Cherie Priest

Cherie Priest's long-awaited steampunk debut, Boneshaker, opens in the early days of the Civil War when rumors of gold in the frozen Klondike brought hordes of newcomers to the Pacific Northwest. Anxious to compete, Russian prospectors commissioned inventor Leviticus Blue to create a great machine that could mine through Alaska's ice. Thus was Dr. Blue's Incredible Bone-Shaking Drill Engine born. But on its first test run the Boneshaker went terribly awry, destroying several blocks of downtown Seattle and unearthing a subterranean vein of blight gas that turned anyone who breathed it into the living dead. Now it is sixteen years later, and a wall has been built to enclose the devastated and toxic city. Just beyond it lives Blue's widow, Briar Wilkes. Life is hard with a ruined reputation and a teenaged boy to support, but she and Ezekiel are managing. Until Ezekiel undertakes a secret crusade to rewrite history. His quest will take him under the wall and into a city teeming with ravenous undead, air pirates, criminal overlords, and heavily armed refugees. And only Briar can bring him out alive.

Young ex-slave Gideon Bardsley is a brilliant inventor, but the job is less glamorous than one might think, especially since the assassination attempts started. Worse yet, they're trying to destroy his greatest achievement: a calculating engine called Fiddlehead, which provides undeniable proof of something awful enough to destroy the world. Both man and machine are at risk from forces conspiring to keep the Civil War going and the money flowing. Bardsley has no choice but to ask his patron, former president Abraham Lincoln, for help. Lincoln retired from leading the country after an attempt on his life, but is quite interested in Bardsley's immense data-processing capacities, confident that if people have the facts, they'll see reason and urge the government to end the war. Lincoln must keep Bardsley safe until he can finish his research, so he calls on his old private security staff to protect Gideon and his data. Maria "Belle" Boyd was a retired Confederate spy, until she got a life-changing job offer from the Pinkerton Detective Agency. Pinkerton respects her work, despite reservations about her lingering Southern loyalties. But it's precisely those loyalties that let her go into Confederate territory to figure out who might be targeting Bardsley. Maria is a good detective, but with spies from both camps gunning for her, can even the notorious Belle Boyd hold the greedy warhawks at bay? Another rollicking alternate history from Cherie Priest--Fiddlehead is the fifth book in the Clockwork Century steampunk series that started with Boneshaker.

Rector Wreck 'em Sherman was orphaned as a toddler in the Blight of 1863, but that was years ago. Wreck has grown up, and on his eighteenth birthday, he'll be cast out out of the orphanage. And Wreck's problems aren't merelyabout finding a home. He's been quietly breaking the cardinal rule of any good drug dealer and dipping into his own supply of the sap he sells. He's also pretty sure he's being haunted by the ghost of a kid he used to know--Zeke Wilkes, who almost certainly died six months ago. Zeke would have every reason to pester Wreck, since Wreck got him inside the walled city of Seattle in the first place, and that was probably what killed him. Maybe it's only a guilty conscience, but Wreck can't take it anymore, so he sneaks over the wall. The walled-off wasteland of Seattle is every bit as bad as he'd heard, chock-full of the hungry undead and utterly choked by the poisonous, inescapable yellow gas. And then there's the monster. Rector's pretty certain that whatever attacked him was not at all human--and not a rotter, either. Arms far too long. Posture all strange. Eyes all wild and faintly glowing gold and known to the locals as simpley The Inexplicables. In the process of tracking down these creatures, Rector comes across another incursion through the wall--just as bizarre but entirely attributable to human greed. It seems some outsiders have decided there's gold to be found in the city and they're willing to do whatever it takes to get a piece of the pie unless Rector and his posse have anything to do with it.

WINNER OF THE LOCUS AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL Ezekiel Blue’s father committed a crime, unleashing a deadly menace into steampowered Seattle. And his bereaved family has paid the price. Now, Ezekiel is determined to clear his father’s name, risking death and the undead in the attempt. Sixteen years ago, as the American Civil War dawned, gold brought hordes to the frozen Klondike. Fanatical in their greed, Russian prospectors commissioned Dr Leviticus Blue to create a great machine, to mine through Alaska’s ice. Thus the Incredible Bone-Shaking Drill Engine was born. But the Boneshaker went awry, destroying downtown Seattle and unearthing a subterranean vein of blight gas. Anyone who breathed its fumes turning into the living dead. The devastated city is now walled in to contain the blight. But unknown to Briar, his widowed mother, Ezekiel is going in. His quest will take him into a city teeming with ravenous undead, air pirates, criminal overlords, and heavily armed refugees. And only Briar can bring him out alive. ‘Adventure of rollicking pace and sweeping proportions … this book is made of irresistible’Scott Westerfeld, ‘This is a hoot from start to finish’Cory Doctorow,‘Intelligent, exceptionally well written and showcasing a phenomenal strong female protagonist’ Publishers Weekly

A devastating storm swells the Tennessee River to dam-breaking levels on the eve of Eden's planned move into a new riverside apartment complex. With the gushing waters comes a tide of corpses, animated and organized by a malignant force with an inscrutable purpose. Reluctant medium Eden may be the only one who can dissuade the zombie army from adding hundreds to their ghastly ranks.

At the Civil War battlefield at Chickamauga, Georgia, there have long been tales of sighting Old Green Eyes, said to be the guardian of the battle's dead, and now there's a new wrinkle. To wit, sightings of ghosts pointing frustratedly across the battlefield. The spirits need someone who can speak to them, and for them. Eden Moore is not interested. But the ghosts aren't taking no for an answer.

Maria Isabella Boyd's success as a Confederate spy has made her too famous for further espionage work, and now her employment options are slim. Exiled, widowed, and on the brink of poverty...she reluctantly goes to work for the Pinkerton National Detective Agency in Chicago. Adding insult to injury, her first big assignment is commissioned by the Union Army. In short, a federally sponsored transport dirigible is being violently pursued across the Rockies and Uncle Sam isn't pleased. The Clementine is carrying a top secret load of military essentials-essentials which must be delivered to Louisville, Kentucky, without delay. Intelligence suggests that the unrelenting pursuer is a runaway slave who's been wanted by authorities on both sides of the Mason-Dixon for fifteen years. In that time, Captain Croggon Beauregard Hainey has felonied his way back and forth across the continent, leaving a trail of broken banks, stolen war machines, and illegally distributed weaponry from sea to shining sea. And now it's Maria's job to go get him. He's dangerous quarry and she's a dangerous woman, but when forces conspire against them both, they take a chance and form an alliance. She joins his crew, and he uses her connections. She follows his orders. He takes her advice. And somebody, somewhere, is going to rue the day he crossed either one of them.

For more than 80 years H. P. Lovecraft has inspired writers of supernatural fiction, artists, musicians, filmmakers, and gaming. His themes of cosmic indifference, the utter insignificance of humankind, minds invaded by the alien, and the horrors of history — written with a pervasive atmosphere of unexplainable dread — remain not only viable motifs, but are more relevant than ever as we explore the mysteries of a universe in which our planet is infinitesimal and climatic change is overwhelming it. In the first decade of the twenty-first century the best supernatural writers no longer imitate Lovecraft, but they are profoundly influenced by the genre and the mythos he created. New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird presents some of the best of this new Lovecraftian fiction — bizarre, subtle, atmospheric, metaphysical, psychological, filled with strange creatures and stranger characters — eldritch, unsettling, evocative, and darkly appealing.

With the government now off her tail, vampire and superthief Raylene Pendle is up to her old tricks, hired to retrieve a valuable magical artefact. But this time, a powerful witch also wants the artefact. So now, Raylene must cross the country with ex-Navy SEAL and fabulous drag queen Adrian, trying to juggle two incredibly tricky assignments without losing control of either.

Monsters: As old as the oldest of stories, as new as our latest imaginings. From the ancient stone corridors of the labyrinth to the graffitied alleyways of the contemporary metropolis, they stalk the shadows. Leering from the darkness of the forest, jostling for space in our closets, they walk, crawl, creep and scuttle through our nightmares. Close as the clutter under the bed or the other side of the mirror, they are our truest companions. Creatures features the best monster fiction from the past thirty years, offering a wide variety of the best monster stories including original stories from the field's most relevant names and hottest newcomers including Clive Barker, Sarah Langan, Joe R. Lansdale, Kelly Link, China Miéville, and Cherie Priest.

Raylene Pendle (aka Cheshire Red) is a vampire and world-renowned thief. When the infuriatingly charming Ian Stott asks for help, Raylene doesn't bargain for a case that takes her from the wilds of Minneapolis to the mean streets of Atlanta. And with a psychotic scientist on her trail, a kick-ass drag queen on her side, and Men in Black everywhere, the case proves to be one hell of a ride.

Kitsune. Werewolves. Crane wives. Selkies. Every culture has stories of such strange creatures — animals turning into humans, humans shapeshifting into animals. Sometimes seductive, sometimes bloodthirsty, but always unpredictable like nature itself, these beings are manifestations of our secret hearts, our desire to belong to both worlds: one tame and civilized, the other unfettered and full of wild impulse. Here are stories that will make you wish you could howl at the moon until your heart bursts with longing or feel yourself shedding your human body as easily as a snake sheds its skin. Beware the night...it might not kill you, but it will certainly steal you away!

Nurse Mercy Lynch is elbows deep in bloody laundry at a war hospital in Richmond, Virginia, when Clara Barton comes bearing bad news: Mercy's husband has died in a POW camp. On top of that, a telegram from the west coast declares that her estranged father is gravely injured, and he wishes to see her. Mercy sets out toward the Mississippi River. Once there, she'll catch a train over the Rockies and - if the telegram can be believed - be greeted in Washington Territory by the sheriff, who will take her to see her father in Seattle. Reaching the Mississippi is a harrowing adventure by dirigible and rail through war-torn border states. When Mercy finally arrives in St. Louis, the only Tacoma-bound train is pulled by a terrifying Union-operated steam engine called the DREADNOUGHT. Reluctantly, Mercy buys a ticket and climbs aboard. What ought to be a quiet trip turns deadly when the train is beset by bushwhackers, then vigorously attacked by a band of Rebel soldiers. The train is moving away from battle lines into the vast, unincorporated west, so Mercy can't imagine why they're so interested. Perhaps the mysterious cargo secreted in the second and last train cars has something to do with it? Mercy is just a frustrated nurse who wants to see her father before he dies. But she'll have to survive both Union intrigue and Confederate opposition if she wants to make it off the DREADNOUGHT alive.

The ageless water witch Arahab has been scheming for eons, gathering the means to awaken the great Leviathan. She aims to bring him and the old gods back to their former glory, not caring that their ascendance will also mean an end to the human race. However, awakening the Leviathan will be no small feat. In fact, Arahab can't complete the ritual without human aid. Arahab's first choice is Jose Gaspar, a notorious sea pirate from eighteenth-century Spain. But when the task proves too difficult for Gaspar, she must look elsewhere, biding her time until the 1930s, when the ideal candidate shows up: a slightly deranged teenager named Bernice. Bernice is sophisticated, torn from New York and forced to spend a miserable summer on Anna Maria Island, a tiny rock off the coast of Florida. She's also been saddled with the companionship of her farm-raised cousin Nia. Eventually, Bernice's disenchantment gives way to rage and she commits a terrible crime. When Nia won't cover for Bernice, she turns on Nia, chasing her into the deadly coastal waves. But the elementals have better ideas: the moment the girls go under, Bernice is commandeered for Arahab's task force, and Nia is turned into a strange and powerful creature by a servant of the earth who doesn't want to surrender his green fields and muddy plains. Add in a hapless fire inspector who's just trying to get his paperwork in order, a fire god whose neutrality has been called into question, and a bizarre religious cult, and rural Florida doesn't seem quite so sleepy anymore. With Fathom, Cherie Priest brings her masterful writing and unforgettable characterization to the realm of near-contemporary rural fantasy. The result is fast-paced, stunning, and quite unlike anything you've ever read.

At the start of the Civil War, a Russian mining company commissions a great machine to pave the way from Seattle to Alaska and speed up the gold rush that is beating a path to the frozen north. Inventor Leviticus Blue creates the machine, but on its first test run it malfunctions, decimating Seattle's banking district and uncovering a vein of Blight Gas that turns everyone who breathes it into the living dead. Sixteen years later Briar, Blue's widow, lives in the poor neighborhood outside the wall that's been built around the uninhabitable city. Life is tough with a ruined reputation, but she and her teenage son Ezekiel are surviving - until Zeke impetuously decides that he must reclaim his father's name from the clutches of history.

An explosive tale of floods and the undead from a rising master of the supernatural, Not Flesh Nor Feathers is a stand-alone sequel to Four and Twenty Blackbirds and Wings to the Kingdom. Down by the river, the first to go missing were not much lamented. Disappearances of homeless men foraging through trash or nuisance skater kids who rolled their boards along the planked piers at night were not noteworthy enough to delay the city's development projects. But deep beneath the riverbank, the evidence of a terrible crime has been covered up twice. When a TVA dam falters and the river swells, panic rises downtown. As the Tennessee creeps over its banks, it dredges up death from its own polluted bed. Twenty-nine victims of a long-ago slaughter walk when the water rises, patrolling the banks and dragging the living down to a muddy grave. No one remembers how they died and no one knows what they want. Some secrets are never washed away. Instead they are patient, biding their time. They wait for the water to lift them so they can prowl for the justice that was denied them ninety years ago. But in ninety years a city's shape changes, and where justice can no longer be found, vengeance may have to suffice. The city of Chattanooga is about to learn a terrible truth about the things a river can and cannot hide.... And reluctant medium Eden Moore may be the only one who can dissuade the twenty- nine bodies from adding hundreds of its citizens to their ghastly ranks.

The fields at Chickamauga, Georgia--America's oldest national military park--claimed 35,000 casualties during the Civil War. Any good guide will tell you that the grounds are haunted. The battlefield even has its own resident haunt, called Old Green Eyes for his tell-tale luminous gaze. It has long been said that Old Green Eyes intends no harm to those who respect the park. He is no menace, but a guardian of the dead. While he walks, the dead may sleep secure in the knowledge that their rest will be undisturbed. While Old Green Eyes patrols the battlefield, there is nothing to fear, for graves are not robbed and bones are not moved. But suddenly a different phenomenon starts puzzling and frightening visitors, causing tours to be canceled and rangers to quit their jobs. These new ghosts are no illusions carved out of the low-rolling fog. One by one, the solemn-faced spirits in ragged uniforms show themselves, and one by one, they point a determined arm off into the distance. Why do the soldiers march again, and what has become of their unblinking custodian? The spirits need a go-between, someone who can speak to them, and for them. Eden Moore is not interested. But the ghosts aren't taking no for an answer.