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The Steel Seraglio

Author: Mike Carey

Publisher: Open Road Media

Published: 2021-03-02

Total Pages: 482

ISBN-13: 1504065484

“A confident One Thousand and One Nights for our present . . . Furious pop entertainment—full of sex, passion, violence, and magic.” —Slant magazine This is the story of the legendary City of Women, told through the tales of those who founded it, championed it, and made it flourish. When the city of Bessa undergoes a violent coup, its lazy, laissez-faire ruler, Bokhari Al-Bokhari, is replaced by the religious zealot Hakkim Mehdad. With little use for the pleasures of the flesh, Hakkim sends his predecessor’s 365 concubines to a neighboring sultan as a gift. But when the new sultan discovers the concubines are harboring Al-Bokhari’s youngest son—a child who might grow up to challenge his rule—he repents of his mercy and sends his soldiers to slaughter the seraglio down to the last woman and child. What he doesn’t count on is a concubine trained in the art of murder—or the courage and fortitude of the women who will rise up with her to forge their own city out of the unforgiving desert. It’s an undertaking beset with challenges: hunger and thirst, Hakkim’s relentless hate, and the struggle to make a place for themselves in a world determined to underestimate and undermine them. Through a mosaic of voices and tales, we learn of the women’s miraculous rise, their time of prosperity—and how they carried with them the seed of their own destruction. “A thrilling tale.” —Publishers Weekly “A masterful, engaging and utterly fascinating story by three wonderful writers.” —SFRevu.com “The Steel Seraglio brings its alternate world of struggle, politics and magic very much to life.” —Locus

Inscape

Author: Louise Carey

Publisher: Gollancz

Published: 2021-01-21

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 1473230004

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'Louise Carey's dystopian future is chillingly plausible' Claire North 'Deftly written, mastefully paced, vividly imagined and absolutely gripping from the first page to last' Joe Hill Warning: use of this gate will take you outside of the InTech corporate zone. Different community guidelines may apply, and you may be asked to sign a separate end-user license agreement. Do you wish to continue? Tanta has trained all her young life for this. Her very first mission is a code red: to take her team into the unaffiliated zone just outside InTech's borders and retrieve a stolen hard drive. It should have been quick and simple, but a surprise attack kills two of her colleagues and Tanta barely makes it home alive. Determined to prove herself and partnered with a colleague whose past is a mystery even to himself, Tanta's investigation uncovers a sinister conspiracy that makes her question her own loyalties and the motives of everyone she used to trust. 'A propulsive thriller filled with great twists and reversals' SFX Introducing a razor-sharp debut SF thriller, INSCAPE holds a mirror up to our own reality by exploring just where our sinister corporation-led world might lead us. For fans of Bladerunner 2049, Mr Robot or 84K by Claire North.

The House of War and Witness

Author: M. R. Carey

Publisher: Hachette UK

Published: 2014-06-19

Total Pages: 424

ISBN-13: 0575132744

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In the year 1740, with the whole of Europe balanced on the brink of war, a company of Austrian soldiers is sent to the village of Narutsin to defend the border with Prussia. But what should be a routine posting is quickly revealed to be anything but. The previous garrison is gone, the great house of Pokoj, where they're to be billeted, a dilapidated ruin, and the people of Narutsin sullen and belligerent. Convinced the villagers are keeping secrets - and possibly consorting with the enemy - the commanding officer orders his junior lieutenant, Klaes, to investigate. While Klaes sifts through the villagers' truths, half-truths and lies, Drozde, the quartermaster's woman, is making uncomfortable discoveries of her own - about herself, her man, and the house where they've all been thrown together. Because far from being the empty shell it appears to be, Pokoj is actually teeming with people. It's just that they're all dead. And the dead know things - about Drozde, about the history of Pokoj, and about the terrible event that is rushing towards them all, seemingly unstoppable. The ghosts of Pokoj, the soldiers of the empress and the villagers of Narutsin are about to find themselves actors in a story that has been unfolding for centuries. It will end in blood - that much is written - but how much blood will depend on Klaes' honour, Drozde's skill and courage, and the keeping of an impossible promise...

The House of War and Witness

Author: Mike Carey

Publisher: Open Road Media

Published: 2021-03-02

Total Pages: 484

ISBN-13: 1504065492

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“A fantastical ghost story and a suspenseful military mystery . . . A daringly original fantasy novel” from the acclaimed authors of The Steel Seraglio (Publishers Weekly, starred review). In 1740, an Austrian infantry company more than two hundred strong arrives at the Prussian border. Their orders: to defend the town of Narutsin when war—inevitably—breaks out. But they don’t get the warm welcome they’re expecting. If anything, the locals seem strangely secretive, and the soldiers who previously garrisoned in the village have disappeared. Fearing the villagers may be consorting with the enemy, the commander orders his prim young lieutenant Klaes to investigate . . . On the outskirts of town, in a dilapidated manor known as Pokoj, the road-weary soldiers make their home for the winter. Accompanying them is Drozde, a camp follower and entertainer who possesses a very special talent: she can see and communicate with the dead. She’s the only one who knows that the crumbling mansion is far from empty. It’s teeming with ghosts—and they know her. Each spirit tells Drozde how they became a part of Pokoj’s sprawling history, hinting at its future as well as its past. As she listens to their tales, it becomes apparent that the story of the manor hasn’t yet ended—and that she and Klaes have their own parts to play in the horror that is to come . . . “All of the characters come alive on the pages—even the ghosts. . . . A compelling, accomplished novel.” —Strange Horizons “Delightfully odd . . . Subtle horror and extra special creepiness . . . A fine example of what the Careys are capable of.” —Starburst

Seraglio

Author: Janet Wallach

Publisher:

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 346

ISBN-13: 9780385490467

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Transporting readers to the menacing yet majestic world of eighteenth-century Turkey, biographer and Middle East expert Janet Wallach brilliantly re-imagines the life of Aimee Dubucq, cousin of Empress Josephine, in her first novel "Seraglio. At the age of thirteen, when en route from France to her home in Martinique, Aimee Dubucq is kidnapped by Algerian pirates. Blonde and blue-eyed, the genteel young girl is a valuable commodity, and she is soon placed in service in the Seraglio - the Ottoman Sultan's private world - in Topkapi Palace. As Dubucq, renamed Nakshidil ("embroidered on the heart") discovers the erotic secrets that win favor of kings and deftly learns the affairs of the empire, she struggles to retain her former identity, including her Catholic faith. Overtime Nakshidil becomes the intimate of several powerful sultans: wife to one, lover and confidante to another, and adoptive mother to a third. Her life often treads the tenuous line between sumptuous pleasures and mere survival until her final years when she is awarded control of the harem as the valide, mother of the Sultan. With phenomenal research and a mesmerizing voice, Janet Wallach provides a powerful and passionate glimpse of East-West history through one woman's distinctly European eyes.

Desert Queen

Author: Janet Wallach

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2010-11-30

Total Pages: 466

ISBN-13: 0307744361

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The definitive biography, mesmerizing and “richly textured ” (Chicago Tribune), that inspired the acclaimed documentary, Letters from Baghdad. With a new Afterword "Desert Queen...plucks Gertrude Bell out of the shadow of Lawrence of Arabia." —The Boston Globe Here is the story of Gertrude Bell, who explored, mapped, and excavated the Arab world throughout the early twentieth century. Recruited by British intelligence during World War I, she played a crucial role in obtaining the loyalty of Arab leaders, and her connections and information provided the brains to match T. E. Lawrence's brawn. After the war, she played a major role in creating the modern Middle East and was, at the time, considered the most powerful woman in the British Empire. In this masterful biography, Janet Wallach shows us the woman behind these achievements—a woman whose passion and defiant independence were at odds with the confined and custom-bound England she left behind. Too long eclipsed by Lawrence, Gertrude Bell emerges at last in her own right as a vital player on the stage of modern history, and as a woman whose life was both a heartbreaking story and a grand adventure.

The Belly of Paris

Author: Émile Zola

Publisher: Good Press

Published: 2023-12-27

Total Pages: 383

ISBN-13:

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The Belly of Paris (Le Ventre de Paris) is the third novel in Émile Zola's twenty-volume series Les Rougon-Macquart, first published in 1873. It is a novel of the teeming life which surrounds the great central markets of Paris. The book was originally translated into English by Henry Vizetelly and published in 1888 under the title Fat and Thin. After Vizetelly's imprisonment for obscene libel the novel was one of those revised and expurgated by his son, Ernest Alfred Vizetelly. The heroine is Lisa Quenu, a daughter of Antoine Macquart. She has become prosperous, and with prosperity her selfishness has increased. Her brother-in-law Florent had escaped from penal servitude in Cayenne and lived for a short time in her house, but she became tired of his presence and ultimately denounced him to the police. Émile Zola (1840 – 1902) was a French writer, the most important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism. He was a major figure in the political liberalization of France.

Fellside

Author: M. R. Carey

Publisher: Orbit

Published: 2016-04-05

Total Pages: 496

ISBN-13: 0316300306

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In the aftermath of a devastating fire, a prisoner is offered one chance at redemption in this haunting supernatural suspense from the author of USA Today bestseller, The Girl With All the Gifts. Fellside is a maximum security prison on the edge of the Yorkshire Moors. It's not the kind of place you'd want to end up. But it's where Jess Moulson could be spending the rest of her life. It's a place where even the walls whisper. And one voice belongs to a little boy with a message for Jess. Will she listen? Lose yourself in Fellside, M. R. Carey's chillingly atmospheric tale of addiction, revenge, and redemption.

The Second Sight of Zachary Cloudesley

Author: Sean Lusk

Publisher: Union Square & Co.

Published: 2023-12-05

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 1454950447

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The Second Sight of Zachary Cloudesley is a sparkling historical novel of wild and wonderful mechanical automata, love in a variety of forms, and gentle themes of identity, with a cast of fabulous characters. In 1755, Abel Cloudesley, a London watchmaker and creator of remarkable mechanical automata, is mourning his wife, Alice, who died giving birth to their son, Zachary. Six years later, Abel is further devastated when a freak workshop accident takes Zachary’s eye. With his new eye made of gold and lapis by Abel’s soft-spoken apprentice Tom, Zachary, now with an astonishing gift of second sight, is sent to live with his eccentric Aunt Franny in the country. Abel buries himself in work until he is coerced by shadowy figures into designing a chess-playing automaton and delivering it to Constantinople to spy on the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. After meeting the Sultan, Abel is not heard from again. Years later, teenage Zachary receives a letter suggesting that his father is still alive, a prisoner of the Sultan. Zachary sets off on a perilous journey to the Levant, determined to find Abel and bring him safely home. A BBC Between the Covers Book Club pick and London Sunday Times Historical Fiction Book of the Month, for fans of Pandora, The Essex Serpent, and The Night Circus. Longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2023 and the Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award 2023.

The Book of Koli

Author: M. R. Carey

Publisher: Orbit

Published: 2020-04-14

Total Pages: 383

ISBN-13: 0316477478

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"This is a beautiful book. Gripping, engaging, and absolutely worth the time it takes to burrow yourself into its reality. I can't recommend it highly enough." —Seanan McGuire The first in a masterful new trilogy from acclaimed author M. R. Carey, The Book of Koli begins the story of a young boy on a journey through a strange and deadly world of our making. Everything that lives hates us... Beyond the walls of the small village of Mythen Rood lies an unrecognizable landscape. A place where overgrown forests are filled with choker trees and deadly seeds that will kill you where you stand. And if they don't get you, one of the dangerous shunned men will. Koli has lived in Mythen Rood his entire life. He believes the first rule of survival is that you don't venture too far beyond the walls. He's wrong. "A captivating start to what promises to be an epic post-apocalyptic fable." —Kirkus "Enthralling...Koli embarks upon a journey as perilous as it is enlightening." —Guardian "The best thing I've read in a long time. I loved it." —Joanne Harris "Carey hefts astonishing storytelling power with plainspoken language, heartbreaking choices, and sincerity like an arrow to the heart." —Locus Look out for the next novels in the trilogy: The Trials of Koli and The Fall of Koli