Mordew

Alex Pheby's Mordew launches an astonishingly inventive epic fantasy trilogy. God is dead, his corpse hidden in the catacombs beneath Mordew. In the slums of the sea-battered city, a young boy called Nathan Treeves lives with his parents, eking out a meagre existence by picking treasures from the Living Mud and the half-formed, short-lived creatures it spawns. Until one day his desperate mother sells him to the mysterious Master of Mordew. The Master derives his magical power from feeding on the corpse of God. But Nathan, despite his fear and lowly station, has his own strength—and it is greater than the Master has ever known. Great enough to destroy everything the Master has built. If only Nathan can discover how to use it. So it is that the Master begins to scheme against him—and Nathan has to fight his way through the betrayals, secrets, and vendettas of the city where God was murdered, and darkness reigns. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

A hallucinatory, fragmentary, and tragic fictional telling of one of the most fa- mous psychotherapy cases in history, A lex Pheby’s Playthings offers a visceral and darkly comic portrait of paranoid schizophrenia. Based on the true story of nineteenth-century German judge Daniel Paul Schreber, Playthings artfully shows the disorienting human tragedy of Schreber’s psychosis, in vertiginous prose that blurs the lines between madness and sanity.

A GLOBE & MAIL RECOMMENDED SUMMER 2021 READ She is about thirty-three, speaks French fluently. . .[she ] is gay, sweet and ironic, but she has bursts of anger over nothing when she is confined to a straightjacket, writes James Joyce in one of the few surviving documents concerning his daughter. A gifted dancer, Beckett’s lover, an aspiring writer—what little we know about Lucia Joyce effectively ends with a diagnosis of schizophrenia and subsequent hospitalization: after her death, her nephew Stephen, executor of the Joyce estate, burned her letters and medical records, erasing her not only from her father’s legacy, but from her own existence in the world as well. To tell the story of a life redacted, Alex Pheby assumes not Lucia Joyce’s lost voice, but the perspectives of the men around her, layering a series of narratives about those on the edges of her life to create a portrait of the lost woman in silhouette. As much a critique of male violence and the long history of misogyny in women’s health, an in-absentia illustration of the fate of inconvenient women as the story of a single life, Lucia is an ethical and empathetic creative act and a moving in memoriam to a woman whose experiences we can only imagine.

In this "thought-provoking" thriller from the author of the Reese Witherspoon book club pick and national bestseller Conviction, a woman in crisis finds herself on the hunt for her own mother's murderer (People). Dr. Margo Dunlop is at a crossroads. Her adoptive mom just passed away, and Margo misses her so much she can't begin to empty the house-or, it seems, get her brother on the phone. Not to mention she's newly single, secretly pregnant, and worried about her best friend's dangerous relationship. In an effort to cheer herself up she goes in search of her birth mother. Instead she finds Nikki, her mother's sister. Aunt Nikki isn't what Margo expects, and she brings upsetting news: Margo's mother is dead. Worse, she was murdered years ago, and her killer is still at large—and sending Nikki threatening letters. Margo is torn. Should she stay out of this mess, or try to find justice? But then Margo receives a letter, too. Someone out there has been waiting and watching, and in Margo sees the spitting image of her mother . . . Darkly funny and deeply affecting, The Less Dead is a sharply modern new thriller from the bestselling author of Conviction, and a surprisingly moving story of daughters and mothers, secrets and choices, and how the search for the truth—and a long-hidden killer—will lead one woman to find herself.

THE DAYS BETWEEN Christmas and New Year’s Eve are dead days, when spirits roam and magic shifts restlessly just beneath the surface of our lives. A magician called Valerian must save his own life within those few days or pay the price for the pact he made with evil so many years ago. But alchemy and sorcery are no match against the demonic power pursuing him. Helping him is his servant, Boy, a child with no name and no past. The quick-witted orphan girl, Willow, is with them as they dig in death fields at midnight, and as they are swept into the sprawling blackness of a subterranean city on a journey from which there is no escape. Praise for The Book of Dead Days: “Beautifully paced and sometimes blood-soaked. . . . A very tangible sense of evil.”—The Guardian “Subtle menace and power.”—The Independent “Packed with drama, mystery, and intrigue.”—The Bookseller

Prepare to lose yourself in the heady, mythical expanse of The Vorrh, a daring debut that Alan Moore has called “a phosphorescent masterpiece” and “the current century's first landmark work of fantasy.” Next to the colonial town of Essenwald sits the Vorrh, a vast—perhaps endless—forest. It is a place of demons and angels, of warriors and priests. Sentient and magical, the Vorrh bends time and wipes memory. Legend has it that the Garden of Eden still exists at its heart. Now, a renegade English soldier aims to be the first human to traverse its expanse. Armed with only a strange bow, he begins his journey, but some fear the consequences of his mission, and a native marksman has been chosen to stop him. Around them swirl a remarkable cast of characters, including a Cyclops raised by robots and a young girl with tragic curiosity, as well as historical figures, such as writer Raymond Roussel and photographer and Edward Muybridge. While fact and fictional blend, and the hunter will become the hunted, and everyone’s fate hangs in the balance, under the will of the Vorrh.

In this “spellbinding” (The Sunday Times) award-winning fantasy, the vast empire of Albion is ruled by the beautiful and forlorn queen, Gloriana, who must battle against a nefarious scoundrel, Captain Quire, and a court soured by debauchery with her wits. First published in 1978, Gloriana is the award-winning story set in the alternate English kingdom of Albion that reimagines Queen Elizabeth’s reign. Bawdy, cruel, and brilliant, Gloriana has been awarded the World Fantasy Award and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction, and is often cited as one of the great works of speculative fiction and fantasy along the lines of J.G. Ballard, Thomas Pynchon, and Philip K. Dick.

'Gripped me like an airport read . . . perfect.' Lena Dunham 'Lena Andersson's Wilful Disregard is a story of the heart written with bracing intellectual rigor. It is a stunner, pure and simple.' Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones Winner of the August Prize 2013 On the day that Ester Nilsson, a poet and a sensible person in a sensible relationship, meets renowned artist Hugo Rask, her rational world begins to unravel. Leaving her boyfriend and her past behind, Ester embarks on what is sure to be the greatest love story of her life. It's a shame no one else agrees.