Showing results by author "Barbara Hambly" in All Categories

Condemned to die for consorting with demons, dragonslayer Lord John Aversin sits in a dank prison cell and calculates the odds of escape, all the while smelling the smoke of the executioners’ pyres. Far away in Winterlands, Jenny Waynest pays a heavy price for turning away from dragonkind and choosing to be human. She mourns the loss of her husband, Lord John, even as she turns to face the dangers that engulf her family.

After a career spying for Queen Victoria, James Asher enjoyed a quiet retirement until he met the vampire Don Simon, an immortal Spaniard who taught him about the secret society of bloodsucking undead. Now, one of the vampires, the Earl of Ernchester, has turned his back on Britain. When Asher spots him boarding a train for Paris in the company of an Austrian spy, he springs into action. If the immortals can forge an alliance with England’s enemies, then the Empire is doomed.

New Orleans, 1838. When Benjamin January suddenly finds that his services playing piano at extravagant balls held by the city's wealthy are no longer required, he ends up agreeing to accompany sugar planter Henri Viellard and his young wife, Chloe, on a mission to Washington to find a missing friend. Plunged into a murky world, it soon becomes clear that while it is very possible the Viellards' friend is dead, his enemies are very much alive - and ready to kill anyone who gets in their way.

It is St. John’s Eve in the summer of 1834 when Benjamin January - Creole physician and music teacher - is shattered by the news that his sister has been arrested for murder. The Guards have only a shadow of a case against her. But Olympe - mystical and rebellious - is a woman of color, whose chance for justice is slim. As Benjamin probes the allegation, he is targeted by a new threat: graveyard dust sprinkled at his door, whispering of a voodoo death curse. Now, to save Olympe’s life - and his own - Benjamin knows he must glean information wherever he can find it.

When Rhion the banker's son met the Master Wizard Jaldis, Jaldis said, "Come." Rhion came, leaving everything behind to answer the call in his blood. And through long years of drudgery and persecution, he had no regrets. Thus he became a wizard. A noble burned out Jaldis' eyes to please some god; Rhion made magic glasses so he could see. Together, they opened the dark well to the Abyss between universes, and a cry for help came from a world that had lost all magic. Could that happen to their world? Though forced to flee again, Jaldis was determined to reach that world through the Abyss, to help and to find how the magic was lost.

It is 1923, and silent film reigns in Hollywood. Of all the starlets, none is more beloved than Chrysanda Flamande, a diva as brilliant as she is difficult to manage. Handling her falls to Norah, widow of Chrysanda’s dead brother. She has always done her job well, but she was never equipped to deal with murder. When a violent killing shocks Chrysanda’s entourage, and other weird happenings swiftly follow, Norah begins to suspect that some strange power is stalking the star. In Chinatown she receives warning that a curse has been placed on the actress as vengeance for wearing a sacred amulet in one of her films.

Nineteenth-century New Orleans is a blazing hotbed of scorching politics and personal vendettas. And it’s into this fire that Benjamin January falls when he is hired to follow Oliver Weems, a bank official who has absconded with $100,000 in gold and securities. But it’s more than just a job for January. The missing money is vital to the survival of the school for freed slaves that he and his wife, Rose, have founded.

Gifted with courage, strength, and the intelligence to know when to fight, Sun Wolf is the greatest mercenary in a land overrun by war. With his first lieutenant, Starhawk - a woman more deadly than any man - at his side, he has laid waste to countless cities, taking the best of their treasures for himself, and distributing the rest among his bloodthirsty crew.

No one can talk to the dead...can they? Free man of color Benjamin January gets caught up in a strange, spiritual world that might lead to his own demise, as he hunts for a missing teenager in this gripping, atmospheric historical mystery. New Orleans, 1840. Freshly home from a dangerous journey, the last thing Benjamin January wants to do is leave his wife and young sons again. But when old friends Henri and Chloë Viellard ask for his help tracking down a missing girl in distant New York, he can’t say no.

There was a time when Joanna Sheraton knew nothing of the Void. She was an ordinary computer programmer, toiling in a cubicle in air-conditioned Southern California comfort, unaware that sinister forces had penetrated her universe. But from across the interdimensional divide, an evil mage had put in motion a scheme for eternal life by transferring himself into a computer that feeds on Earth’s life force. Called upon to help by the wizard Antryg, Joanna could do nothing more than delay.

Feltipern Trevagg has traded in his life as a bounty hunter for the security of an Imperial office - as a tax-official to be precise. But the predatory Gotal misses the chase and yearns for a conquest to take him away from his clerical duties. The opportunity to do so eludes him, until one day, during his usual walk through the marketplace, he senses the vibrations of a Jedi Knight. If his senses prove correct, this particular bounty could prove worth his weight in gold to the Empire.

When an overworked team of government physicists unwittingly invites something catastrophic into the world, rising young New York lawyer Cal Griffin is forced into a strange new role in a world of nightmare and wonder.

Mexico City in the autumn of 1835 is a lawless place, teeming with bandits and beggars. But an urgent letter from a desperate friend draws Benjamin January and his new bride, Rose, from New Orleans to this newly free province. Here they pray they’ll find Hannibal Sefton alive - and not hanging from the end of a rope.

Kyra was preparing for her final wizard test before the Council. But suddenly, something was twisting her magic, weaving sinister portents of doom into even the simplest of her spells. Then she knew for certain that her young sister Alix was soon to marry--and soon to die. And so she journeyed back to the family who had disowned her. To save her sister, Kyra would have to face down her father's rage, stand firm against the venomous rivalries of her family's enemies, and confront the Inquisition. Then she must defeat a still deadlier foe--if only she could find it!

Abishag Shaw is seeking vengeance for his brother’s murder - and Benjamin January is seeking money after his bank crashes. Far beyond the frontier, in the depths of the Rocky Mountains, both men are to be found at the great Rendezvous of the Mountain Men, a month-long orgy of cheap booze, shooting matches, tall tales, and cutthroat trading. But at the rendezvous, the discovery of a corpse opens the door to hints of a greater plot - of madness and wholesale murder.

Something is amiss with the world's magic. Spells don't work the way they used to—when they work at all. Only the powers of the Crystal Mages remain as they were, powers founded on the use of the mystical element adamis, the harvesting of which has enslaved the peoples of the Twilight Lands. Ravenous beasts have begun to appear, legendary creatures that seem to be proof against any magic.

New Orleans, 1836. When free Black musician and surgeon Benjamin January attends the funeral of a friend, an accident tips the dead man out of his coffin - only to reveal an unexpected inhabitant. Just one person recognizes the corpse of the White man: Hannibal Sefton, fiddle-player and one of January’s closest friends. But he seems unwilling to talk about his connection to the dead man....

RAN AWAY. So began a score of advertisements every week in the New Orleans newspapers, advertising for slaves who’d fled their masters. But the Turk, Hüseyin Pasha, posted no such advertisement when his two lovely concubines disappeared. And when a witness proclaimed he’d seen the “devilish infidel” hurl their dead bodies out of a window, everyone was willing to believe him the murderer. Only Benjamin January, who knows the Turk of old, is willing to seek for the true culprit, endangering his own life in the process.

In ancient Rome, a poor philosopher races to rescue his kidnapped lover before she is abused by the sinister Christian cult. The son of a wealthy Roman family, Marcus gave up the prestige and riches that were his birthright to devote himself to philosophy. His noble mind attracted Tullia, a Senator’s daughter whose father wanted her to have nothing to do with the penniless intellectual. The news that she is to marry a prosperous merchant shatters Marcus, who goes to her house, hoping to plead his case, only to see her attacked and abducted by disguised ruffians.

Finally, Rudy, Gil, and the rest of mankind's survivors will take the offensive, bringing an end to this terrible war, for better or for worse.