In a city where Gatherers harvest the magic of the sleeping mind and use it to judge the corrupt, Ehiru, the most famous of the city's Gatherers, learns that he must protect the woman he was sent to kill or watch the city be devoured by forbidden magic.

"Man or God; what happens when the lines are blurred? Haern is the King's Watcher, protector against thieves and nobles who might fill the night with blood. Yet hundreds of miles away, an assassin known as the Wraith has begun slaughtering those in power, and leaving the symbol of the Watcher in mockery. When Haern travels south to confront his copycat killer, he finds a city ruled by the corrupt, the greedy, and the dangerous. Rioters fill the streets,...

"Steffan Dekkard is an isolate, one of the small percentage of people who are immune to the projections of empaths. As an isolate, he has been trained as a security specialist and he and his security partner Avraal Ysella, a highly trained empath are employed by Axel Obreduur, a senior Craft Minister and the de facto political strategist of his party. When a respected Landor Councilor dies of "heart failure" at a social event, because of his political...

It begins in the realm of the Real, where matter still matters. It begins with a murder. And it will not end until the Culture has gone to war with death itself. Lededje Y'breq is one of the Intagliated, her marked body bearing witness to a family shame, her life belonging to a man whose lust for power is without limit. Prepared to risk everything for her freedom, her release, when it comes, is at a price, and to put things right she will need the...

Eliana is a model citizen of the island, a weaver in the prestigious House of Webs. She also harbors a dangerous secret she can dream, an ability forbidden by the island s elusive council of elders. No one talks about the dreamers, the undesirables ostracized from society.But the web of protection Eliana has woven around herself begins to unravel when a young girl is found lying unconscious in a pool of blood on the stones outside the house. Robbed...

In Cold War Berlin, American magician Karen O'Neil defeated the ghosts of Germany's past and sealed the breach that threatened the whole world, but in doing so she learned a terrible truth: Magic cannot be trusted. Despite her wariness of the new and growing powers she gained in Germany, Karen agrees to help an old friend and is drawn to Cuba, a world of opulence run by a corrupt government and ruthless, magic-obsessed mobsters. In Havana, while the...

"An American writer of travel guides in need of a new location chooses to travel to a small and obscure Eastern European country. The moment Grafton crosses the border he is in trouble, much more than he could have imagined. His passport is taken by guards, and then he is detained for not having it. He is released into the custody of a family, but is again detained. It becomes evident that there are supernatural agencies at work, but they are not...