We're stopping by this cool Autumn morning with a chilling announcement. Here are six brand new voices that we've added to the Parliament brew...
E.M. Wright: Sedition
In an alternate Victorian England, clockwork cyborgs provide the main source of
labour for the upper class. Known as biomatons, they are property by law and have been manipulated and mind-controlled into subservience.
Taryn Roft, a 17-year-old girl attending classes at Grafton’s School of Mechanicks in London has a secret: her left arm is made entirely of clockwork. She keeps her deformity hidden beneath a glove, but the existence she has managed to eke out is neither easy nor exciting. Worse, she cannot remember anything before her twelfth birthday, neither the man who made her a Biomaton, nor the reason he abandoned her. More than anything in the world, she wishes she were human.
Despite all her uncertainties, Taryn of sure of one thing—she was created for more than slavery.
She was built for rebellion.
Sedition was acquired by The Parliament House Press for publication in early 2021.
About the author:
E.M. Wright has been writing since she grew too big for playing pretend. She lives in Portland, Oregon, beneath the shadow of Mt. Hood. She works as a freelance editor and full-time bookstore employee, because everyone knows you can’t make money writing. You can find her @EMWrightWrites on Twitter.
Nicole Willson: Tidepool
In 1913, Henry Hamilton travels to Tidepool to investigate the small oceanside town’s development potential. Ada Oliver, a wealthy Tidepool resident, asks Henry if he’d like to meet her daughter. Mysteriously, Henry never returns home to Baltimore, and his sister, Sorrow Hamilton, travels to Tidepool searching for him.
After a mutilated corpse washes up on the beach, havoc ensues as the string of disappearances is investigated—along with the dark, destroying secret that the town and its gods harbor.
Tidepool is Willson's first novel, and has been acquired by The Parliament House Press for publication in early 2021.
About the author:
Nicole Willson lives in Virginia. She’s frequently visited the Eastern shore but hasn’t seen anything alarming emerge from the Atlantic, much to her disappointment. She hopes her
lifelong aversion to eating fish might earn her mercy when the hungry ocean gods finally come ashore.
Ryan Leslie: The Between
While landscaping his backyard, ever-conscientious Paul Prentice discovers an iron door buried in the soil. His childhood friend and perpetual source of mischief, Jay Lightsey, pushes them to explore what's beneath. When the door slams shut above them, Paul and Jay are trapped in a between-worlds place of Escher-like rooms and horror story monsters, all with a mysterious connection to a command-line, dungeon explorer computer game from the early 80s called The Between.
Paul, Jay, and the others they meet find themselves filling roles in a story that seems to play out over and over again. The roles warp their personalities to become like the heroes and villains of the computer game, turning friends into foes. Their biggest threat to survival may not be the Koŝmaro, risen from the Between’s depths to hunt them; the biggest danger may be each other.
About the author:
Ryan Leslie oversees research and analytics for a large health system, where making stuff up is generally frowned upon. His creative outlet has always been writing fiction. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife, children’s author Lindsay Leslie, and their two sons.
Winnie Lyon: Curse of the King
Laura Wilson is the young heiress in a long line of powerful witches, descended from the very clan of three sisters that cursed Macbeth. When she’s forced to participate in a production of the play for school credit, she tasks herself with breaking the curse once and for all. This proves difficult when a miscast spell leads to the summoning of her ghostly ancestor, Cecily Wilson. While she attempts to send her resurrected relative back beyond the veil, Laura is also dealing with a massive crush on her best friend, Holly, who is infatuated with Peter, a lonely and quick-witted vampire.
As she grows closer to Cecily and sees first-hand the horrors of being a witch in Elizabethan England, demonic forces arise in Laura’s little town of Shipley Hollow.
Curse of the King has been acquired by The Parliament House Press for publication in early 2021.
About the author:
Winnie Lyon has been writing for nearly all of her 18 years. Born and raised in Cincinnati OH, she’s always written about bigger and brighter worlds than the Midwest. Her interests and her own writing style have been influenced by everything from the Magic Tree House to Shakespeare.
Ester Manzini: The Other Side of Magic
In a world inspired by 16th century Italy, magic is a common occurrence. Everyone in the realms of Epidalio and Zafiria is gifted with it at birth, but with every spell casted, their
power wanes.
Gaiane Aspares is the result of an accurate selection by her mother, the queen of
Zafiria: she’s infinitely powerful, a weapon of mass destruction kept segregated in a
tower and used against her will to conquer Epidalio.
Manzini's The Other Side of Magic was acquired by The Parliament House Press for publication in early 2021.
About the author:
Ester Manzini has always had a passion for books, stories and mythology. When she attended University, she took advantage of the opportunities to travel abroad to experience new adventures and cultures.
In 2019, under the nickname Valpur, she was added to a team behind Dorks, a collection of LGBTQ+ centered illustrated short stories, and has been a selected author in an international independent anthology, To Ashes. Currently, Ester is working as lead scriptwriter for Bad Seed, an indie Italian Game Studio.
S.C. Alban: Playing Cupid
For the past five years, seventeen-year-old Megan Cooper has built a wall around her heart with little room to experience true feelings. That all changes the moment she crashes into Cupid on her way home from finals. With his shooting arm significantly injured, she has no choice but to
take his place.
Now, as Megan races to find Cupid’s final three love matches in order to meet his quota by the New Year, she comes face to face with the very emotions she has been pushing
away for so long. Megan finds herself caught between what her head is saying and what her heart longs for. As she comes to terms with her feelings, she realizes she must make a decision that will impact her for the rest of her life: open herself up and risk getting hurt, or keep her heart safe
and live life at a distance.
Playing Cupid was acquired by The Parliament House Press for publication in early 2021.
About the author:
SC Alban was born and raised in Northern California. After earning a degree in English Literature from San Francisco State University, S.C. Alban took a year abroad, exploring Bermuda, to the Highlands of Scotland, to Hawaii.
After moving back to Northern California and spending some time teaching, her passion for writing never faded. In 2010, she decided she’d waited long enough. Writing after work, well into the night, S.C. drafted her first novel, A Life Without Living (Book One in The Strega Series). After completion, she knew writing was her destiny and spent every spare moment dedicating herself to the craft.