Jodi Meadows

THE LOYAL SWORD

Annelise has a problem with princes: they show up at the worst possible moments, turning her life upside down. After the first one gets her exiled from her homeland and into enemy territory, drinking herself into oblivion sounds like a pretty good idea. But when she’s forced to save a second prince from an early death in an alley, alcohol isn’t an option anymore.

Suddenly, she’s dressing like a man, becoming the suicidal prince’s bodyguard, and fighting off rumors that she’s a spy. Not to mention the strange marks that priests keep leaving on her wrist, the dragon living underneath the temple who’s waiting to make a meal of her employer, and the impending war between her homeland and the enemy kingdom.

But all that pales in comparison to the way her skin begins to glow, and she discovers that saving a prince, saving a kingdom, and saving what’s left of her pride aren’t the only things that she’s meant to do.

MARIELE AT MIDNIGHT

When rogue sorcerers kidnap her sister, Mariele goes to the capital to petition the king for help. He refuses, saying her sister isn’t important, so she joins a group of resistance fighters who want to dethrone the king. They agree to help her find her sister in exchange for her assistance with a few spying exploits.

On her first mission, Mariele finds an ally and dangerous romance when she meets one of the king’s personal sorcerers, Tobias. He’s the king’s right hand, but not by choice. The king’s magic compels him to do things he hates. To make up for his wrongs, he endeavors to help Mariele find her sister, and they work together to discover the truth about the resistance, his past, and how both connect to the recent abduction.

But with the people she thought were friends keeping valuable secrets from her, and the kidnappers trying to kill her at every turn, Mariele may never see her sister again.

THREEFOLD BLIGHT

Sadie sees things others don’t: mermaids in fountains, fairies in her attic, and the end of the world.

The townspeople call her crazy behind her back, but she tries not to mind. She’s more concerned about the trees she finds melting into sharp black puddles — they leave wounds that never heal — and the hole in the sky, which is sucking in clouds and stars and slices of the moon. At the same time as the world is dying, Sadie meets a stag who save her from a mountain lion. But the stag is also a fox and ferret and eagle…and a young man with no name or memory of his past, and no power to control what shape the magic makes him become. All he knows is that he’s hiding from someone. Sadie names him Changer.

The end of the world has three parts: the hole in the sky; sickness of the earth; and a hidden thing, a changing thing, a forgotten thing. Sadie wants to believe Changer isn’t connected to the threefold blight, but as she searches for answers in priests’ libraries and long-dead sorcerers’ notes, she realizes they’re both more involved than anyone. In order to save the world, Sadie will have to give up her life, and Changer’s.

GHOST DAUGHTER

Cassandra has enough problems when she discovers the bodies outside her inn, half-buried in snow. But while she and the other townspeople are out investigating, a bright light comes streaking into the forest, bringing five visitors from another world. Or so Cassandra believes; the visitors speak no language she’s ever heard.

In spite of the language barrier, what the star-strangers want soon becomes clear: they desire to go into the old city south of town, from which no one has ever returned. It’s forbidden to enter the old city, which holds ghosts and secrets that should stay hidden in the ruins. Still, they need a device locked in the ancient temples there, one that can help them win a war in the stars, so they go in, armed and armored with their technology.

When people in town start dying mysteriously, Cassandra realizes the murders have connections with old city magic. She follows the star-strangers into the old city to try to stop the murders, but they all must hurry, because the bodies–which she found beneath the window of a room outside of time–were the strangers’, and her own.

DELUGE

Angela is the only one to escape the Deluge.

It began half a century ago, with neriads cleaning rivers and lakes in exchange for protection. They made deserts fertile and brought magic into the world. Then came unexplained pregnancies and children drowning where mermaids ruled. Leviathans rose from the bottom of the sea, toppling ships and killing crews.

During a reconnaissance mission to the East Jungle, everyone in Angela’s company was killed by water cultists. Everyone but Angela. For three years she was kept prisoner by a powerful nix called Iancu. Kept as a pet, a lab rat.

Angela escapes, safe behind the unmagical dome that protects the city, but the jungle haunts her. The Ministry of Deluge Mitigation does little to help; when her mind closes up and refuses to remember anything, the Ministry dumps her in her in the gang-infested slums. As a terrible virus floods her neighborhood, killing some and causing others to grow scales and gills, Angela struggles to rebuild her life. But a nix is getting through the unmagic barrier to torment her, and nightwraiths make her doubt her sanity. Memories trickle back, and Angela realizes she didn’t escape from the jungle. She was released.

TOUCH OF THE SILENCE

Imogene makes the perfect spy: she is Touched. With only a moment of skin to skin contact, she can see into people’s minds and learn their darkest secrets.

When she discovers a secret that could start a fifth world war, she refuses to tell her king and the Order of Silence. Now a traitor, Imogene stays hidden until news of her father’s illness finds her. She recognizes this mysterious sickness as a plot to draw her out, but she may be the only one both willing and able to help her family.

With the aid of her former partner, Imogene sneaks home undiscovered. There, she learns of a brewing civil war, her partner’s motivations for not turning her in, and the Silence’s involvement in her father’s slow poisoning. Imogene desperately wants to help her father, but when another spy offers a deal that could save his life, she realizes she might have to let him die. In order to get the antidote, Imogene will have to betray the secret everyone is willing to kill for: the way for a mortal to see the gods.

HARPY

The trouble with wings is that they’re hard to hide.

Harriet is one-quarter harpy. She’s managed to hide her wings for years, but after one slip at a bus stop, EchidHunt–an organization devoted to capturing the monstrous children of the Greek legend, Echidna–kidnaps her. Harriet fears she’ll never get free, until help comes from a fellow captive and a rogue EchidHunt employee.

After a narrow escape, she finds herself hunted again. Harriet knows her missing father, a half-harpy who abandoned her, hid from EchidHunt his whole life. She sets out to find him and ask how. But her search leads her to the world of monsters, where she discovers there’s more at stake now than her freedom: her father has amassed an army of mythical creatures to use to destroy EchidHunt. That sounds okay to Harriet, until she learns the creatures are the violent sort, and that next, her father will release those thousands of Echidna’s children on an unprotected Earth, reclaiming the world for monsters.

And he wants Harriet to help.

TOIL FOR THE WIND

Selah and her cat live in the village of the wind, where the nighttime wind sweeps demons back to the deepest roads. When the wind disappears one night, the villagers panic. Only the priest and madman understand the wind’s double-edged protection: it drives back demons, but causes madness in anyone caught out after dark. Either of them might know how to protect the village now, but the madman won’t talk, and the priest suddenly dies–in Selah’s arms.

The villagers need someone to blame, and Selah is the easiest target. For all she knows, they’re right. Ever since she encountered the wind as a child, she’s had blackouts, waking up to find people dead.

As punishment, the villagers lock her away with the madman. When she earns his trust, he tells her what he and the priest have always known: the wind made her its champion and sacrifice, and she is the world’s one chance against demons they’ve only imagined until now. To keep the village safe and earn back her life, Selah and the madman escape their prison to search for the vanished wind. And a way for Selah to survive once it’s back.

SHADOW OF VENGEANCE

Mai became a thief to kill a murderer. She’s waited patiently since childhood, training until she can take revenge on the thief who killed her parents.

Now, at twenty, Mai is practiced in the arts of thievery, stealth, and death. She believes she is ready until the blind and reclusive thief lord, Whisper, calls upon her for aid. The thieves’ guild is being torn apart by a war between the gifted and the giftless. If she can help him settle matters, her reward will be power. Knowledge. If she can’t, the guild will be destroyed, as will Mai’s chances of finding vengeance.

Accepting Whisper’s offer does not come without a price. She faces mortal danger as she is used against those she once thought friends and sent on assignments that will emotionally destroy her. Trusts are formed and shattered when she learns truths she never thought possible: who betrayed the guild, and who murdered her parents. The truth presents her with a terrible choice between friendship, duty, and revenge.

GLICIA

After eight years as a paraplegic writer, Tabetha thought traveling to the fantasyland she created would be a dream come true. But when she reaches Glicia she can’t walk, she can’t speak the language, and her characters don’t love her. Even the wildlife wants to kill her.

And there is something else. Something has changed on Glicia, between the time she wrote her story and the time she was dropped into an icy forest, alone and half-naked. There are new powers in the land, and despite Tabetha’s intimate knowledge of the world, she cannot foresee what role she will play until it is too late.

Tabetha was not brought to Glicia to save it.