Thick as Thieves

The Haptha, a seven-foot tall superhuman race, won the trade war. Several of them live in the capital city of the defeated Clackmat Confederacy. Some under the terms of the peace treaty—some not. Shib, a Haptha with a criminal past, runs a tavern that serves as a front for certain of his less than legal enterprises. When he sees a chance for a heist—and a bit of mischief—he recruits a team to pull it off. Brick, with a bum leg and a quick fuse, lets loyalty and a woman involve him in the caper. Glum Arent, alcoholic poet, information broker, and occasional lock-pick, needs only greed and wine-addled imagination to entangle him and inspire plans of his own. Add Dahlia, a conflicted, sword-wielding bodyguard who betrays her employer and has eyes for Brick, and Nahl, a Haptha burglar with a penchant for violence and poor impulse control. With a crew like this, events are liable to spiral out of control. Magic, treachery, and bad decisions drive a simple heist from farce to tragedy. Can any of the thieves survive the mishaps and double-crosses?
With a nod to the novels of Elmore Leonard, the dean of American crime fiction, Thick as Thieves is gritty, street-level swords and sorcery from the author of Reunion and Under Strange Suns.