Snow shrouds Venice in cold darkness, ice fills the canals, and a thousand ghosts pluck at the shadow's edge. A violent attack on Lady Giulietta's son forces Tycho from his new-found happiness and back into the treacherous intrigue of the court. For Giulietta's sake he would go to the world's end to track down those responsible. As Venice teeters on the brink of civil war, its warring families prepare to discover who is a player and who a pawn in the coming struggle for power. The Exiled Blade is the climatic finale to Tycho's story.

The Exiled Blade (The Assassini, 3)

Literature & Fiction

GRIMWOOD, Jon Courtenay

Literary

Orbit

In the depths of night, customs officers board a galley in a harbor and overpower its guards. In the hold they find oil and silver, and a naked boy chained to the bulkhead. Stunningly beautiful but half-starved, the boy has no name. The officers break the boy's chains to rescue him, but he escapes. Venice is at the height of its power. Duke Marco commands the seas, taxes his colonies, and, like every duke before him, fears assassins better than his own. In a side chapel, Marco's thirteen-year old cousin prays for deliverance from her forced marriage. It is her bad fortune to be there when Moorish pirates break in to steal a chalice, but it is the Moors' good fortune - they kidnap her and demand ransom from the Duke. As day dawns, Atilo, the Duke's chief assassin, prepares to kill the man who let in the pirates. Having cut the traitor's throat, he turns back, having heard a noise, and finds a stranger crouched over the dying man, drinking blood from the wound. The speed with which the boy dodges a dagger and scales a pillar stuns Atilo. And the assassin knows he has to find the boy. Not to kill him though - because he's finally found what he thought he would never find. Someone fit to be his apprentice.

The Fallen Blade (The Assassini, Book 1)

As the Byzantine and German emperors plot war against each other, Venice's future rests in the hands of three unwilling individuals: The newly knighted Sir Tycho. He defeated the Mamluk navy but he cannot make the woman he loves love him back. Tortured by secrets, afraid of the daylight, he sees no reason to save a city he hates. The grieving Lady Giulietta. Virgin. Mother. Widow. All she wants is to retire from the poisonous world of the Venetian court to mourn her husband in peace. But her duty is to Venice: both emperors want her hand in marriage and an alliance with Europe's richest city. She must choose, knowing that whichever suitor she rejects will become Venice's bitterest enemy. Lastly, a naked, mud-strewn girl who crawls from a paupers' grave on an island in the Venetian lagoon and begins by killing the men who buried her. Between them, they will set the course of history.

The Outcast Blade (The Assassini, Book 2)

British & Irish

Stamping Butterflies

A mystery, a thriller, and a cutting-edge sci-fi adventure all in one, Stamping Butterflies bends time, genre, and consciousness itself to tell the spellbinding story of two worlds, three lives, one future–and the question upon which everything depends: who is dreaming whom. . . . From Marrakech to China’s Forbidden City, from a doomed starship carrying a cryogenically preserved crew to an island prison camp, the fate of the world is being played out in the minds of two dreamers. One, a would-be assassin obsessed with enigmatic equations, has set out to kill the U.S. President. The other is a young Chinese emperor ruling thousands of years in the future. Each believes he is dreaming the other. One must change the future; one must change the past. And time is running out for both. Caught in the maelstrom is a motley cast of characters, each an unwitting key to the ultimate fate of both worlds: Moz, a resourceful young Marrakech street punk, and his half-German girlfriend, Malika; Jake Razor, a self-exiled rock star; and psychiatrist Katie Petrov, who finds herself racing against a looming death sentence to pry free the secret of her condemned patient–a secret with the power to restore hope to the future...or stamp it out forever.

Spectra

“Fast, furious, fun and elegant, the Arabesk trilogy is one of the best things to hit the bookstores in a while.”—SF Revu In a world where secrets kill, an ex-cop discovers he’s got the biggest secret of all. . . . Set in a 21st-century Ottoman Empire, Jon Courtenay Grimwood’s acclaimed Arabesk series is a noir action-thriller with an exotic twist. Here an ex-cop with nothing to lose finds himself on the trail of a man he doesn’t believe in: his father. Ashraf Bey has been a lot of things—and most of them illegal. Now, having resigned as El Iskandryia’s Chief of Detectives, he’s taking stock of his life and there’s not much: a mistress he’s never made love to, a niece everyone thinks is mentally incompetent, and a credit card bill rising towards infinity. With a revolt breaking out across North Africa, the world seems to be racing Raf straight to hell. The last thing he needs is a father he’s never known. But when the old Emir’s security chief requests that Raf come out of retirement to investigate an assassination attempt on His Excellency, that’s exactly what Raf gets. Now, disguised as an itinerant laborer, Raf goes underground to discover a man—and a past—he never knew . . . and won’t survive again. “Felaheen is SF at its most inventive.” –Guardian

Felaheen (Arabesk)

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Mystery

Part mystery, part speculative fiction, and wholly unforgettable, Jon Courtenay Grimwood’s celebrated Arabesk series portrays the dark, hard-boiled story of a man out to prove his innocence in an alternate world where the facts aren’t always the same as the truth . . . and murder isn’t the worst that can happen. It’s a twenty-first century hauntingly familiar—and yet startlingly different from our own. Here the United States brokered a deal that ended World War I, and the Ottoman Empire never collapsed. And lording it over all sits the complex, seductive, and bloodthirsty North African metropolis of El Iskandryia. Almost nothing is what it seems to be in El Isk, and Ashraf Bey is no exception. Neither the rich Ottoman aristocrat everyone thinks he is, nor the minor street criminal once shipped off to prison when he fell foul of his Chinese Triad employers–the fact is that Raf has as little idea who he is as anyone else. With few clues and no money, all Raf has is a surname hinting at noble heritage and an arranged marriage to a woman who hates him. But nothing Ashraf al Mansur learns about himself is as unexpected—or as terrifying—as the brutal murder he’s accused of committing. Now, as a hunted man with the welfare of a precocious young girl in his irresponsible hands, Raf must race after a killer through an unforgiving city as foreign to him as the truth he'll uncover about himself.

Pashazade (Arabesk)

Masterfully blending speculative fiction and hard-boiled mystery, Jon Courtenay Grimwood’s acclaimed Arabesk series plunges readers into a world eerily familiar and shockingly unpredictable. Here a troubled detective follows a trail of clues through a city where innocence itself may be a thing of the past. . . . It’s the twenty-first century and El Iskandryia—an alluring metropolis built on seduction, corruption, and lies—is the double-dealing heart of an Ottoman Empire that still rules the world. But these days a sense of dread hangs over El Isk—and over Ashraf Bey, the city’s new Chief of Detectives. A trial is set to take place, and it’s up to Raf to decide the case. There’s only one problem: the suspect is the billionaire father of the woman Raf should have married.  Industrialist Hamzah Effendi is accused of crimes so horrible that even El Iskandryia wants him eliminated. But Raf finds that protecting the sensual and impetuous Zara Quitrimala from the secrets of her father’s past may be even more dangerous. For Raf must now solve a series of brutal murders that are somehow connected to the case—and to Zara. And the closer Raf gets to the truth, the more elusive the answers become—and the closer he comes to his own demise.… Praise for the Arabesk series and Effendi “Raymond Chandler for the 21st century.”—Esquire  “All brilliant light and scorching heat . . . Grimwood has successfully mingled fantasy with reality to make an unusual, believable, and absorbing mystery."—Sunday Telegraph (London) “If you’re not reading Jon Courtenay Grimwood, then you don’t know how subtle and daring fiction can be.”—Michael Marshall Smith, author of Spares and One of Us “Fast, furious, fun and elegant, the Arabesk trilogy is one of the best things to hit the bookstores in a while.”—SFRevu

Effendi (Arabesk)

From Jon Courtenay Grimwood, author of the celebrated Arabesk series, comes a stunningly inventive novel of futuristic noir set in a world of shifting realities. Here a man is drawn into a gritty postmodern subculture and a secret kingdom of otherworldly beings to find what he lost long ago: a reason to live. Kit Nouveau figured he’d already come to the end of the world. An Iraqi war veteran, expatriate, and part owner of Pirate Mary’s, the best Irish bar in Tokyo, Kit had settled down to await the inevitable with barely a whimper. It wasn’t exactly how Kit thought he’d end up, and he was right. It’s going to end up a lot worse. A teenage runaway with fifteen million dollars in stolen cash and a taste for cosplay is about to save Kit’s life in a lethal swirl of scarlet and bridal lace. Lady Neku, a.k.a. Countess of High Strange, has her own dangerous destiny to fulfill and it’s mysteriously connected to Kit’s ravaged past. Now Kit’s only hope for redemption is to save an ex-girlfriend he tragically failed once before. But everyone says it’s already too late. And she’s left behind only one ominous clue: her suicide note.

End of the World Blues: A Novel

From Jon Courtenay Grimwood, author of the celebrated Arabesk series, comes a stunningly inventive novel of futuristic noir set in a world of shifting realities. Here a man is drawn into a gritty postmodern subculture and a secret kingdom of otherworldly beings to find what he lost long ago: a reason to live.Kit Nouveau figured he’d already come to the end of the world. An Iraqi war veteran, expatriate, and part owner of Pirate Mary’s, the best Irish bar in Tokyo, Kit had settled down to await the inevitable with barely a whimper. It wasn’t exactly how Kit thought he’d end up, and he was right.It’s going to end up a lot worse.A teenage runaway with fifteen million dollars in stolen cash and a taste for cosplay is about to save Kit’s life in a lethal swirl of scarlet and bridal lace. Lady Neku, a.k.a. Countess of High Strange, has her own dangerous destiny to fulfill and it’s mysteriously connected to Kit’s ravaged past. Now Kit’s only hope for redemption is to save an ex-girlfriend he tragically failed once before. But everyone says it’s already too late. And she’s left behind only one ominous clue: her suicide note.

End Of The World Blues (Gollancz S.F.)

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Science Fiction

Gollancz

End of the World Blues (Gollancz)

Gollancz / Orion

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by GRIMWOOD, Jon Courtenay. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by GRIMWOOD, Jon Courtenay