A Shrewdness of Swindlers

<p><strong><em>Nobody captures the delight of magic-or makes you </em></strong><em>feel</em><strong><em> its cost-quite like DeAnna Knippling veteran author of 80+ wonderfully strange books for interesting people.</em></strong></p><p>On the coldest night of 1929 the Honeybee's Sting-a basement speakeasy under a laundry-smells of damp brick and rotgut whiskey. Bare bulbs cut too-bright shadows across the room while a blizzard rages outside. The sharp-eared kid watching the door planned to push a broom for twenty minutes and spend the rest of the night with a battered copy of <em>Black Mask</em>.</p><p>A quiet night.</p><p>Then the private guests start arriving: a dame in otter fur a famous detective nursing a killing cough a millionaire old enough to be the devil's grandfather a doctor with blood on his cuffs and news that the party's final member just turned up dead.</p><p>Once a decade a table of cunning liars cheats and thieves gathers to compete for a stolen prize something in a blood-dotted velvet box that makes scratching noises from the inside.</p><p>A prize that can only be won...by a story.</p><p>Power tells lies that bind. Most people carry those chains without hope of getting free. Even at the Honeybee's Sting the truth cannot set you free-but the best stories can.</p><p><em>Ten tales of magic deception and the lies that keep us trapped or set us free for fans of historical fantasy and speculative fiction.</em></p>