A Shrewdness of Swindlers

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.