Two surprising allies have emerged to aid the embattled ruler in a struggle he must win: Cefwyn's two young sons. Aewyn Marhanen is the prince destined to rule. Aewyn's half-brother, Elfwyn Aswydd—the bastard son of the king and the sorceress Tarien Aswydd—has spent years unaware of his parentage, yet now it is his time to emerge and claim the gifted birthright he's been denied for so long. But a dark, sinister magic has crept close to the young man and seized hold of the kingdom. Nothing is as it seems, as the bonds of family strain against the powerful forces that would see them undone—and the battle is joined to unmask and destroy the malevolence that threatens to unhinge the king's peaceful and fragile reign.
"Wonderful . . . J. V. Jones is a striking writer." So says Robert Jordan, the author of The Wheel of Time epic fantasy series. And Jones lives up to that praise in the highly charged epic adventure of Ash March and Raif Sevrance, two outcasts whose fate are entwined by ancient prophecies and need, in the cold, dark world that threatens to be torn asunder by a war to end all wars. Isolated by their birthrights, they are but two who fight the dreaded Endlords, and their strength and courage will be needed if the world is to be saved from darkness." Raif, wrongly accused and cut off from his clan by the treachery of their new headsman, has a talent for killing that is part of his curse and his burden. But he bears another burden of greater weight. Ash is a sacred warrior to the Sull, an ancient race whose numbers have declined. Raised as a foundling, never knowing her true history, she must learn to accept the terrible gifts of her heritage. But as Ash learns more of her greater fate, Raif's task looms dark and desperate, for he must journey through the nightmare realm of the Want, a place where even the Sull now fear to tread. For deep within the Want is the Fortress of Grey Ice, and there he must heal the breach in the Blindwall that already threatens the world. Should he fail, not even Ash's powers can save them. . . . At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A white-knuckle tale of polar exploration and heroism in the Gilded Age from the New York Times bestselling author of Blood and Thunder and Ghost Soldiers. • “A splendid book in every way…a marvelous nonfiction thriller.” —The Wall Street Journal On July 8, 1879, Captain George Washington De Long and his team of thirty-two men set sail from San Francisco on the USS Jeanette. Heading deep into uncharted Arctic waters, they carried the aspirations of a young country burning to be the first nation to reach the North Pole. Two years into the harrowing voyage, the Jeannette's hull was breached by an impassable stretch of pack ice, forcing the crew to abandon ship amid torrents of rushing of water. Hours later, the ship had sunk below the surface, marooning the men a thousand miles north of Siberia, where they faced a terrifying march with minimal supplies across the endless ice pack. Enduring everything from snow blindness and polar bears to ferocious storms and labyrinths of ice, the crew battled madness and starvation as they struggled desperately to survive. With thrilling twists and turns, In The Kingdom of Ice is a spellbinding tale of heroism and determination in the most brutal place on Earth.
HIGH ADVENTURE ON THE SWORD EDGE OF DESTINY A Cavern of Black Ice is the first book in J.V. Jones's Sword of Shadow series As a newborn Ash March was abandoned--left for dead at the foot of a frozen mountain. Found and raised by the Penthero Iss, the mighty Surlord of Spire Vanis, she has always known she is different. Terrible dreams plague her and sometimes in the darkness she hears dread voices from another world. Iss watches her as she grows to womanhood, eager to discover what powers his ward might possess. As his interest quickens, he sends his living blade, Marafice Eye, to guard her night and day. Raif Sevrance, a young man of Clan Blackhail, also knows he is different, with uncanny abilities that distance him from the clan. But when he and his brother survive an ambush that plunges the entire Northern Territories into war, he yet seeks justice for his own . . . even if means he must forsake clan and kin. Ash and Raif must learn to master their powers and accept their joint fate if they are to defeat an ancient prophecy and prevent the release of the pure evil known as the End Lords. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
The Fortress of Glass by David Drake is the first in the Crown of the Isles trilogy, which will conclude the epic Lord of the Isles series. A true trilogy, the action extends over the whole three-book arc. The Fortress of Glass begins the story of how the new kingdom of the Isles is finally brought into being by the group of heroes and heroines who have been central to all the books in the series. The group includes Prince Garric, heir to the throne of the Isles, his consort Liane, his sister Sharina, her herculean sweetheart Cashel, his sister Ilna, with her adopted child Merota and piratical Chalcus. On giant triremes filled with soldiers and diplomats, they journey to the small kingdoms of the Isles to confirm the succession of Garric and to subdue, if necessary, any local rulers too fond of their own kingship to pledge fealty to Garric. All this is being done in a time when the powers of magic in the Isles have flooded to a thousand-year peak, and even local magicians can perform powerful spells normally beyond their control. Fantastic forces from all angles try to keep them apart and unable to continue the reunification of the Isles. So separately and together, they must fight their way back to the same time and place to combat the mysterious and supernatural menace of The Green Woman in her Fortress of Glass. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Return to the world of The Bard's Tale in this stand-alone sequel to the smash hit Castle of Deception. Naitachal, the Dark Elf who showed his true heroic nature in Castle, is now a Master Bard with a mystical apprentice. On an adventure to a distant, icy land, the pair rescue three strangers who make for strange companions indeed.
The walls between the worlds are down. A new unfolding has begun... It started long ago, as a war between the shadowy Immortals that persists today, as the wizard Mauryl's Shaping confronts the Shadows summoned from Chaos. Tristen is that Shaping. Both more and less than human, he successfully fought sorcery's evil tides, a victory that brought his friend Cefwyn both a kingdom and true love. But the Lines that hold the world in place are shifting again. A ruthless enemy is preparing for battle. Once again, Tristen will take up the sword inscribed with "Truth" and "Illusion" on its blade. But he faces more than war and a pretender to Cefwyn's throne. The Shadows he sees are straight from Ruin -- a flow of darkness covering the world like ink... Fortress of Dragons completes the high-fantasy epic begun in Fortress in the Eye of Time and continued in Fortress of Eagles and Fortress of Owls --a powerful tale set in a world of magic, violence, wonder and awe -- a world as vividly real as our own.
An epic debut novel about a lovelorn eighteenth-century Russian noble, cursed with longevity and an immunity to cold, whose quest for the truth behind his condition spans two thrilling centuries and a stunning array of historical events. The Empress Anna Ioannovna has issued her latest eccentric order: construct a palace out of ice blocks. Inside its walls her slaves build a wedding chamber, a canopy bed on a dais, heavy drapes cascading to the floor—all made of ice. Sealed inside are a disgraced nobleman and a deformed female jester. On the empress’s command—for her entertainment—these two are to be married, the relationship consummated inside this frozen prison. In the morning, guards enter to find them half-dead. Nine months later, two boys are born. Surrounded by servants and animals, Prince Alexander Velitzyn and his twin brother, Andrei, have an idyllic childhood on the family’s large country estate. But as they approach manhood, stark differences coalesce. Andrei is daring and ambitious; Alexander is tentative and adrift. One frigid winter night on the road between St. Petersburg and Moscow, as he flees his army post, Alexander comes to a horrifying revelation: his body is immune to cold. J. M. Sidorova’s boldly original and genrebending novel takes readers from the grisly fields of the Napoleonic Wars to the blazing heat of Afghanistan, from the outer reaches of Siberia to the cacophonous streets of nineteenth-century Paris. The adventures of its protagonist, Prince Alexander Velitzyn—on a lifelong quest for the truth behind his strange physiology—will span three continents and two centuries and bring him into contact with an incredible range of real historical figures, from Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, to the licentious Russian empress Elizaveta and Arctic explorer Joseph Billings. The Age of Ice is one of the most enchanting and inventive debut novels of the year.
