Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell meets A Tale of Two Cities in H. G. Parry's A Far Better Thing, a heart-rending fantasy of faery revenge set during the French Revolution.
Most Anticipated SSF Books 2025--The Nerd Daily
I feared this was the best of times; I hoped it could not get any worse.
That most rare and precious thing: a brand-new classic, both wholly original and wonderfully nostalgic. --Alix E. Harrow, New York Times bestselling author
In the early 1900s, a young woman is caught between two worlds in H. G. Parry's cozy tale of magic, miracles, and an adventure of a lifetime. Off the coast of Ireland sits a legendary island hidden by magic. A place of ruins and ancient trees, sea salt air, and fairy lore, Hy-Brasil is the only home Biddy has ever known. Washed up on its shore as a baby, Biddy lives a quiet life with her guardian, the mercurial magician Rowan. A life she finds increasingly stifling. One night, Rowan fails to return from his mysterious travels. To find him, Biddy must venture into the outside world for the first time. But Rowan has powerful enemies--forces who have hoarded the world's magic and have set their sights on the magician's many secrets. Biddy may be the key to stopping them. Yet the closer she gets to answers, the more she questions everything she's ever believed about Rowan, her past, and the nature of magic itself. Praise for The Magician's Daughter Brilliantly imagined. Parry blends mythic elements with wit and heart. --Lucy Holland A charming romp of an old-school coming of age fantasy about family and magic that will take your heart for a wild ride. ―NPR For more from H. G. Parry, check out: The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep The Shadow HistoriesThe ultimate book-lover's fantasy, this sparkling debut is a delight of magic and literature, love and adventure (Kat Howard) featuring a young scholar with the power to bring literary characters into the world.
For his entire life, Charley Sutherland has concealed a magical ability he can't quite control: He can bring characters from books into the real world.
But when literary characters start causing trouble throughout the city and threatening to destroying the world, he learns he's not the only one with his ability. Now it's up to Charley and his reluctant older brother, Rob, to stop them--hopefully before they reach The End.
Praise for The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep
A star-studded literary tour and a tangled mystery and a reflection on reading itself; it's a pure delight. --Alix E. Harrow, Hugo Award-winning author
This beautifully-written novel is an exploration of the power fiction wields -- the power to inform and to change, even to endanger, our everyday world. --Louisa Morgan, author of A Secret History of Witches
Equal parts sibling rivalry, crackling mystery, and Dickensian battle royale, it'll be one of your most fun reads this year. --Mike Chen, author of Here and Now and Then
A rich, sprawling epic full of history and magic, Declaration is Jonathan Strange with international politics and vampires. I loved it.―Alix E. Harrow
A sweeping tale of revolution and wonder in a world not quite like our own, A Radical Act of Free Magic is the conclusion to this genre-defying series of magic, war, and the struggle for freedom in the early modern world. The Concord has been broken, and a war of magic engulfs the world. In France, the brilliant tactician NapolĂ©on Bonaparte has risen to power, and under his command, the army of the dead has all but conquered Europe. Britain fights back, but Wilberforce's own battle to bring about free magic and abolition has met a dead end in the face of an increasingly repressive government. In Saint-Domingue, Fina aids Toussaint Louverture as he navigates these opposing forces to liberate the country. But there is another, even darker war being fought beneath the surface: the first vampire war in hundreds of years. The enemy blood magician who orchestrated Robespierre's downfall is using the French Revolutionary Wars to bring about a return to dark magic. Across the world, only a few know of his existence, and the choices they make will shape the new age of magic. Praise for The Shadow Histories: Magnificent...[turns] the part of history class you might have slept through into something new, exciting and deeply magical.―BookPage A witty, riveting historical fantasy . . . Parry has a historian's eye for period detail and weaves real figures from history--including Robespierre and Toussaint L'Ouverture--throughout her poetic tale of justice, liberation, and dark magic. This is a knockout. ―Publishers Weekly (starred review) The Shadow Histories