Plan your reading schedule around these recent and upcoming Candlemark & Gleam releases!

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A Blackened Mirror
Jo Graham

—from the author of the addictive Numinous World and The Calpurnian Wars series; first in historical fantasy series Memoirs of the Borgia Sibyl, to be followed by The Borgia Dove

Giulia Farnese is known to historians as a formidably learned and intelligent advisor to two Renaissance popes. But in Graham’s vision Giulia is also a seer, despite the dangers of such a talent in her era. Transposing the myth of Persephone and Hades onto the opulent Rome of the Borgias, A Blackened Mirror is kin to Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel works and Guy Gavriel Kay’s imaginative transmutations.

1489—When Giulia Farnese came to Rome to make an arranged marriage with young noble Orsino Orsini, she dreamed of learning and power in the glittering city of the Renaissance popes. However, her mother-in-law seems frightened, and her husband refuses to consummate the marriage at the direction of the head of his family, Lord Bracciano. But Giulia herself has a secret: she sees visions in mirrors and hears the whispers of spirits, the gifts of an ancient sibyl in an age when magic is heresy punishable by death. Is this ability the reason Bracciano has trapped her in this sham of a marriage?

As she struggles to unearth answers, Giulia finds herself drawn to her mother-in-law’s cousin, Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia. Ruthless, sophisticated, and old enough to be Giulia’s father, Rodrigo is a humanist, a collector of pagan art and heretical writings, and a loving father to his illegitimate children. He is a bright spot in Giulia’s chilly life—but to Bracciano, he’s a political rival to be removed. Bracciano’s dark rites to summon demons may make Giulia the instrument of Rodrigo’s destruction.

Dealing with demons is a mortal sin. Refusing Bracciano would be a fatal mistake. And Giulia’s growing attraction to Rodrigo might be her downfall—or the key to her salvation. To defy the demon’s power and seize control of her life, Giulia will need to cross the line between innocence and dangerous knowledge. And once she’s descended into that underworld, she is not coming back unchanged.

Launched: March 6, 2023

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The Master of Samar
Melissa Scott

—from the celebrated author of Trouble and Her Friends, Dreaming Metal, Shadow Man, Finders, Water Horse

In The Master of Samar, Erikson’s Malazan meets Kushner’s Riverside in a vividly-hued alt-universe Venice where power is based on dangerous covenants.

Rejected by his aristocratic family, Gil Irichels has been content to make his living as a traveling cursebreaker, working with his lover, the feral mage Envar Cassi, and their bodyguard, swordswoman Arak min’Aroi. After a series of deaths leave him the sole heir to the family’s house and fortune, Irichels’s main concern is to do whatever he must to settle the estate and return to his previous life. But these is something very wrong in seaborne Bejanth, starting with the deaths of his kin and spreading into the complex web of politics and magic that holds the city together. As he struggles to discover the truth behind his family’s losses, he realizes that there is more at stake than the fall of one house. Someone is unraveling the web of curses on which the city depends, and Irichels is the only person who can stop them—if it’s not already too late.

Launched: June 5, 2023

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Fortune’s Favor
Jo Graham

—from the author of the addictive Numinous World series; third in the highly acclaimed space opera series The Calpurnian Wars after Sounding Dark and Warlady

When a Calpurnian faction leader kidnaps the young son of the Guardian of the city of Beira on Menaechmi, it’s up to his gaura, the intrepid Caralys, to find a way to rescue the boy. Getting a child off a Calpurnian warship in orbit safely seems impossible, but Caralys has an ace up her sleeve, a freelance agent named Bister. Bister wants Menaechmi’s support to repeal the Isolation that keeps her people imprisoned on Inanna, and what better way to get it than to have the Guardian owe her a favor? With the help of Boral, a young Morriganian electromancer on Menaechmi for his first port call, Bister lays her plans to trick the Calpurnians out of their prize. But when the Calpurnians threaten the unarmed cities of Menaechmi, the stakes get higher than one boy’s life. The fate of Menaechmi is in play, and Caralys must roll the Golden Lady’s dice to save her family and her world.

Launched: October 9, 2023

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Fallen
Melissa Scott

—from the celebrated author of Trouble and Her Friends, Dreaming Metal, Shadow Man, Finders, Water Horse; second in space opera series Firstborn, Lastborn after Finders

In Fallen, the Successor civilization after the First Dark is trying to keep starlanes open by fending off hostile AI trapped in the adjacent possible, with different factions divided on whether (or how) to reclaim the Ancestral technology that offers so much reward—but also so much risk. Set in a fully imagined universe with vividly delineated protagonists, Fallen is a cinematic, seamless fusion of adventure, myth, and science so advanced as to have become magic—a bold, original re-imagining of the tales of the Atreides, Daedalus, Prometheus, Pandora, and the Titans.

Nic en Doroney was promised an education and an academic career in exchange for sharing the nanite burden she carries in her bloodstream. Instead, the Novilis family broke that bargain, and now Nic is captain of a small starship, competing with larger businesses by using illegal Ancestral technology to chart her way through the adjacent possible. But when Rejane Novilis re-enters her life, Nic is unable to resist the chance to work with her again, even if it means challenging the malevolent AI who have already destroyed human society once before.

Launched: December 18, 2023

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Midnight Special
Justin Robinson

—sixth in Justin’s inspired noir/monsterverse mash, Moonlight Special follows City of Devils, Fifty Feet of Trouble, Wolfman Confidential, A Stitch in Crime and Unwitch Hunt

A Chandleresque outing, Midnight Special gives a glimpse of series protagonist Nick Moss—WWII veteran, Night Wars survivor, hard-bitten private eye, member of the dwindling, beleaguered human cohort—through the eyes of a tormented policeman who happens to be a wolfman.

Los Angeles. Where the sun is bright, the beaches inviting, and the orange groves stretch to the horizon. Organized crime is a thing of the past, and these streets are the safest in the nation. Life is good in the City of Angels. That’s what they say, anyway.

The truth is that the mob owns the town, lock, stock, barrel. Honest police catch silver bullets, and the only way to survive is to be bought. Detective Frank Wolfman thought he could stay clean by getting a little dirty, but in the City of Devils, no one is half a sinner.

To save his friend, Frank must unearth every rotten decision he’s ever made in his life and unravel the secret of a “moonlight special.” But the answer is strangled in the oily tentacles of this town and the City of Devils keeps its secrets.

Launch: March 2024

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The Borgia Dove
Jo Graham

— from the author of the addictive Numinous World and Calpurnian Wars series; second in historical fantasy series Memoirs of the Borgia Sibyl after A Blackened Mirror

Giulia Farnese is known to historians as a formidably learned and intelligent advisor to two Renaissance popes. But in Graham’s vision Giulia is also a seer, despite the dangers of such a talent in her era. Transposing the myth of Persephone and Hades onto the opulent, dangerous Rome of the Borgias, The Borgia Dove is kin to Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel works and Guy Gavriel Kay’s imaginative transmutations.

1492: Giulia Farnese is the mistress of the powerful Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia. Educated, brave and ambitious, Giulia revels in the art and ideas of the Renaissance and in her newfound influence as the consort of one of the leaders of the humanist movement within the Vatican. The gifts of prophecy and magic that made her a weapon against Rodrigo but allowed her to save his life are gone with her virginity—or so she thinks.

Now the pope is dying, plunging Rome into lawless chaos until a new pope can be elected. The most likely candidates want to purge Rome of heresy, endangering both Giulia’s friends and the fragile Renaissance itself. A dark horse candidate who most people underestimate to their peril, Rodrigo is ruthless and clever; but to seize the ultimate prize of the papacy, he’ll need all the help he can get. He relies on Giulia to be his eyes and ears in the world of powerful women and to negotiate on his behalf when the voting cardinals are locked in seclusion.

Drawn into a high-stakes game of bribery and bargains, Giulia discovers all too soon that losing means paying a deadly price. Her only hope of protecting those she cares about from Rodrigo’s enemies lies in mastering the magical gifts she once thought lost. For Giulia to claim the divine power of a pagan priestess may be the ultimate heresy—or a way to win her lover the papal crown.

Launch: June 2024

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Pond Man Opens a Door
Martha A. Hood

—from the author of The Miasma Is Not for Us to Say and The Valley and the Hill

Pond Man Opens a Door is a chilling take on the Garden of Eden. Whereas Martha’s The Miasma Is Not for Us to Say and The Valley and the Hill were witty, incisive takes on small-town bureaucracies and intrigues complicated by ghostly emanations or misdirected sensory perceptions, Pond Man is a mythic retelling of Harlan Ellison’s “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream”.

When landscape designer Thalia enters the Domain of Gardens, the enigmatic Pond Man bestows upon her limitless space to design any kind of garden she likes—perhaps something grand, to impress her wife, Hazel. Or, perhaps that grove of trees that Thalia longs for.

But the Domain’s bounty comes at a cost. Once Thalia is dug into the Domain, she finds it difficult to leave. And the Domain and Pond Man have no intention of letting her go.

Launch: September 2024

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Gyre
Amy Griswold

—from the author of the Lynes and Mathey Victorian magic series and of literate, character-driven RPGs

Gyre is the first title of a projected space opera trilogy (Gyre, Meridian, Ecliptic) in which starfaring societies battle for self-government against monopoly threats.

Captain Lazlo and his self-aware sailship Kestrel have spent their lives as Cleansers, endlessly battling the alien wyrms that emerge from subspace to devour spaceships and their crew. A long transit aboard the massive space transport Gyre offers a rare chance for Laz to rest from the fight and enjoy the company of his attractive new friend Arkady. But when Kes’s sensor readings detect a wyrm on board Gyre, the voyage seems likely to be brutally cut short. Wyrms can eat anything—machinery, hull, or living flesh.

Gyre’s world-weary manager Eli didn’t expect an easy voyage. It’s her job to balance the demands of Gyre’s corporate owners with the whims of its paying passengers and the frustrations of its self-governing crew. But her most important job is to protect her space transport home, and now that they’ve started their long wormhole transit, they’re out of reach of rescue by anyone but Laz.

To kill the wyrm, Laz needs new recruits, volunteers willing to let sailship personalities take up residence in their brains and change their lives. Arkady’s ties to Gyre’s tight-knit queer community may be the key to finding volunteers willing to accept transformation. But Eli has her eye on another enemy entirely. This convenient threat sounds like the excuse the Cleansers need to seize control of Gyre and all civilian wormhole traffic—and Laz just might be the agent who’s been sent to do it.

Launch: December 2024