Jon Courtenay Grimwood

In the depths of night, customs officers board a galley in a harbor and overpower its guards. In the hold they find oil and silver, and a naked boy chained to the bulkhead. Stunningly beautiful but half-starved, the boy has no name. The officers break the boy's chains to rescue him, but he escapes. Venice is at the height of its power. Duke Marco commands the seas, taxes his colonies, and, like every duke before him, fears assassins better than his own. In a side chapel, Marco's thirteen-year old cousin prays for deliverance from her forced marriage. It is her bad fortune to be there when Moorish pirates break in to steal a chalice, but it is the Moors' good fortune - they kidnap her and demand ransom from the Duke. As day dawns, Atilo, the Duke's chief assassin, prepares to kill the man who let in the pirates. Having cut the traitor's throat, he turns back, having heard a noise, and finds a stranger crouched over the dying man, drinking blood from the wound. The speed with which the boy dodges a dagger and scales a pillar stuns Atilo. And the assassin knows he has to find the boy. Not to kill him though - because he's finally found what he thought he would never find. Someone fit to be his apprentice.

Act One of the Assassini

The Fallen Blade

LizAlec is a rich bitch's daughter, wired for sound, speed and anything else that money can buy. But she's abducted. Her mother's a French minister, who moves Heaven and Earth to find her. Fixx fixes thinks - recordings, people, anything that makes money. Some of him is almost human. Now he has to find LizAlec. Somewhere in the 22nd Century the things that draw these people together will lead to an explosion of death and destruction.

Remix

Kit Nouveau, a British expatriate living in Tokyo, running a biker bar, and sleeping with the wife of a Yakusa gang lord, is rescued from an armed robbery by a mysterious young girl wearing a red cloak, a thief and possible murderer who appears out of nowhere to save him, possesses a omniscient cat, and is still in high school, in a suspenseful, sci-fi thriller. Original. 20,000 first printing.

End of the World Blues

9Tail Fox

The extraordinary new novel from one of this or any genre's most talented writers - cutting edge genre writing with an impeccable critical track record.

9tail Fox

Tom Fox, werkzaam bij de Inlichtingendienst van het Britse leger, is tijdelijk in Moskou, waar hij betrokken raakt bij het onderzoek naar de verdwijning van de stiefdochter van de Britse ambassadeur.

Moskva

Snow shrouds Venice in cold darkness, ice fills the canals, and a thousand ghosts pluck at the shadow's edge. A violent attack on Lady Giulietta's son forces Tycho from his new-found happiness and back into the treacherous intrigue of the court. For Giulietta's sake he would go to the world's end to track down those responsible. As Venice teeters on the brink of civil war, its warring families prepare to discover who is a player and who a pawn in the coming struggle for power. The Exiled Blade is the climatic finale to Tycho's story.

The Exiled Blade

Abandoned in a land he does not know and accused of a series of murders he did not commit, the enigmatic Ashraf Bey must turn sleuth to clear his name and save his life, in the first volume in a new trilogy that blends elements of mystery, speculative fiction, alternate history, and adventure. Original. 17,500 first printing.

The First Arabesk

Pashazade

In a slightly different 21st century where the Ottoman Empire never fell Ashraf Bey is the head of detectives in the vibrant city of El Iskandryia, the double dealing hear of the Empire. Raf must investigate a series of brutal murders linked to the mysterious and alluring daughter of an Industrialist who stnads accused himself of a series of ghastly crimes. At once predicatable and shockingly new the world of the Arabesk novels is one of the great creations of modern SF and with Islam so much in the news it is a creation that is never more relevant.

The Arabesk Trilogy

Effendi

Set in a 21st century subtly different from ours - a world where Germany did not lose the first world war and where the Ottoman Empire still survives. Ashraf Bey has little or no idea who he really is. Neither the Rich aristocrat everyone thinks he is or the street criminal once sent to prison after a run-in with a Triad. But he needs to find out fast as he's on the run and a precocious young girl is depending on him. Suffused with sights sounds and mythology of the middle east this is the first of Grimwood's acclaimed Ashraf Bey novels that combine SF, crime and a hint of the supernatural.

The Arabesk Trilogy Book 1

Felaheen (Arabesk)

Kit Nouveau didn't escape himself when he flew to Japan. He runs a bar in the Roppongi district of Tokyo and is having an affair with the wife of a High Yakusa ganglord. All things considered being held up at gunpoint isn't a complete shock. The pale girl in the black cloak appearing from nowhere and punching an ivory spike into the man's head on the other hand ... Nijie has stolen fifteen million dollars, she's on the run, she's just killed a man and she has a cat who knows more than it should. It's a lot to deal with when you haven't even left school. But Nijie is really Lady Neku. And it is time for her to stop mewling in the darkness. And suddenly, the girl who became Lady Neku understands she's never really been anyone else. And in a sentient castle at the end of world Lady Neku otherwise known as Baroness Nawa-no-ukiyo, Countess High Strange and chatelaine of Schloss Omga realizes that a man called Kit has stolen some of her memories.

End Of The World Blues

As the Byzantine and German emperors plot war against each other, Venice's future rests in the hands of three unwilling individuals: The newly knighted Sir Tycho. He defeated the Mamluk navy but he cannot make the woman he loves love him back. Tortured by secrets, afraid of the daylight, he sees no reason to save a city he hates. The grieving Lady Giulietta. Virgin. Mother. Widow. All she wants is to retire from the poisonous world of the Venetian court to mourn her husband in peace. But her duty is to Venice: both emperors want her hand in marriage and an alliance with Europe's richest city. She must choose, knowing that whichever suitor she rejects will become Venice's bitterest enemy. Lastly, a naked, mud-strewn girl who crawls from a paupers' grave on an island in the Venetian lagoon and begins by killing the men who buried her. Between them, they will set the course of history.

The Outcast Blade

STAMPING BUTTERFLIES tells the story of two dreamers. One, a would be assassin in tomorrow's Marrakech. He aims to kill the US President and holds in his head the secret to a faster-than-light drive. The other, a Chinese Emperor, ruler of 148 billion people on an immense Dyson sphere thousands of years in the future. Each believes they are dreaming the other. One must change the future, one must change the past. Both have only days to live. This is a fast moving unusually well written SF novel of ideas. Ideas that will change the reader's perception of time and fate. Ideas from the cutting edge of hard science. It is peopled with vivid characters and evocative of Marrakech, where the author has lived.

Stamping Butterflies

Venedig 1407. Der junge Tycho erwacht ohne Erinnerung in der Lagunenstadt. Noch bevor er das Geheimnis um seine Herkunft lüften kann, wird er gefangen genommen und im Auftrag des Dogen zum besten Assassinen der Stadt ausgebildet. Dabei entdeckt er in sich ungeahnte Fähigkeiten. Sein Weg als willenloses Instrument scheint vorherbestimmt, bis er der schönen Giulietta Millioni begegnet: Die Nichte des Dogen ist auf der Flucht vor den finsteren Plänen ihres Onkels, und gemeinsam müssen sie und Tycho nicht nur gegen politische Intrigen, Hexen und Werwölfe kämpfen, sondern auch gegen die Anziehungskraft zwischen ihnen, denn ihre Liebe kann für einen von beiden tödlich sein ...

Roman

Silberklinge

As the Byzantine and German emperors plot war against each other, Venice's future rests in the hands of three unwilling people: The newly knighted Sir Tycho. An ex-slave and trained assassin who defeated the Mamluk navy but cannot make the woman he loves love him back. Tortured by secrets, afraid of the daylight, he sees no reason to save a city he hates. The grieving Lady Giulietta. Impossibly rich, deeply spoilt. A virgin, a mother, a widow . . . Both emperors want her hand for their sons in marriage. All she wants is to retire from the poisonous world of the Venetian court to mourn her husband in peace. And finally a naked, mud-strewn girl who crawls from a pauper's grave on an island in the Venetian lagoon and begins by killing the men who buried her.

Book 2 of the Assassini

Redrobe

Passion di Orchi is no more than the obscenely rich daughter of a West Coast mafia boss - until she decides to rebuild Venice. In the middle of the Pacific. A century later, with New Venice ossified into a puritanical elegance, the daughter of Count Ryuchi slips away from her father's palazzo, out to the levels to play Lucifer's Dragon. A multi-level, self-perpetuating, true 3-D trawl through the Apocalypse, Lucifer's Dragon is coded so the game never repeats its own failures. But an altercation in a bar puts Karo on a collision course with NVPD officer Angeli, drafted in by media giant CySat to investigate a murder she knows way too much about. And then there's Razz, the silver exotic. Too tired and jaded to keep living, she takes on the job of guarding CySat's ultimate boss, the ten-year-old Aurelio. With all the high tech security in place, it should be a walk in the park. But the last thing Razz sees is CySat's child-ruler making too close an acquaintance with an Uzi, and then she wakes up in Zurich. Dead…

Jon Courtenay Grimwood

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