Evidence points to a rebel group trying to stab fear into the very heart of the empire. Inspector Khlid begins a harrowing hunt for those responsible, but when a larger conspiracy comes to light, she struggles to trust even the officers around her.

    Sasha is a princess, the like of which the highland country of Lenayin has never seen before. Spurning her royal heritage to be raised by the great warrior, Kessligh, her exquisite swordplay astonishes all who witness it. But Sasha is still young, untested in battle and often led by her rash temper. In the complex world of Lenayin loyalties, her defiant wilfulness is attracting the wrong kind of attention. Lenayin is a land almost divided by its two faiths: the Verenthane of the ruling classes and the pagan Goeren-yai, amongst whom Sasha now lives. The Goeren-yai worship swordplay and honour and begin to see Sasha as the great spirit—the Synnich—who will unite them. But Sasha is still searching for what she believes and must choose her side carefully. When the Udalyn people—the symbol of Goeren-yai pride and courage—are attacked, Sasha will face her moment of testing. How will she act? Is she ready to lead? Can she be the saviour they need her to be?

    War will tear it down.Seventeen years after rebels stormed the streets, factions divide Kisia. Only the firm hand of the god-emperor holds the empire together. But when a shocking betrayal destroys a tense alliance with neighboring Chiltae, all that has been won comes crashing down.In Kisia, Princess Miko Ts'ai is a prisoner in her own castle. She dreams of claiming her empire, but the path to power could rip it, and her family, asunder.In Chiltae, assassin Cassandra Marius is plagued by the voices of the dead. Desperate, she accepts a contract that promises to reward her with a cure if she helps an empire fall.And on the border between nations, Captain Rah e'Torin and his warriors are exiles forced to fight in a foreign war or die.As an empire dies, three warriors will rise. They will have to ride the storm or drown in its blood.The Reborn EmpireWe Ride the StormFor more from Devin Madson, check out:The Vengeance TrilogyThe Blood of WhisperersThe Gods of ViceThe Grave at Storm's End

    Kiernan Dunne abandoned his family ties to help Kate fight the Cyrists, and he's never regretted that for one moment. But he doesn't understand why Kate can't remember that night in 1893 Chicago, when she turned back to face the killer chasing them through the smoky corridors of the World's Fair Hotel. Kate placed the CHRONOS key around his neck and made his eight year old self promise to wear it always, and that's a promise Kiernan has never broken.When Kate suddenly vanishes after a Cyrist-engineered time shift, that hidden medallion is Kiernan's only hope for finding her. He returns to the Cyrist fold to look for clues, but his search will lead him back to the question that has haunted him for years--what really happened after he left Kate at the World's Fair Hotel?This digital novella gives Timebound readers a glimpse at Kate in another timeline and helps set the stage for Time's Edge, the second book in The CHRONOS Files Series, coming from Skyscape in October.

    . .You can't change your fate - so throw yourself into battle, because you'll either win or wake up drinking mead in the halls of your ancestors. That's what Finn's tribe believe.But when their settlement is massacred by a hostile tribe and Finn and several friends, companions and rivals make their escape across a brutal, unfamiliar landscape, Finn will fight harder than he's ever fought in his life. He wants to live - even if he only lives long enough to tell Thyri Treelegs how he feels about her.The David Gemmell Award nominated author of Age of Iron returns with You Die When You Die - in which a mismatched group of refugees battle animals and monsters, determined assassins, depraved tribes, an unforgiving land and each other as they cross a continent to fulfill a prophecy.

    Caught in one feud too many, he’s on the verge of becoming a dead barbarian – leaving nothing behind him but bad songs, dead friends, and a lot of happy enemies. Nobleman Captain Jezal dan Luthar, dashing officer, and paragon of selfishness, has nothing more dangerous in mind than fleecing his friends at cards and dreaming of glory in the fencing circle. But war is brewing, and on the battlefields of the frozen North they fight by altogether bloodier rules. Inquisitor Glokta, cripple turned torturer, would like nothing better than to see Jezal come home in a box. But then Glokta hates everyone: cutting treason out of the Union one confession at a time leaves little room for friendship. His latest trail of corpses may lead him right to the rotten heart of government, if he can stay alive long enough to follow it. Enter the wizard, Bayaz. A bald old man with a terrible temper and a pathetic assistant, he could be the First of the Magi, he could be a spectacular fraud, but whatever he is, he's about to make the lives of Logen, Jezal, and Glokta a whole lot more difficult. Murderous conspiracies rise to the surface, old scores are ready to be settled, and the line between hero and villain is sharp enough to draw blood.

    The Brothers of the Sixth Order are devoted to battle, and Vaelin will be trained and hardened to the austere, celibate, and dangerous life of a Warrior of the Faith. He has no family now save the Order.Vaelin’s father was Battle Lord to King Janus, ruler of the unified realm. Vaelin’s rage at being deprived of his birthright and dropped at the doorstep of the Sixth Order like a foundling knows no bounds. He cherishes the memory of his mother, and what he will come to learn of her at the Order will confound him. His father, too, has motives that Vaelin will come to understand. But one truth overpowers all the rest: Vaelin Al Sorna is destined for a future he has yet to comprehend. A future that will alter not only the realm, but the world.

    Then the half-mad and completely bored Shadan Khairn invaded Gen's village to winter there and start a war. He shoved a sword in Gen's hands and tormented his body, shaping a bard into a warrior to be killed for sport. As the days of torture pile up like the snow, Gen searches for death. But the day is at hand when the shattered shards of the world will knit together again and the world’s slain god be reborn. The mighty Ha'Ulrich will be the father, the mysterious Chalaine the mother. In dangerous times, the holy couple doesn't need a bard. They need a warrior. And Gen needs a reason to live.

    Seven were forged by the first Sovereign of the Seven Isles and bound to the bloodline of each of the seven Island Kings in exchange for their loyalty to the Old Law. Each sword is as long as a man’s arm, as wide as a man’s thumb and so thin it can’t be seen when viewed from the edge. Thinblade is the story of Alexander’s quest to find the ancient sword, claim the throne of Ruatha and raise an army to stand against the enemy that has awoken to claim dominion over all of the Seven Isles.

    On the eve of a recurring catastrophic event known to extinguish nations and reshape continents, a troubled orphan evades death and slavery to uncover her own bloody past… while a world goes to war with itself.In the frozen kingdom of Saiduan, invaders from another realm are decimating whole cities, leaving behind nothing but ash and ruin.As the dark star of the cataclysm rises, an illegitimate ruler is tasked with holding together a country fractured by civil war, a precocious young fighter is asked to betray his family and a half-Dhai general must choose between the eradication of her father’s people or loyalty to her alien Empress.Through tense alliances and devastating betrayal, the Dhai and their allies attempt to hold against a seemingly unstoppable force as enemy nations prepare for a coming together of worlds as old as the universe itself.In the end, one world will rise – and many will perish.

    The Strike at Shayol Ghul was a short piece written by Robert Jordan in 1996 to explain the events surrounding the imprisonment of the Dark One and the circumstances surrounding it.

    Martin and award-winning editor Gardner Dozois is filled with subtle shades of gray. Twenty-one all-original stories, by an all-star list of contributors, will delight and astonish you in equal measure with their cunning twists and dazzling reversals. And George R.R. Martin himself offers a brand-new A Game of Thrones tale chronicling one of the biggest rogues in the entire history of Ice and Fire.Follow along with the likes of Gillian Flynn, Joe Abercrombie, Neil Gaiman, Patrick Rothfuss, Scott Lynch, Cherie Priest, Garth Nix, and Connie Willis, as well as other masters of literary sleight-of-hand, in this rogues gallery of stories that will plunder your heart — and yet leave you all the richer for it.Contents:- Tough Times All Over by Joe Abercrombie (a Red Country story)- What Do You Do? (aka The Grownup) by Gillian Flynn- The Inn of the Seven Blessings by Matthew Hughes- Bent Twig by Joe R. Lansdale (a Hap and Leonard story)- Tawny Petticoats by Michael Swanwick- Provenance by David Ball- The Roaring Twenties by Carrie Vaughn- A Year and a Day in Old Theradane by Scott Lynch- Bad Brass by Bradley Denton- Heavy Metal by Cherie Priest- The Meaning of Love by Daniel Abraham- A Better Way to Die by Paul Cornell (a Jonathan Hamilton story)- Ill Seen in Tyre by Steven Saylor- A Cargo of Ivories by Garth Nix (a Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz story)- Diamonds From Tequila by Walter Jon Williams (a Dagmar story)- The Caravan to Nowhere by Phyllis Eisenstein (a Tales of Alaric the Minstrel story)- The Curious Affair of the Dead Wives by Lisa Tuttle- How the Marquis Got His Coat Back by Neil Gaiman (a Neverwhere story)- Now Showing by Connie Willis- The Lightning Tree by Patrick Rothfuss (a Kingkiller Chronicle story)- The Rogue Prince, or, A King’s Brother by George R.R. Martin (a Song of Ice and Fire story)

    Trained in the fighting arts and the laws of Tristia, the Greatcoats are travelling Magisters upholding King’s Law. They are heroes. Or at least they were, until they stood aside while the Dukes took the kingdom, and impaled their King’s head on a spike.Now Tristia is on the verge of collapse and the barbarians are sniffing at the borders. The Dukes bring chaos to the land, while the Greatcoats are scattered far and wide, reviled as traitors, their legendary coats in tatters. All they have left are the promises they made to King Paelis, to carry out one final mission.But if they have any hope of fulfilling the King’s dream, the divided Greatcoats must reunite, or they will also have to stand aside as they watch their world burn…

    He is high priest and emperor, a man whose power, wit, and charm are all that preserves a tenuous peace. Yet Prisms never last, and Guile knows exactly how long he has left to live.When Guile discovers he has a son, born in a far kingdom after the war that put him in power, he must decide how much he's willing to pay to protect a secret that could tear his world apart.

    Jemisin.” -- BooknestA brilliantly imaginative talent makes her exciting debut with this epic historical military fantasy, inspired by the bloody history of China’s twentieth century and filled with treachery and magic, in the tradition of Ken Liu’s Grace of Kings and N.K. Jemisin’s Inheritance Trilogy.When Rin aced the Keju—the Empire-wide test to find the most talented youth to learn at the Academies—it was a shock to everyone: to the test officials, who couldn’t believe a war orphan from Rooster Province could pass without cheating; to Rin’s guardians, who believed they’d finally be able to marry her off and further their criminal enterprise; and to Rin herself, who realized she was finally free of the servitude and despair that had made up her daily existence. That she got into Sinegard—the most elite military school in Nikan—was even more surprising.But surprises aren’t always good.Because being a dark-skinned peasant girl from the south is not an easy thing at Sinegard. Targeted from the outset by rival classmates for her color, poverty, and gender, Rin discovers she possesses a lethal, unearthly power—an aptitude for the nearly-mythical art of shamanism. Exploring the depths of her gift with the help of a seemingly insane teacher and psychoactive substances, Rin learns that gods long thought dead are very much alive—and that mastering control over those powers could mean more than just surviving school.For while the Nikara Empire is at peace, the Federation of Mugen still lurks across a narrow sea. The militarily advanced Federation occupied Nikan for decades after the First Poppy War, and only barely lost the continent in the Second. And while most of the people are complacent to go about their lives, a few are aware that a Third Poppy War is just a spark away . . .Rin’s shamanic powers may be the only way to save her people. But as she finds out more about the god that has chosen her, the vengeful Phoenix, she fears that winning the war may cost her humanity . . . and that it may already be too late.