S. E. COONEY A young human painter and an ageless gentry queen fall in love over spilled wine—at the risk of his life and her immortality. Pulled into the Veil Between Worlds, two feuding neighbors (and a living statue) get swept up in a brutal war of succession. An investigative reporter infiltrates the Seafall City Laundries to write the exposé of a lifetime, and uncovers secrets she never believed possible. Returning to an oak grove to scatter her husband’s ashes, an elderly widow meets an otherworldly friend, who offers her a momentous choice. Two gentry queens of the Valwode plot to hijack a human rocketship and steal the moon out of the sky. DARK BREAKERS gathers three new and two previously uncollected tales from World Fantasy Award-winning writer C. S. E. Cooney that expand on the thrice-enfolded worlds first introduced in her Locus and World Fantasy award-nominated novella DESDEMONA AND THE DEEP. In her introduction to DARK BREAKERS, Crawford Award-winning author Sharon Shinn advises those who pick up this book to “settle in for a fantastical read” full of “vivid world-building, with layer upon layer of detail; prose so dense and gorgeous you can scoop up the words like handfuls of jewels; a mischievous sense of humor; and a warm and hopeful heart.”

    An empath confident in her own skin. His powers may not affect her, but there’s more than magic in play.***Lisca doesn’t want to be a part of Lhanaperi’s trade delegation. While she is heir to a powerful merchant family, she is on the negotiation team for one reason only—her empathic talents are the perfect foil to Khiran BeVelor, the Moialans’ not-so-secret weapon.Being part incubus gives Khiran the power to engender more than just lust in the people around him. Too bad his uncle, the king, thinks his only use is seducing his opponents. Khiran plans to ignore his uncle’s expectations and rely on other emotions to gain favorable trade concessions for Moial. But when the empath detects his every lure—even those he didn’t know he used—seduction might be the only option.But who will be the seducer, and who the seduced?