“readers with a taste for madcap fantasy will find something to enjoy.” —Publishers Weekly Drawing on an eclectic mix of influences and based on the myths and history of Zagreb, Croatia, The City Beneath the Hidden Stars is a fantastical story that unveils the wondrous concealed in the mundane and is an adventure not to be missed. Long ago, the Black Queen once ruled Zagreb in a looming fortress over the city. Her legend lives on in children’s games and bedtime stories. Is it truly only folklore? And what harm is death to a queen who supposedly stole secrets from the stars? When rumors surface that the Black Queen might still be alive and living in a haunted chasm beneath Zagreb’s Bear Mountain, it prompts the Star Council to dispatch star daimon Leo Solar to Earth to investigate. After witnessing a bizarre event at a local music gig, former philosophy student Dario Taubek begins to notice a strange-looking man in a star suit. Curious, he follows him and what he discovers catapults him into a world he never knew existed. A world of magical trams, myths and monsters, celestial beings, and the legendary Black Queen.

First English translation of the celebrated Golden Age Science Fiction Classic. "This stunning classic stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Arthur C. Clarke, Asimov, and Heinlein." – New York Times and USA Today bestselling authors W. Michael Gear and Kathleen O'Neal Gear Tankar Holroy, Lieutenant in the Stellar Guard of earth’s Empire, floats in space after his spaceship is sabotaged. Rescued by an enormous, unknown ship, he awakes to discover himself saved by the People of the Stars who are born and live in space with minimal contact with planets and their occupants whom they call, with contempt, planetaries. The chilly welcome he receives from the ship’s leader, the Teknor, is followed by overt hostility from the other inhabitants of the Tilsin. Only a woman named Orena reaches out to him. Tankar soon realizes that he was rescued for his knowledge of tracers, the technology that allows Empire ships to track others through hyperspace, a technology the People of the Stars lack. Out of spite, he refuses to deliver the one piece of knowledge that can protect the people who saved but now spurn him - and the consequences will be catastrophic. FLAME TREE PRESS is the new fiction imprint of Flame Tree Publishing. Launched in 2018 the list brings together brilliant new authors and the more established; the award winners, and exciting, original voices.

Imagine awakening to a new reality of who you are, revealing a hidden past that has shaped your family’s history for centuries. Fact, not fiction, this experience has been shared by thousands of descendants of Sephardic Jews who fled Spain and Portugal in the 15th and 16th centuries, seeking safe haven from the ruthless Spanish Inquisition. Many had already converted to Catholicism, but learned that conversion was not enough to save their lives. They established new communities throughout the world, living as Catholics on the outside, but guarding a precious Jewish heritage in secret, an observance reduced over time to mere ritual and custom. Meet a modern day member of New Mexico’s northern Hispanic settlements who finds a new truth about herself and her family in the unexpected tumult of her life. The disappearance of her two children leads her on an inner journey and an outer one, into the past and toward a newly imagined future where she can finally choose how she wants to live and who she wants to be. Hidden Star was inspired by the emergence of Spanish Catholics and Protestants in Mexico, Texas and the American Southwest, who believe they have Jewish roots. Today, many have thoughts of return, or have already begun the process. A work of fiction, this book was inspired by interviews with actual descendants, plus events that shaped this culture’s history, and suggests that in an era of religious freedom, we’re more alike than different – whatever our heritage, we want a better world. www.corinnejoybrown.com/

The first day of Christmas can be a magical time, filled with anticipation and the sweet scent of gingerbread. But for eleven-year-old twins, Mia and Jack, this Christmas Eve was about to become anything but ordinary. An extraordinary letter, addressed to them in elegant script, arrived on their doorstep, bearing the unmistakable seal of Santa Claus himself. It was a letter that would forever change their lives, setting them on a thrilling quest to save Christmas from an ancient curse. Prepare to be swept away by this heartwarming story of adventure, friendship, and the enduring spirit of Christmas. Join Mia and Jack as they unravel clues, face challenges, and uncover the true meaning of Christmas. Discover a world filled with talking snowmen, mischievous elves, and enchanted items, all while experiencing the joy and wonder that only the magic of Christmas can bring. So, grab a cozy blanket, a cup of hot cocoa, and settle in for a journey that will warm your heart and fill you with Christmas cheer.

Bellwether Prize-winner Cole pays homage to the strength and beauty of the people and landscape of her adopted home, Alaska.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) The final collection of stories by award-winning writer Marjorie Kowalski Cole, The City Beneath the Snow is a portrait of contemporary Alaskans, their interactions, and their foibles. These stories reveal the moral decisions that lurk at unexpected corners in daily life as the characters confront a world at once magical and ordinary, joy-filled and tragic. Together, they give the reader an intimate portrait of a people and place more often portrayed through wilderness specials and reality adventure shows. “Marjorie Kowalski Cole’s characters live, work, and struggle in interior Alaska, and she depicts life here with a keen eye and with compassion. We see the daughter of a Fairbanks junkyard owner struggling with her isolation. We meet a bartender at Circle Hot Springs who’s also a certified nurse’s assistant at Fairbanks Memorial Hospital . . . These are inner lives, revealed with care and with skill, the true material of good literature.”—Peggy Shumaker, Alaska State Writer Laureate “These are indeed short stories, but each has its own unquestionable beauty . . . Each story in The City Beneath the Snow begs re-reading, whether to absorb the poetic prose once more, or to attempt to resolve an ending that left a question mark. The characters are real, their situations elicit compassion, and Cole’s writing deserves to be savored.” —Foreword Reviews

On her Abuela's (grandmother's) death bed, Estrella Schmitt, discovers that she is a descendant of Conversos (hidden Jews) from Spain. he finds mementos, writings and audiotapes from her ancestor, Estrella Gomez, dating back to 1597, about the harrowing overseas journey and all of the difficulties she endured to find a place of peace, far from the hands of the Spanish Inquisition. That is until she discovers that the Inquisition followed her to New Spain. Her descendent, Estrella, becomes interested in the story of her family and decides to retrace her family's steps to find out more which she does.

"A story of the human spirit as its most indomitable... one of the outstanding autobiographies of the century." San Francisco Chronicle "Once in a rare while we read a book that puts the urgencies of our time and ourselves in perspective, making us confront the darker realities of human nature... Mrs. Kovaly experienced the two supreme horrors of what Hannah Arendt called this terrible century. But her book is not just a personal memoir of inhumanity. In telling her story – simply, without self-pity – she illuminates some general truths of human behavior... Quietly, with cumulative force, it shows us how the totalitarian state feeds on the blindness and the weakness of man." Anthony Lewis, New York Times "A wonderfully expressive writer. Although her approach is above all personal, Kovaly’s reflections on her experiences reveal a high degree of insight into politics, individual and institutional behavior, and the formation of attitudes." Christian Science Monitor "A Jew in Czechoslovakia under the Nazis, Kovaly spent the war years in the Lodz ghetto and several concentration camps, losing her family and barely surviving herself. Returning to Prague at the end of the war, she married an old friend, a bright, enthusiastic young Jewish economist named Rudolf Margolius, who saw the country's only hope for the future in the Communist Party. Thereafter, Rudolf became deputy minister for foreign trade. For a time, the Margoliuses lived like royalty, albeit reluctantly, but then, in a replay of the Stalinist purges of the 1930s, Rudolf and others, mostly of Jewish background, were arrested and hung in the infamous Slansky Trial of 1952. Kovaly's memoir of these years that end with her emigration to the West after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 are a tragic story told with aplomb, humor and tenderness. The reader alternately laughs and cries as Kovaly describes her mother being sent to death by Dr. Mengele, Czech Communist Party leader Klement Gottwald drunk at a reception, the last sight of her husband, the feverish happiness of the Prague Spring. Highly recommended." Publishers Weekly