The Contessa of Mostul Ûbar

 Awaking from death was just the beginning of Poleen's troubles.

A good girl from an idyllic country village shouldn't find herself in a dark forest dead. But when her broken neck mysteriously heals, violence erupts, and she stands over her killer's body wondering if she was such a good girl after all.

With her brother killed and her mother taken prisoner by a powerful trade guild, the source of her troubles points to a box of cigars. Exotic and rare, no doubt, but it wasn't worth her life. What secret does it hold that the rich and powerful are willing to kill and die for? More importantly, how can she leverage its worth to rescue her mother?

Rumors of war with the Pirate Kings of Boboru swirl the politics of The Monsoon Straits as her pursuit for answers entangles her in a web of smugglers, pirates, sorcerers, secret societies, and her sweet mother's involvement with them all. She defies death time and again, but she knows her luck will run out. She needs the help and influence of a man Poleen has never met, her father, the Count of Mostul Ûbar.

L. James Rice is the #1 International Best Selling Author of the multi-award-winning Epic Fantasy, Eve of Snows, and the Sundering the Gods Saga. Eve of Snows won a Grand Prize for Fiction in the 2020 Next Gen Indie Book Awards while winning the Fantasy Category, won the 2019 Epic Fantasy Fanatics Readers Choice Award, and medaled in the 2020 Independent Publisher Awards.

Having lived in his own world for many years, L. James Rice decided he might as well share that world with folks otherwise trapped in reality, and got serious about writing. He has made enough wine to no longer enjoy wine. He has not eaten enough steak or pizza to no longer enjoy steak or pizza, but is working on it. "Challenges are good," he maintains. He is an old English Lit major who also studied screenwriting at UCLA.

Having managed to graduate high school only rarely turning in homework, he moved on to a university to find it even more forgiving of lax study skills. He celebrated with copious amounts of beer. With scant few memories of either educational facility or anything they reputedly taught him, he refuses to confirm or deny their usefulness. Probably because he is wishy-washy, but I'm not sure of that. 98% sure... or maybe only 50%. Hell if I know.

His proudest success in life does, however, harken back to high school. In geometry class a teacher set a remarkable challenge by saying (paraphrased) "In ten years you might forget everything you ever learned in class, but you will not forget..." Taunted by this teacher's arrogance, L. James Rice managed to not only forget what it was he learned, but the name of it too. And for good measure, the name of the teacher. But not the challenge itself. That would've made the exercise of forgetfulness pointless. To pile on insult to injury, he does remember the name of a spell from the video game Wizardry which he played often during this time: Tiltowait. Take that, geometry!

Born and raised in the midwest, US of A, L. James Rice has a lovely wife and two beautiful daughters, the names and birthdays of whom he remembers most of the time. Plus, two dogs, an unknown number of chickens (always in flux with predators and other natural causes), and a gosling he assumes will someday be a goose who lays non-golden eggs... stupid goose anyhow.