Showing results by publisher "W. F. Howes Ltd" in Fantasy

Valour and Petrichor are esteemed members of the Order of Axsten, an assassin's guild tasked with keeping order in the rough city of Vinterstock. Plucked from the streets as children and raised to compete for their guild's approval, Valour uses her brawn to survive, while Petrichor strives to be a gentleman assassin.

2005: While researching her Japanese ancestors, Isla travels from Scotland to Kagoshima. There, a vicious typhoon hurls her through a strange white gate and back to 1877, amid the dawn of the Satsuma Rebellion–the conflict that ended the samurai. When she meets Keiichiro Maeda, a samurai who introduces her to a way of life only previously encountered in books, Isla begins to wonder if she has found her true home. But as the samurai fight a losing battle, she is increasingly distraught. Should she warn Keiichiro and save the man she loves or let him die the glorious death he so believes in?

Four friends have a pact: to meet up on the same day every year in their small hometown in southern Italy. Art, the charismatic leader of the group, has always been adamant about the pact. But this year, he doesn't show up. Searching for him, the friends make a worrying discovery: Art has been farming marijuana, a very dangerous activity in mafia-controlled country.

Fryda has grown up hearing tales of her uncle, King Beowulf, and his spectacular defeat of the monstrous Grendel. Her one desire is to become a shield maiden in her own right, but a terrible accident during her childhood has thwarted this dream. Yet still, somehow, she feels an uncontrollable power begin to rise within herself.

When Max tries to intervene to prevent an assault and it goes horribly wrong, she wants nothing more than to keep her head down and get on with her job. She does not want to answer calls for help, not even from Bryce, the Order warrior who seems willing to give her a second chance. Despite telling herself she just wants to live her quiet life, Max finds herself delving into parts of the city where no one apart from the desperate want to go, facing terrifying supernatural creatures and ghosts from her past.

Distraught that her academic career has stalled, Alba is walking through her neighbourhood when she finds herself in front of 11 Hope Street. A woman named Peggy invites her to stay, on the house's usual conditions: she has 99 nights to turn her life around. With nothing left to lose, Alba moves in. But this is no ordinary house.... Past residents have included George Eliot and Beatrix Potter, who have hung around to help newcomers - literally, in talking portraits on the wall!

It is 1916 and Rasputin has finally been killed by those who have long feared his influence over Tsar Nicholas and Tsarina Alexandra. But for Princess Militza, famed as one of the 'Witches of St Petersburg', and her daughter Nadezhda, life is about to become extremely dangerous. Revolution is bubbling and with it will come the murder of the Romanov imperial family. Now the rest of the court is also on the run, fleeing from the mob. Against this violent and turbulent backdrop, Nadezhda, the witch's daughter, finds in exile and captivity an extraordinary and unlikely love.

Everyone thinks they know the story of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table, but they don't know sh*t. There was never a painting that showed the true Britain, that clogged sewer Rome abandoned just as soon as it could. A Britain where petty warlords murdered each other in the mud, while all the while the Angles and Saxons and worst of all the Jutes, were coming over here and taking our lands and taking our jobs and taking our women.

There's power in stories. But power can be deadly. Detective Cora Gorderheim is a detective no longer. Stripped of her badge by the corrupt chief inspector, Cora's job now is to protect her sister, Ruth, the new Wayward storyteller. Ruth must tell her tale of the Tear widening if people are to know the truth of what's happening in the Union of Realms. But Lowlander Chambers Morton wants the Wayward to change their election story, and will stop at nothing to achieve this – including murder.

Jessica Grant liaises with Otherworlders for York Council so she knows that falling in love with a vampire takes a leap of faith. But her lover Sil wouldn't run out on her, he wouldn't let his demon get the better of him. Or would he? With her loyalties already questioned for defending zombies, the Otherworlders no one cares about, Jess must choose which side she's on. Whatever she decides, there's a high price to pay.

Two worlds bound by a pomegranate gate. Toba Peres can speak but she can't shout; she can walk but she can't run; and she can write in five languages… with both hands at the same time. Naftaly Cresques dreams every night of an orange-eyed stranger; when awake, he sees things that aren't real; and he carries a book he can never lose and never read.

The weather has gone crazy and the war has spread to China. Jase, Euan and Murdo are laggers: forced workers in a future Scotland. The laggers are helping to lay a new power line in the Highlands. Ailiss, a young woman from a secret settlement in the frozen hills, is going to strain their loyalties to breaking point - and beyond.

A sister searches for her missing brother as a new power rises amid the splendour and the squalor of a once great city. Lower Rhumbsford is a city far removed from its glory days. On the banks of the great river Rhumb, its founding fathers channelled the river's mighty flow into a subterranean labyrinth of pipes, valves and sluices, a feat of hydraulic prowess that would come to power an empire. But a thousand years have passed since then, and something is wrong.

Many millennia after the fall of Eden, Adam, the first man in creation, still walks the Earth - exhausted by the endless death and destruction, he is a shadow of his former hope and glory. And he is not the only one. The Garden was deconstructed, its pieces scattered across the world and its inhabitants condemned to live out immortal lives, hiding in plain sight from generations of mankind.

The endless rotstorm rages over the ruins of the Ferron Empire. Floré would never let the slavers of the empire rise again. As a warrior of the Stormguard Commandos, she wrought horrors in the rotstorm to protect her people. She did her duty and left the bloodshed behind. Floré’s peace is shattered when blazing orbs of light cut through the night sky and descend on her village. Her daughter is abducted, and Floré is forced into a chase across a land of twisted monsters and ancient gods.

A thrilling, profoundly moving science fiction retelling of the Greek tragedy Antigone filled with inevitable doom, heart-break and one final act of courage. Outside the last city on Earth, the planet is a wasteland. Without the Archive, where the genes of the dead are stored, humanity will end.

Fahima Deeb changed everything seven years ago when she triggered the Pulse, imbuing millions of people with otherworldly gifts like flight, telekinesis or superhuman strength. She thought that would herald the end of the hostilities between those with abilities and those without, but it instead highlighted a new problem: there is someone behind the scenes, able to influence and manipulate these newly empowered people into committing horrible acts against their will. Worse still, that shadowy figure is wearing the face of Fahima's oldest friend, Patrick Davenport.

Cornwall, 1817. Napoleon has crushed the Duke of Wellington at the Battle of Waterloo, and his ex-wife, Josephine, presides over French-occupied England. Cornwall erupts into open rebellion, and young heiress Hester escapes with Crow, Wellington's former intelligence officer. Together, they become embroiled in a web of treachery and espionage as plans are laid to free Wellington from captivity and lead an uprising against the French occupation.

Kyndra has finally mastered her cold Starborn powers - but is it too late? A faction of assassins who can manipulate time plan to rewrite the history of Acre. These Khronostians will ensure the Sartyan Empire was never founded. And in this new narrative, Kyndra is never even born. With her ally Char and the rogue Khronostian Ma, Kyndra resolves to enlist the help of the dragons, banished long ago. They must find them first, but together they could generate a huge amount of power. It could propel Kyndra far back in time, to avert the ending of an era.

Rhea and her twin brother, Lexos, have spent an eternity helping their father rule their small unstable country. For a hundred years, they’ve been each other’s only ally, defending one another against their father’s increasingly unpredictable anger. Now, with an independence movement gaining ground and their father’s rule weakening, the twins must take matters into their own hands to keep their family—their entire world—from crashing down around them.