This Crumbling Pageant – Best Fantasy Romance of 2015

Get swept away into the first book of a dark fantasy series combining sorcery and magic, Arthurian legend turned upside down, and a coming of age that leaves Persephone Fury choosing between love and honour, between desire and destiny.

Winner, Golden Quill for best Romantic Fantasy in 2015

England, 1811. As fashionable Society streams toward London for the start of a new social season, they are unaware of a hidden magical England existing alongside. The Magi cathedrals are temples to the old gods. Reigning on their throne is not poor mad George, but the ailing King Pellinore of the House of Pendragon. But their wars are no less deadly.

The Fury family is known for its extraordinary music, its powerful magic, and its historic role as kingmakers. But the Furys have their secrets as well, none so dangerous as the daughter whose Shadow magic spills from her, unchecked. Unless her powers are concealed, she’s not only ruined in Society, but marked as a target for those who would use and abuse her magic.

Persephone Fury is the Dark daughter, the one they hide.

But desperate times call for desperate measures, and a good marriage for this frightening daughter is desperately needed. On the night of her debut, her world comes crumbling down around her when she is abducted from the man she loves by the man she most loathes.

Evil powers circle, calling her to the destiny foretold at the moment of her birth, drawing her to the source of her power, to the one place she can finally be free.

By embracing the Shadows, by embracing the Darkness within her.

Persephone is ruthless, devious, and clever, but when confronted with the truth, she must make horrifying choices.

Can she defy destiny and seize her own fate?

So when the last and dreadful hour

This crumbling pageant shall devour,

The trumpet shall be heard on high,

The dead shall live, the living die,

And music shall untune the sky.

John Dryden, 1687

SAMPLE CHAPTERS

• Series: The Fury Triad
• Digital File Size: 1501 KB
• Trade Paperback: 606 pages
• Hardcover: 652 pages
• Publisher: Story Spring Publishing
• Publication Date: April 29, 2014
• Digital-ISBN-13:  978-1-940699-05-9
• Trade-ISBN-13: 978-1940699035
• Hardcover-ISBN-13: 978-1940699

Award-winning screenwriter & novelist Patricia Burroughs loves Pratchett, Aaronovitch, Dunnett, and Heyer. She and her husband live in Dallas, Texas.

Patricia Burroughs—Pooks—began her writing career in romance with five published novels. She received nominations and recognition from RT Reviews and was a Finalist for Romance Writers of America’s RITA.

Then she got lured over to the dark side—screenwriting. Her first script landed her an agent, director, stars—everything needed for the movie to get made but money. Later scripts [action comedies, romantic comedies, science fiction and fantasies] continued the string of “almosts” until the years 2000 and 2001, when she became the only screenwriter in history to be a Finalist twice with two different scripts in the competition to win a Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting. She received the Fellowship from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences for an adaptation of her first published novel, La Desperada, under the title, “Redemption,” in 2001. Uncredited but paying work followed.

The award-winning The Fury Triad (Story Spring Publishing) marks her return to novels.

How Research Gave Me the Home I Didn’t Want and the World I Needed, Word Wenches

My Favorite Bit: Patricia Burroughs Talks About This Crumbling Pageant    MaryRobinetteKowal.com

Patricia Burroughs Q&A Get Lost in a Story

Q&A with Patricia Burroughs   SuzanneJohnsonAuthor.com

Of [Redacted] and Aubergine CelluloidBlonde.com

Of Adders and the Writing Process Magical Words

Of Adders and Rattlesnakes FuryTriad.com

How a Name Defined a Character and a History Magical Words

Those Pesky Genres Magical Words