We Need Diverse Villains

Charm is a witch alone, the last of her line, a child of a conquered people. She lives confined to the Orchard House and its bone trees, which she tends for the sake of her children. She acts as the madam to a house filled with girls who are not real, and every Tuesday is the mistress of the emperor. But when the emperor is dying, he summons her to his bedside and tasks her with choosing which of his terrible sons will carry on the empire… and finding out which of them has murdered him. If she completes these tasks, she will have her freedom… but she will have betrayed her past.

The Memory House in Tumble Tree, Texas, is a place where people come to have their most painful memories removed by the family that’s long practiced this trade. Lucy, now sixteen, is finally old enough to learn. Her father tries to teach her, using himself as a subject, but she can’t pry his memories loose… and instead sees far more than she should, including a moment from the day her mother died, one that’s left her father wracked with guilt. As she investigates this memory, she realizes that she, herself, has gaps in her memory…

The City of Dusk is a place where Life, Death, Light, and Darkness–the Four Realms–converge on the city as night falls. Each of the realms has a god of its own, and an heir to that god. Once, the city thrived under their care, but the four have withdrawn their favor and the city is dying–and with it, the realms. It is up to the four heirs to join forces to save the city, no matter what their defiance will cost them.

In late 1920s Seattle, a well-respected mage and city leader is trying to criminalize certain types of magick users, and with them its most vulnerable population. He hires a companion for his daughter, intent on curbing her rebellious behavior, but who he gets is the widowed owner of a speakeasy looking to avenge her husband’s murder.

In a future where terraforming has become commonplace, the next great frontier is Pluto, at four billion miles from the Sun and an average temperature of 200 degrees below zero. Humanity’s greatest scientists and engineers are making the project work with captured asteroids and engineers… until they are sabotaged. This horrifying act leaves one family shattered, the father comatose and nine-year-old Nou unable to speak. But Nou might hold the key to what happened… and why someone is trying to destroy the project.