A Dance of Assassins presents the competing histories of how Congolese Chief Lusinga and Belgian Lieutenant Storms engaged in a deadly clash while striving to establish hegemony along the southwestern shores of Lake Tanganyika in the 1880s. While Lusinga participated in the east African slave trade, Storms' secret mandate was to meet Henry Stanley's eastward march and trace "a white line across the Dark Continent" to legitimize King Leopold's audacious claim to the Congo. Confrontation was inevitable, and Lusinga lost his head. His skull became the subject of a sinister evolutionary treatise, while his ancestral figure is now considered a treasure of the Royal Museum for Central Africa. Allen F. Roberts reveals the theatricality of early colonial encounter and how it continues to influence Congolese and Belgian understandings of history today.

A young apprentice to an assassin becomes embroiled in a conspiracy that could destroy a kingdom in a brilliant epic fantasy debut by David Gemmell Award-nominated author RJ Barker To catch an assassin, use an assassin... Girton Club-foot has no family, a crippled leg, and is apprenticed to the best assassin in the land. He's learning the art of taking lives, but his latest mission tasks him with a far more difficult challenge: to save a life. Someone is trying to kill the heir to the throne, and it is up to Girton to uncover the traitor and prevent the prince's murder. In a kingdom on the brink of civil war and a castle thick with lies, Girton finds friends he never expected, responsibilities he never wanted, and a conspiracy that could destroy an entire kingdom. Praise for The Wounded Kingdom: "Dead gods, dread magic, and a lead that feels like a breath of fresh air. Great fun."―Peter Newman, author of The Vagrant "Often poignant and always intriguing, Age of Assassins reveals its mysteries with the style of a magic show and the artful grace of a gifted storyteller."―Nicholas Eames, author of Kings of the Wild "The most interesting treatment of the fantasy assassin trope in a while, and an involving narrative in its own right."―RT Book Reviews The Wounded Kingdom Age of Assassins Blood of Assassins King of Assassins For more from RJ Barker, check out: The Tide Child Trilogy The Bone Ships Call of the Bone Ships

"Thren Felhorn is the greatest assassin of his time. All the thieves' guilds of the city are under his unflinching control. If he has his way, death will soon spill out from the shadows and into the streets. Aaron is Thren's son, trained to be heir to his father's criminal empire. He's cold, ruthless--everything an assassin should be. But when Aaron risks his life to protect a priest's daughter from his own guild, he glimpses a world beyond piston, daggers, and the iron rule of his father"--Page 4 of cover.

Book 4 of the Chameleon Assassin series, sequel to the award-winning Book 1, Chameleon Assassin. Even a chameleon can be a target. Libby makes her money as a thief and an assassin, but a girl has to have a cover. To her surprise, her business installing security systems in 23rd century Toronto is taking off, as is her romance with Wil-North America's top cop. Then an insurance company hires her to recover a fortune in stolen art and jewelry. Bring them the stolen goods and they'll pay an outrageous fee, no questions asked. The Vancouver art scene is hot, in more ways than one. Billionaires compete for bragging rights, and they aren't picky who they deal with. With big money and reputations on the line, Libby is on a collision course with the super-rich. When too many questions make the art thieves uncomfortable, one of the world's top assassins is hired to eliminate those who know too much-including Libby.

In London, Jack the Ripper has claimed another victim. This time, however, "London" is a crime-free historical theme park.

A child is born along with thousands of other children at a military camp where the kids are trained in multiple areas of combat and warfare. When the camp burns down, only four children survive. The four go their separate ways. Jack is picked up by The Ravens and is trained in their way of killing. Years later he starts to hear an eerie voice that says that The Ravens have been lying to him and he should betray them. Now Jack is left with a daunting decision. Should he continue fighting against The Templars? Or should he bite the hand that feeds? Some unknown skeletons pop up from his past, ones he never knew he had.

Twenty years ago, Girton began his journey to become the Tired Land's finest assassin and now he'll face his greatest challenge yet in the riveting conclusion to RJ Barker's debut epic fantasy trilogy. Assassin Girton Club-Foot has lived in relative peace for many years, but now his king, Rufra ap Vthyr, eyes the vacant High-King's throne and will take his court to the capital. In a viper's nest of intrigue, the endgame of twenty years of politics and murder will be played out in the bid to become the King of all Kings. Friends become enemies, enemies become friends, and the god of death stands closer than ever, casting his shadow over everyone Girton holds dear. It's assassin versus assassin for the fate of a kingdom... Praise for The Wounded Kingdom: "Dead gods, dread magic, and a lead that feels like a breath of fresh air. Great fun."―Peter Newman, author of The Vagrant "Often poignant and always intriguing, Age of Assassins reveals its mysteries with the style of a magic show and the artful grace of a gifted storyteller."―Nicholas Eames, author of Kings of the Wild "The most interesting treatment of the fantasy assassin trope in a while, and an involving narrative in its own right."―RT Book Reviews The Wounded Kingdom Age of Assassins Blood of Assassins King of Assassins For more from RJ Barker, check out: The Tide Child Trilogy The Bone Ships Call of the Bone Ships

One girl. Stella Grey is a notorious assassin willing to put her life on the line for her family. In a split Kingdom. Worlds are ruled by which side one is born on. One is either part of the Blue community, living the high life in the Kingdom of Atlantis, or part of the Red community, living in poverty, fighting for their next meal without any power, in the Kingdom of Avalon. Will enter a Trial. Stella's master sends her and her fellow assassins on a mission to find the murderer who has stolen his identity, which lands them all in the heart of Atlantis. Stella is left competing in the Trials for the Crowned Prince of Atlantis's hand in marriage. To unveil the truth. With the help of her new found friend, a slave boy, she learns not all is as it seems. The truth may change her life forever.

Playwright Harold Pinter, singer-songwriters Bob Dylan, David Gray, and Ian Curtis, of 1970s band Joy Division, would appear to have little in common as artists. But delve beneath the surface and amazing similarities suddenly reveal themselves.

Sergei Eisenstein's unfinished masterpiece, Ivan the Terrible, was no ordinary movie. Commissioned by Joseph Stalin in 1941 to justify state terror in the sixteenth century and in the twentieth, the film's politics, style, and epic scope aroused controversy even before it was released. In This Thing of Darkness, Joan Neuberger offers a sweeping account of the conception, making, and reception of Ivan the Terrible that weaves together Eisenstein's expansive thinking and experimental practice with a groundbreaking new view of artistic production under Stalin. Drawing on Eisenstein's unpublished production notebooks, diaries, and manuscripts, Neuberger's riveting narrative chronicles Eisenstein's personal, creative, and political challenges and reveals the ways cinematic invention, artistic theory, political critique, and historical and psychological analysis went hand in hand in this famously complex film. Neuberger's bold arguments and daring insights into every aspect of Eisenstein's work during this period, together with her ability to lucidly connect his wide-ranging late theory with his work on Ivan, show the director exploiting the institutions of Soviet artistic production not only to expose the cruelties of Stalin and his circle but to challenge the fundamental principles of Soviet ideology itself. Ivan the Terrible, she argues, shows us one of the world's greatest filmmakers and one of the 20th century's greatest artists observing the world around him and experimenting with every element of film art to explore the psychology of political ambition, uncover the history of recurring cycles of violence and lay bare the tragedy of absolute power.