Ari lost everything she once loved when the Five Guilds' resistance fell to the Dragon King. Now, she uses her gift for clockwork machinery to earn a living on the black market. Cvareh would do anything to see his sister usurp the Dragon King's place on the throne, and the Alchemist Guild on Loom might hold the key. When Ari stumbles across a wounded Cvareh, she sees an opportunity to slaughter an enemy and make a profit. He sees an opportunity to navigate Loom with the best person to get him where he wants to go. He offers Ari the one thing she can't refuse: a wish of her greatest desire, if she brings him to the Alchemists of Loom. --

The final installment of USA Today-bestselling author Kova's Loom Saga reveals the fate of Loom's brilliantly contrasting world and its beloved inhabitants.

When the first fissures became visible to the naked eye in August 2007, suddenly the most powerful men in the world were three men who were never elected to public office. They were the leaders of the world’s three most important central banks: Ben Bernanke of the U.S. Federal Reserve, Mervyn King of the Bank of England, and Jean-Claude Trichet of the European Central Bank. Over the next five years, they and their fellow central bankers deployed trillions of dollars, pounds and euros to contain the waves of panic that threatened to bring down the global financial system, moving on a scale and with a speed that had no precedent. Neil Irwin’s The Alchemists is a gripping account of the most intense exercise in economic crisis management we’ve ever seen, a poker game in which the stakes have run into the trillions of dollars. The book begins in, of all places, Stockholm, Sweden, in the seventeenth century, where central banking had its rocky birth, and then progresses through a brisk but dazzling tutorial on how the central banker came to exert such vast influence over our world, from its troubled beginnings to the Age of Greenspan, bringing the reader into the present with a marvelous handle on how these figures and institutions became what they are – the possessors of extraordinary power over our collective fate. What they chose to do with those powers is the heart of the story Irwin tells. Irwin covered the Fed and other central banks from the earliest days of the crisis for the Washington Post, enjoying privileged access to leading central bankers and people close to them. His account, based on reporting that took place in 27 cities in 11 countries, is the holistic, truly global story of the central bankers’ role in the world economy we have been missing. It is a landmark reckoning with central bankers and their power, with the great financial crisis of our time, and with the history of the relationship between capitalism and the state. Definitive, revelatory, and riveting, The Alchemists shows us where money comes from—and where it may well be going.

Two Sudanese "lost boys." Both fathers murdered during civil war. Both mothers forced into exile where the only law was violence. To survive, the boys became ruthless loners and child soldiers, until they found mystic mentors who transformed them into their true destinies. One: known to the streets as the Supreme Raptor; the other: known to the Greeks as Horus, son of Osiris. Separated by seven thousand years, and yet connected by immortal truth. Born in fire. Baptized in blood. Brutalized by the wicked. Sworn to transform the world and themselves. They are the Alchemists of Kush.

Dead men can’t rob themselves Evrik Attel wanted to live life on his terms, and where better to start than in Lityen, the village at the foot of the great alchemical Sect of Seven Fires? On the first day of the Preceptory of Yseult's exhibition, he held a card tournament at his draughtshop with a special prize, a deck of lucky cards blessed by a god. Now, he lies dead at Lady Azadiya Hobon’s feet. Hot on her heels as ever, Ibram Ucalegon discovers Evrik was robbed of everything except his money. Inside the draughtshop, everyone wanted to profit off of Evrik’s work, but no one wants to believe he was murdered. His cousin claims it’s on account of foreign food, his prospective business partner says it was bad shellfish, and the Imperial clerk simply wants to escort Lady Azadiya to her meeting. But men don’t simply drop dead clutching their throats, and a robbery is a robbery. To find out what really happened, Lady Azadiya and Ibram must discover what caused ... The Body In The Larder?

Ibram Ucalegon is a private investigator in the strictest sense of the term. He only has one client: Lady Azadiya Hobon, the intelligent, poised, and beautiful alchemist who oversees the daily struggles of life in the alchemical village of Lityen, and he investigates whatever she tells him to. In a village crammed with foreign deities, potion pushers, and folk who can see through a man's skin straight to his bones, Ibram's the thoroughly mundane answer to every murky question. Together with his childhood friend, Ahksell Solari, alchemist and movable mountain, they tidy up the dark corners and murderous disputes of Lityen's population amidst the never-ending upheaval of merchants, adventurers, and displaced nobility seeking their fortunes. In The Gilty Party: Ibram thought he knew everything he needed to know about the death of Harken Tolk, but when the man who found him disappears before the inquest, Lady Azadiya has no choice but to reopen the investigation. Did Ibram sign off on a natural death, when the verdict should have been murder? Or is Rustam Monbrith hiding some other secret? In Cursebird On A Wire: Following a short period of unfortunate incarceration, Ibram buys his freedom by promising his jailer an introduction to Lady Azadiya. But on the day of the introductory gala, a cursebird flies in the face of everybody's plans. Can Lady Azadiya discover the culprit and save the party before Ibram trades in his smooth sailing for another hard landing? The Alchemist's Agent Omnibus 1 is a collection of two books in E.M. Burnham's standalone fantastical mystery series: The Alchemist's Agent. The books included are: The Gilty Party, the first book in the series, and Cursebird On A Wire, a prequel novella.