Book picks similar to
RADIO by J. Rushing


fantasy
spfbo6
mythology
historical-fiction

A Study in Silks


Emma Jane Holloway - 2013
    In a Victorian era ruled by a ruthless steam baron council, mechanical power is the real monarch, and sorcery the demon enemy of the empire. Evelina has secretly mastered a coveted weapon - magic that can run machines. Should she trust the handsome, clever rake who speeds her breath, or the dashing trick rider who would dare anything she would ask?

Triumff: Her Majesty's Hero


Dan Abnett - 2009
    Adventurer. Fighter. Drinker.Saviour?Pratchett goes swashbuckling in the hotly anticipated original fiction debut of the multi-million selling Warhammer star.Triumff is a ribald historical fantasy set in a warped clockwork-powered version of our present day … a new Elizabethan age, not of Elizabeth II but in the style of the original Virgin Queen. Throughout its rollicking pages, Sir Rupert Triumff drinks, dines and duels his way into a new Brass Age of Exploration and Adventure.

In Great Waters


Kit Whitfield - 2009
    The landsmen of the city broker a treaty with a water-dwelling tribe of deepsmen, cementing the alliance through marriage. The mingling of the two races produces a fresh, peerless strain of royal blood. To protect their shores, other nations make their own partnerships with this new breed–and then, jealous of their power, ban any further unions between the two peoples. Dalliance with a deepswoman becomes punishable by death. Any “bastard” child must be destroyed.This is an Earth where the legends of the deep are true–where the people of the ocean are as real and as dangerous as the people of the land. This is the world of intrigue and betrayal that Kit Whitfield brings to life in an unforgettable alternate history: the tale of Anne, the youngest princess of a faltering England, struggling to survive in a troubled court, and Henry, a bastard abandoned on the shore to face his bewildering destiny, finding himself a pawn in a game he does not understand.Yet even a pawn may checkmate a king.

Heraclix & Pomp


Forrest Aguirre - 2014
    That was before Heraclix’s reanimation (along with the sewn-together pieces and parts of many other dead people) and Pomp’s near murder at the hands of an evil necromancer. As they travel from Vienna to Prague to Istanbul and back again (with a side-trip to Hell), they struggle to understand who and what they are: Heraclix seeks to know the life he had before his death and rebirth, and Pomp wrestles with the language and meaning of mortality. As they journey across a land rife with revolution and unrest, they discover the evil necromancer they thought dead might not be so dead after all. In fact, he might be making a pact to ensure his own immortality . . .

The Iron Wyrm Affair


Lilith Saintcrow - 2012
    His skills of deduction are legendary, and her own sorcery is not inconsiderable. It doesn't help much that they barely tolerate each other, or that Bannon's Shield, Mikal, might just be a traitor himself. Or that the conspiracy killing registered mentaths and sorcerers alike will just as likely kill them as seduce them into treachery toward their Queen. In an alternate London where illogical magic has turned the Industrial Revolution on its head, Bannon and Clare now face hostility, treason, cannon fire, black sorcery, and the problem of reliably finding hansom cabs. The game is afoot..

She Who Became the Sun Sneak Peek


Shelley Parker-Chan - 2021
    Download a FREE sneak peek today!To possess the Mandate of Heaven, the female monk Zhu will do anything“I refuse to be nothing…”In a famine-stricken village on a dusty yellow plain, two children are given two fates. A boy, greatness. A girl, nothingness…In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. For the starving peasants of the Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories. When the Zhu family’s eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received by the family’s clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected.When a bandit attack orphans the two children, though, it is Zhu Chongba who succumbs to despair and dies. Desperate to escape her own fated death, the girl uses her brother's identity to enter a monastery as a young male novice. There, propelled by her burning desire to survive, Zhu learns she is capable of doing whatever it takes, no matter how callous, to stay hidden from her fate.After her sanctuary is destroyed for supporting the rebellion against Mongol rule, Zhu takes the chance to claim another future altogether: her brother's abandoned greatness.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The Blushing Bounder


Meljean Brook - 2013
    But before the events of that novel, Constable Newberry’s faced a danger of another kind: to his heart, by the woman forced to marry him. What will it take for this prudish bounder to convince his wife to stay?The Blushing Bounder was previously published in the anthology Wild & Steamy. The Blushing Bounder is a short story/novella of approximately 13,400 words (50 pages.)

Waking Brigid


Francis Clark - 2008
    Driven by the ravages of the famine, Brigid's family chose to give the girl up to the service of the Church to ensure her survival. But in order to do that she had to reject her people's pagan ways. The Church is all she has known and she seeks to do her duty…all the while fighting the lure of her people’s legacy.   Brigid's resolve is tested when a prominent Savannah citizen is cruelly murdered behind a locked and bolted door in an insane asylum. The last words of the man chilled the blood of all who heard him, and the fact that he was murdered while he was alone in the cell defies all logical reason. What follows is nothing less than an amazing clash between the forces of good and evil—dedicated white magicians versus the entrenched devil worshippers--for the soul of a city.

There Are No Saints


Stephen Kanicki - 2021
    This is his story:For the low price of five dollars, Dexter “Dex” James will exorcise your demons: the demon of lust, drink, and gluttony. Unfortunately, he’s new in town, and few people take him seriously. The ones that do, don’t have a dime to spare. Desperate for money, he elicits help from a boy named Boo and a beautiful woman, named Miss Leslie—she’s half his age and a prostitute, but Dex is smitten.After performing a supposed miracle, Dex becomes the talk of Titusville. His billfold and ego grow with each exorcism. Only Miss Leslie’s love could make him happier. However, when an evil entity threatens a young girl, Dex must make a choice: take the coward’s way out or stay and fight?

Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City


K.J. Parker - 2019
    The people have no food and no weapons, and the enemy has sworn to slaughter them all.To save the city will take a miracle, but what it has is Orhan. A colonel of engineers, Orhan has far more experience with bridge-building than battles, is a cheat and a liar, and has a serious problem with authority. He is, in other words, perfect for the job.

The Factory Witches of Lowell


C.S. Malerich - 2020
    S. Malerich's The Factory Witches of Lowell is a riveting historical fantasy about witches going on strike in the historical mill-town of Lowell, Massachusetts.Faced with abominable working conditions, unsympathetic owners, and hard-hearted managers, the mill girls of Lowell have had enough. They're going on strike, and they have a secret weapon on their side: a little witchcraft to ensure that no one leaves the picket line.For the young women of Lowell, Massachusetts, freedom means fair wages for fair work, decent room and board, and a chance to escape the cotton mills before lint stops up their lungs. When the Boston owners decide to raise the workers’ rent, the girls go on strike. Their ringleader is Judith Whittier, a newcomer to Lowell but not to class warfare. Judith has already seen one strike fold and she doesn’t intend to see it again. Fortunately Hannah, her best friend in the boardinghouse—and maybe first love?—has a gift for the dying art of witchcraft.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Legend of the Highland Dragon


Isabel Cooper - 2013
    Some wander the earth; some keep to their lands in Scotland. And Stephen MacAlasdair, the newest lord of the family, must go to London to settle his father’s business affairs. He brings an object of great power and greater darkness. He finds an enemy from his past, whose wrath is still living and deadly. And he meets an ally he’d never have expected. 1894 London, doesn't provide an easy life for women of the lower class, but Mina Seymour has managed to work herself up to a position as the secretary of a famous scholar. When a tall, dark Scottish stranger demands to see her employer, Mina is irritated; when MacAlasdair's departure leaves the professor worried, she’s suspicious. Determined to figure out the situation, she investigates further - and finds a world and a man she could never have imagined.

The Darkening Dream


Andy Gavin - 2011
    God, demon, monster, and sorcerer alike plot to regain what was theirs.1913, Salem, Massachusetts – Sarah Engelmann’s life is full of friends, books, and avoiding the pressure to choose a husband, until an ominous vision and the haunting call of an otherworldly trumpet shake her. When she stumbles across a gruesome corpse, she fears that her vision was more of a premonition. And when she sees the murdered boy moving through the crowd at an amusement park, Sarah is thrust into a dark battle she does not understand. With the help of Alex, an attractive Greek immigrant who knows a startling amount about the undead, Sarah sets out to uncover the truth. Their quest takes them to the factory mills of Salem, on a midnight boat ride to spy on an eerie coastal lair, and back, unexpectedly, to their own homes. What can Alex’s elderly, vampire-hunting grandfather and Sarah’s own rabbi father tell them? And what do Sarah’s continuing visions reveal?No less than Gabriel’s Trumpet, the tool that will announce the End of Days, is at stake, and the forces that have banded to recover it include a 900 year-old vampire, a trio of disgruntled Egyptian gods, and a demon-loving Puritan minister. At the center of this swirling cast is Sarah, who must fight a millennia-old battle against unspeakable forces, knowing the ultimate prize might be herself.

An Easy Death


Charlaine Harris - 2018
    Battered by a run across the border to Mexico, gunslinger Lizbeth Rose takes a job offer from a pair of Russian wizards. She may be young, but Gunnie Rose has acquired a fearsome reputation and the wizards are at a desperate crossroads, even if they won't admit it. They're searching frantically to locate the only man whose blood they believe can save their tsar's life.A powerful enemy sends enemies who want their mission to faillThe trio are set upon by a powerful force does not want them to succeed in their mission. Lizbeth Rose is a gunnie who has never failed a client, but her oath will test all of her skills and resolve to get them all out alive.

The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters


Gordon Dahlquist - 2006
    But for Miss Temple, Roger Bascombe’s cruel rejection will ignite a harrowing quest for answers, plunging her into a mystery as dizzying as a hall of mirrors—and a remote estate where danger abounds and all inhibitions are stripped bare.Nothing could have prepared Miss Temple for where her pursuit of Roger Bascombe would take her—or for the shocking things she would find behind the closed doors of forbidding Harschmort Manor: men and women in provocative disguise, acts of licentiousness and violence, heroism and awakening. But she will also find two allies: Cardinal Chang, a brutal assassin with the heart of a poet, and a royal doctor named Svenson, at once fumbling and heroic—both of whom, like her, lost someone at Harschmort Manor. As the unlikely trio search for answers—hurtling them from elegant brothels to gaslit alleyways to shocking moments of self-discovery-- they are confronted by puzzles within puzzles. And the closer they get to the truth, the more their lives are in danger. For the conspiracy they face—an astonishing alchemy of science, perverted religion, and lust for power—is so terrifying as to be beyond belief.