Showing results by author "Mark Lawrence" in All Categories

At the Convent of Sweet Mercy, young girls are raised to be killers. In a few the old bloods show, gifting talents rarely seen since the tribes beached their ships on Abeth. Sweet Mercy hones its novices' skills to deadly effect: it takes 10 years to educate a Red Sister in the ways of blade and fist. But even the mistresses of sword and shadow don't truly understand what they have purchased when Nona Grey is brought to their halls as a bloodstained child of eight, falsely accused of murder - guilty of worse.

Lawrence brings the Broken Empire series to its devastating conclusion. The path to the throne is broken - only the broken can walk it. The world is cracked and time has run through, leaving us clutching at the end days. These are the days that have waited for us all our lives. These are my days. I will stand before the Hundred and they will listen. I will take the throne no matter who stands against me, living or dead, and if I must be the last emperor then I will make of it such an ending. This is where the wise man turns away. This is where the holy kneel and call on God.

Author Mark Lawrence has won over audiences everywhere with Prince of Thorns, his exciting debut novel. Nine-year-old Prince Jorg is forced to watch as his mother and brother are slaughtered. Fleeing the palace, Jorg joins a bloodthirsty band of thugs. But he’s determined to take back what’s rightfully his, so he returns to the castle a few years later - unaware of the dark and powerful magic that awaits.

The Red Queen is old but the kings of the Broken Empire fear her as they fear no other. Her grandson Jalan Kendeth is a coward, a cheat, and a womaniser; and 10th in line to the throne. While his grandmother shapes the destiny of millions, Prince Jalan pursues his debauched pleasures. Until he gets entangled with Snorri ver Snagason, a huge Norse axe man, and dragged against his will to the icy north.

In the ice, east of the Black Rock, there is a hole into which broken children are thrown. Yaz's people call it the Pit of the Missing, and now it is drawing her in as she has always known it would. To resist the cold, to endure the months of night when even the air itself begins to freeze, requires a special breed. Variation is dangerous, difference is fatal. And Yaz is not the same.

Prince of Thorns is the first volume in a powerful new epic fantasy trilogy, original, absorbing and challenging. Before the thorns taught me their sharp lessons and bled weakness from me I had but one brother, and I loved him well. But those days are gone and what is left of them lies in my mother's tomb. Now I have many brothers, quick with knife and sword, and as evil as you please. We ride this broken empire and loot its corpse.

Lacking health insurance when he was diagnosed with cancer, Shawn Speakman asked friends in the science fiction and fantasy writing community to donate short stories he could use to counter mounting medical debt. The result was Unfettered, an anthology offering tales from some of the best authors working today. Now, in Unfettered III, Speakman continues to pay forward the aid he received, raising money to combat medical debt for SF&F artists and authors.

When most people think of the prohibition era, they think of speakeasies, rum runners, and backwoods fundamentalists railing about the ills of strong drink. In other words, in the popular imagination, it is a peculiarly American history. Yet, as Mark Lawrence Schrad shows in Smashing the Liquor Machine, the conventional scholarship on prohibition is extremely misleading for a simple reason: American prohibition was just one piece of a global phenomenon.

When the Great War broke out in August 1914, Thomas Mann, like so many people on both sides of the conflict, was exhilarated. Finally, the era of decadence that he had anatomized in Death in Venice had come to an end; finally, there was a cause worth fighting and even dying for, or, at least when it came to Mann himself, writing about. Mann immediately picked up his pen to compose a paean to the German cause. Soon after, his elder brother and lifelong rival, the novelist Heinrich Mann, responded with a no less determined denunciation.

In January 1986, fifteen-year-old boy-genius Nick Hayes discovers he’s dying. And it isn’t even the strangest thing to happen to him that week. Nick and his Dungeons & Dragons-playing friends are used to living in their imaginations. But when a new girl, Mia, joins the group and reality becomes weirder than the fantasy world they visit in their weekly games, none of them are prepared for what comes next.

Evar has lived his whole life trapped within a vast library, older than empires and larger than cities. Livira has spent hers in a tiny settlement out on the Dust where nightmares stalk and no one goes. The world has never noticed them. That’s about to change.

"The Secret" is set in the world where the Broken Empire and Red Queen's War trilogies take place. I've been writing short stories based on the various members of Jorg Ancrath's brotherhood of the road, exploring their origins. When I saw that the Blackguards anthology was seeking tales of assassins, I thought it was time to write about Brother Sim.

From the critically acclaimed author of Prince of Fools comes the second volume of the brilliant new epic fantasy series, The Red Queen's War. "If you like dark, you will love Mark Lawrence. And when the light breaks through, and it all makes sense, the contrast is gorgeous." (Robin Hobb) The Red Queen has set her players on the board…. Winter is keeping Prince Jalan Kendeth far from the longed-for luxuries of his southern palace.

They came against her as a child. Now they face the woman. The ice is advancing, the Corridor narrowing, and the empire is under siege from the Scithrowl in the east and the Durns in the west. Everywhere, the emperor’s armies are in retreat. Nona faces the final challenges that must be overcome if she is to become a full sister in the order of her choice. But it seems unlikely that Nona and her friends will have time to earn a nun’s habit before war is on their doorstep.

Few topics have as many myths, stereotypes, and misperceptions surrounding them as that of poverty in America. The poor have been badly misunderstood since the beginnings of the country, with the rhetoric only ratcheting up in recent times. Our current era of fake news, alternative facts, and media partisanship has led to a breeding ground for all types of myths and misinformation to gain traction and legitimacy. Poorly Understood is the first book to systematically address and confront many of the most widespread myths pertaining to poverty.

The second novel in the brilliant new series from the best-selling author of Prince of Thorns. In Mystic Class, Nona Grey begins to learn the secrets of the universe. But so often even the deepest truths just make our choices harder. Before she leaves the Convent of Sweet Mercy, Nona must choose her path and take the red of a Martial Sister, the grey of a Sister of Discretion, the blue of a Mystic Sister or the simple black of a Bride of the Ancestor and a life of prayer and service.

The Sounds of Crime is an exclusive collection of five brand new short stories by some of the best crimewriters around. Using the theme of 'audio', this unique collection features brand new stories by Lawrence Block, Peter James, Val McDermid, Mark Billingham and Christopher Fowler.

On Abeth there is only the ice. And the Black Rock. For generations, the priests of the Black Rock have reached out from their mountain to steer the ice tribes’ fate. With their Hidden God, their magic and their iron, the priests’ rule has never been challenged. But nobody has ever escaped the Pit of the Missing before. Yaz has lost her friends and found her enemies. She has a mountain to climb, and even if she can break the Hidden God’s power, her dream of a green world lies impossibly far to the south across a vast emptiness of ice.

A volume of short stories by the best-selling author of The Broken Empire series, Mark Lawrence This is a collection of 14 stories of murder, mayhem, pathos, and philosophy, all set in the world of the Broken Empire. Within this audiobook, you will find tales of men such as Red Kent, Sir Makin, Rike, Burlow and the Nuban, telling of their origins and the events that forged them.

A Cyber War rages throughout the galaxy. The Earth-aligned worlds are fighting for survival against the cold, emotionless might of the Cyber Bloc - an alliance of planets whose inhabitants have undergone cybernetic conversion in the name of racial superiority.