Margins
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The Awakened
Series · 3 books · 2014-2017

Books in series

Prophet of the Badlands book cover
#1

Prophet of the Badlands

2014

For most twelve year olds, being kidnapped is terrifying. For Althea, it’s just Tuesday. Her power to heal the wounded and cleanse the sick makes her a hunted commodity in the Badlands, a place devoid of technology where the strong write the law in blood. For as long as she can remember, they always come, they always take her, and she lets them. Passed around in an endless series of abductions, she obeys without question ― mending those who killed to own her. After three whole months in the same village, the affection of a young warrior makes her feel almost like a member of the tribe rather than a captive. Her brief joy shatters when raiders seize her yet again; for the first time in six years, being stolen hurts. A reluctant escape sends her wandering, and she realizes her gift is a prize that causes as much death as it prevents. Her attempt to return to the tribe leaves her lost and alone, hounded at every turn. When a family who sees her not as the Prophet ― but as a little girl ― takes her in, she finds the courage to use her power to protect those she loves. A strange man from a world beyond her imagining tests her newfound resolve, seeking to use her power to further his own agenda. Tired of being property, her freedom boils down to one question: Can Althea balance the sanctity with which she holds all life against the miserable truth that some people deserve to die?
Archon's Queen book cover
#2

Archon's Queen

2015

Secrets, guilt, and shame―Annabelle Morgan has them all in droves. Fortunately, only one can kill her. Anna’s gift, psionic control over electricity, tends to go haywire in moments of high emotion. One such episode leaves her homeless after her father’s “accidental” death. She ekes out a modest life as a thief and freelance enforcer until a close call with a murderous government agency makes her turn to Zoom―a powerful hallucinogenic street drug that numbs her mind so the monster cannot get out. Her safety blanket becomes a devouring pit. In 2413 London, Anna lives in the gutter, unable to even keep work as an exotic dancer and prostitute. After ignoring her only friend’s pleas for years, it takes a pimp telling her she is too addicted to be useful to realize just how lost she is. When a young addition to her circle of vagrants attaches to her, Anna attempts to turn away from Zoom. A job from her old handler ends on shaky ground, but introduces her to Doctor James Mardling, a university professor looking for people just like her. He offers the one thing she has always longed for: dignity. His price, however, may just be too much to pay.
Daughter of Ash book cover
#4

Daughter of Ash

2017

Designed to be the perfect assassin, Kate is as beautiful as she is deadly―everything she touches, burns. The government attempted to engineer a pyrokinetic the likes of which the world had never seen, but their plans went awry. Her power to command fire as a living extension of her psyche was more than they had hoped for, except for one problem. Her skin is hot enough to destroy most materials on contact. Useless for infiltration, they declared the project a failure and slated her for disposal at the age of seven. Years after escaping, she hides on the outskirts of society in the shadows of East City. A chance encounter brings her under the wing of a Syndicate underboss, El Tío. Kate kills without hesitation to earn the favor of the only person ever to show her kindness, but her happiness is as false as her holographic clothing. An eerie figure interrupts her routine with a promise of an end to her curse, if she joins The Awakened―a group of psionics as powerful as she. To find them, she must travel thousands of miles across the country, but her uncontrollable ‘gift’ leaves her no option but to walk. Desperate for human contact, Kate throws herself into the Badlands, unconcerned with danger. Cured or dead… Either way she wins.

Author

Matthew S. Cox
Matthew S. Cox
Author · 55 books

Born in a little town known as South Amboy NJ in 1973, Matthew has been creating science fiction and fantasy worlds for most of his reasoning life. Somewhere between fifteen to eighteen of them spent developing the world in which Division Zero, Virtual Immortality, and The Awakened Series take place. He has several other projects in the works as well as a collaborative science fiction endeavor with author Tony Healey. Hobbies and Interests: Matthew is an avid gamer, a recovered WoW addict, Gamemaster for two custom systems (Chronicles of Eldrinaath [Fantasy] and Divergent Fates [Sci Fi], and a fan of anime, British humour (<- deliberate), and intellectual science fiction that questions the nature of reality, life, and what happens after it. He is also fond of cats.

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