Dusk Peterson: 26 books

Deep underground lies a prison filled with idealistic men who have committed themselves to putting the best interest of their prisoners first . . . through torture. Soaring high in an adjoining nation are two "reformed" prisons where life prisoners (and a few sympathetic guards) must band...

"He could not leave this room without his father's permission. And he could not imagine going to his father and saying, 'Please let me go gather moss so that my slave can have a proper New Year for once.'" What can you give a slave who, by law, can own nothing? That is the question...

"I hesitated. Was Fairview dead? Was it worth my while to risk my own life for a dead man?" Until risk arrives, you never know how important the things are that you're required to risk. A soldier must decide how high a price he is willing to pay for an unspoken bond. A journeyman...

"'It's like being a servant,' he added, seeing that Frank still didn't understand. 'Masters are born masters; servants are born servants.'" Soon after they were born, they were tattooed with the signs of their ranks: master or servant. Now, in the time between past and future, the...

Koretia, Emor, and Daxis were all founded on the same day, but as the centuries have passed, the Three Lands of the Great Peninsula have become increasingly divided by religion, government, and culture. Koretians worship many gods, Daxions worship one goddess, and Emorians revere only their law. Emorians...

"Master Meredith, whose entitlement to a last name had not yet been determined by the courts, was sitting in a window-seat overlooking the playing fields of Narrows School when the Third House bullies found him." In his final terms of school before his university years, Meredith is...

"He was skilled by now at making innocuous remarks in the presence of the Shining Ones. Nobody had even guessed that he knew what they were." The Eternal Dungeon is filled with prisoners who shine like the sun. No one knows this except Barrett Boyd, a guard notorious for having...

"Oh, Mercy and Hell. He would gladly allow himself to be flayed for eternity if he could thereby escape the responsibility of disciplining his love-mate for any future violations of the Code." The Eternal Dungeon has been split by a civil war, with the division clearly marked by a...

"The servants were scared stiff of him, and the masters were clearly uncertain what to say to a man who came from such an eccentric House. Nothing was different, nothing had changed. And yet everything had changed since Carr met a young foreigner who showed him not the least bit of respect." When...

"Sometimes I feel that he is as mysterious as the gods, and that he is hiding something of vital importance from me. Something that would transform my life." Few events are more thrilling in a young man's life than a blood feud between two villages. Or so Adrian thought. Torn...

"He was the flame, and his love-mate was the kindling. To say they were mismatched was an understatement. He knew that it was only a matter of time before their relationship was tested. . . . Layle had simply not expected the test to be a pile of dirty dishes." They are two of the...

"Ledwin growled, 'I trust the slave is dead. The last thing our landstead needs are perverts wandering about causing trouble.'" In a society where the rank of master or slave defines every aspect of a person's being, what do you do when you're a master and you envy your slaves? This...

"Selig had placed me next to the fire, both as a way to emphasize my honor – what little honor I had left – and as a way to keep me from dying of a chill. He had made it more than clear during the past three years that he considered me a frail creature, incapable of enduring the hardened...

"I had come to tell him, in the cheerful manner boys have, that our world was about to be destroyed." He has taken a blood vow to the Jackal God to bring freedom to his land by killing Koretia's greatest enemy. But what will he do when the enemy becomes his friend? Thrust into...