It could all be over before it even begins.Clyde Hatchett and the rest of the Skull & Thrones better play their cards right -- otherwise their newly-formed guild will fall in a war with the Iron Silents, the overpowered immortals fond of spawn-camping and well, anything that puts them ahead.So much for resting on laurels, huh?To keep his dreams alive, and his newfound family safe, Clyde is committed to do whatever it takes. His usual thieving tactics are all well and good, but this time he'll also throw magic, his ties to the prince, and even a few kobolds at the problem. He just hopes it'll be enough.War of the Posers is the fourth novel in the exhilarating Bad Guys LitRPG series. If you like epic battles, sharp humor, and a touch of palace intrigue, you'll love Eric Ugland's sprawling, surprising new novel.
Just yesterday, Ben was a petty thief who got a little too invested in the lives of one of his marks. Today, he's got a new name, a new face, and a new body, and he's watching the Glaton City Guard fight a twenty-foot-tall ooze that crawled forth from the sewers. Tomorrow, he'll need to join a guild, save a girl, steal a crown, and most importantly, convince an innkeep about the gloriousness of chicken fingers.
Kidnapped and sent sailing by his own girlfriend. Clyde Hatchett hadn't planned on running away to become a pirate -- that's just what happened. Now he's on a seaside mission far from Glaton, desperate to find the only mage capable of freeing Clyde from the corpse-king taking over his body. Get ready for a nonstop joyride full of secrets, betrayal, loot -- and mermaids! Oh and on the way, Clyde will have to rescue his tjene's sister from marrying a murderous slave owner. The winds of ill-fortune may be blowing directly at Clyde, but our down-on-his luck rogue assembled the best team in the business to help him succeed: a libertine swordsman who keeps getting arrested, a mohawked captain whose crew is perpetually on the brink of mutiny, and a salty old seadog who's very nice and has a lot of... well, he's very nice, and that has to count for something, right? Add Hellion the mimic and Grim the little grimeling to the mix, and there's no stopping this dream team. Not even the mermaids. Seas the Day is the swashbuckling fifth novel in the Bad Guys LitRPG series. If you like adventure on the high seas, breathtaking magic, and monstrous creatures, pick up this page-turner today!
When Montana first started playing in iNcarn8, his new game life, he just wanted to be one of the good guys for a change. But despite his impressive stats and incredible heroics, even his closest followers are just plain scared of him. Trouble keeps pouring down Montana, even in the remote, supposedly safe holding he's building into his dukedom. All that will have to change if Coggeshall is going to survive. Walls go up and homes get built, but Montana can't shake the feeling that none of it will be enough to keep out the problems of the Empire. Or the world of Vuldranni. Dukes and Ladders is the fifth book in The Good Guys LitRPG series. It's half town-building grinding, half action-adventure epic, and all thoroughly good fun. Pick up this page-turner today!
In all your boyhood dreams of growing up, did you dream of being a "nice guy"? Eldredge believes that every man longs for a battle to fight, an adventure to live, and a beauty to rescue. That is how he bears the image of God; that is what God made him to be.
"Has your life here been so difficult? You seem to fail upward at every opportunity." So says Careena, the hag teaching Clyde Hatchett how to use magic. It certainly doesn't feel like that to Clyde, who's still got a day job scraping mud (at least he hopes it's mud) out of monster pits, and whose "thieves' guild" is more concerned with baking cookies than with protecting him against a rival gang. He keeps accumulating roommates - like a freed sex slave and a retired paladin - who make him nervous, but for very different reasons. And let's not get started on the mimic that's taken up residence by Clyde's shower, or the supposedly-tame grimeling in his closet... And yet even with all the annoyances, distractions, and occasional death threats, Clyde's found himself at the center of a massive conspiracy to kill the Emperor. He's the only one with proof that could save the man, and take down an entire network of corrupt nobles, evil slavers, and power-hungry despots. Clyde really hopes Careena is right about him - the fate of the entire Empire depends on it.
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2015 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2015 BY THE WASHINGTON POST, TIME, MEN’S JOURNAL, CHICAGO TRIBUNE, KANSAS CITY STAR, BROOKLYN MAGAZINE, NPR, HUFFINGTON POST, THE DAILY BEAST, AND BUZZFEED WINNER OF THE 2015 ERNEST J. GAINES AWARD FOR LITERARY EXCELLENCE LONGLISTED FOR THE 2016 ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN FICTION NATIONAL BESTSELLER From the PEN/Faulkner finalist and critically acclaimed author of Hold It ’Til It Hurts comes a dark and socially provocative Southern-fried comedy about four UC Berkeley students who stage a dramatic protest during a Civil War reenactment—a fierce, funny, tragic work from a bold new writer. Welcome to Braggsville. The City that Love Built in the Heart of Georgia. Population 712 Born and raised in the heart of old Dixie, D’aron Davenport finds himself in unfamiliar territory his freshman year at UC Berkeley. Two thousand miles and a world away from his childhood, he is a small-town fish floundering in the depths of a large, hyper-liberal pond. Caught between the prosaic values of his rural hometown and the intellectualized multicultural cosmopolitanism of Berzerkeley, the nineteen-year-old white kid is uncertain about his place until one disastrous party brings him three idiosyncratic best friends: Louis, a “kung-fu comedian" from California; Candice, an earnest do-gooder claiming Native roots from Iowa; and Charlie, an introspective inner-city black teen from Chicago. They dub themselves the “4 Little Indians.” But everything changes in the group’s alternative history class, when D’aron lets slip that his hometown hosts an annual Civil War reenactment, recently rebranded “Patriot Days.” His announcement is met with righteous indignation, and inspires Candice to suggest a “performative intervention” to protest the reenactment. Armed with youthful self-importance, makeshift slave costumes, righteous zeal, and their own misguided ideas about the South, the 4 Little Indians descend on Braggsville. Their journey through backwoods churches, backroom politics, Waffle Houses, and drunken family barbecues is uproarious to start, but will have devastating consequences. With the keen wit of Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk and the deft argot of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, T. Geronimo Johnson has written an astonishing, razor-sharp satire. Using a panoply of styles and tones, from tragicomic to Southern Gothic, he skewers issues of class, race, intellectual and political chauvinism, Obamaism, social media, and much more. A literary coming-of-age novel for a new generation, written with tremendous social insight and a unique, generous heart, Welcome to Braggsville reminds us of the promise and perils of youthful exuberance, while painting an indelible portrait of contemporary America.
The bestselling author of "Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs" returns with an all-original nonfiction collection of questions and answers about pop culture, sports, and the meaning of reality.
Noted documentary photographer Robert Nickelsberg's photographs help bring into focus the day-to-day consequences of war, poverty, oppression, and political turmoil in Afghanistan. Since the attack on the World Trade Center, Afghanistan has evolved from a country few people thought twice about to a place that evokes our deepest emotions. TIME magazine photographer Robert Nickelsberg has been publishing his images of this distant yet all too familiar country since 1998, when he accompanied a group of Mujahideen across the border from Pakistan. This remarkable volume of photographs is accompanied by insightful texts from experts on Afghanistan and the Taliban. The images themselves are captioned with places, dates, and Nickelsberg's own extensive commentary. Timely and important, the book serves as a reminder that Afghanistan and the rest of the world remain inextricably linked, no matter how much we long to distance ourselves from its painful realities.
“I have no doubt this will end up being the best fantasy debut of the year [...] I have absolutely no doubt that [Kuang’s] name will be up there with the likes of Robin Hobb and N.K. Jemisin.” -- Booknest A Library Journal, Paste Magazine, Vulture, BookBub, and ENTROPY Best Books pick! Washington Post "5 Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Novel" pick! A Bustle "30 Best Fiction Books" pick! A 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.
