Nobody captures the delight of magic—or makes you feel its cost—quite like DeAnna Knippling, veteran author of 80+ wonderfully strange books for interesting people.
On the coldest night of 1929, the Honeybee's Sting—a basement speakeasy under a laundry—smells of damp brick and rotgut whiskey. Bare bulbs cut too-bright shadows across the room while a blizzard rages outside. The sharp-eared kid watching the door planned to push a broom for twenty minutes and spend the rest of the night with a battered copy of Black Mask.
A quiet night.
Then the private guests start arriving: a dame in otter fur, a famous detective nursing a killing cough, a millionaire old enough to be the devil's grandfather, a doctor with blood on his cuffs and news that the party's final member just turned up dead.
Once a decade, a table of cunning liars, cheats, and thieves gathers to compete for a stolen prize, something in a blood-dotted velvet box that makes scratching noises from the inside.
A prize that can only be won…by a story.
Power tells lies that bind. Most people carry those chains without hope of getting free. Even at the Honeybee's Sting, the truth cannot set you free—but the best stories can.
Ten tales of magic, deception, and the lies that keep us trapped, or set us free, for fans of historical fantasy and speculative fiction.
