Books

“Kings are a bad habit. Let’s break it.”

It’s fifteen years after the Norsunder War. David, one of Detlev’s boys, is a man in his early thirties, teacher and guide at the new dyranarya school, revived after a four thousand year hiatus—and also a highly-trained military strategist.

His last student having gone off to a new life, he agrees to check...

Acclaimed Inda series within Sherwood Smith’s epic fantasy Sartorias-deles universe • Military fantasy woven with courtly politics, vast worldbuilding, and diverse characters

For nearly nine years, Inda has been at sea, living under a new name and forcing himself to never think of all he had lost. He created a new life, for the military skills...

AAcclaimed Inda series within Sherwood Smith's epic fantasy Sartorias-deles universe • Military fantasy woven with courtly politics, vast worldbuilding, and diverse characters

As the second son of the Prince and Princess of Choraed Elgaer, Inda was supposed to protect the realm his older brother would inherit. Forced to flee his homeland before...

After journeymage Wren and Queen Teressa argue over wicked Hawk Rhiscarlan, Wren leaves the magic school seeking Prince Connor. Wren is aboard a smuggler,fighting pirates with magic when Teressa flirts with Hawk, who upsets her court as Tyron-the next Queen’s Mage-watches helplessly. Evil ex-king Andreus adds to the danger that the four friends...

OK, Bitches, anyone here like diversity? Kickass female characters? Rich, detailed worldbuilding? Of course you do! And I have got the series for you! Allow me to tell you absolutely everything about it. Buckle up, this is gonna take awhile. (Smart Bitches, Trashy Books Keeper Shelf)

The first book in the acclaimed Inda series, now in a...

“Disguise your passion in masque; when the dance ends, peril begins.”

It’s nearly fourteen years since the Norsunder War ended. But peacetime still has surprises for The Trouble With Kings’ second gen, especially those with high ambitions.

Sky Szinzar, Princess of Ralanor Veleth, has loyally insisted on the betrothal she made to Lexan Glenereth,...

Ie wants only to rescue his father. But everyone wants a piece of him. The chase is on.

Dave and I describe the flavor of our five-book retro-futura space opera Exordium as a cross between early Star Wars and Dangerous Liaisons by way of the Three Stooges. Further blurb stuff: With its fast-moving blend of humor and horror, of high-tech skiffy...

First written when I was a teen, the series called CJ’s Notebooks features a gang of girls around thirteen-year-old Queen Clair of Mearsies Heili. The M girls, as they come to be known, prefer their villains silly, their throwing pies gloppy, and their adventures fun. But villains don’t ask first if the girls want to be dragged into dangerous...

In this latest addition to the Dobrenica series, Ruli, a new vampire, is trying to adjust to this change in¿can you call it a life? She’s lost everything. But that including her old reputation for weakness and lack of direction, as she discovers the lure of badassery.

At the same time, Kim and the crown prince of Dobrenica are on their honeymoon...

Sherwood Smith’s media happy place tends toward braided tales, with characters growing and changing in a world both breathtaking and strange, where striving to become the best one can be matters. She found that in Chinese and Korean historical dramas, which kicked off years of immersion in East Asian history, literature, art, and language.

In...

In this third re-edited and amended edition, Kim is on the eve of her wedding. She’s still trying to get used to the idea of becoming a princess when she goes through the wrong door, and is caught Dobrenica’s liminal boundary.

It’s now 1795, the rise of Napoleon, and Kim finds herself a guardian spirit for a twelve-year-old kid who will either...

The final book in the Phoenix Feather and Sagacious series, Sagacious Blade brings the story full circle.

It would be difficult to find two boys more unlike.

Friendly, animal-loving Ki Mek, youngest of a sprawling family of gallant wanderers, was born with Essence talent—much to the dismay of the Kis, who only believe in the skills of their...

The Prisoner of Zenda meets Brigadoon by way of Buffy…

In this unrepentant wish-fulfillment series, Kim is back in the US, licking her wounds both metaphorical and physical when a vision of Ruli, the woman who married Alec Ysvorod, crown prince of Dobrenica and the man Kim loves, forces her to return to Dobrenica to face the mess she left behind....

The Prisoner of Zenda meets Brigadoon

Grad student and fencing enthusiast Kim Murray is in Europe trying to find her grandmother’s missing family when she sees her first ghost. Not that she knows it’s a ghost. There’s a lot she doesn’t know, because her grandmother never talked about her past.

Two days into her stay in Vienna, she comes across a...

In the darkness of defeat, can hope catch fire?

The greatly anticipated final book in the Change series. In a world of mutant powers and deadly creatures, one small town faces its worst nightmare…

In a single shocking night, Las Anclas is conquered. Voske rules the town, remaking it in his image. He brings Opportunity Day to Las Anclas, with its...

A starving English major desperate for a job goes on an interview, where she is turned loose in a ballroom full of books...

This story is an homage to those who love works with grace and wit such as Jane Austen wrote, who regard fan fiction as part of the river of story, and who wonder just what universal imagination can achieve...

Set in the tumultuous, magic-filled history of Tribute and the Phoenix Feather quartet…

The second half of the story of sixteen-year-old Lan Renti’s rise to the phoenix throne begins literally in the air, as she returns to her ship of wanderers, crying hard after leaving the brother she sought for four years. But her brother sees her as a young...

Set in the tumultuous, magic-filled history of the Phoenix Feather quartet…

How did scholarly, modest Lan Renti, lowest ranking of the troubled imperial clan, rise to become the Sage Empress, first woman ruler in the long history of the Empire of a Thousand Isles?

Aware of how the official records embellish (or sidestep) the truth, she’s...

A YALSA Best Book for Young Adults, Stranger captures the excitement of The Hunger Games, the immersive world of Shadow and Bone, and the special powers of The Darkest Minds.

“A first-rate page-turner”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

In the post-apocalyptic world of the Change, people with mutant talents are powerful and hated, and even the trees...

In this first in a series set in the world of the Phoenix Feather quartet, Bu is twelve and near-sighted, an unwanted daughter sent to a music audition. If she fails, she’s on her own. Elderly Granny Zim, who knows that soon she must retire as head of the music academy, is fascinated by YinYin, a student who might not be human. YinYin and Bu...