After centuries of calm, the Nameless One is stirring.

An army is gathering; thousands of giants, ogres, and other creatures joining forces from all across the Desolate Lands. In the Crayfish Dukedom they are forging weapons night and day. By the next spring, or perhaps sooner, the Nameless One and his forces will be at the walls of the great city of Avendoom. Unless Harold, master thief, can find some way to stop them.

Harold will be accompanied on his quest by an Elfin princess, Miralissa; ten of the Wild Hearts, the most experienced and dangerous fighters in their world; and the king’s court jester. These companions will form a bond of friendship and honor that must carry them over a series of frightful obstacles before they can reach their goal: Hrad Spein, the mysterious Palaces of the Bones. Only there will they find the key to undoing the ancient curse that hangs over their world and ridding the land of the Nameless One forever.

Reminiscent of Michael Moorcock’s Elric series, Shadow Prowler is the first work by the bestselling new generation fantasy author Alexey Pehov to be translated into English.

The work was translated from Russian by Andrew Bromfield, best known as the translator of the highly successful Night Watch series.

Captain Ean Tephe is a man of faith, whose allegiance to his lord and to his ship is uncontested. The Bishopry Militant knows this — and so, when it needs a ship and crew to undertake a secret, sacred mission to a hidden land, Tephe is the captain to whom the task is given.

Tephe knows from that the start that his mission will be a test of his skill as a leader of men and as a devout follower of his god. It’s what he doesn’t know that matters: to what ends his faith and his ship will ultimately be put — and that the tests he will face will come not only from his god and the Bishopry Militant, but from another, more malevolent source entirely…

Author John Scalzi has ascended to the top ranks of modern science fiction with the best-selling, Hugo-nominated novels Old Man’s War and Zoe’s Tale. Now he tries his hand at fantasy, with a dark and different novella that takes your expectations of what fantasy is and does, and sends them tumbling.

Say your prayers… and behold The God Engines.

In a word: Excellent. I’m deeply pleased with this cover. In fact it’s being made the sole cover for the novella, because it is more accurate for the story in tone and imagery. This is not to take away from the previous cover, which had qualities of its own. But this cover is very close to what I saw in my own mind’s eye when I was writing the tale.

1926. New York. The Roaring Twenties. Jazz. Flappers. Prohibition. Coal-powered cars. A cold war with a British Empire that still covers half of the globe. Yet things have developed differently to established history. America is in the midst of a cold war with a British Empire that has only just buried Queen Victoria, her life artificially preserved to the age of 107. Coal-powered cars roar along roads thick with pedestrians, biplanes take off from standing with primitive rocket boosters and monsters lurk behind closed doors and around every corner. This is a time in need of heroes. It is a time for The Ghost. A series of targeted murders are occurring all over the city, the victims found with ancient Roman coins placed on their eyelids after death. The trail appears to lead to a group of Italian-American gangsters and their boss, who the mobsters have dubbed ‘The Roman’. However, as The Ghost soon discovers, there is more to The Roman than at first appears, and more bizarre happenings that he soon links to the man, including moss-golems posing as mobsters and a plot to bring an ancient pagan god into the physical world in a cavern beneath the city. As The Ghost draws nearer to The Roman and the center of his dangerous web, he must battle with foes both physical and supernatural and call on help from the most unexpected of quarters if he is to stop The Roman and halt the imminent destruction of the city.