joe Stevenson

I never wanted to rule. I never wanted to have men follow me. Die for me. But now, they do it anyway. The power in me is growing. If I’m not careful, it will consume me. It will consume everything. And the gods want it back. They come to me in a vision. Through the smoke and the screams of dying men, they give me a choice. Bow before them or die. My choice is easy; I defend what’s mine. It’s easier said than done, of course. I have to build an army unlike anything the Bosses have ever seen.

It always seems to be, lately. Blood. Mayhem. Destruction. It just follows me. The people after me - they’re relentless. They’ve hunted me from the moment I stepped into this new power. They say it’s not mine. That it belongs to the dragon Bosses. Hell, maybe even to the gods themselves. Well, anyone who wants my magic can fight me for it. I’m a diamond dragon, and the only one of my kind. Though I’ve been able to keep that a secret while my dragon and I get to know each other, we can’t hide the truth much longer.

There’s an entirely new depth to my magic, and for the first time, I truly have no limits. There are no boundaries to what I can do - and that terrifies everyone who has been trying so desperately to control me. The fact is, I’m a diamond dragon - the only one of my kind. The only other diamond dragons in history were the gods themselves. So...what does that make me?

My sister and I are human orphans raised by the world’s best assassin, taught to steal and kill our way through the dragonlands under her watchful eye. Grown men fear us, and no one knows we’re coming until it’s too late to run. Irena and I - we’re good. The best. In a dog-eat-dragon kind of world, we have to be. But someone betrayed us. Someone we trusted with our lives.

The magic I possess - the magic I’m quickly mastering - it can destroy whole cities. Start wars. Change the tides of a battle. As the dragon vessel, pretty much everyone wants me either locked up or dead. Out of the shadows comes a new threat - a fighter who reminds me a little too much of my mentor. He wants to take my old place at Zurie’s side. And the only way he can get it, apparently, is to kill me. Dragons and humans alike just won’t leave me alone. In the end, that’s going to be their fatal mistake. Because I don’t go down quietly.

All my life, I was trained to be the perfect killer. An assassin. A ghost in the night. The sort of phantom that gives grown men nightmares. But the woman who raised me to hunt dragon shifters made a mistake, and that blunder left me marked. Magical. Determined to undo all of this, Zurie is now at war. With me. My former mentor won't stop until I'm dead, but we know each other too well. Moves. Tactics. Fears. Strengths. Weaknesses.

A dangerous and cruel dragon-shifter is holding my sister hostage. And I am going to kill him. With my bare hands, if I have to. He wants to trade - Irena’s life, for mine. For my freedom. For the ancient and deadly dragon magic I fused with when his cronies kicked me into a pit to die. I came back from the dead, and I brought the fury of hell with me. Now, they’re running scared - as they should. All of them, except this guy. As the cherry on this toxic pie, my mentor is hunting me, too. She’s using every skill she ever taught me to track me down and lock me away.

Empathic Flinx and his minidrag, Pip, have saved the universe more times than they can count, but the return of an old friend pulls the duo from their retirement and plunges them into a story of intrigue and imagination. The planet of Largess has recently opened itself to trade with the human-dominated Commonwealth. But when the daughter of a powerful chieftain goes missing, authorities believe a covert agent to be the cause. They need someone to track down the princess and roust the troublemaker and to do so without alerting the whole planet.

The last time Thread attacked Pern, the world was unprepared for the fight - until the Oldtimers appeared. These courageous dragonriders arrived from the past, traveling 400 years to help their descendants survive. But the collision of past and present took its toll. While most of the displaced rescuers adapted to their new reality, others could not abide the jarring change and found themselves in soul-crushing exile, where unhappiness and resentment seethed.

In the aftermath of the brutal murder of his father, a mysterious woman, Kahlan Amnell, appears in Richard Cypher's forest sanctuary seeking help...and more. His world, his very beliefs, are shattered when ancient debts come due with thundering violence. In a dark age it takes courage to live, and more than mere courage to challenge those who hold dominion, Richard and Kahlan must take up that challenge or become the next victims.