Amanda Downum

The Drowning City

Lovecraftian urban fantasy, but it's Lovecraft with all the worst exceses taken out. Beautifully written and brilliantly paced. When Liz Drake's best friend vanishes, nothing can stop her nightmares. Driven by the certainty he needs her help, she crosses a continent to search for him. She finds Blake comatose in a Vancouver hospital, victim of a mysterious accident that claimed his lover's life--in her dreams he drowns. Blake's new circle of artists and mystics draws her in, but all of them are lying or keeping dangerous secrets. Soon nightmare creatures stalk the waking city, and Liz can't fight a dream from the daylight world: to rescue Blake she must brave the darkest depths of the dreamlands. Even the attempt could kill her, or leave her mind trapped or broken. And if she succeeds, she must face the monstrous Yellow King, whose slave Blake is on the verge of becoming forever.

Dreams of Shreds and Tatters

Death is no stranger in the city of Erisín-- but some deaths attract more attention than others. When a prostitute dies carrying a royal signet, Isyllt Iskaldur, necromancer and agent of the Crown, is called to investigate. Her search leads to desecrated tombs below the palace, and the lightless vaults of the vampiric vrykoloi deep beneath the city. But worse things than vampires are plotting in Erisín... As a sorcerous plague sweeps the city and demons stalk the streets, Isyllt must decide who she's prepared to betray, before the city built on bones falls into blood and fire.

The Bone Palace

The World Fantasy Award Finalist: “It’s Clive Barker crossed with Tanith Lee set to a Siouxsie and the Banshees beat, and I loved every second of it.” —Gemma Files, Shirley Jackson Award–winning author of Experimental Film Welcome to a world of monsters, ghosts, and witches, both seductive and terrifying. In the first collection of short fiction from the author of the Necromancer Chronicles, reality shifts and shimmers with potent magic. More than twenty works, including two poems, feature characters who will steal your heart just as easily as your soul. In “Wrack,” a fisherman becomes so enchanted by a mermaid that the call of the waves becomes impossible to resist. When a killer comes to “Dogtown,” he learns that his bark isn’t worse than the bites of the locals. A dying artist returns to Ireland, where the faerie she has always loved tempts her with eternal life, as long as she leaves her humanity on the shore like so much “Flotsam.” And in “Smoke & Mirrors,” the circus comes to a town strangely bereft of ghosts, thanks to a demonic being conducting a train to the netherworld. With prose that is “gently pulling, promising beautifully cold oblivion in smothering darkness,” Amanda Downum transports you to sweltering southern swamps and the labyrinthine streets of Old World cities, proving without a doubt that “she’s one of the very best dark fantastical writers working today” (Bracken MacLeod, author of Closing Costs). “Ethereal, atmospheric, and mysterious.” —Elizabeth Bear, Hugo Award–winning author of Machine “These stories range from the melancholic to the downright chilling, and deftly evoke both the truly strange and the very human.” —Liz Bourke, author and reviewer for Tor.com and Locus

Still So Strange

Richard Lee Byers

Jennifer Brozek

the Collected Novellas, Vol. 2

Grim Investigations : Arkham Horror

The bold investigators of Arkham Horror are humanity’s best hope against monstrous terrors from beyond the void, in this second collection of extraordinary eldritch novellas To Fight the Black Wind by Jennifer Brozek – psychologist Carolyn Fern’s treatment of a patient’s terrifying nightmares tears open a doorway into the Dreamlands and the Elder Gods. The Blood of Baalshandor by Richard Lee Byers – the arcane tomes of Miskatonic University are an irresistible lure for stage magician, Dexter Drake and his assistant Molly Maxwell, where they soon fall prey to dark forces. Dark Revelations by Amanda Downum – when author Gloria Goldberg visits Arkham to complete the unfinished novel of her fellow author, its words escape the page and transform Arkham. Also featuring the essential Investigator Origins stories, drawn from deep in the Arkham Horror archives.

Arkham Horror: The Collected Novellas, Vol. 2

Grim Investigations

When Liz Drake's best friend vanishes, nothing can stop her nightmares. Driven by the certainty he needs her help, she crosses a continent to search for him. She finds Blake comatose in a Vancouver hospital, victim of a mysterious accident that claimed his lover's life – in her dreams he drowns. Blake's new circle of artists and mystics draws her in, but all of them are lying or keeping dangerous secrets. Soon nightmare creatures stalk the waking city, and Liz can't fight a dream from the daylight world: to rescue Blake she must brave the darkest depths of the Dreamlands. Even the attempt could kill her, or leave her mind trapped or broken. And if she succeeds, she must face the monstrous Yellow King, whose slave Blake is on the verge of becoming forever.

With her master dead and her oaths foresworn, necromancer and spy Isyllt Iskaldur finds herself in exile. Hounded by assassins, she seeks asylum in Assar, the empire she so recently worked to undermine. There, warlords threaten the Empire's fragile peace, and the empress is beset by enemies within the court. Even worse, darkness stirs in the deep desert. Ancient spirits are waking that could destroy Assar faster than any army. Isyllt must travel into the heart of the desert to lay the darkness there to rest once more. But first she must stop an order of mages that will do anything to keep the Empire safe - even raze it to dust.

Amanda Downum

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