Astreiant Books

A guard in the great city of Astreiant, Nicholas Rathe must calm an angry and frightened population as he searches the overcrowded streets of the city for a kidnapper and the children he has abducted, before it is too late. Reprint.

The city of Astreiant has gone crazy with enthusiasm for a new play, The Drowned Island, a lurid farrago of melodrama and innuendo. Pointsman Nicolas Rathe is not amused, however, at a real dead body on stage and must investigate. A string of murders follow, perhaps related to the politically important masque that is to play on that same stage. Rathe must once again recruit the help of his soldier lover, Philip Eslingen, whose knowledge of actors and the stage, and of the depths of human perversity and violence, blends well with Rathe's own hard-won experience with human greed and magical mayhem. Their task is complicated by the season, for it is the time of year when the spirits of the dead haunt the city and influence everyone, and also by the change in their relationship when the loss of Philip's job forces him to move in with Nicolas. Mystery, political intrigue, floral magic, astrology, and romance--both theatrical and personal-- combine to make this a compelling read.

A welcome return to the vividly realized city of Asteiant with its intricate magics and deadly politics. Point of Knives takes place in the interval between the widely praised earlier novels Point of Hopes and Point of Dreams . A fantastical mystery and a rousing adventure, Point of Knives also reveals for the first time the beginning of the romance between Adjunct Point Nicolas Rathe and ex-soldier Philip Eslingen. The events of Midsummer have hardly been forgotten by the Fall Balance, and Nicolas Rathe can hardly complain that they've done any harm to his reputation, or to the reputation of the Points in general. However, it has meant that he's more in demand as an investigator, and the increased recognition and workload has made it hard to pursue friendship, or anything more, with Philip Eslingen, his comrade in the rescue of the stolen children. Eslingen is still Hanselin Caiazzo's bodyguard and Caiazzo is involved in any number of questionably legal ventures, and it does neither of them any good to be seen too often in each other's company. When a father and son who are both rumored to have been pirates are murdered on the same night, and Rathe finds Eslingen standing over the son's body, Eslingen proves his innocence easily enough, though he refuses to say exactly what errand he's running for Caiazzo at that hour of the morning. But when the old man's grandson and the son's self-proclaimed wife quarrel over the son's meager belongings, and Caiazzo dispatches Eslingen to represent his interests in the investigation, Rathe begins to wonder if their friendship is going to survive. Or whether they'll survive at all.

Pointsman Nicolas Rathe and the dashing soldier Philip Eslingen return in a new novel set in the great city of Astreiant. As the Dog Moon approaches with the promise of terrier races popular among aristocrats and common people alike, the broadsheets are filled with scandal. A suspicious bankruptcy threatens to destabilize Astreiant's merchant class; dog trainers have gone missing or turned up dead. When Eslingen receives an unwanted dog, the domestic contentment he shares with Rathe is threatened-but more threatening still is the offer of a new position that seems to poach upon the prerogatives of Astreiant's pointsmen and his lover's livelihood.

Autumn downpours soak the city of Astreiant and cast a gloomy pall over its streets, while storms at sea have delayed merchant ships bearing important cargoes from distant lands. For Philip Eslingen, whose stars are bad for water, the season adds damp misery to the complications of organizing the new and controversial City Guard. The murder of a tea captain brings to a head the rivalry between Point of Sighs, where the crime took place, and Point of Dreams, where Eslingen's lover, Adjunt Point Nicolas Rathe, doubts the evidence against the son of a prominent Dreams merchant house. As extortion against traders by the dockers of Point of Sighs and corruption among the district pointsmen come to light, the mystery deepens, but nothing can prepare Rathe and Eslingen for the return of a legend and the revival of a savage cult.

Secrets and danger stalk the streets of Astreiant… Point of Hearts, Astreiant’s pleasure district, is being disrupted by an influx of scheming nobles who have descended upon the city for an aristocratic wedding. Mysterious carts smuggling something unknown through the night time streets and civil unrest are creating suspicion and turmoil. Adjunct Point Nicolas Rathe and his lover, Philip Eslingen, captain in the City Guard, are keeping an eye on an aristocrat under self-imposed house arrest when Rathe is injured during a riot. Pursued by false accusations, Eslingen takes him on the run to Point of Knives while they try to unravel a plot against the queen and her government that could destroy the city they love. Can they count on alliances from their pasts to keep them safe long enough to solve the mystery?