Amanda J. McGee

Behind the walls of an invulnerable city ruled by angels, old movies provide balm for the soul and a plan to escape risks grisly retribution. A princess discovers a passage to a nightmarish world of deception and blood-sealed enchantment. A woman who has lost everything meets a man of great wealth and ominous secrets. In a town haunted by tragedy, malevolent supernatural entities converge, and the conflict that ensues unleashes chaos.A Sinister Quartet gathers original long-form wonders and horrors composed in unusual keys, with a short novel by World Fantasy Award winner C. S. E. Cooney and a new novella from two-time World Fantasy Award finalist Mike Allen joined by debut novellas from rising talents Amanda J. McGee and Jessica P. Wick. All four offer immersions into strange, beautiful and frightening milieus.

Liana has lost much to Herka's manipulations, though nothing so precious as her sanity. Emerging from her madness, she finds the world changed - her body wasted, her son gone, and her kingdom still beyond her reach. Only the fires of vengeance remain, and she will build the flames high.DAUGHTER OF MADNESS tells the story of a princess and her twin, a soldier and his king, and an oracle who is more than she seems.

Not all that is right comes from the gods.Sometimes, they demand much that is wrong.Liana and her twin are an anomaly at the heart of a kingdom bound by unyielding tradition. The crown princess is the first female marked as Herkun's heir, and her existence has unfortunate consequences. When her uncle leads a coup with the intent to kill her, Liana and her twin brother are spirited away to a place where not even the stars are the same. Lost and alone, with only her father's pact with a foreign goddess to guide her, Liana must decide whom she can trust. Time is running short, and the will of the gods is all.Mother of Creation is an epic fantasy that tells the story of the coming of age of a royal heir, a brother's quest to save his sister, the machinations of the son of a god, a blind oracle's dreams, and the struggles of an ordinary soldier.