Her Royal Majesty Alethea Kontis!

The Literary Underworld is delighted to offer a limited selection of titles from our longtime friend Alethea Kontis, New York Times bestseller, princess and storm chaser. Her Majesty has written more than 20 books and 50 short stories, including the wildly popular AlphaOops! children’s series. Alethea has received the Jane Yolen Mid-List Author Grant, the Scribe Award, the Garden State Teen Book Award, and is a two-time winner of the Gelett Burgess Children’s Book Award. She has been twice nominated for both the Andre Norton Nebula and the Dragon Award.

Also, she chases storms. She’s just that awesome.

Below are the Alethea Kontis titles temporarily available at the Literary Underworld, online and at our booths at the fall conventions. When they’re gone they’re gone, so move fast!

BEAUTY AND DYNAMITE

Once upon a time, a young girl walked into a world of wonder and delight. But that’s not where this story starts.

The young woman she became published a nationally recognized children’s book and edited a star-filled collection of stories to benefit the tsunami relief effort. But that’s not where this story ends.

Meet Alethea Kontis, a self-proclaimed Genre Chick whose life is an adventure that tears through these pages like a hurricane. Carrot-a-day cancer cures and Murphy as a guardian angel (yes, that Murphy, the guy with all those irritating laws) are just a part of the daily routine for the Incredible Whirlwind of Beauty and Dynamite, the force of nature masquerading in human form.

Through essays, poetry, and commentary from family, friends, and famous authors alike, a world of Blood Oaths and road trips, broken hearts and mended cars, comes alive with the strength of one woman’s conviction that the world is there to be befriended.

You have now been introduced.

Let your adventure begin.

 

ENCHANTED

It isn’t easy being the rather overlooked and unhappy youngest sibling to sisters named for the other six days of the week. Sunday’s only comfort is writing stories, although what she writes has a terrible tendency to come true.

When Sunday meets an enchanted frog who asks about her stories, the two become friends. Soon that friendship deepens into something magical. One night Sunday kisses her frog goodbye and leaves, not realizing that her love has transformed him back into Rumbold, the crown prince of Arilland—and a man Sunday’s family despises.

The prince returns to his castle, intent on making Sunday fall in love with him as the man he is, not the frog he was. But Sunday is not so easy to woo. How can she feel such a strange, strong attraction for this prince she barely knows? And what twisted secrets lie hidden in his past—and hers?

 

HERO

Rough and tumble Saturday Woodcutter thinks she’s the only one of her sisters without any magic—until the day she accidentally conjures an ocean in the backyard. With her sword in tow, Saturday sets sail on a pirate ship, only to find herself kidnapped and whisked off to the top of the world. Is Saturday powerful enough to kill the mountain witch who holds her captive and save the world from sure destruction? And, as she wonders grumpily, “Did romance have to be part of the adventure?”

As in Enchanted, readers will revel in the fragments of fairy tales that embellish this action-packed story of adventure and, yes, romance.

 

DARK HUNTER COMPANION

with Sherrilyn Kenyon

Consider this handbook your education. Hunter 101. And don’t go thinking you got off easy just because there’s not a pop quiz at the end. This is the good stuff. The real deal. In here you’ll find out all there is to know about being a Dark-Hunter.

Now for the disclaimer: This book is mutable. It goes with the wind. It changes more often than the mind of a sixteen-year-old Gemini with a closet full of clothes and a date in an hour. Don’t be surprised if you open it up for the thirty-five thousandth time and find something old, something new, something borrowed or. . .well you get the point.

Curl up in a comfy chair with some millennium-old scotch and feast upon the informative banquet I have prepared for your enjoyment.

Welcome to your new life.

 

ZERO GRAVITY

Alva J. Roberts, ed.

This short story collection features thirteen fantastic adventures set in the cold vacuum of space. Read about rogues, scoundrels, aliens, robots, heroes, junkers and priests as you explore the rich and creative diversity of the following stories: “Junker’s Fancy” By Rosemary Jones, “Leech Run” By Scott W. Baker, “A Space Romance” By Paul A. Freeman, “Hawking’s Caution” By Mark Rivett, “Parhelion” By David Schembri, “To Stand Among Kings” By Kenneth Mark Hoover, “The Unicorn Tree” By Alethea Kontis, “The Beacon of Hope” By Gregory L Norris, “Tangwen’s Last Heist” By C.B. Calsing, “The Stand-Ins” By Gef Fox, “Glacier Castle” By Will Morton, “Rescue” By Margaret Karmazin, and “At One Stride Comes the Dark” By Murray Leeder.

 

DARK FAITH

Maurice Broaddus and Jerry Gordon, eds.

Some of the genre’s top authors and most promising newcomers whisper horror tales that creep through the mists at night to rattle your soul. Step beyond salvation and damnation in this intense horror and dark fantasy anthology containing thirty stories and poems that reveal the darkness beneath belief. Place your faith in that darkness; it’s always there, just beyond the light.

Experience the spiritual side of the zombie apocalypse in “The Days of Flaming Motorcycles” and transcend both hell and nirvana in “Zen and the Art of Gordon Dratch’s Damnation.” Look into “The Mad Eyes of the Heron King” to find the beautiful brutality written in the moment of epiphany or “Go and Tell it On the Mountain,” where Jesus Christ awaits your last plea to enter heaven—if there is a heaven to enter when all is said and done.

Contains the following stories and poems:

  • “The Story of Belief-Non” by Linda D. Addison (poem)
  • “Ghosts of New York” by Jennifer Pelland
  • “I Sing a New Psalm” by Brian Keene
  • “He Who Would Not Bow” by Wrath James White
  • “Zen and the Art of Gordon Dratch’s Damnation” by Douglas F. Warrick
  • “Go and Tell It on the Mountain” by Kyle S. Johnson
  • “Different from Other Nights” by Eliyanna Kaiser
  • “Lilith” by Rain Graves (poem)
  • “The Last Words of Dutch Schultz Jesus Christ” by Nick Mamatas
  • “To the Jerusalem Crater” by Lavie Tidhar
  • “Chimeras & Grotesqueries” by Matt Cardin
  • “You Dream” by Ekaterina Sedia
  • “Mother Urban’s Booke of Dayes” by Jay Lake
  • “The Mad Eyes of the Heron King” by Richard Dansky
  • “Paint Box, Puzzle Box” by D.T. Friedman
  • “A Loss For Words” by J. C. Hay
  • “Scrawl” by Tom Piccirilli
  • “C{her}ry Carvings” by Jennifer Baumgartner (poem)
  • “Good Enough” by Kelli Dunlap
  • “First Communions” by Geoffrey Girard
  • “The God of Last Moments” by Alethea Kontis
  • “Ring Road” by Mary Robinette Kowal
  • “The Unremembered” by Chesya Burke
  • “Desperata” by Lon Prater (poem)
  • “The Choir” by Lucien Soulban
  • “The Days of Flaming Motorcycles” by Catherynne M. Valente
  • “Miz Ruthie Pays Her Respects” by Lucy A. Snyder
  • “Paranoia” by Kurt Dinan (poem)
  • “Hush” by Kelly Barnhill
  • “Sandboys” by Richard Wright
  • “For My Next Trick, I’ll Need a Volunteer” by Gary A. Braunbeck