Launch Day : Into the Blight

Our latest Fantasy outing is Into the Blight by Jonathan Ward. 

It is a time of turmoil and uncertainty.

For decades the Bask have ruled over the six clans of Arran. Now they rule no longer: overthrown by a creature from legend that wields terrifying power, and seeks to remake the land according to her own inscrutable designs.

Fearing that the creature might turn her attention their way, the rulers of the neighbouring kingdom of Taleria seek anything that could stand against her might. They find it in the past: in the tales surrounding a cursed land and an ancient power buried there. An expedition is mounted to claim this power for Taleria.

But there are some things in the world that should very definitely remain buried…

Read more here 

Contact us for review copies or author interviews adele@foxspirit.co.uk

Into the Blight

Into the Blight by Jonathan Ward
Cover Art by Kieran Walsh

It is a time of turmoil and uncertainty.

For decades the Bask have ruled over the six clans of Arran. Now they rule no longer: overthrown by a creature from legend that wields terrifying power, and seeks to remake the land according to her own inscrutable designs.

Fearing that the creature might turn her attention their way, the rulers of the neighbouring kingdom of Taleria seek anything that could stand against her might. They find it in the past: in the tales surrounding a cursed land and an ancient power buried there. An expedition is mounted to claim this power for Taleria.

But there are some things in the world that should very definitely remain buried…

Buy this book

 

Prologue
The Kantor Pass

The mountains were wailing.

Dana had never considered herself particularly imaginative, but even she had to admit that was how it sounded. It
had been coming and going for hours, and despite its increasing familiarity the haunting noise never failed to make her shiver. Of course, that might also have had something to do with the iciness of the wind, to be expected this high up. It was easy to see why the locals had nicknamed this place the Pass of Ghosts.

She was lying flat at the top of a steep slope, overlooking a winding gorge that opened up into the pass proper about a mile further to the east. Over two dozen scouts had accompanied her, though as she cast a quick glance to either side of her she could only see the nearest two. Even then they were hard to spot; each wearing concealing cloaks dyed the shade of the mountain rocks all around them. They were all Black Wolves: this whole area had been part of their lands for a long time, and nobody knew it better than they. If any had objections to being led by a woman not of their clan, they had thankfully kept them to themselves.

Dana shook her head, frowning at her lapse in concentration. Things had been chaotic ever since Saramanth had
risen to power over the six clans almost a season ago, and she couldn’t remember the last time she had actually had a decent night’s sleep.. That was no excuse, though. If her party screwed up here many soldiers could die, and she wouldn’t allow that to happen.

Skytown

Skytown by K.C. Shaw

Cover by Jenny Haines

Skytown is a fantasy adventure of airships and piracy, and the first full length outing for Lizzy and Jo, characters that have appeared in a number of K.C. Shaw’s short stories. 

Four months ago, Jo Clarke and her friend Lizzy McGowan stole an airship in Amprad and flew off to see the world. Now they’re out of money. But when they down a blimp to rob it, they get much more than they bargained for. Someone has already shot the passengers. Only one wounded young man survives and he’s not talking – except to lie. All Jo and Lizzy salvage are some coded paper that hint about a powerful weapon – a weapon sought after by the emperor of Ampra, the king of Hule and the notorious air pirate Keez. If Jo and Lizzy turn the weapon over to Amprad or Hule, they’ll be pardoned for air piracy. They’ll also start a war. The only way to avoid war is to join up with the cold-hearted Captain Keez – and steal the very weapon everyone wants.

Buy this book

 

 

Launch Day

The Hobgoblin’s Herald is now available!

Andrew’s debut is a fantastic fantasy adventure for lovers of traditional fantasy and those looking for something a but different. 

Cover art by Tabatha Stirling

There are monsters in the forests of Katahia, and not all of them are human…
 
When a poacher’s daughter saves one of their chieftains, she is drawn into the twisted world of the dreaded hobgoblins, where life is cheap and pity is weakness. Together, the girl and the malignant beasts must cross a realm on the cusp of dynastic civil war, in search of a land where they might thrive, or else be eradicated in the coming conflict.
 
As the road before her grows ever darker and her allies ever stranger, Mallory must choose which side she owes loyalty, and what she is willing to do in order to survive.

Read the opening paragraphs here 

Find the book on Amazon uk here

Contact me at adele@foxspirit.co.uk if you are interested in reviewing The Hobgoblin’s Herald or interviewing the author. 

The Hobgoblin’s Herald

The Hobgoblin’s Herald
By A R Aston
Cover art and layout by Tabatha Stirling

There are monsters in the forests of Katahia, and not all of them are human…
 
When a poacher’s daughter saves one of their chieftains, she is drawn into the twisted world of the dreaded hobgoblins, where life is cheap and pity is weakness. Together, the girl and the malignant beasts must cross a realm on the cusp of dynastic civil war, in search of a land where they might thrive, or else be eradicated in the coming conflict.
 
As the road before her grows ever darker and her allies ever stranger, Mallory must choose which side she owes loyalty, and what she is willing to do in order to survive.
 

Buy this book

Opening Paragraphs

‘The fetters of the Aelf were made of sapphires, the walls of their cells silver and ivory. It was nothing like the dank black dungeons of menfolk, or the festering oubliettes of Hezra Half-Gremlin. This cell was bright, and cold and austere. It hurt her eyes to look upon the mirror-polished star metal that entombed her here. And so the Herald dangled in a darkness of her own imposing, eyes screwed shut.
Her shackles rubbed unpleasantly against her flesh, and when she cried out, the sound was without echo. The walls
seemed to consume her screams and nullify her protests. Her captors had no desire to listen to her entreaties. Everything she said would be considered a lie by the Fated Ones. Thus she was doomed to suffer an ignoble, yet relatively painless death by their hands. She had days at most, but it was impossible to judge just how long that would be, for days were meaningless in a realm without night to mark the cycles.
They’d taken her bone-threaded war braids, and stripped the Herald of her rune-etched armour of boiled leather and
foraged steel. Upon capture, they’d even scrubbed her face of the blood marks, leaving only the silvery scars that formed their base behind. Like a cat declawed, the Aelf divested her of her scimitar, her daggers, and her sling. Now she wore a simple habit of pale blue silk, but this did nothing to disguise the fact she was a reviled heathen fated to die. She dangled from the ceiling by her hands, a flank of beef hung for smoking. Her bare feet dangled helplessly beneath her. They were the palest they’d been in years. The Aelf could not tolerate filth, not a single gram of it, not even caking their prisoners’ soles.
They had kept her fed with bland wafers and crystal still water, which seemed to sap her strength and will to fight with every mouthful. They could have poisoned her by slipping something odourless and colourless into the daily rations, but she suspected not. They simply had no need to nourish her or poison her. That was the worst thing of all, they didn’t hate her. She meant nothing to the tall, gleaming nightmares. She was an obstruction to remove and her captors would carry out her sentence with a workmanlike efficiency.
The Herald wondered where her allies were now. Were they even alive? She didn’t even entertain the notion they’d
be coming to save her. These were not those kinds of allies. Polder might have helped, but that passive psychotic was next to useless in a scrap.
The Fated Ones would kill her, unless she fought for herself. That was always the way it went.
Each day, she felt her resolve weakening. Her will was maintained now by hate and fear. Curse them for their indifference! 
With her eyes closed, she dreamt of the spiralling nightmare which had brought her to this ignominious terminus.
The five-limbed leviathans of Ashebos, the flying cities, the incandescent Lance of Rael, the black naga, the Djinncallers, the Eater of Names; all these things she had seen, all that pain and wonderment she had experienced, had sprung from a singular event, back in a different life, a different world.
It had been an act of mercy, for one who did not deserve an ounce of it.
She heard the whisper-quiet footsteps of her gaoler in the corridor outside. The lock on the door rattled, as simultaneously the bolts barring it were thrown open one by one. The prisoner clenched her fists, bared her teeth, and drew her feet up to her chest, like an animal tensing for the pounce. She spat bloody phlegm on their pristine floor, which made her smile. If the Aelf wanted her dead, they would need to get their hands dirty. She’d tear at them like a mad shrike. She’d make them work for their kill. She would teach them hate.’

 

 

Cover Reveal : Hobgoblin’s Herald

This summer has a couple of fantastic new releases coming. One of which is the fantasy novel ‘Hobgoblin’s Herald’ by A.R. Aston. 

The book will be launched on 1st July so there will be plenty of time to grab a copy before Edge.Lit and get Andrew to sign it. 

In the mean time, here is the cover by the fantastic Tabitha Sterling mudlarkdesign.tumblr.com and for your enjoyment, the Prologue. 

‘The fetters of the Aelf were made of sapphires, the walls of their cells silver and ivory. It was nothing like the dank black dungeons of menfolk, or the festering oubliettes of Hezra Half-Gremlin. This cell was bright, and cold and austere. It hurt her eyes to look upon the mirror-polished star metal that entombed her here. And so the Herald dangled in a darkness of her own imposing, eyes screwed shut.
Her shackles rubbed unpleasantly against her flesh, and when she cried out, the sound was without echo. The walls
seemed to consume her screams and nullify her protests. Her captors had no desire to listen to her entreaties. Everything she said would be considered a lie by the Fated Ones. Thus she was doomed to suffer an ignoble, yet relatively painless death by their hands. She had days at most, but it was impossible to judge just how long that would be, for days were meaningless in a realm without night to mark the cycles.
They’d taken her bone-threaded war braids, and stripped the Herald of her rune-etched armour of boiled leather and
foraged steel. Upon capture, they’d even scrubbed her face of the blood marks, leaving only the silvery scars that formed their base behind. Like a cat declawed, the Aelf divested her of her scimitar, her daggers, and her sling. Now she wore a simple habit of pale blue silk, but this did nothing to disguise the fact she was a reviled heathen fated to die. She dangled from the ceiling by her hands, a flank of beef hung for smoking. Her bare feet dangled helplessly beneath her. They were the palest they’d been in years. The Aelf could not tolerate filth, not a single gram of it, not even caking their prisoners’ soles.
They had kept her fed with bland wafers and crystal still water, which seemed to sap her strength and will to fight with every mouthful. They could have poisoned her by slipping something odourless and colourless into the daily rations, but she suspected not. They simply had no need to nourish her or poison her. That was the worst thing of all, they didn’t hate her. She meant nothing to the tall, gleaming nightmares. She was an obstruction to remove and her captors would carry out her sentence with a workmanlike efficiency.
The Herald wondered where her allies were now. Were they even alive? She didn’t even entertain the notion they’d
be coming to save her. These were not those kinds of allies. Polder might have helped, but that passive psychotic was next to useless in a scrap.
The Fated Ones would kill her, unless she fought for herself. That was always the way it went.
Each day, she felt her resolve weakening. Her will was maintained now by hate and fear. Curse them for their indifference! 
With her eyes closed, she dreamt of the spiralling nightmare which had brought her to this ignominious terminus.
The five-limbed leviathans of Ashebos, the flying cities, the incandescent Lance of Rael, the black naga, the Djinncallers, the Eater of Names; all these things she had seen, all that pain and wonderment she had experienced, had sprung from a singular event, back in a different life, a different world.
It had been an act of mercy, for one who did not deserve an ounce of it.
She heard the whisper-quiet footsteps of her gaoler in the corridor outside. The lock on the door rattled, as simultaneously the bolts barring it were thrown open one by one. The prisoner clenched her fists, bared her teeth, and drew her feet up to her chest, like an animal tensing for the pounce. She spat bloody phlegm on their pristine floor, which made her smile. If the Aelf wanted her dead, they would need to get their hands dirty. She’d tear at them like a mad shrike. She’d make them work for their kill. She would teach them hate.’

 

Launch Day : Murder for Hire the Peruvian Pigeon

This time of year is always a little busy with releases for Fox Spirit, and this year is no exception.

Murder for Hire was a book I read years before Fox Spirit was a thing, when I was still reviewing. I don’t recall whether I read MFH because I knew Dana, or whether I knew Dana because I read MFH, I don’t suppose it matters. I loved the book, I adore the writer and I followed her across to erotica when she wrote that, and again back to more familiar territory with her awesome Ashley Parker zombie novels, a must for Buffy fans.

MFH

About Murder for Hire:

‘Connie Garrett knows that a trenchcoat and a fedora don’t make a detective. She’s the co-founder of Murder for Hire, an acting troupe that specializes in spoofing, not sleuthing. When MFH performs at a sleepy coastal community’s mystery gala, celebrating the works of a famous hard-boiled mystery writer, the bodies start stacking up, and Connie finds herself on the case whether she likes it or not. Now Connie is committed to solving the murders while trying to keep both the show-and her love life-afloat.’

Murder for Hire : The Peruvian Pigeon

MFH

Murder for Hire : The Peruvian Pigeon
by Dana Fredsti

Cover art by Sarah Anne Langton

‘Connie Garrett knows that a trenchcoat and a fedora don’t make a detective. She’s the co-founder of Murder for Hire, an acting troupe that specializes in spoofing, not sleuthing. When MFH performs at a sleepy coastal community’s mystery gala, celebrating the works of a famous hard-boiled mystery writer, the bodies start stacking up, and Connie finds herself on the case whether she likes it or not. Now Connie is committed to solving the murders while trying to keep both the show-and her love life-afloat.’

Cozy noir, ‘The Peruvian Pigeon’ was Dana’s first novel and is an entertaining tale of theatre, murder and writing. Fox Spirit is delighted to have re released it.

Buy this book

Opening Paragraphs of Murder for Hire: The Peruvian Pigeon

‘Hand it over, Club! We know you got it.’ Scarface Tony’s face twisted into a snarl as he pointed his ’45 at Carl Club. ‘Hold out
on us and you’ll be leaking tomato sauce all over your nice, shiny floor.’
‘Yeah,’ grunted the other gorilla, towering over Club in a stance meant to intimidate. 
‘I don’t know what you punks are talking about.’
Unintimidated, Club stared coolly at the two thugs. ‘C’mon Club,’ Scarface barked. ‘We want the goods! You know, the loot, the dough, the clams, the hot ice, the moola, the do-re-mi!’
Club looked at them contemptuously. ‘I don’t got what you scum are looking for. And I ain’t no stoolie. And you can tell that
to your sauerkraut sucking, Nazi boss.’
‘Take him, Tiny!’ Scarface shouted as the big gorilla lunged, catching Club in a choke hold. ‘You had your chance, Club. Now you’ll be dripping arterial ketchup all over your office… ‘
‘Oof!’
The seamy world of Carl Club evaporated back into our living room as Brad, aka ‘Carl Club’ took a real punch to the gut from Chris ‘Scarface’ Galante. Everyone immediately broke character as Brad doubled over. Chris stood to one side, looking sheepish.

The Office of Lost and Found


The Office of Lost and Found by Vincent Holland-Keen
Cover and layout by Vincent Holland-Keen

Thomas Locke can find anything. You know the hurricane that hit a while back? Word is he found the butterfly that started it. So, when a desperate Veronica Drysdale hires Locke to find her missing husband, it makes perfect sense.

Except the world of Thomas Locke doesn’t make sense. It puts monsters under the bed, makes stars fall from the sky and leads little children to worship the marvels of road-works.

This world also hides from Veronica a past far darker and stranger than she could ever have imagined. To learn the truth, Veronica is going to have to lose everything.

And that’s where Locke’s shadowy business partner Lafarge comes in…

Buy this book

Opening Paragraphs of The Office of Lost and Found

Prelude

HE WOKE UP from nothing into a dark room with a single window. A cat figurine sat on the floor next to where he lay.

He stared at the ornament, waiting for his memory to explain the situation, but his memory was gone.

He knew a world existed beyond these walls and he knew it was full of people and places and facts and figures and he knew he must have lived a life there, but the details were lost to him.

He became very afraid. He curled tightly into a ball and closed his eyes and prayed that if he waited long enough, maybe at least his name would come back to him.

A breeze touched his face, followed by a faint scratching at his nose.

He opened his eyes. A piece of paper fluttered weakly on the floor before him. A message was written upon it in thick black ink:

‘Your name is Thomas Locke. You work for me now.’

He looked up and around, both hopeful and fearful that the author was here. That was when he saw the shadow within the shadow for the first time.

Reviews

The Eloquent Page The thing to remember is that this isn’t your typical, by the numbers, urban fantasy this is something completely different. This novel is going to challenge your perceptions and force you to use the old grey matter. Underneath this splendidly quirky detective story there is an interesting on-going commentary about the nature of belief and those that choose to be believers. The key thing to remember when reading this metaphysical mind-bender, to paraphrase The Matrix, is that ‘there is no spoon’.

Elizabeth A White was very kind about this and the YA follow on Billy’s Monsters : To call Vincent Holland-Keen’s debut novel The Office of Lost & Found merely “strange” is an understatement of epic proportions. Of course, in my world strange means creative, original, enchanting, challenging, and mind-blowing, which means the über strange of The Office of Lost & Found makes for an amazing read; one of my Top 10 of 2011 in fact.

Crime writer Luca Veste  ‘The Office of Lost and Found’ is a novel unlike anything you are likely to read this year. Probably next year as well. It’s staggeringly different to anything else I’ve read since picking up a copy of a Douglas Adams book when I was a teenager, really enjoying it and then never reading anything in the same vein since. With character names which border on the ridiculous, situations which still make no sense to me and a plot which continually surprises right up to the end, ‘The Office of Lost and Found’ should find its way onto every readers shelf at some point.

Tony Lane I would recommend this book to anybody who is slightly unhinged or at least open to the possibility that pan-dimensional aliens are already walking amongst us. It is a wild and thoroughly enjoyable read that I will be recommending to my friends, and certainly reading again at a later date.

Revisited : 25 Ways to Kill a Werewolf by Jo Thomas

Today we launch the second Elkie Bernstein novel at Edge.Lit4, so it seems a good time to revisit the first in the series.

Elkie is a great heroine, with nothing but her determination, her wits and the strength of any girl living in rural Wales to help her she survives focused attacks, personal betrayal and more. Elkie is an ordinary woman in extraordinary circumstances.

25 Ways Wrap 72ppi

25 Ways to Kill A Werewolf by Jo Thomas
Cover Art by Sarah Anne Langton

‘My name is Elkie Bernstein. I live in North Wales and I kill werewolves.’

When Elkie finds herself fighting for her life against something that shouldn’t exist she is faced with the grim reality that werewolves are real and she just killed one. Part diary, part instruction manual Elkie guides the reader through 25 ways you can kill a werewolf, without any super powers, and how she did it.

Opening paragraphs

My name is Elkie Bernstein. I live in North Wales and I kill werewolves.

I’m human and nothing special. No quick healing, no super strength, no fantastic reflexes, no mutant powers. Just human. I get hurt and the injuries take their own time to heal. It leaves me weak and vulnerable so I avoid it. I can’t fight a million attackers at once — I don’t have the raw talent or the trained skill — so I avoid doing it. I can’t read minds or call lightning from the sky so I avoid situations where they would be my only possible line of defence.

I’m nothing special. But anyone who tells you that you have to be special to kill werewolves hasn’t been trying hard enough. And anyone who says there’s only one way to kill a werewolf needs to experiment more. A lot more.