Shadow's Claim
#1 New York Times bestseller Kresley Cole introduces The Dacians: Realm of Blood and Mist, a new paranormal series following the royal bloodline of Dacia, a vampire kingdom hidden within the Lore of the Immortals After Dark.
Shadow’s Claim features Prince Trehan, a ruthless master assassin who will do anything to possess Bettina, his beautiful sorceress mate, even compete for her hand in a blood-sport tournament— to the death.
HE WON’T BE DENIED
Trehan Daciano, known as the Prince of Shadows, has spent his life serving his people—striking in the night, quietly executing any threat to their realm. The coldly disciplined swordsman has never desired anything for himself—until he beholds Bettina, the sheltered ward of two of the Lore’s most fearsome villains.
SHE’S BOUND TO ANOTHER
Desperate to earn her guardians’ approval after a life-shattering mistake, young Bettina has no choice but to marry whichever suitor prevails—even though she’s lost her heart to another. Yet one lethal competitor, a mysterious cloaked swordsman, invades her dreams, tempting her with forbidden pleasure.
A BATTLE FOR HER BODY AND SOUL
Even if Trehan can survive the punishing contests to claim her as his wife, the true battle for Bettina’s heart is yet to come. And unleashing a millennium’s worth of savage need will either frighten his Bride away—or stoke Bettina’s own desires to a fever pitch. . . .
About the Author
Kresley Cole is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Immortals After Dark paranormal series. Her books have been translated into many foreign languages, garnered two RITA awards, and consistently appear on the bestseller lists in the U.S. and abroad. Visit her at KresleyCole.com.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
A savage kick to Princess Bettina of Abaddon’s back severed her spinal cord.
A blessing.
The searing pain that had been clawing through her entire being faded below her waist to pinpoints of pressure, then tingles, then . . .
Nothing.
Blessing. She’d long since stopped begging for her life, knew she’d never leave this field of poppies alive.
The four winged monsters who’d dragged her here had plans for her: as much agony as possible before her death.
Just as their kind had delivered to her sorceress mother twenty years before.
Though half demon, Bettina was weak in body, hopeless at fighting. She’d depended on her Sorceri power for protection—the one that these Vrekeners had siphoned from her as easily as they’d snatched the clothes from her body.
No longer could she open her swollen eyes. Her last sight? The leader standing over her, brandishing a scythe, his eyes frenzied. His claw-tipped wings had blocked the light of a low yellow moon. The scythe’s blade wasn’t fashioned out of metal, but of black flame. . . .
Yet Bettina could still hear, was still aware. In the distance, a new age band played in an outdoor arena. Young mortals danced and sang—
The force of one kick jostled her over onto her belly. Her mauled face shoved against crushed poppies. The leader played with her as a hawk would a mouse, ravaging the meat from its bones. His followers jeered and doused her with bottles of spirits.
Menacing yells, steel-toed boots, the blistering sting of alcohol.
Ah, gods, she was too aware. She tried desperately to lose herself in memories of a boy with smiling blue eyes and sun-kissed hair.
He doesn’t know how much I love him. So many things I wish I’d done—
Her upper body exploded with even more pain, as if to compensate for the numbness in her fractured legs. She could perceive her broken ribs jutting from her skin. Her mangled arms draped limply across the ground where they’d fallen when she’d last tried to protect her head. . . . Anguish multiplied.
Or perhaps the Vrekeners’ blows rained down more swiftly. The kill was near.
All she’d wanted was to go to a party with her mortal college friends. She’d been excited, happy to fit in with them, or to appear to—as a halfling, she’d never fit in before. Little did she know that she’d already drawn her enemy’s notice with her sorcery. She’d never intentionally used it—
Over all other pain, she perceived the heat of that burning scythe descending ever closer to her. Hotter, hotter, scorching.
Alcohol on her skin, the black flame . . .
Bettina choked on a sob. They planned to burn her?
Suddenly she felt weightless. This is what dying feels like?
No, she was traveling. Summoned? Dear gods, yes, the demon in her had been summoned across realms. Naked, powerless, sightless, she slipped from that field in the mortal world to her home plane of Abaddon.
In a flash, the poppies were replaced by cold marble, a balm on what was left of her skin. That awareness returned. I’m lying on the floor of my castle’s court, broken, wearing only my blood and the Vrekeners’ rank liquor. The courtiers still gossip and laugh. Can’t they see me?
She tried to scream for help; blood bubbled up over her lips. Can’t scream, can’t move. She could only listen. A conversation between her godfather Raum—the Grand Duke of the Deathly Ones—and another was already under way.
“Now you’ve done it, Raum.” It was Caspion the Tracker. The demon she secretly loved. “Tina hates being summoned with that medallion.” Not at present! “She considers it a leash.”
Her guardians had insisted on it, a condition of her leaving Abaddon.
“Ha! It probably makes her feel more like a demon,” Raum said in a gruff tone, knowing that wasn’t true. They’d had words over his use of the mystical medallion. “Besides, she told me she was coming home from college by month’s end.”
“You know time moves differently in the mortal realm,” Caspion said, amusement lacing his words. “And more, she said she was very busy but would try to visit—”
Bettina heard a courtier gasp. They’ve seen me. Murmurs rose to a furor.
From the front of the court, Caspion demanded, “What is it?” Closer by, he asked, “Who is this pitiful creature? No, no, this isn’t Tina. It can’t be!” A touch on her forehead . . . a sucked in breath of recognition . . . a roar of grief. “Bettina!”
Raum bellowed, “What has happened?”
“Tina, wake up!” Caspion commanded her. “Ah, gods, stay with me. Stay.”
For him, she managed to slit open one eye. His curling blond hair hung over his harried face. His own eyes had gone from midnight blue to black, signaling his emotion. They even started watering as he gazed over her injuries.
She saw a shining hero of old. Her beloved Cas.
He yanked off his warm coat, covering her. “A physic!” he yelled into the crowd. “Now!”
Others gathered around her. She heard Raum stomping closer. “Who’s done this to my little Tina?” Something broke directly. No doubt from his fist. “Damn you, tell me! Who’s hurt her?”
She tried to answer, parting her lips. . . . Her jaw must be broken.
Another anguished roar. Oh, Cas.
Visibly making an effort to control himself, he said, “You hang on and stay with me.”
There’s nowhere else I’d rather be than with you.
“I’ll get you through this, Tina. I swear it. You’re going to be all right,” he said, his voice thick. “Don’t leave me.”
Bettina felt the tiniest sliver of hope, something to fight for. Surely Cas returned her feelings, saw her as more than a little sister.
“Will she live?” Raum bit out. “She’s not hardy like a demoness, not strong like we are.”
She hadn’t been a true demon before. Now she was no longer a true sorceress. They took my root power. My soul.
A male she didn’t recognize asked, “Has she frozen into her immortality?” The physic?
Cas answered, “She was on the cusp. Maybe by now . . .”
“We need a Sorceri healer. If we act quickly, the princess could recover,” the physic said, but hastily qualified his statement: “Her body could recover from this.”
What did that mean?
Raum ordered, “Find Tina’s godmother! Don’t return from the Sorceri plane without Morgana!” Coming into Bettina’s line of vision, Raum yelled to Cas, “I should never have let her go! I was too lenient! Things will change in Abaddon!” His eyes were glinting, his voice choked up. The crusty old warrior was at a loss. He began ramming his horns against a stone wall, roaring to everyone, “Heed my words! We return to olden ways!”
Free of the attack, Bettina’s body started trying to regenerate, nerves sparking to life once more. Pain erupted all over her, blistering waves of it.
Even in the midst of her escalating agony and lingering horror, the words olden ways struck fear in her heart.
Prince Trehan Daciano shot awake in the middle of the day, bolting upright from his pallet of furs.
He gazed around in confusion, seeing his usual surroundings—shelves of books, weapons, his sideboard with carafes of mead-laced blood.
Though he’d experienced no nightmare, sleep had been snatched from him, replaced by a marked unease. With each moment, he grew even more on edge, a feeling like . . . like emptiness settling in his chest.
Like dread. So different from his usual numbness.
Brows drawn, he rose, tracing across the spacious room to one of the curtained balconies.
These grand apartments had once been the royal library. Centuries ago, he’d moved in and never moved out, haunting this place until no other member of the family would enter.
Time and history seeped from these familiar stones. He knew every crag and groove as well as he knew his own grim reflection. Like these stones, I quietly endure the ages.
Drawing back the thick curtain, he gazed outside. From this height, Trehan could survey far into the Realm of Blood and Mist, the secreted lands of the mighty Dacians.
The royal city below was still at this hour. Only the sound of Dacia’s bubbling blood fountains could be heard.
Across from his residence stood the majestic black stone castle, the heart of the realm—abandoned without a king. How many of his kinsmen had perished trying to seize that keep? How much deceit and murder surrounded it?
The warring houses of the royal family had once boasted hundreds of members each—now dwindled down to a handful.
For an immortal family, they knew death so well.
Trehan was the last born to the House of Shadow, the assassin arm of the family. Though he was a potential contender for the crown—along with four of his lethal cousins—he had no real aspiration to seize it. A quiet loner by nature, he loathed spectacle and attention, was content to blend into the shadows.
He only wanted to perform his duty. For nearly a millennium, he’d been the enforcer of law, a merciless assassin.
As his long-dead father had oft told him, “You are the sword of the kingdom, Trehan. Dacia will be your family, your friend, your mistress, the grand love of your life. That is your lot, Son. Want for nothing else. And you will never be disappointed.”
Trehan had once foolishly entertained secret hopes, but he’d eventually embraced his father’s teachings. As was logical.
I want for not...
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Spider's Trap
Keep your friends close but your enemies within stabbing distance.
One important lesson I’ve learned in the assassination business is that to be the best you have to roll with the punches. Now that I’m queen of Ashland’s underworld—by default, not by choice—a lot more punches are being thrown my way. But I suppose that’s the price of victory for taking down some of the underworld’s top dogs. Good thing I have my Ice and Stone magic to help me survive my volatile new position. Just when I think things are finally settling down, someone tries to murder me during a hush-hush underworld meeting. But the real surprise is how strangely familiar my shadowy assailant seems to be.
My job is to maintain order among killers, crooks, and thieves, and soon I’m embroiled in a bloody game where the ability to keep secrets could be the greatest superpower of all. My enemies have all sharpened their knives and laid their traps, waiting for me to fall. But this Spider weaves her own webs of death…
The Darkest Star
In the world of the Lux, secrets thrive, lies shatter, and love is undeniable.
#1 New York Times, USA Today, and internationally bestselling author Jennifer L. Armentrout brings her trademark drama and intrigue to a new romantic YA science fiction series with The Darkest Star. A girl pulled into in a world she doesn't understand finds herself confronted by long buried secrets, a betrayal that could tear her life apart...and Armentrout's most swoonworthy book boyfriend yet.
Seventeen-year-old Evie Dasher knows firsthand the devastating consequences of humanity's war with the aliens. When she's caught up in a raid at a notorious club known as one of the few places where humans and the surviving Luxen can mingle freely, she meets Luc, an unnaturally beautiful guy she initially assumes is a Luxen...but he is in fact something much more powerful. Her growing attraction for Luc will lead her deeper and deeper into a world she'd only heard about, a world where everything she thought she knew will be turned on its head...
The Prodigal Daughter
Review
"One of the top ten storytellers in the world." -Los Angeles Times
"Chalk up another smash hit for Jeffrey Archer...an exceptional storyteller."
-John Barkham Reviews
-John Barkham Reviews
"Fast-moving and compelling."-Library Journal
"A master at mixing power, politics, and profit into fiction."--Entertainment Weekly
"Archer is a master entertainer."--Time
"Archer plots with skill, and keeps you turning the pages."--The Boston Globe
"Cunning plots, silken style...Archer plays a cat-and-mouse game with the reader."
--The New York Times
--The New York Times
"A storyteller in the class of Alexandre Dumas...unsurpassed skill...making the reader wonder intensely what will happen next."--The Washington Post
"Archer is one of the most captivating storytellers writing today. His novels are dramatic, fast moving, totally entertaining-and almost impossible to put down."-Pittsburgh Press
Product Description
With a will of steel, Polish immigrant Florentyna Rosnovski is indeed Abel's daughter. She shares with her father a love of America, his ideals, and his dream for the future. But she wants more to be the first female president.
Golden boy Richard Kane was born into a life of luxury. The scion of a banking magnate he is successful, handsome, and determined to carve his own path in the world-and to
build a future with the woman he loves.
build a future with the woman he loves.
With Florentyna's ultimate goal only a heartbeat away, both are about to discover the shattering price of power as a titanic battle of betrayal and deception reaches out from the past-a blood feud between two generations that threatens to destroy everything Florentyna and Richard have fought to achieve.
The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Amazon.com Review
Mohsin Hamid's first novel, Moth Smoke, dealt with the confluence of personal and political themes, and his second, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, revisits that territory in the person of Changez, a young Pakistani. Told in a single monologue, the narrative never flags. Changez is by turns naive, sinister, unctuous, mildly threatening, overbearing, insulting, angry, resentful, and sad. He tells his story to a nameless, mysterious American who sits across from him at a Lahore cafe. Educated at Princeton, employed by a first-rate valuation firm, Changez was living the American dream, earning more money than he thought possible, caught up in the New York social scene and in love with a beautiful, wealthy, damaged girl. The romance is negligible; Erica is emotionally unavailable, endlessly grieving the death of her lifelong friend and boyfriend, Chris.
Changez is in Manila on 9/11 and sees the towers come down on TV. He tells the American, "...I smiled. Yes, despicable as it may sound, my initial reaction was to be remarkably pleased... I was caught up in the symbolism of it all, the fact that someone had so visibly brought America to her knees..." When he returns to New York, there is a palpable change in attitudes toward him, starting right at immigration. His name and his face render him suspect.
Ongoing trouble between Pakistan and India urge Changez to return home for a visit, despite his parents' advice to stay where he is. While there, he realizes that he has changed in a way that shames him. "I was struck at first by how shabby our house appeared... I was saddened to find it in such a state... This was where I came from... and it smacked of lowliness." He exorcises that feeling and once again appreciates his home for its "unmistakable personality and idiosyncratic charm." While at home, he lets his beard grow. Advised to shave it, even by his mother, he refuses. It will be his line in the sand, his statement about who he is. His company sends him to Chile for another business valuation; his mind filled with the troubles in Pakistan and the U.S. involvement with India that keeps the pressure on. His work and the money he earns have been overtaken by resentment of the United States and all it stands for.
Hamid's prose is filled with insight, subtly delivered: "I felt my age: an almost childlike twenty-two, rather than that permanent middle-age that attaches itself to the man who lives alone and supports himself by wearing a suit in a city not of his birth." In telling of the janissaries, Christian boys captured by Ottomans and trained to be soldiers in the Muslim Army, his Chilean host tells him: "The janissaries were always taken in childhood. It would have been far more difficult to devote themselves to their adopted empire, you see, if they had memories they could not forget." Changez cannot forget, and Hamid makes the reader understand that--and all that follows. --Valerie Ryan
A Conversation with Mohsin Hamid
Set in modern-day Pakistan, Mohsin Hamid's debut novel, Moth Smoke, went on to win awards and was listed as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His bold new novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, is a daring, fast-paced monologue of a young Pakistani man telling his life story to a mysterious American stranger. It's a controversial look at the dark side of the American Dream, exploring the aftermath of 9/11, international unease, and the dangerous pull of nostalgia. Amazon.com senior editor Brad Thomas Parsons shared an e-mail exchange with Mohsin Hamid to talk about his powerful new book
Set in modern-day Pakistan, Mohsin Hamid's debut novel, Moth Smoke, went on to win awards and was listed as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His bold new novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, is a daring, fast-paced monologue of a young Pakistani man telling his life story to a mysterious American stranger. It's a controversial look at the dark side of the American Dream, exploring the aftermath of 9/11, international unease, and the dangerous pull of nostalgia. Amazon.com senior editor Brad Thomas Parsons shared an e-mail exchange with Mohsin Hamid to talk about his powerful new book
Read the Amazon.com Interview with Mohsin Hamid
From Publishers Weekly
Hamid's second book (after Moth Smoke) is an intelligent and absorbing 9/11 novel, written from the perspective of Changez, a young Pakistani whose sympathies, despite his fervid immigrant embrace of America, lie with the attackers. The book unfolds as a monologue that Changez delivers to a mysterious American operative over dinner at a Lahore, Pakistan, cafe. Pre-9/11, Princeton graduate Changez is on top of the world: recruited by an elite New York financial company, the 22-year-old quickly earns accolades from his hard-charging supervisor, plunges into Manhattan's hip social whirl and becomes infatuated with Erica, a fellow Princeton graduate pining for her dead boyfriend. But after the towers fall, Changez is subject to intensified scrutiny and physical threats, and his co-workers become markedly less affable as his beard grows in ("a form of protest," he says). Erica is committed to a mental institution, and Changez, upset by his adopted country's "growing and self-righteous rage," slacks off at work and is fired. Despite his off-putting commentary, the damaged Changez comes off as honest and thoughtful, and his creator handles him with a sympathetic grace. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
The War of Two Queens
From the desperation of golden crowns…
Casteel Da’Neer knows all too well that very few are as cunning or vicious as the Blood Queen, but no one, not even him, could’ve prepared for the staggering revelations. The magnitude of what the Blood Queen has done is almost unthinkable.
And born of mortal flesh…
Nothing will stop Poppy from freeing her King and destroying everything the Blood Crown stands for. With the strength of the Primal of Life’s guards behind her, and the support of the wolven, Poppy must convince the Atlantian generals to make war her way—because there can be no retreat this time. Not if she has any hope of building a future where both kingdoms can reside in peace.
A great primal power rises…
Together, Poppy and Casteel must embrace traditions old and new to safeguard those they hold dear—to protect those who cannot defend themselves. But war is only the beginning. Ancient primal powers have already stirred, revealing the horror of what began eons ago. To end what the Blood Queen has begun, Poppy might have to become what she has been prophesied to be—what she fears the most.
As the Harbinger of Death and Destruction.