The Book Plank

Excerpt: Scourge: A Novel of Darkhurst Chapter One A HEAVY IRON candleholder slammed against the  wall, just missing Corran Valmonde’s head. “Son of a bitch!” “Try not to make her mad, Corran.” Rigan Valmonde knelt on the worn floor, drawing a sigil in charcoal, moving as quickly as he dared. Not quickly enough; a piece of firewood spun from the hearth and flew across the room, slamming him in the shoulder hard enough to make him grunt in pain. “Keep her off me!” he snapped, repairing the smudge in the soot line. Sloppy symbols meant sloppy magic, and that could get someone killed. “I would if I could see her.” Corran stepped away from the wall, raising his iron sword, putting himself between the fireplace and his brother. His breath misted in the unnaturally cold room and moisture condensed on the wavy glass of the only window. “Watch where you step.” Rigan worked on the second sigil, widdershins from the soot marking, this one daubed in ochre. “I don’...

Excerpt: Anywhere but Here Bookburners: Episode 2 By Brian Francis Slattery, Max Gladstone, Margaret Dunlap, and Mur Lafferty “Welcome to the Black Archives of the Societas Librorum Occultorum. Come in. The others are waiting.” Asanti guided Sal and Menchú through the towers of books, talking as she went. “The library was built in the 1400s—the architecture gives that away, don’t you think?—when the Society’s collection grew a little too large and a little t oo dangerous to have in broad daylight, or just sitting in some monastery. Take a left. No, the other left. That’s it. We are now in the only central chamber of the library. There are seven chambers radiating off of this one. Each one has a small antechamber, with the larger rooms beyond that. Just in case something gets out in the library, you understand, and we need to seal it in.” Sal glanced back at the staircase. Now it looked like a strand of DNA, ascending into the gloom until it disappeared in the middle ...

Excerpt: Nightwise                                                                                                         Chapter One The banker was crucified on the wall of his Wall Street office, fountain pens rammed through both wrists, an Armani Jesus. The pens are Montblancs, very nice. Each one is custom-made, decorated with emeralds, sapphires, and rubies, and then hundreds of tiny diamonds just for good measure. They run for a hair under a million dollars each. They’re sturdy too, obviously. I doubt that their current function would be of much use in a marketing campaign, but still, a fun fact to know. I left the shitty meth-lab-trailer-on-cinder-blocks I called home when I was thirteen. I remember writing ...

Excerpt: The Affinities by Robert Charles Wilson CHAPTER 1 I made the decision when I saw the bloo d in the mirror. The blood was what changed my mind. I had thought about it, of course. I had clipped the ad out of the back pages of the local entertainment paper, checked out the website, memorized the address of the local test center. I had strolled past the building earlier that afternoon, lingering at the brass-and-frosted-glass door with what I tried to pass off (not least, to myself) as idle curiosity. I pictured myself stepping into the cool, dim lobby behind the InterAlia logo and maybe changing the course of my life forever, but in the end I shrugged and walked on—a failure of courage, the better part of valor, I honestly couldn’t say which. Tempted as I was, opening that door would have seemed like a confession of my own inadequacy, a confession I wasn’t prepared to make. The sight of my own bloody face changed my mind. *   *   * ...