Lake Jay

Green is hounded by the gods of Copper Downs and the gods of Kalimpura, who have laid claim to her and her children. She never wanted to be a conduit for the supernatural, but when she killed the Immortal Duke and created the Ox god with the power she released, she came to their notice. Now she has sworn to retrieve the two girls taken hostage by the Bittern Court, one of Kalimpura's rival guilds. But the Temple of the Lily Goddess is playing politics with her life.

More than five-hundred pages, over one-quarter of a million words... Space Opera spans a vast range of epic interstellar adventure stories told against a limitless cosmos filled with exotic aliens, heroic characters, and incredible settings. A truly stellar compilation of tales from one of the defining streams of science fiction, old and new, written by a supernova of genre talent.

Rejoin the adventure in the third novel of "Lake's Clockwork Earth" series. Paolina Barthes, young sorceress, is crossing the Equatorial Wall, attempting to take herself and her magic away from the grasp of powerful men in the empires of the north. Emily Childress is still aboard the renegade Chinese submarine, along with her devoted Captain, and the British chief petty officer Angus al-Wazir. They are all being sought most urgently by the powers that secretly rule the Northern Earth - the Silent Order and the White Birds. And a third power, of the Southern Earth, has its eye on Paolina; she will not be allowed to bring the political turmoil of the North into the more mystical South.

Her exquisite beauty and brilliant mind were not enough to free her from captivity. That took her skills with a knife, plus the power of a goddess. She was born in poverty, in a dusty village under the equatorial sun. She does not remember her mother, she does not remember her own name - her earliest clear memory is of the day her father sold her to the tall pale man. In the Court of the Pomegranate Tree, where she was taught the ways of a courtesan - and the skills of an assassin - she was named Emerald, the precious jewel of the Undying Duke's collection of beauties. She calls herself Green. The world she inhabits is one of political power and magic, where Gods meddle in the affairs of mortals. At the centre of it is the immortal Duke's city of Copper Downs, which controls all the trade on the Storm Sea. Green has made many enemies, and some secret friends, and she has become a very dangerous woman indeed.

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, discovered dead and tortured, left him enough money to buy himself out of his contract and a curious encrypted "bearer deed" to a mysterious property on the distant edge of the galactic Spray. 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 behind his bearer deed and more about his own past than he had ever dared bargain for.For the first time ever in paperback, this thrilling, vividly imagined new science fiction novel from rising star Matthew Hughes (The Commons, Majestrum, The Spiral Labyrinth) provides atmospheric adventure in the classic tradition while layering on complex, fascinating societies and future cultures with the deft touch of a master storyteller.