The only way a pawn can survive is to gain position and power. The only way Mark Seaton can be free, is to become a player. "Prazeman has crafted a magnificent, credible fantasy where noble lords symbiotically bond with masked jesters whose machinations and assassinations further their ambitions without imperiling their souls. She does a uniquely wonderful job of honoring her readers' intelligence, parsing out little hints and nibbles, barely enough information to figure out what is going on as her hero navigates the intrigue. The result is a swift and satisfying read that leaves us begging for a sequel. Whole-heartedly recommended!" – Lawrence Kane, ForeWord Magazine "Prazeman's jesters dance fine lines through a world of byzantine politics. Real, fallible people lie behind complex masks. The subtle weave of influences, and the dangers they produce, will keep readers hooked." – Sara Mueller, Endeavor Award Committee Member "The world of MASKS is a fantasy world unlike any other I've encountered, rich with mystery, intrigue, and danger, and its hero Mark is complex and unusual – a young man trying to solve the riddle of his parents' deaths while concealing dangerous secrets of his own. No one in this book is exactly what they seem, Mark least of all. We all have our masks, and MASKS lifts the façades of its characters and its world to expose the ambiguous truths behind them." – David Levine, Hugo Award Winning Author

    He's powerful, popular, and he has a plan. But his plan for fame and glory is disrupted when the Oracle sticks him with Landyn Glendower for Senior Trial. This is an act unprecedented in their school's history. Landyn is a water mage, and everyone knows mages with opposing elements can’t work magic together.Connor is left with a choice: work alone and fail or swallow his pride and work with Landyn to find a way to combine their magic in a display the Archmages will never forget—if they don't get kicked out of school in the process.

    Determined to try again, Tarn takes human form and sets out to explore this new world, battling his grief and bewilderment as he realises all he once loved has faded into legend: his armies, his brothers and sisters, even the lover who grew old without him centuries ago. Posing as a caravan guard, he sets out across the Alagard Desert in search of the spirit who made him smile.But it isn’t just a single dragon who has woken again. As Tarn and his new friends press deeper into the desert, their path grows perilous, and it soon becomes obvious that something dark and terrible has returned to the world.The Shadow Tarn once defeated has woken before him and now he is the only one left to defend his new friends, his desert, and all that lies below the protective shadow of his wing.

    The renegade airmen who fly the corps’s mechanical, magic-fueled dragons are Volstov’s greatest weapon. But now one of its members is at the center of a scandal that may turn the tide of victory. To counter the threat, four ill-assorted heroes must converge to save their kingdom: an exiled magician, a naive country boy, a young student—and the unpredictable ace who flies the city’s fiercest dragon, Havemercy. But on the eve of battle, these courageous men will face something that could make the most formidable of warriors hesitate, the most powerful of magicians weak, and the most unlikely of men allies in their quest to rise against it.

    Ripped from his life as a student to fulfil a magical contract as punishment for his family's past, he now has to play valet to Methian for ten years. It'll be hell on their already strained relationship.And with his city of Katraman under attack, Lornyc needs to connect to the powers he’s been hiding. If he can’t master his powers and find the leader of the plot, he could lose everything he knows and loves: his family, his future as High Lord, and Methian.Trigger warning: mind control, attempted assaultTags:Secret relationship, Magic and mayhem, What’s this thing on my arm? Romanus you old reprobate, Coming of age, Temporal vampires (sort of). Lornyc’s just about had enough! Methian needs to deal with it, Orbs are shiny, Ooh pretty blue sparkles, Didn’t see that coming, Lornyc looks good in valet clothes, Not ready but no choice, Youngest ever High Lord, That’s gotta hurt, Magical belly rumbles, Pseudo-Regency, Seriously they wear frockcoats, This is just the beginning…Previously published, this second edition has been edited and reworked for release

    But as they investigate, they uncover more than a missing man: a legendary creature connected to the secret of the massacre of Rune's Court. In looking for Addam, can Rune find the truth behind his family's death and the torments of his past?

    Felix Harrowgate is a dashing, highly respected wizard. But his aristocratic peers don't know his dark past — how his abusive former master enslaved him, body and soul, and trained him to pass as a nobleman. Within the walls of the Mirador — Melusine's citadel of power and wizardry — Felix believed he was safe. He was wrong. Now, the horrors of his previous life have found him and threaten to destroy all he has since become. Mildmay the Fox is used to being hunted. Raised as a kept-thief and trained as an assassin, he escaped his Keeper long ago and lives on his own as a cat burglar. But now he has been caught by a mysterious foreign wizard using a powerful calling charm. And yet the wizard was looking not for Mildmay — but for Felix Harrowgate.Thrown together by fate, the broken wizard Felix and the wanted killer Mildmay journey far from Melusine through lands thick with strange magics and terrible demons of darkness. But it is the shocking secret from their pasts, linking them inexorably together, that will either save them, or destroy them.

    He hears words that have not been spoken, and can see flashes of futures that may never come to pass. Out of his time, place and comfort zone, Eden lives inside his head, constantly haunted by the idea that there is something else. Something more. Running from those who would harm him, Eden breaks through a Divide believed only in myth and stories, and finds himself in another realm—a place, he soon discovers, he should have been in all along. Finding friends, love and completion for the first time in his life, Eden starts to wake up to who he is and sets his feet firmly on a path he can never turn away from, with his tall beautiful warrior-elf lover always at his side Hunted by those who would have his power, trying to hide from evil, Eden finds himself running through the realms in the hope he can escape his fate, lead the future down a path that will not see the worlds destroyed, and will keep Khari safe from a past that is raising its head once more.

    Now it’s time for him to do his duty: his uncle, the king, needs him to escort Prince Garith to his wedding, a union that will create an alliance between the two strongest countries in the known world. But Yarrow isn’t the prince’s only guard. A whole company of knights is assigned to the duty, and Yarrow’s not sure he trusts their leader.Knight Duncan Purefroy isn’t sure he trusts Yarrow either, but after a bizarre occurrence during their travels, they have no choice but to work together—especially since the incident also reveals a disturbing secret, one that might threaten the entire kingdom. But will it ultimately work in their favor?When a third member joins the precarious alliance, it seems to cement the bonds between all three men. But the arrangement isn’t perfect: Yarrow knows the power inside him and fears getting too close. The mysterious newcomer was raised to believe love and trust are weaknesses. And Duncan struggles to accept them as they are. Saving their home will take everything they have—including the fragile relationship they’ve built.

    He was also not at all married to Oliver’s mother, a washerwoman, who died when Oliver was only six.”Oliver Meacham, bastard nephew of the Duke of Drakewell, and a massive disappointment to his father, has just lost all his male relatives to the war with the invading Sels from the West. Without an heir, the duchy of Drakewell stands to fall into enemy hands, unless one of Oliver’s cousins can marry a lord with an army strong enough to defend it – which is how he finds himself escorting his cousin Tessa to the Great Northern Wastes; to the kingdom of Aeretoll, with a hope that Tessa might wed the fearsome warrior king who rules there, Erik Frodeson, in order to protect her people.But the stern, forbidding Erik refuses to marry. He offers his nephew’s hand to Tessa instead. And to Oliver he offers insult, challenge – and the sorts of loaded glances that leave Oliver as flustered as he is furious.Tessa doesn’t relish the prospect of marrying for a political alliance, but she’s ready to fulfill her duty to her family and people – even more so when she realizes that she won’t have to wed the churlish Erik, but his charming nephew, instead. Only…the king has two nephews. And Tessa has a choice to make.The Drake Chronicles is a slow-burn fantasy series, full of court intrigue, adventure, drama, dragons, and passionate romance. Heavily influenced by Viking history and mythology, the series follows the intertwining stories of multiple couples as they fall in love, and fight to save their families, and their kingdoms.

    But a precious few begin even before birth.In the dual-gendered realm of Ylandre, the great divide between the high-born True Bloods and the lower-ranked Half Bloods is deemed impassable by most. Rohyr Essendri dared to cross it when he took young Lassen Idana from his provincial town and made him his paramour. Lassen perforce learned how to navigate the intricate byways of life at court. What he never expected, however, was to fall in love with Rohyr, a most inadvisable and impractical thing to do when one’s lover is sovereign ruler of the land. But anything worth having is worth fighting for, both figuratively and, as Lassen discovers, literally speaking.Contains hermaphroditism and explicit homoerotic sexual encounters.

    But when he meets Kieran Trevarde, a hard-hearted gunslinger with a dark magic lurking in his blood, Ash finds that necessity makes strange heroes... and love can change the world.

    Defying the new.The making of a legend—and a truly innovative re-imagining of Robin Hood. Rob of Loxley and his older sister Marion have been groomed from birth to take their parents’ places within the Old Religion. Despite this, when Rob finds an injured nobleman’s son in the forest, neither he nor Marion understand what befriending young Gamelyn could mean for the future of their beliefs. Already the ancient spirits are fading beneath the iron of nobleman’s politics and the stones of Church subjugation. More, the druid elders warn that Rob and Gamelyn are cast as sworn adversaries, locked in timeless and symbolic struggle for the greenwood’s Maiden. Instead, in a theological twist only a stroppy dissident could envision, Rob swears he’ll defend the sacred woodland of the Horned God and Lady Huntress to his last breath—if his god will let him be lover, not rival, to the one fated as his enemy.But in the eyes of Gamelyn’s Church, sodomy is unthinkable... and the old pagan magics are an evil that must be vanquished. ------ With a truly original take on the Robin Hood legends, this historical fantasy series sets Robin the outlaw archer as a queer, chaotic-neutral druid; Marion as pagan queen who is sister but not wife, and their consort a Christian--and thusly conflicted--nobleman.

    Jim Grimsley has created a fantasy that could have come right from our world where power and greed can tempt, and sometimes conquer, even the most rightist person and where knowing who your friends and enemies are can be very difficult if not impossible. Yet it is not our world. For in Kirith Kirin's world magic is real, immortals walk the land, and people are sometimes the playthings for the dark arts. The Blue Queen, upon resuming the throne while King Kirith Kirin's eternality is renewed in the Arthen forest, has partnered with a magician of the dark arts. No longer does she need to leave the throne to renew her eternal nature. Swayed by promises of the dark magician, she has claimed the throne forever and is extending her influence to the far corners of the world. Malleable grey clouds, sidewinding wind, and intelligent lightning bolts made the trip across the vast Girdle nearly impossible. Out of nowhere, the Blue Queen's Patrols made haste to kill the boy and the warrior before they could safely reach the deep forest of Arthen. Riding upon two magnificent stallions, one a royal Prince out of Queen Mnemarra, Jessex and his uncle Sivisal reached Arthen despite a deadly storm that reeked of magic. Thus begins Jessex's new life as he enters Arthen and moves into the royal court of Kirith Kirin.

    As the sheltered youngest son of a healer, Eiland of Summerton has heard of them all his life, the miserable creatures who share the great sickness brought down by the wrath of the gods. Yet unlike any of the illnesses Eiland's father treats in the village, this one is not passed by touch or cough or poison. It's given by the Cursed Ones. All it takes is three small words: I curse you.It never occurred to Eiland that a Cursed One could be young. Or handsome. Until he meets Charon, a wandering outcast who bears the Curse. One stolen kiss changes everything for Eiland and sends the two young men on a dangerous journey that neither can hope to survive—unless they set aside their differences and give in to forbidden love...