Books By Matthew Hughes
Word Count: 135,000
Summary: In a far-future world of wizards and walled cities, Cascor is a bitter cashiered policeman who has built a new career as a freelance discriminator who occasionally dabbles in magic and hopes the wizards’ Guild never finds out. This collection brings together all the Cascor stories, including four that began with the discriminator as a supporting character in the series about Raffalon the unlucky thief. It includes three more that ran in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, plus two original novelettes and a short novella about the sorceress Margolyam, who became one of Cascor’s strange “family” of operatives.
Word Count: 85,000
Summary: In a world of wizards and walled cities, Galabras Nachecko is a necromancer in the seaport metropolis of Golathreon, connecting the living with deceased relatives and associates to answer questions left unresolved at the time of death. Then he is tasked by Duke Simisson’s conniving seneschal to capture the ghost of a notorious land pirate scheduled for execution. He snags the spirit but finds that the assignment has made him a man who knows too much. Nachecko is propelled into a new career—secret agent segueing into diplomat—that leads him far from home, plunges him into perilous adventures, and brings him both true love and tragedy.
Word Count: 127750
Summary: In a Dying Earth of wizards and walled cities, a boy climbs out of poverty when he becomes an assistant to a moneylender’s debt collector, then enters a career as henchman to a young, ambitious thaumaturge. But Baldemar’s career as a wizard’s minion goes sideways after a powerful entity left over from the creation of the cosmos finds him useful for its own ends. Now he must tread a perilous path peopled by dukes and demons, spellslingers and secret agents, assassins and academics, plus a pair of vengeful wizards who want their stolen treasures returned. His course will lead him through the Underworld and Overworld, and along shadowy paths in the tenebrous realm known as the Glooms, to a final confrontation that will test Baldemar’s hard-won knowledge to the utmost.
