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Fiction and Excerpts [5]
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Fiction and Excerpts [5]

A Plunder of Souls (Excerpt)

Wed Jun 11, 2014 4:00pm
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, || Boston, 1769: Ethan Kaille, a Boston thieftaker who uses his conjuring to catch criminals, has snared villains and defeated magic that would have daunted a lesser man. A ruthless, extremely powerful conjurer seeks to wake the souls of the dead to wreak a terrible revenge on all who oppose him, and Kaille's minister friends have been helpless to stop crimes against their church.

The Price Of Doing Business

Wed Feb 19, 2014 10:00am
Edited by: James Frenkel
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, || Ethan Kaille is a Thieftaker in Boston in the years leading up to the American Revolution. Having suffered losses and reversals in his life, he is neither naive nor without considerable personal resources. He isn't just a detective; he's also a conjurer, which makes him someone who lives on the margins of polite society. Some people fear his powers; others merely find him a distasteful rogue who should simply go away . . . but still, he is useful to the powers-that-be when problems arise requiring his unusual skill-set. In the novels Thieftaker and Thieves' Quarry, as well as in the story "A Spell of Vengeance," which was published on Tor.com, Kaille has had to deal with a variety of crimes and their perpetrators. The story that follows is one from Kaille's early days as a thieftaker in Boston. In it, he must face a formidable foe, one of a most unexpected sort, whose own powers, very different from his own, prove the equal of Ethan's.

A Plunder of Souls (Excerpt)

Wed Jun 11, 2014 4:00pm 1 comment Favorite This

Check out A Plunder of Souls, the third stand-alone novel in D.B. Jackson’s acclaimed Thieftaker series, available July 8th from Tor Books!

Boston, 1769: Ethan Kaille, a Boston thieftaker who uses his conjuring to catch criminals, has snared villains and defeated magic that would have daunted a lesser man.

A ruthless, extremely powerful conjurer seeks to wake the souls of the dead to wreak a terrible revenge on all who oppose him, and Kaille’s minister friends have been helpless to stop crimes against their church. Graves have been desecrated in a bizarre, ritualistic way. Equally disturbing are reports of recently deceased citizens of Boston reappearing as grotesquely disfigured shades, seemingly having been disturbed from their eternal rest, and now frightening those who had been nearest to them in life. But most personally troubling to Kaille is a terrible waning of his ability to conjure. He knows all these are related… but how?

[Read an Excerpt]

The Price Of Doing Business

Wed Feb 19, 2014 10:00am 14 comments Favorite This

Ethan Kaille is a Thieftaker in Boston in the years leading up to the American Revolution. Having suffered losses and reversals in his life, he is neither naive nor without considerable personal resources. He isn’t just a detective; he’s also a conjurer, which makes him someone who lives on the margins of polite society. Some people fear his powers; others merely find him a distasteful rogue who should simply go away . . . but still, he is useful to the powers-that-be when problems arise requiring his unusual skill-set. In the novels Thieftaker and Thieves’ Quarry, as well as in the story “A Spell of Vengeance,” which was published on Tor.com, Kaille has had to deal with a variety of crimes and their perpetrators. The story that follows is one from Kaille’s early days as a thieftaker in Boston. In it, he must face a formidable foe, one of a most unexpected sort, whose own powers, very different from his own, prove the equal of Ethan’s.

[Read “The Price of Doing Business” by D.B. Jackson]

Thieves’ Quarry (Excerpt)

Fri May 31, 2013 11:30am Post a comment Favorite This

Here’s a peek at  Thieves’ Quarry, out on July 2, the second Thieftaker novel by D. B. Jackson, a historical urban fantasy set in 1768, three years after the first novel, in the politically charged cauldron of Boston, as events conspire to bring the American colonies steadily closer to revolution. Thieves’ Quarry will be published on July 2, 2013.

Nothing like revolution has occurred yet, but the presence of a number of ships of His Majesty’s Navy in Boston Harbor is creating fear and unrest among the colonials in Boston. And when a terrible tragedy befalls the entire crew of a British naval vessel, the circumstances are so unusual and shocking that Ethan Kaille, a thieftaker who uses his conjuring skills as well as his wits to fight wrongdoers, is summoned.

Ethan is viewed with suspicion by the agents of the Crown who have called upon him, but they know that only someone with his unique . . . talents . . . can discover the cause of the mysterious and horrifying crime that confronts them. He has often been an object of scrutiny by the authorities, but one hundred men are dead, and he offers their best hope of apprehending whoever perpetrated this monstrous crime . . . if he survives his battle with a magical force that could kill so many.

Readers may recall a Thieftaker story that appeared here last year, “A Spell of Vengeance.”  There are more magical, suspenseful Thieftaker stories and novels to come. Watch this space.

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A Spell of Vengeance

Wed Jun 13, 2012 10:00am 16 comments 1 Favorite [+]

Ethan Kaille is a thieftaker in Colonial Boston, scratching out a living by restoring stolen property to its rightful owners. But unlike others in his profession, Ethan relies on magical spells as well as his wits to track down thieves. Being a conjurer doesn’t make him popular with the law in Boston, so Ethan is taken aback when the sheriff seeks his help in settling a dispute between a pair of wealthy merchants and a ship’s captain who has threatened their lives. Ethan knows the captain can back up his threats with magic of his own. But there is more to this matter than the merchants have let on, and Ethan soon discovers that what he doesn’t know might actually kill him. D. B. Jackson’s first Ethan Kaille novel, Thieftaker, will be published on July 3, 2012.

This story was acquired and edited for Tor.com by Tor Books editor Jim Frenkel.

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Thieftaker (Excerpt)

Tue May 8, 2012 4:00pm 10 comments Favorite This

Take a look at this excerpt from D.B. Jackson’s Thieftaker, out on July 3:

Boston, 1767: In D.B. Jackson’s Thieftaker, revolution is brewing as the British Crown imposes increasingly onerous taxes on the colonies, and intrigue swirls around firebrands like Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty. But for Ethan Kaille, a thieftaker who makes his living by conjuring spells that help him solve crimes, politics is for others…until he is asked to recover a necklace worn by the murdered daughter of a prominent family.

Suddenly, he faces another conjurer of enormous power, someone unknown, who is part of a conspiracy that reaches to the highest levels of power in the turbulent colony. His adversary has already killed—and not for his own gain, but in the service of his powerful masters, people for whom others are mere pawns in a game of politics and power. Ethan is in way over his head, and he knows it. Already a man with a dark past, he can ill afford to fail, lest his livelihood be forfeit. But he can’t stop now, for his magic has marked him, so he must fight the odds, even though he seems hopelessly overmatched, his doom seeming certain at the spectral hands of one he cannot even see.

[Read more]

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