Two-Title Wednesday: W*n 2 Titles from Ari Marmell

First, the commercials:

* You can still enter for the RIVER ROAD ARC and the big Sentinels of New Orleans prize pack over at Dark Faerie Tales.

* Susannah Sandlin continues her REDEMPTION blog tour today at A Bibliophile's Thoughts on Books--you can read about the alpha versus beta male, and log another entry for the $50 Amazon gift card and other prizes.

Tomorrow, you can rack up more entries by visiting Carrie Ardoin's website, and by heading over to I Just Wanna Sit Here and Read, where vampire Will Ludlam has a guest blog, talking about his friend Aidan.

And..if you're looking for annotated Royal Street chapters, I'm in a daylong mandatory workshop for Ye Olde Day Jobbe about having a positive attitude (and I'm having a bit of negative attitude about it, must admit), so I'll try to put those up on my website in the next day or two.

TOMORROW...I'll be posting "Rivalry," a new short story that is a prequel to Royal Street. Want to see what Alex and Jake Warin were like in high school? Well, Alex has a big secret....

Now...how about some fantasy? I'm happy today to bring you the first two Widdershins Adventure novels from Ari Marmell, Thief's Covenant, which came out in February, and False Covenant, book two, which came out in June. Here's the scoop:

THIEF'S COVENANT: Once she was Adrienne Satti. An orphan of Davillon, she had somehow escaped destitution and climbed to the ranks of the city’s aristocracy in a rags-to-riches story straight from an ancient fairy tale. Until one horrid night, when a conspiracy of forces—human and other—stole it all away in a flurry of blood and murder. Today she is Widdershins, a thief making her way through Davillon’s underbelly with a sharp blade, a sharper wit, and the mystical aid of Olgun, a foreign god with no other worshippers but Widdershins herself. It’s not a great life, certainly nothing compared to the one she once had, but it’s hers. But now, in the midst of Davillon’s political turmoil, an array of hands are once again rising up against her, prepared to tear down all that she’s built. The City Guard wants her in prison. Members of her own Guild want her dead. And something horrid, something dark, something ancient is reaching out for her, a past that refuses to let her go. Widdershins and Olgun are going to find answers, and justice, for what happened to her—but only if those who almost destroyed her in those years gone by don’t finish the job first.

FALSE COVENANT: A creature of the other world, an unnatural entity bent on chaos and carnage, has come to stalk the nighttime streets of the Galicien city of Davillon. There’s never a good time for murder and panic, but for a community already in the midst of its own inner turmoil, this couldn’t possibly have come at a worse one. Not for Davillon, and not for a young thief who calls herself Widdershins. It’s been over half a year since the brutal murder of Archbishop Wil­liam de Laurent during his pilgrimage to Davillon. And in all that time, Widdershins has truly tried her best. She has tried to take care of Genevieve’s tavern and tried to make a semihonest living in a city slowly stagnating under the weight of an angry and disapproving Church. She has tried to keep out of trouble, away from the attentions of the Davillon Guard and above the secrets and schemes of the city’s new bishop. But she’s in way over her head, with no idea which way to turn. The Guard doesn’t trust her. The Church doesn’t trust her. Her own Thieves’ Guild doesn’t trust her. Too bad for everyone, then, that she and her personal god, Olgun, may be their only real weapon against a new evil like nothing the city has ever seen.

Sounds good, yes? Have you ever read a fantasy featuring a thief? I have a final copy of Thief's Covenant to give away, along with an ARC of False Covenant. You know the drill: a comment to enter, plus extra entries for a Twitter follow, a blog follow, and a tweet or retweet. Steal away!