Showing results by author "Matthew Hughes" in All Categories

These stories are a little bit of madness, brought to you by some of the best horror authors working in the industry, today, that wanted to show off their love for splatterpunk.

Henghis Hapthorn is the foremost penetrator of mysteries and uncoverer of secrets in a decadent, far-future Old Earth, one age before Jack Vance's Dying Earth. A superb rationalist, he has long disdained the notion that the universe has an alternative organizing principle: Magic. But now a new age is dawning, overturning the very foundations of Hapthorn's existence, and he must struggle to survive in a world where all the rules are changing.

In an age of wizards and walled cities, Raffalon is a journeyman member of the ancient and honorable guild of Purloiners and Purveyors—in other words, a thief. His skills allow him to scale walls, tickle locks, defeat magical wards. He lifts treasures and trinkets, and spends the proceeds on ale and sausages in taverns where a wise thief sits with his back to the wall. But somehow things often go the way they shouldn’t, and then Raffalon has to rely upon his wits and a well-calibrated sense of daring.

A cab ride to an infamous cemetery takes a sinister turn when the passengers discover they may be the graveyard’s next residents. Fun and games unleash evil beyond imagination when a young couple rolls the dice of a board game from hell. And a treasure hunt turns deadly when a pair of explorers discover what’s really hiding deep in the woods....

When professional duelist Conn Labro escapes indentured servitude as the star player of Horder's Emporium, he abandons the gaming world of Thrais, and sets out on an interstellar journey filled with murder, deceit, and self-discovery. His only friend on Thrais, dead and tortured, left him enough money to buy himself out of his contract, and a curious encrypted "bearer deed" to a mysterious property. With the seductive, secretive showgirl Jenore Mordene at his side, and a villainous, pleasure cult dogging his every move, Labro sets out to learn the truth, and more about his own past.

The first collection by writer Matthew Hughes, and the perfect companion to his acclaimed novel Black Brillion, The Gist Hunter and Other Stories features nine stories taking place in the universe of The Archonate, as well as four non-series stories. The stories of Henghis Hapthorn, Old Earth's "foremost freelance discriminator", combine mystery and science fantasy while simultaneously recalling the arch irony of Gene Wolfe and the sly fancies of Jack Vance.

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In a dying Earth of wizards and walled cities, a boy climbs out of poverty when he becomes an assistant to a moneylender's debt collector, then enters a career as henchman to an ambitious young thaumaturge. But Baldemar's career as a wizard's minion goes sideways after a powerful entity left over from the creation of the cosmos finds him useful for its own ends. Now he must tread a perilous path peopled by dukes and demons, spellslingers and secret agents, assassins and academics, plus a pair of vengeful wizards who want their stolen treasures returned.

Vunt is building a career as a gambler. Oldo is a young man fresh from the farm. But the Duke of Vanderoy has decreed that every able-bodied man must have a job or be conscripted for unpleasant chores. The two meet when they come seeking work at a riverside warehouse that handles goods being shipped up- and downstream. The job pays more than it ought to, so long as they keep their mouths shut. They do that, but they also keep their eyes open, and soon they discover their new employer is engaged in shifty operations. Worse, they suspect his brutish bodyguard may have killed the workers Vunt ...

He calls himself Farouche, after a character from legend, but his reality is that his memories and identity were stolen from him by a secret enemy. In a far-future world of wizards and walled cities, he finds himself trailing a wealthy merchant’s caravan across a dusty plain. Possessed of a soldier’s skills, he hires on with the merchant and begins to build a life. But his efforts to discover his past reveal a dark prospect: was he a participant in a notorious massacre of innocents? Will Farouche come to know the truth? Will he survive the journey across a lawless land to the remote ...

In a far-future world of wizards and walled cities, Cascor is a bitter cashiered policeman who has built a new career as a freelance discriminator who occasionally dabbles in magic and hopes the wizards’ Guild never finds out. This collection brings together all the Cascor stories, including four that began with the discriminator as a supporting character in the series about Raffalon the unlucky thief. It includes three more that ran in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, plus two original novelettes and a short novella about the sorceress Margolyam, who became one of Cascor’s ...

In Old Earth’s penultimate age, the corpulent master criminal Luff Imbry moves through the halfworld like a full-fleshed shark. Thief, forger, confidence man, and sometimes go-between, he maps out his illicit operations with exquisite care then carries them out with courage and panache. But, often, things don’t go as Luff planned, and he must call upon a talent for improvisation and a ruthless will to survive. This collection brings together seven short stories and novelettes previously published in Postscripts, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and the anthology Forbidden ...

Orphaned at twelve, Margolyam leaves the port city of Golathreon to live with her aunt Oleadora, a sorceress and healer in the inland market town of Keddrick. But her new life brings out qualities in the girl that she never knew she possessed, and Margolyam begins a journey of self-discovery that will plunge her into the world of wizardry, with all it manifold wonders and dire perils.

In another sparkling and slightly askew adventure in the mode of Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams and Jack Vance, Fools Errant's Filidor Vesh sashays once more through the penultimate age, finding that... LOVE IS A MANY SPLINTERED THING The dandified Archon's apprentice is literally bowled over by beautiful Emmlyn Podarke -- she knocks him flat and steals his credentials, daring him to pursue her to a remote and mostly forgotten corner of Old Earth. Now Filidor must cope with philosophical pirates, prophet-seeking aliens, light-fingered mummers, and a tiny, bothersome voice in his left ear. ...

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PASSENGERS AND PERILS continues the story of the two central characters from the Jack Vance-influenced 2008 novel, TEMPLATE (PS Publishing and Paizo). (SPOILERS, if you haven't read TEMPLATE) Conn Labro is a manufactured human, created as the template for a legion of vat-grown super soldiers, but raised to be a professional duelist in a gaming house on one of the planets of the Ten Thousand Worlds. Jenore Mordene is a former showgirl who helps him navigate the strange ways of “normal” people. After surviving many perils in Template, the couple acquired a space yacht and are now hiring ...

Here are nine tales of Henghis Hapthorn, foremost freelance discriminator of Old Earth in the planet's penultimate age. Included are the six stories that ran in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (and were previously collected in The Gist Hunter and Other Stories), leading up to the events that began the first Hapthorn novel, Majestrum, plus three more.

Wise, witty and just a little weird, FOOLS ERRANT wryly strolls the satirical path laid down by Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett and Jack Vance, heralding the brilliant debut of a gifted new voice. Foppish young Filidor Vesh wants only to dally among his shallow pastimes. But a simple errand for his uncle, the vaguely all-powerful Archon of those parts of Old Earth still populated by human beings, becomes a frenetic odyssey across a planet speckled with eccentric nations pursuing odd aims with intense determination. Harried at every step by the irascible dwarf, Gaskarth, and frequently at the...