Who Can Resist This Bargain?

Who stole the scrolls containing the Alchemical League's valuable formulas? Perhaps the thief was even Miriam’s frantic father, on the cusp of financial ruin, eager for Miriam to end her dalliance with a handsome jeweler and marry into an honorable and wealthy family. Or her rebellious brother, intent on raising money to travel to Capua so he can enroll in the Roman Empire's most renowned gladiator school. Or her faint-hearted fiancé, who begrudges her preoccupation with alchemy and yearns for their forthcoming marriage?

To recover the scrolls, Miriam must stalk the culprit through the sinister alleys of Alexandria's claustrophobic underbelly:

The fading glow of my lantern did little to disperse the shrill parade of macabre creatures that flitted across the screen of my imagination. Instead they bred in the formless, flickering shadows that the lantern struggled to cast. The face of every tumbling tenement, the stench of every dank alley, and the scratch of every whirling piece of trash whispered veiled threats in my ears. At the same time, the dread of never recovering the scrolls coated the back of my throat with bile.

I neared an alley between the shell of an old slaughterhouse and an abandoned brewery, its only remaining door propped open with refuse, its yard choked with weeds and unidentifiable debris. Panic seized me. Something malevolent was seeping out of that alley. Some sentient life form was hovering in that squalor, on edge, poised for action.

Fortunately, you can accompany Miriam into that alley now for only 99 cents. Yes, your blood will flow faster, but you will have escaped into that world of adventure for which we all long. Just click here or wherever e-books are sold.