The Instruments of Control
Livia Serafini must die.
To the Church she is a heretic, tried in absentia and sentenced to burn.
To her brother Carlo, she stands as a threat to his corrupt rule and a
symbol of resistance. To her new "allies" in the east, she is a pawn to
be played and sacrificed as they see fit. They don't hear the whispers
that follow her in the streets: whispers of hope, and the name of a
long-dead saint.
When Livia rises up to fight, she will not rise alone.
Across the ocean, Felix struggles for control of his family's fate against the crime lord Basilio Grimaldi. Basilio is wealthy, ruthless, and the
master of a hundred killers. All Felix has are his wits and his courage. It won't be enough. To break free, and to save the lives of everyone he loves, he'll have to face the darkness that followed him home from
Winter's Reach.
And as the Owl's horrific vengeance unfolds, her coven teeters on the brink of civil war. All the dominoes are in place
now, lined up from the frozen north to the swamps and ruins of a dead
empire, and set to tumble at one man's command. When they do, a world
will fall with them.
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Craig Schaefer
Craig Schaefer writes where the lines between crime and sorcery blur, and where every bargain comes with a cost. Under that name, Heather Schaefer has built an interconnected body of work that threads through the neon alleys of Las Vegas, the halls of occult conspiracies, and worlds shaped by betrayal, devotion, and blood-stained magic.
Her breakthrough came with The Long Way Down in 2014, the first Daniel Faust novel. What began as the tale of a streetwise magician hustling through Vegas’s underbelly grew into a sprawling series praised for its relentless pacing and razor-edged mix of noir and urban fantasy. Schaefer expanded the universe with Harmony Black, turning the camera on a covert government team tasked with confronting supernatural threats, and with The Revanche Cycle, a Renaissance-tinged epic of politics and power. Though distinct in setting, these works share a gravitational pull toward moral ambiguity: damaged survivors, corrupt institutions, and the fragile bonds that can either redeem or destroy.
Revanche Cycle
A world away from Daniel Faust and Harmony Black - though perhaps not as far as you might think - awaits the intrigue and danger of The Revanche Cycle. As Pope Benignus lies in his deathbed and an empire awaits his successor, a madman puts his apocalyptic plan for revenge into motion. His web of conspiracy will snare an unlikely gathering of souls, from a barmaid and her lover, to a pair of low-rent bounty hunters, to the pope's iron-willed daughter, their roads converging in a broken, war-ravaged land.
Revanche Cycle consists of four books. The current recommended reading order for the series is provided below.
