A Virtual Evening with Brock Adams and Jill Criswell

Join us for a virtual evening with Brock Adams and Jill Criswell, two local (Spartanburg!) authors of dystopian fiction and young adult historical fantasy. This married couple will be meeting us via Zoom on September 22nd at 7PM to discuss their newest novels, Apocalypse Yesterday and Kingdom of Ice and Bone, both publishing this month! We hope you'll join us for an exciting discussion!

Register here!

Apocalypse Yesterday

by Brock Adams

• • •

With his best and craziest days behind him, a Florida call center employee struggles through mind-numbing drudgery day after day--but he just might have a way to reclaim the madness and his former life.

The zombie apocalypse is over. The humans have won. Life is back to normal. And Rip is bored as hell. It's not much of a life sitting in a call center in the poor town of Spanish Shanty, Florida, answering emails like a drone and listening to customer complaints.

Rip was ruler of a tiny kingdom in the Lazy River waterpark, killing zombies by day and making passionate love at night. He misses the danger, the camaraderie, and the blistering love he once knew. He longs to feel Santana--his trusty machete--in his hand, and Davia--the fiercest woman alive--in his arms once again. He can still picture it-- life on the razor's edge--and he would do anything to get that feeling back.

“Unintentionally prescient, a tale of losing and finding oneself at the end of the world.”
—Kirkus

But what if Rip could get it back? He's totally desperate. Not normal desperate--more like ready-to-restart-the-apocalypse desperate. Condemning humanity to a repeat merely for an adrenaline rush is probably not a good idea. But life at the call center is nothing more than a slow death, and Rip might not be able to go on without trying to find out.

Kingdom of Ice and Bone

by Jill Criswell

• • •

Lira and Reyker have lost everything. Including each other.

Lira of Stone watched her home burn and her clan fall beneath the sword of the warlord known as the Dragon. She believes the man she loves, a warrior who defected from the Dragon's army, is dead. Alongside her exiled brother and his band of refugees, she will fight the forces that conquered her island. But the greatest danger may come from Lira herself -- with the blood of banished gods running through her veins, she's become a weapon, and no one is safe from the power of her wrath.

Reyker Lagorsson thought he was done being a Dragonman. That was before he saw Lira leap from a cliff and vanish into the sea. Determined to honor her memory by protecting her people, Reyker must feign loyalty to the warlord, undermine him at every turn, and seek alliances with renegade soldiers without succumbing to the battle-madness that threatens to possess him once more.

''A fierce saga, beautifully told, that will transport readers to a time of magic and gods, battles and clan warfare. A totally engrossing and epic adventure.'' --Jessica Leake, author of Beyond a Darkened Shore and Through the White Wood, on Beasts of the Frozen Sun

When the Fallen Ones offer Lira a chance to defeat the Dragon, her quest leads her to a place she never expected Iseneld, the warlord's homeland. Her journey into the heart of the Frozen Sun will put her on a collision course with Reyker, costing both of them more than they ever imagined, and leaving her with a terrible choice: to save their countries, she must forsake everything she loves.

• • •

Brock Adams's first novel, Ember, won the South Carolina First Novel Prize in 2016 and was published the following year by Hub City Press. His short fiction has appeared in Best American Mystery Stories, The Sewanee Review, Bacopa Literary Review, and several other journals. He's won prizes including The Andrew Lytle Prize in Fiction, the Hub City Fiction Prize, and second place in Playboy's College Fiction Contest. His short story collection Gulf was published by Pocol Press in 2010; it was published in Italy that same year by Round Robin Press. Adams lives in Spartanburg, SC, with his wife and daughter. He teaches English and creative writing at USC Upstate.

Jill Criswell is a writer of young adult historical fantasy. Born and raised in the swamps of northeastern Florida, she earned degrees in English and psychology and an MFA in creative writing from the University of Central Florida. Her greatest passion, besides reading and writing, is traveling the world; she's visited fifty countries across six continents, falling in love with places like Iceland, Namibia, and Cambodia. She works as a university English teacher and lives in South Carolina, near the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, with her husband and daughter (who is named after a volcano in Iceland). She is the author of Beasts of the Frozen Sun, the first book in the Frozen Sun Saga. For more information, visit JillCriswell.com.