Rural Fantasy Books

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 "Imagine a book somewhere between American Gods and Faulkner. In brief: a good book. Absolutely worth your time."—Patrick Rothfuss

Private Bronwyn Hyatt had left her small town of Needsville for the army to escape the pressures of her mystical Tufa family legacy. She returns a lone survivor after a disastrous attack overseas, wounded in body and spirit.

But cryptic omens warn of impending tragedy, and a restless haint lurks nearby, waiting to reveal Bronwyn's darkest secrets. Now Bronwyn finds the greatest battle lies right in her backyard, especially as young minister with too much curiosity arrives in town. If she makes the wrong choice, the consequences could be deadly for all the Tufa. . . .

 From Book 1: Finalist for Best Fantasy Novel in the 2019 British Fantasy Awards

A hundred years ago, a man with a secret could travel a few hundred miles and give himself a new name and life story. No one would be any the wiser, as long as he didn’t give anyone a reason to start asking questions. These days, that’s not so easy, with everyone on social media, and CCTV on every street corner. So Daniel Mackmain keeps his head down and keeps himself to himself.

But now a girl has been murdered and the Derbyshire police are taking a closer look at a loner who travels from place to place, picking up work as he goes. Worse, Dan realises the murder involves the hidden world he was born into. When no one else can see the truth, who will see justice done?

A modern fantasy rooted in the ancient myths and folklore of the British Isles. 

When two young girls go missing in rural Herefordshire, police constable and wizard-in-training Peter Grant is sent out of London to check that nothing supernatural is involved.

It’s purely routine—Nightingale, Peter’s superior, thinks he’ll be done in less than a day. But Peter’s never been one to walk away from someone in trouble, so when nothing overtly magical turns up he volunteers his services to the local police, who need all the help they can get. 

But because the universe likes a joke as much as the next sadistic megalomaniac, Peter soon comes to realize that dark secrets underlie the picturesque fields and villages of the countryside and there might just be work for Britain’s most junior wizard after all.

Soon Peter’s in a vicious race against time, in a world where the boundaries between reality and fairy have never been less clear.... 

 "A true story of the woods, of the fae, and of the heart. Deep and green and wonderful.”—New York Times bestselling author Naomi Novik

There is a Wild Man who lives in the deep quiet of Greenhollow, and he listens to the wood. Tobias, tethered to the forest, does not dwell on his past life, but he lives a perfectly unremarkable existence with his cottage, his cat, and his dryads.

When Greenhollow Hall acquires a handsome, intensely curious new owner in Henry Silver, everything changes. Old secrets better left buried are dug up, and Tobias is forced to reckon with his troubled past—both the green magic of the woods, and the dark things that rest in its heart.
 

 Myth and Terror in the Forest Deeps

The mystery of Ryhope Wood, Britain's last fragment of primeval forest, consumed George Huxley's entire long life. Now, after his death, his sons have taken up his work. But what they discover is numinous and perilous beyond all expectation.

For the Wood, larger inside than out, is a labyrinth full of myths come to life, "mythagos" that can change you forever. A labyrinth where love and beauty haunt your dreams. . .and may drive you insane.

"Utterly enthralling."
--Times Literary Supplement

"Robert Holdstock's is one of the voices at the very heart of modern fantasy."
-Guy Gavriel Kay 

 The Edge lies between worlds, on the border between the Broken, where people shop at Walmart and magic is a fairytale–and the Weird, where blueblood aristocrats rule, changelings roam, and the strength of your magic can change your destiny…

Cerise Mar and her unruly clan are cash poor but land rich, claiming a large swathe of the Mire, the Edge swamplands between the state of Louisiana and the Weird. When her parents vanish, her clan’s long-time rivals are suspect number one.

But all is not as it seems. Two nations of the Weird are waging a cold war fought by feint and espionage, and their conflict is about to spill over into the Edge—and Cerise’s life . William, a changeling soldier who left behind the politics of the Weird, has been forced back into service to track down a rival nation’s spymaster.

When William’s and Cerise’s missions lead them to cross paths, sparks fly—but they’ll have to work together if they want to succeed…and survive. 

 The World Fantasy Award-winning author's foray into the modern world-now in paperback.

No stranger to the realms of myth and magic, World Fantasy Award-winning author Patricia A. McKillip presents her first contemporary fantasy in many years-a tale of the tangled lives mere mortals lead, when they turn their eyes from the beauty and mystery that lie just outside of the everyday...

When bookstore owner Sylvia Lynn returns to her childhood home in upstate New York, she meets the Fiber Guild-a group of local women who meet to knit, embroider, and sew-and learns why her grandmother watches her so closely. A primitive power exists in the forest, a force the Fiber Guild seeks to bind in its stitches and weavings. And Sylvia is no stranger to the woods 

 Sink your teeth into the first novel in the #1 New York Times bestselling Sookie Stackhouse series—the books that gave life to the Dead and inspired the HBO® original series True Blood.

Sookie Stackhouse is just a small-time cocktail waitress in small-town Bon Temps, Louisiana. She's quiet, doesn't get out much, and tends to mind her own business—except when it comes to her “disability.” Sookie can read minds. And that doesn’t make her too dateable. Then along comes Bill Compton. He’s tall, dark, handsome—and Sookie can’t hear a word he’s thinking. He’s exactly the type of guy she’s been waiting for all her life...

But Bill has a disability of his own: he’s a vampire with a bad reputation. And when a string of murders hits Bon Temps—along with a gang of truly nasty bloodsuckers looking for Bill—Sookie starts to wonder if having a vampire for a boyfriend is such a bright idea. 

Phil Hastings was a lucky man—he had money, a growing reputation as a screenwriter, a happy, loving family with three kids, and he'd just moved into the house of his dreams in rural of magic—and about to be altered irrevocably by a magic more real than any he dared imagine.

For with the Magic came the Bad Thing, and the Faerie, and then the Fool . . . and the resurrection of a primordial war with a forgotten People—a war that not only the Hastings but the whole human race could lose.

“Absorbing, thought-provoking, and thoroughly magical. Feist's skillfully crafted prose illuminates many of the darker sides of fairy stories. . . . Try it as a bedtime story . . . but only on nights when you can take some time getting to sleep.”—The West Coast Review of Books 

 Howard Marsh is a lot of things: a liar, a thief, a poor man’s wizard. He’s the product of a miserable county with more dirt roads than paved; where poverty and loss is the order of the day. He’s a man haunted by his past, and has yet to find any reason to try and piece himself back together.

Where we find him is at the bottom, eking out a living as a water witch, a copper thief, a finder of lost things. Living in a storage shed and trying to maintain what's left of the frayed relationships of the few family members who will still talk to him. Untrained, he uses the drugs that ravage his body to fuel his magic.

Within these pages Marsh will work to unravel two supernatural mysteries as only a redneck wizard can: poorly, and with much cursing. In Bringing Home the Rain he has to piece together just why it hasn’t rained in months within the bounds of a perfect circle just south of town. And in Dancing With Your Demons he’s on the trail of a missing woman whose now infamous son once burned down a church.

He is Howard Marsh, the Methgician.

He’s a travesty...but he’s the best hope Jubal County has.

 When the demons are in your head, call an exorcist. When they are at your front door, call Ty Burdin. And when all else fails, decapitation kills everything.

There are some nightmares you can’t drink away. Determined to quit demon hunting, Ty Burdin left the Agency with a trail of bodies in his wake.

When local Agency Head Rancic is in over his head with a redneck war-demon that always seems to be one step ahead, Ty is thrown back into the crosshairs. After the devil’s bullets start flying, he is going to need more than his piss-poor attitude to make it out of Shiner’s Ridge alive. Only one thing is for sure, the DEMON GOTTA GO.

Beasts of Burdin is a double noir on the rocks with a Southern gothic twist. If you like the hard knock, unabashedly dark style of Richard Kadrey and Stephen Blackmore, you'll love the hilarious cynicism of Alexander Nader.

 Demons from other worlds sneak through magical portals and wreak havoc on earth. In response, the Earth Mother created the Keepers, a group of shapeshifters made from the world’s most vicious predators, to protect her, and us. The fate of North Georgia hangs in the balance when an unknown menace with new magic attacks the Earth Mother and her Keepers. It’s up to Obie to recruit the help of a shifter motorcycle club called the Tortured Occult and the Elvin Nation to find an eliminate the threat before the Earth Mother takes maters into her own hands.