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Greetings, and welcome to a new short story collection, featuring characters from our latest novel in the Reign of the Eagle series, Old Habits Die Hard.
These stories are about hopes and dreams and wishes. They’re about characters realizing they’ve wanted the wrong things all along. They’re about characters getting their fondest dream and finding it’s not what they expected. They’re about wishes that can never be fulfilled. They’re about people who achieve their deepest desires, without understanding that it’s all slipping away from them.
If you haven’t read Old Habits Die Hard yet, don’t worry. You don’t need to have read the book to understand what’s going on in these stories. Old Habits Die Hard is the fifth novel in our Reign of the Eagle series, but you don’t need to have read the previous four books, either.
If you enjoy these stories, though, you will almost certainly enjoy the series in general, and Old Habits Die Hard in particular, as it follows the adventures of these same people. We’ve got Morwyn Byrne, beautiful and intelligent daughter of a proud noblewoman, who discovers a higher calling. There’s Molly Coburn, running out of money and ready to do anything to change her fortune. There’s Timothy Woolrich, a promising young man who doesn’t yet understand how far down the social ladder he is. And there’s Penny Ostensen, who only wants to find a school to match her intellect, but instead gets a front row seat to her parents’ collapsing marriage.
These stories were originally emailed to our newsletter subscribers (if you’re not a subscriber yet, you really should be), before being posted on our website (which you should also check out). But we’re not simply recycling old material. As always, we’ve got bonus material, available here for the first time ever. First, we’ve got a story about Lawrence Swithin, Earl of Hyrne, and how he managed to start a relationship with Duchess Flora Byrne, one of the wealthiest and most beautiful women in Myrcia. She’s out of his league, and he’s the most hapless general in the country, but she’s got plans and schemes, and he never sees it coming. (Flora happens to be Morwyn’s mother, by the way.)
Our other bonus for this volume is a map of Keneshire, the proud and ancient region of Myrcia ruled by Duchess Flora. It’s the primary setting of Old Habits Die Hard, so we thought our readers might like to see where things take place.
As always, we really appreciate all our readers. And if you don’t mind, please take a minute to leave a review of our books somewhere online.
J.S. Mawdsley, August 2023
PS We also have the first part of the next book in the Reign of the Eagle series, A Troubled Peace. Get a preview now, and the full book this October!