of the wastelands seek to destroy them, but if they cannot solve the ancient wizard's paradox, the Deep Kings will walk the earth again, and all will be lost.