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Narrator
Mary Robinette Kowal
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Length
11 hours 26 minutes
Language
English
"[Narrator Mary Robinette Kowal] delivers a stellar performance, imbuing each character, even the minor ones, with a fully realized personality...Kowal's background in theater allows her to maximize the emotional impact of each pivotal event." — AudioFile Magazine, Earphones Award Winner
From author Lara Elena Donnelly, comes a debut spy thriller, Amberlough, where a gay double-agent schemes to protect his smuggler lover during the rise of a fascist government coup
Trust no one with anything – especially in Amberlough City.
Covert agent Cyril DePaul thinks he’s good at keeping secrets, especially from Aristide Makricosta. They suit each other: Aristide turns a blind eye to Cyril’s clandestine affairs, and Cyril keeps his lover’s moonlighting job as a smuggler under wraps.
Cyril participates on a mission that leads to disastrous results, leaving smoke from various political fires smoldering throughout the city. Shielding Aristide from the expected fallout isn’t easy, though, for he refuses to let anything – not the crooked city police or the mounting rage from radical conservatives – dictate his life.
Enter streetwise Cordelia Lehane, a top dancer at the Bumble Bee Cabaret and Aristide’s runner, who could be the key to Cyril’s plans—if she can be trusted. As the twinkling lights of nightclub marquees yield to the rising flames of a fascist revolution, these three will struggle to survive using whatever means — and people — necessary. Including each other.
Combining the espionage thrills of le Carré with the allure of an alternate vintage era, Amberlough will thoroughly seduce and enthrall you.
"James Bond by way of Oscar Wilde." —Holly Black
"Sparkling with slang, full of riotous characters, and dripping with intrigue, Amberlough is a dazzling romp through a tumultuous, ravishing world." —Robert Jackson Bennett, winner of the Shirley Jackson Award and the Edgar Award
"An astonishing first novel!" —World Fantasy Award-winning author Ellen Kushner
LARA ELENA DONNELLY is a graduate of the Alpha and Clarion writing workshops. Her fiction won the Dell Magazine Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy and she has been published in Icarus, Strange Horizons, Grim Corps, and Mythic Delirium. Donnelly has worked as professional fire performer, belly dancer, and is knowledgeable in aerial acrobatics and burlesque. Amberlough is her debut novel.
Mary Robinette Kowal is the author of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Award-winning alternate history novel, The Calculating Stars, the first book in the Lady Astronaut series. She is also the author of The Glamourist Histories series and Ghost Talkers and has received the Astounding Award for Best New Writer, four Hugo Awards, the Nebula, and Locus Awards. Her stories appear in Asimov’s, Uncanny, and several Year’s Best anthologies. Mary Robinette has also worked as a professional puppeteer, is a member of the Award-winning podcast Writing Excuses, and performs as a voice actor (SAG/AFTRA), recording fiction for authors including Seanan McGuire, Cory Doctorow, and Neal Stephenson. She lives in Tennessee with her husband Rob and over a dozen manual typewriters.
Reviews
"Mary Robinette Kowal narrates a gripping historical fantasy, inspired by 1920s Weimar-era Berlin, but with broader political implications....Kowal delivers a stellar performance, imbuing each character, even the minor ones, with a fully realized personality. The result is that the city of Amberlough bursts fully to life... Kowal's background in theater allows her to maximize the emotional impact of each pivotal event." -AudioFile, Earphones Award Winner
“James Bond by way of Oscar Wilde.” —Holly Black
“Donnelly blends romance and tragedy, evoking gilded-age glamour and the thrill of a spy adventure, in this impressive debut. As heartbreaking as it is satisfying.” –Publishers Weekly, starred review
“A tightly woven and diverse cast of spies, criminals, cabaret bohemians, and lovers struggles to save what matters to each of them against a tide of rising fascism and violence in Donnelly's debut novel, set in a vaguely 1920s milieu….A sense of inevitable loss and futility permeates this rich drama. The fascists may never be defeated but only escaped—if the characters are willing to abandon the people they love. That dilemma will haunt them, as it haunts the reader.” —Kirkus Reviews
"Amberlough grabbed me from the first page. It is beautiful, all too real, and full of pain. Read it. It will change you." —Hugo Award-winning author Mary Robinette Kowal
"An astonishing first novel!" —World Fantasy Award-winning author Ellen Kushner
"Sparkling with slang, full of riotous characters, and dripping with intrigue, Amberlough is a dazzling romp through a tumultuous, ravishing world." —Robert Jackson Bennett, winner of the Shirley Jackson Award and the Edgar Award
"It’s a terrific novel. Very Evelyn Waugh meets The Sandbaggers.” —John Chu, Hugo-award winning author
"A peach softens and grows sweeter until it reaches a fragile state, lasting only about six hours, during which it's actually better than perfect--and then it goes off, it's gone, it's through. In Amberlough Donnelly takes us to a city and culture just tipping from this pluperfect moment. What a rich and melancholy book; so tragic, so gay!" —Kai Ashante Wilson, author of Sorcerer of the Wildeeps and the Nebula & World Fantasy finalist for "The Devil in America"
“This is the book we need right now. Amberlough is a gorgeous, crucial reminder that even when the Fascists take over, people will fight back - no matter how flawed or frightened or damaged they might be, or how much they risk by doing so.” —Sam J. Miller, finalist for the Nebula, World Fantasy, and Theodore Sturgeon Awards and winner of the Shirley Jackson Award
“Amberlough offers a sharp, lush, sensual espionage Cabaret, a Weimar world of lovers, criminals and spies all floating toward the fire.” —Max Gladstone, LAMBDA Literary Award finalist
"Intrigue and passions intertwine in Amberlough – A city on the edge of political upheaval, glittering with decadence and riddled with spies! Be careful or you too will be lost in the whirl of the kind of glamour familiar in 1930s Shanghai or Weimar-era Berlin. Donnelley's debut is powerfully seductive and wrenching." —Fran Wilde, author of Updraft
"A glittering cabaret of a novel, with show-stopping language on every page." —Lev AC Rosen, author of Depth
"Lust and betrayal, intrigue and treachery, feints within feints within feints—Amberlough will keep readers up late into the night. I look forward to more adventures from Lara Elena Donnelly." —D.B. Jackson, author of the Thieftaker Chronicles
"Amberlough is the stiletto-sharp tale of an intelligence agent caught between corrupt handlers, a rising fascist regime, and his doomed passion for the notorious star of a sizzling underworld nightclub. Sexy and suspenseful, with characters who play for keeps, Donnelly's debut novel mixes secrets, spying, and outlawed love like a perfectly made cocktail... one that seduces before hitting you with an unforgettable kick." —A.M. Dellamonica, LAMBDA Literary Award finalist for Child of a Hidden Sea
"Weirdly elegant, wholly engaging, Donnelly's Amberlough is a richly visualized and genuinely fascinating novel. I couldn't put it down." —Josh Lanyon, author of the Adrien English Mysteries, and USA Book News Award for GLBT Fiction and the Eppie Award winner
"If you put David Bowie, China Mieville, and Shakespeare in Love into a blender, you might get something as rich and frothy as Amberlough. An intricate tale of society where nothing is as it seems, and where the political is all-too-personal." —Cecilia Tan, author of The Struck by Lightning series
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