King Arthur

An immortal Knight of the Round Table faces his greatest challenge yet--saving the politically polarized, rapidly warming world from itself--in this slyly funny contemporary take on Arthurian legend. "A brilliant collision of ancient mysticism with modern madness."--Robert Jackson Bennett, bestselling author of the Founders Trilogy Legends don't always live up to reality. Being reborn as an immortal defender of the realm gets awfully tiring over the years--or at least that's what Sir Kay's thinking as he claws his way up from beneath the earth yet again. Kay once rode alongside his brother, King Arthur, as a Knight of the Round Table. Since then, he has fought at Hastings and at Waterloo and in both World Wars. But now he finds himself in a strange new world where oceans have risen, the army's been privatized, and half of Britain's been sold to foreign powers. The dragon that's running amok--that he can handle. The rest? He's not so sure.

Arthurian legends are reborn in this upbeat queer urban fantasy with a mystery at its heart The knights of the round table are alive in Vancouver, but when one winds up dead, it's clear the familiar stories have taken a left turn. Hildie, a Valkyrie and the investigator assigned to the case, wants to find the killer -- and maybe figure her life out while she's at it. On her short list of suspects is Wayne, an autistic college student and the reincarnation of Sir Gawain, who these days is just trying to survive in a world that wasn't made for him. After finding himself at the scene of the crime, Wayne is pulled deeper into his medieval family history while trying to navigate a new relationship with the dean's charming assistant, Bert -- who also happens to be a prime murder suspect. To figure out the truth, Wayne and Hildie have to connect with dangerous forces: fallen knights, tricky runesmiths, the Wyrd Sisters of Gastown. And a hungry beast that stalks Wayne's dreams. The Winter Knight is a propulsive urban fairy tale and detective story with queer and trans heroes that asks what it means to be a myth, who gets to star in these tales, and ultimately, how we make our stories our own.

The legendary epics of King Arthur and Camelot don't tell the whole story. Chroniclers say Arthur's mother Ygraine married the man that killed her husband. They say that Arthur's half-sister Morgana turned to dark magic to defy him and Merlin. They say that the enchantress Nimue challenged Merlin and used her magic to outwit him. And that Arthur's marriage to Guinevere ended in adultery, rebellion and bloodshed. So why did these women chose such dangerous paths? As warfare and rivalries constantly challenge the king, Arthur and Merlin believe these women are destined to serve Camelot by doing as they are told. But men forget that women talk. Ygraine, Nimue, Morgana and Guinevere become friends and allies while the decisions that shape their lives are taken out of their hands. This is their untold story. Now these women have a voice.

Imagine a city where a young, magic-touched bastard astonishes everyone by becoming king - albeit with extreme reluctance - and a girl with a secret past trains to become a knight for the sole purpose of vengeance. The boldest, smartest, most adventurous fantasy I've read in ages' Krystal Sutherland, author of Our Chemical Hearts Imagine a city where magic is illegal but everywhere, in its underground bars, its back-alley soothsayers - and in the people who have to hide what they are for fear of being tattooed and persecuted. Imagine a city where electricity is money, power the only game worth playing, and violence the most fervently worshipped religion.

Everyone thinks they know the story of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table. The fact is they don't know sh*t. Arthur? An over-promoted gangster. Merlin? An eldritch parasite. Excalibur? A shady deal with a watery arms dealer. Britain? A clogged sewer that Rome abandoned just as soon as it could. A savage and cutting epic fantasy, equally poetic and profane, By Force Alone is a magical adventure and a subversive masterwork.

From the vast lore surrounding King Arthur, Camelot, and the Knights of the Round Table, comes an anthology of gender-bent, race-bent, LGBTQIA+ inclusive retellings. Here you'll find the Lady of the Lake reimagined as an albino Ugandan sorceress and the Lady of Shalott as a wealthy, isolated woman in futuristic Mexico City; you'll see Excalibur rediscovered as a baseball bat that grants a washed-up minor leaguer a fresh shot at glory and as a lost ceremonial drum that returns to a young First Nations boy the power and the dignity of his people. There are stories set in Gilded Age Chicago, '80s New York, twenty-first century Singapore, and space; there are lesbian lady knights, Arthur and Merlin reborn in the modern era for a second chance at saving the world and falling in love-even a coffee shop AU. Brave, bold, and groundbreaking, the stories in Sword Stone Table will bring fresh life to beloved myths and give long-time fans a chance to finally see themselves in their favorite legends.