Archonate | The Archonate Bookstore: eBooks

Welcome to the Archonate Bookstore!

Here you will find previously published novels and short-story collections from the backlist of Matthew (sometimes Matt) Hughes. All titles are available as ebooks (in mobi, epub, and pdf formats), priced at $3.99.

Selected titles are also available as print-on-demand trade paperbacks, produced through CreateSpace and priced at $12.99 plus shipping.

eBooksPaperback Books

Devil or Angel & Other Stories

From the award-winning author of Majestrum, Template, and The Other, this collection of short stories ranges from the thoughtful to the whimsical. Most of them appeared first in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and Asimov’s. Others were written for bespoke anthologies, including Songs of the Dying Earth, Old Mars, and Welcome to the Greenhouse; one is published here for the first time.

“If you like vivid adventure science fiction and fantasy, of the sort written by Jack Vance, Poul Anderson, and Roger Zelazny, you’ll like Matthew Hughes too.” — Gardner Dozois

“Matthew Hughes writes contemporary science fiction and fantasy with a classic sensibility–driven by adventure and thrills, and chock full of sense of wonder.” — John Joseph Adams, Series Editor of Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy

The Compleat Guth Bandar

In Old Earth’s penultimate age, humanity’s collective unconscious has long since been fully explored and mapped by the noönaut scholars of the Institute for Historical Inquiry. But something is threatening the integrity – perhaps even the very existence – of the noösphere, and aspiring academic Guth Bandar finds his career plans diverted by a collective unconscious that appears to be waking up.

The Compleat Guth Bandar brings together the full series of Bandar stories originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and later assembled into a “fix-up” novel: The Commons.

You can read an excerpt from The Compleat Guth Bandar here.

Majestrum: A Tale Of Henghis Hapthorn

Henghis Hapthorn is the foremost penetrator of mysteries and uncoverer of secrets in a decadent, far-future Old Earth, one age before Jack Vance's Dying Earth. A superb rationalist, he has long disdained the notion that the universe has an alternative organizing principle: magic. But now a new age is dawning, overturning the very foundations of Hapthorn's existence, and he must struggle to survive in a world where all the rules are changing.

Hapthorn is on the trail of an unknown killer who collects body parts from his victims. The search leads him off-planet, into the Ten Thousand Worlds of The Spray, then turns in an unexpected direction as the freelance discriminator learns that an ancient and evil power is plotting to reassert its dominion over Old Earth.

You can read an excerpt from Majestrum here.

The Spiral Labyrinth: A Tale Of Henghis Hapthorn

It was bad enough when Henghis Hapthorn, Old Earth's foremost discriminator and die-hard empiricist, had to accept that the cosmos was shortly to rewrite its basic operating system, replacing rational cause-and-effect with detestable magic.

Now he finds himself cast forward several centuries, stranded in a primitive world of contending wizards and hungry dragons, and without his magic-savvy alter ego.

Worse, some entity with a will powerful enough to bend space and time is searching for him through the Nine Planes, bellowing "Bring me Apthorn!" in a voice loud enough to frighten demons.

You can read an excerpt from The Spiral Labyrinth here.

Hespira: A Tale Of Henghis Hapthorn

In Hespira, Hapthorn decides to leave Old Earth, seeking to solve the mystery of Hespira, an ungainly off-world woman who has lost her memory.

The investigation takes him down The Spray to the rank-obsessed world of Ikkibal and the rustic Shannery, where he unravels Hespira's role in a deadly feud between aristocrats. But behind the scenes an unseen antagonist is plotting the discriminator's destruction.

You can read an excerpt from Hespira here.

Nine Tales of Henghis Hapthorn

Here are nine tales of Henghis Hapthorn, foremost freelance discriminator of Old Earth in the planet's penultimate age.

Included are the six stories that ran in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (and were previously collected in The Gist Hunter and Other Stories), leading up to the events that began the first Hapthorn novel, Majestrum, plus three more.

The Meaning of Luff and Other Stories

In Old Earth’s penultimate age, the corpulent master criminal Luff Imbry moves through the halfworld like a full-fleshed shark. Thief, forger, confidence man, and sometimes go-between, he maps out his illicit operations with exquisite care then carries them out with courage and panache. But, often, things don’t go as Luff planned, and he must call upon a talent for improvisation and a ruthless will to survive.

This collection brings together seven short stories and novelettes previously published in Postscripts, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and the anthology Forbidden Planets, plus two novellas formerly only available in limited editions. It offers Luff Imbry in all his moods and guises.

Finalist for the 2014 Endeavour Award.

You can read excerpts from The Meaning of Luff and Other Stories here and here.

Template: a Novel of the Archonate

When professional duelist Conn Labro escapes indentured servitude as the star player of Horder's Emporium, he abandons the gaming world of Thrais and sets out on an interstellar journey filled with murder, deceit, and self-discovery.

His only friend on Thrais, discovered dead and tortured, left him enough money to buy himself out of his contract and a curious encrypted "bearer deed" to a mysterious property on the distant edge of the galactic Spray.

With the seductive, secretive showgirl Jenore Mordene at his side and a villainous pleasure cult dogging his every move, Labro sets out to learn the truth behind his bearer deed and more about his own past than he had ever dared bargain for.

You can read an excerpt from Template here.

Fools Errant: a novel of the Archonate

Wise, witty and just a little weird, Fools Errant wryly strolls the satirical path laid down by Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett and Jack Vance, heralding the brilliant debut of a gifted new voice.

Foppish young Filidor Vesh wants only to dally among his shallow pastimes. But a simple errand for his uncle, the vaguely all-powerful Archon of those parts of Old Earth still populated by human beings, becomes a frenetic odyssey across a planet speckled with eccentric nations pursuing odd aims with intense determination.

Harried at every step by the irascible dwarf, Gaskarth, and frequently at the peril of wild beasts, enraged mobs and a particularly nasty thaumaturge, Filidor makes a reluctant progress toward a final encounter with an ancient and possibly world-ending evil.

You can read an excerpt from Fools Errant here.

Fool Me Twice: a novel of the Archonate

In another sparkling and slightly askew adventure in the mode of Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams and Jack Vance, Fools Errant's Filidor Vesh sashays once more through the penultimate age, finding that...

LOVE IS A MANY SPLINTERED THING

The dandified Archon's apprentice is literally bowled over by beautiful Emmlyn Podarke -- she knocks him flat and steals his credentials, daring him to pursue her to a remote and mostly forgotten corner of Old Earth. Now Filidor must cope with philosophical pirates, prophet-seeking aliens, light-fingered mummers, and a tiny, bothersome voice in his left ear. Meanwhile, the Archon may or may not have been kidnapped, and somebody's digging up a mysterious ancient artifact buried on the Podarke family farm.

You can read an excerpt from Fool Me Twice here.

Books published as Matt Hughes

Downshift (a Sid Rafferty Mystery)

Sid Rafferty is between writing jobs, a rock and a hard place, and the poles of his luck. At this point, he's willing to take on just about any writing gig.

But when a return to his political spin doctor days collides with what should be a simple promo piece about a new ski resort in British Columbia's playground, Sid finds himself out of his depth, over his head, in love and at risk of his life.

You can read an excerpt from Downshift here.

Old Growth (a Sid Rafferty Mystery)

Freelance speechwriter Sid Rafferty signs on to help a neophyte candidate run for election as an alderman in Cumberland, once a booming coal-mining town on Vancouver Island that's now shrunk down to an out-of-the-way little village. But first another writing job makes Sid a witness to a violent death the Mounties are calling murder, then a pair of marijuana-growing brothers want to know what he's doing poking around near their grow-op.

An old colleague from his newspaper offers Sid a job spying on environmental activists, but he finds working undercover is no picnic. And he's about to find out that in Cumby, old currents run as dark and deep as the abandoned mine shafts. Dig down too far and the past can reach up with a deadly grip.

You can read an excerpt from Old Growth here.

Paroxysm

Ruthless mercenaries, hired by an ex-Pentagon chemical-weapons designer turned rogue, take over a small town in Oregon. The plan: use the citizenry as guinea pigs in a test-run of a bootlegged bio-agent for an Islamist terror organization.

But something goes wrong and the mercs and their clients find themselves surrounded by townsfolk who have turned into hyper-coordinated killing machines.

PAROXYSM is an action-packed tale about the seductive power of righteous violence, about how ordinary people can explode when fate gives them the power to hit back.

And once they’ve gone down that road, there’s no turning back.

You can read an excerpt from Paroxysm here.