Independent Press Award
2024 winner
A Dream of Shadows
Peter Eliott
A high-octane, intense fantasy that takes place over 48 hours in a city known as Hell’s Labyrinth. Full of stunning twists and fast-paced action, Peter Eliott’s genre mashup of post-apocalyptic dystopia and romantic thriller will grip readers tight and never let go.
Vazeer the Lash has spent his entire adulthood on the verge of peril while operating as a criminal in the violent metropolis of Hell's Labyrinth. Vazeer, intelligent and poised, longs to leave the life of smuggling that betrays his cultured personality.
His chance comes when he is commissioned to overthrow The Raving Blade, one of the most notorious and cruel power brokers in Hell's Labyrinth. Vazeer joins a rogue’s gallery of accomplished Shadow Bidders, each a master of distinct and nefarious skills. Among them are an ex-pirate, whose enormous size and skill with weapons make him a veritable one-man army, a brilliant actress who finds herself playing a key role in a criminal world where she doesn't belong, and a calm, mysterious assassin who draws events ever forward towards a series of increasingly dire consequences.
Vazeer has 48 hours of mortal danger and sadistic enemies standing between him and freedom… but good and evil are not as straightforward as they seem.