


Books in series

#1
The Antiheroes
2020
The world needed heroes...It got them instead.
A swordsman past his prime who has vowed to never wield a blade again.
A mage who’d rather throw fists than fireballs and thinks magic is for sissies.
An assassin who grows sick at the sight of blood.
And a man with a pet squirrel he believes to be an ancient god from long ago.
An evil has risen in the land, one that, if not dealt with, threatens to start a war which would include the god themselves. To counter it, the realm must call on its greatest heroes, its most courageous adventurers. Unfortunately, those great heroes, those brave adventurers, are all busy—being dead mostly.
So it is left to Dannen Ateran, known in his youth as the Bloody Butcher but, more recently as the passed-out drunk at the table in the corner, to lead his companions against an army of the dead.
They are not heroes.
But perhaps they just might do.
The Antiheroes is the first book in a new epic fantasy series by bestselling author Jacob Peppers. It is a tale of fast-paced action, swordfights, magic, and humor. Think you can't laugh at undead armies and battles of life and death? Come find out.

#2
Don't Feed the Trolls
2021
Hero Checklist for a long and happy life:
Step One: Don’t be a hero.
Step Two: If by some horrible miscalculation, a man finds himself a hero, then he should not, under any circumstances, accept a “quest.” Particularly one including magical rings, swords in stones, or any talk of “chosen ones.” Quests, after all, are only death with a lot of walking beforehand.
Step Three: If said hero is so foolish as to actually find himself on a quest, he is advised to run heroically for the nearest exit. He’ll die anyway, but if the gods are kind, he’ll do so with an ale in his hand.
P.S. The gods are never kind.
Step Four: If the unfortunate soul is unable to find an exit—or at least one not containing a rampaging troll—he should, by any means necessary, ensure that there are as many people between him and the troll as possible in the hopes that it won’t be hungry by the time it reaches him.
P.S. Trolls are always hungry.
Step Five: If all else fails and a hero finds himself confronting a mythical monster or a magic-wielding necromancer, he is to draw his sword. It won’t help, but it will give him something to do while he waits to die.
Step Six: If “death” outcome is unacceptable, see steps 1-4.
Dannen Ateran had never gone so far as to write the list out, but he knew it by heart. He ought to, as he had been telling it to himself for years and himself—fool that he was—had been ignoring it for just as long.
So it was that he found himself standing beside Fedder, Mariana, and Tesler, watching as an undead dragon soared toward them.
And if, by some feat of magic or luck—with undead dragons, skill rarely factored into it—they survived, there was only the little issue of a master swordsman and his necromancer brother to worry about, not to mention an undead horde.
Plenty of ways to die, then, if a man liked a little variety with his suffering.
And the week was just getting started.
Don't Feed the Trolls is book two of The Antiheroes, an epic fantasy series by Jacob Peppers, the author of the bestselling grimdark fantasy series The Seven Virtues. It is a tale of mythical creatures and magic, of swordsmen, necromancers and undead hordes. Do you enjoy character driven fantasy with a lot of action and humor? Then come and enjoy the fun. Just...don't feed the trolls, alright?
It only makes them hungrier.

#3
Probably it's Prophecy
2021
The only thing rarer than a homicidal chicken is a hero who lives to see retirement.
Dannen Ateran spent the week following his battle with the necromancer and his undead army doing exactly what he enjoyed most—nothing.
Certainly nothing heroic. At least nothing more heroic than lying in Claire’s bed and reveling in the feeling—depressingly unfamiliar—of having no one try to kill him.
At least, that was, until Perandius summoned him to the land of the gods once more with a mission to rescue a shepherd boy foretold of in prophecy.
Dannen didn’t care for shepherd boys—the fools never could seem to stay out of trouble—and he cared even less for prophecies. But considering that the messenger god confiscated the Divining Stone—which Dannen had given to Claire as a necklace and which she loved, likely more than him—he decided it might be best to leave Talinseh for a time.
And so Dannen, hoping to keep breathing a bit longer, sets off to the south with his companions. But that was the thing about fleeing from death—no matter how fast a man runs, it’s always ahead of him.
And that death, this time, might well come in the form of wererats, plague-ridden beasts infesting the sewers of a port city or, perhaps, in an ancient sea monster and, if all else fails, there’s always the group of assassins hunting them.
Plenty of ways to die and die horribly but then, Dannen had lived long enough to know that if a man went looking for ways to die, he never had to look very far.
Probably it’s Prophecy is the third installment in the humorous, action-packed epic fantasy series, The Antiheroes. It is a story of magic and magical beasts, of assassins and blades in the dark, of monsters out of myth and men out of their minds. And one unfortunate, reluctant hero, known as the Bloody Butcher, who is only trying to survive it all.

#4
A Cult Classic
2022
Assassins are bad. Angry gods are worse. All that plus cults and demons? In the hero business, they call that Monday.
The worst thing about a man being led to his execution—aside from the whole impending death bit—was that he immediately tried to figure out what choice had brought him there. Which Dannen thought was ridiculous.
The one possible comfort a man could have, when faced with his own death, was that things simply could not get any worse.
The problem, of course, was that things could always get worse.
Sure, on the surface being saved from certain death seemed all well and good. But what about when that saving came at the hands of the God of Mischief, a deity whose sole purpose was to cause chaos? And what if, after being saved, a man—along with those poor fools unlucky enough to be his companions—found himself facing assassins, a strange magical hermit, a demonic cult, and a very demonic demon?
If there are lessons to be learned, then they are the same lessons the world had been trying to teach Dannen since his birth. Insane mages make for poor friends, the only thing better than being a hero is being alive, and the most important lesson . . .
Things can always get worse.
