"Mooooorrrrrrrreeeeeeee, this book is like air, i need it!" @noromance101 "These chapters are written BEAUTIFULLY! You are, without a doubt, my favorite writer on this site. " @nagykt "Reading this feeds my soul." @Yrthraethra Sixteen-year-old Mirra can see people's memories. She is a Shadow Weaver, one of the outlawed, glitter-eyed race feared in her land and forced into brutal slavery as children. She and her brother Kel have escaped their fate by hiding near the frozen mountains. But when bounty hunters snatch Kel, Mirra injured and unable to track long distances will lose him unless she gives herself up to his captors. As as a Shadow Weaver who's survived childhood and whose golden-flecked irises have faded, concealing her talent, Mirra's own value is priceless on the black-market. Taken to a lawless town in the northern territories, Mirra convinces her captors to sell her to a mysterious young man destined for the same province as the officer who has bought her brother. The young man is the Kingdom's missing Prince, feared dead after his escort was attacked on an expedition. He has been in hiding, waiting for a Shadow Weaver whose skill he can use to discover who ordered his assassination. But before he will risk breaking his father's law and taking Mirra to the royal court, he must test her talent and her ability to hide it. If Mirra fails, her hopes of seeing her brother again will be cut by the noose around her neck. HIGHEST RANKING #1 in Fantasy on Wattpad. #1 Amazon Sword & Sorcery This book was taken down in DEC 2017 due to publishing restrictions. It is now possible to put it back up on wattpad. From March onwards 2 chapters will be posted per week until the completed book is available.

************************************************************************************** An outcast rogue must break a curse put on his fate, or die on his nineteenth birthday. To survive, he'll need the sword of a maiden, the aid of an immortal, and the power of forbidden magic that could cost him the only girl he ever loved. ************************************************************************************ *** THE JACK OF SOULS won a Silver IPPY this year! *** THE JACK OF SOULS won 1st place in the PNWA Competition in Fantasy! * *** THE JACK OF SOULS won 1st place in the Southwest Writers competition! * *** A "Featured Book" on Wattpad! * *** Now a "Staff Pick" on Kickstarter! * *** Available on Amazon in paper, hardback, and ebook ! * *** My contract with Kindle Select won't allow me to post more than 3 chapters here, but... *** Sign up for my newsletter on stephenmerlino.com for alerts when it's free on Amazon! * MY INSPIRATION I wrote this out of pure love of trickster rogues; I love the wit over brawn motif -- Odysseus over Achilles, Raven over Eagle -- so I like to play with it in my stories. In JOS I set the rogue and con-artist Harric against a foil of warriors in a land threatened by magic and civil war. Whenever possible I turn familiar tropes on their heads: instead of a handsome young Lancelot, I cast a broken-down ex-champion addicted to pain-killing herbs; instead of a dashing Squire Brian, the old knight reluctantly takes an ambitious young woman as squire. Similarly, I re-imagine the standard medieval milieu by infusing aspects of two of my favorite historical periods, Elizabethan England, and The American Frontier. Both eras boast a kind of nationalistic arrogance that borders on hubris, and a magnificent spirit of resourcefulness and re-invention that is fun to play with. SERIES The Jack of Souls is first in a series. I am posting parts of the sequel here now (The Knave of Souls), to help me refine the story.

~ COMPLETE AND NOW AVAILABLE ON AMAZON ~ In the Five Kingdoms of Saol Eile, magic is the only currency and those who have the most cast long shadows across the land. Amidst lavish parties, sumptuous banquets, and sprawling castles, despicable tyrants have risen, calling themselves kings by right; emperors, by the laws of old magic, and monarchs, by the wealth they've procured. When it's rumored that an army of flesh-eating monsters has risen from the shadows, tyrant-kings are forced to submit to a far more dangerous power - the sorcerer standing at the head of it all: The Cursed One. Orphaned and penniless, eighteen-year-old Cecily Trask's magic has always been reluctant to emerge. But with the kingdoms at the brink of war, she vows to do whatever it takes to keep her people safe-even if it means breaking all the rules, reaching into the depths of her soul to unravel the bindings around her true power, and allying with the potentially dangerous prince, Daire Niadh, to do it. In a landscape thick with mistrust, desire, and incipient hope, Cecily and Daire cross paths in an unfamiliar world forever changed by violent forces neither of them understand. They should hate each other. They should want each other dead. But their grief both draws them together and breaks them down, until all they have left is their shared goal - to defeat The Cursed One, even though for Cecily, the journey means almost certain death. ❧ Copyright © Marcella Colavecchio, 2014 - 2020.

The entity living inside Callan's soul orphaned her at age eleven. By the time she's sixteen, it's ensured her being shunted from one foster family to another. Her thirteenth foster assignment should be routine. Except... it's not. A psycho in medieval armor kidnaps her and she ends up in a magical world. There, she accidentally discovers a secret her parents had kept until the day they died. Both actually came from this magical world, but left before Callan was born. To cover their tracks, they'd lied about everything. Even who they really were. Driven to find out where she comes from, Callan's trapped in a race for life and death. Walking away isn't an option, but if she stays too long, the entity will find its next victim. In this world where secrets are sacrosanct and grudges are remembered, finding the truth will be near impossible. Especially when Callan has her own homicidal little secret to deal with. A secret with a taste for destroying her life.

A silence to keep and a wicked queen to defeat. An exiled princess returns to her kingdom, bent on slaying the immortal sorceress, the Queen in the Glass Mountain. By her side is the Caster, guide and protector. Perils await them on their quest, and will test not only their strength but their hearts as well. Yet how will such thirst for vengeance serve the Princess, if not to lead to her own ruin? Follow the story of the silent Princess, from the fairy tales "Seven Ravens" and "Six Swans", retold as one of grief and hatred, of lost dreams, and above all, of how love can emerge from even the darkest of places. Cover art by Oliver Barcelon: http://oliverpaulobarcelon.daportfolio.com/

She's fae. He's human. He should never have followed her into the magic realm... Violet has one job: protect humans from dangerous magical creatures. It's a job she's good at-until the cute human guy whose life she just saved follows her into the fae world. Now she's broken faerie law, risking her future at the Guild of Guardians. She needs to get Nate home and make him forget everything he's discovered. If only someone wasn't intent on hunting him down. Vi and Nate are pulled into the darker side of the fae world, where deadly magic and long-forgotten secrets exist. Vi might be one of the best, but can she get them out alive? Dazzling magic, page-turning action, family secrets, and swoon-worthy romance. Start reading today to be swept away into this enchanting world! (Note: This is a first edition. The second edition with minor changes is now available on the Google Play store, Apple Books, Kobo, Amazon and other ebook and print book retailers.)

{Removed for edit} Maliko, captain of the militia, makes an oath to a neighboring king. Now he is racing against time to locate the missing princess and protect her from the enemy's grasp. However, a mysterious woman imposes on his mission and unintentionally captures his interest. The captain never anticipates the extent of the woman's influence and sets to uncover the truth as she travels with his team.

Religion rules Constantine's world...and she has been condemned as the Spawn of the Devil. She is a Champion, a human being blessed with superhuman abilities by the deities of her world. However, her patron happens to be the Lord of War and Strategy - and women were never supposed to be Champions of War. In order to survive in a world that would rip her apart, she disguises as a boy, training to fulfil her supposed destiny. But fate has other things in store for her. An ancient evil is rising - and only Constantine may have the power needed to fight it. Along with a brash warrior and a too-perceptive scholar, Constantine begins to unravel secrets of a prophecy foretelling the end of the world. Now, she must learn how to fight evil with nothing but a magical knife as well as powers she knows next-to-nothing of. The real problem though? She may have been the one to call the great evil in the first place. ************ Now a Wattpad Featured story! Highest ranking: #1 in Fantasy Cover by @seventhstar Previous cover by @TrafficCop Original cover sketch by @MissBookNut, colours by @AFlyingPug

What if Snow White wasn't so good after all? Eleanor, the Queen of RedCrest presides over the kingdom with her son, Floran. The time since the war has been peaceful, until one day when a mysterious woman arrives on horseback, bloodied, dirtied and with an arrow embedded in her shoulder. The woman is revealed to be Snow White, who causes quite a stir with the residents of RedCrest. Everyone takes quite the liking to her, including Floran. Everyone except Queen Eleanor, that is, who believes that Snow White is harbouring a secret. A deadly secret. (Featured in Fantasy during 2015)

Sixteen-year-old Mara Westray has just lost her mother, and now, being shipped off to live with the father she doesn’t know is not how she imagined grieving. She’s already counting down the days until she turns eighteen and can leave the tiny island of Swans Landing. But from the moment she steps off the ferry, nothing is as ordinary as it looks. Whispers of a haunting song on the wind make her see impossible things, and she isn’t sure she can trust her judgment about what is real and what isn’t anymore. Maybe she can’t even trust her judgment about quiet Josh Canavan, whose way of speaking in riddles and half-truths only confuses her more, luring her deeper into the secrets hidden beneath the ocean’s surface. As she tries to unravel the events that led to her mom fleeing the island sixteen years ago, Mara finds that the biggest secret of all is only the beginning. SURFACING is currently available in ebook format from Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, iTunes, Smashwords, and other ebook retailers. Available in audiobook from Audible, and in print at Amazon. Visit my website for more information on the Swans Landing series and where to purchase the ebooks: http://www.shananorris.com/surfacing/