A stand-alone novella featuring Madis Defranthea, whose brother presents her with a challenge. If she wants to join his gang, she and her team have to steal a magical belt that’s locked to the waist of a bride, on her wedding night, in a fortified castle, on a rock in the middle of the sea.  Madis takes him up on it. But when she discovers just how much her brother didn’t know, the job proves even more hazardous than she bargained for... Featuring magic, automata, snobbery, small gods, large fish,  a useful corpse and an unnervingly intelligent horse. In A Hazardous Engagement the author of Babylon Steel and Shanghai Sparrow delivers a thrilling tale of cunning, ingenuity and betrayal that entertains royally from first page to last. **

All Tastes! All Species! All Currencies!You can find anything in Scalentine, the city of portals, but you won't find a better brothel than the Red Lantern. And its proprietor, Babylon Steel (ex-mercenary, ex-priestess, ex... lots of things), means to keep it that way.But a prurient cult are protesting in the streets, sex workers are disappearing, and Babylon has bills to pay. When the powerful Diplomatic Section hires her – off the books – to find a missing heiress, she has to take the job.And then her past starts to catch up with her...

A stand-alone novella featuring Madis Defranthea, whose brother presents her with a challenge. If she wants to join his gang, she and her team have to steal a magical belt that’s locked to the waist of a bride, on her wedding night, in a fortified castle, on a rock in the middle of the sea.  Madis takes him up on it. But when she discovers just how much her brother didn’t know, the job proves even more hazardous than she bargained for... Featuring magic, automata, snobbery, small gods, large fish,  a useful corpse and an unnervingly intelligent horse. In A Hazardous Engagement the author of Babylon Steel and Shanghai Sparrow delivers a thrilling tale of cunning, ingenuity and betrayal that entertains royally from first page to last. **

Babylon Steel, owner of the Red Lantern brothel – and former avatar of the goddess of sex and war – has been offered a job. Two jobs, really: bodyguard to Enthemmerlee, a girl transformed into a figure of legend... and spy for the barely-acknowledged government of Scalentine. The very young Enthemmerlee embodies the hopes and fears of many on her home world of Incandress, and is a prime target for assassination.Babylon must somehow turn Enthemmerlee's useless household guard into a disciplined fighting force, dodge Incandress's bizarre and oppressive Moral Statutes, and unruffle the feathers of a very annoyed Scalentine diplomat. All of which would be hard enough, were she not already distracted by threats to both her livelihood and those dearest to her...

Eveline Sparrow hopes to put her past experiences as a thief and con-artist to more legitimate use; which is why some of the girls at her Sparrow School receive private lessons in burglary, fakery, and other such underhand practices.But it's hard to get honest work when few businesses will employ young ladies in the security professions. The duns are at the doorstep, her friend Liu the half-fox-spirit is in some sort of trouble, and the rivalries of the Folk are in danger of overspilling into the mundane world, forcing the Empire into a bloody, horrifying war.Can Eveline pull things out of the mire this time, or will the Sparrow's wings be clipped once and for all?