Maria Dahvana Headley Books In Order
Book links take you to Amazon. As an Amazon Associate I earn money from qualifying purchases.Publication Order of Magonia Books
Magonia | (2015) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Aerie | (2016) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Publication Order of Standalone Novels
Queen of Kings | (2011) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Dark Lady | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Mere Wife | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Girlfriend's Guide to Gods | (2020) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas
The Tallest Doll in New York City | (2014) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The End of the Sentence | (2014) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Some Gods of El Paso | (2015) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Little Widow | (2016) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Read After Burning | (2019) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Publication Order of Collections
Beowulf: A New Translation | (2020) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books
The Year of Yes | (2005) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Publication Order of Anthologies
Maria Dahvana Headley
Maria Dahvana Headley grew up on a sled-dog ranch in rural Idaho, spent a part of her 20s as a pirate negotiator, and ship marketer in the maritime industry.
She is an American writer that graduated from Vallivue High School in Caldwell, Idaho, in the year 1995, and went to New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts Dramatic Writing Program from 1996-2000. She is married to screenwriter and playwright, Robert Schenkkan.
Maria’s Shirley Jackson, Nebula, and World Fantasy award nominated short fiction has appeared on Tor.com, as well as in The Toast, Lightspeed, Clarkesworld, Apex, Nightmare, The Journal of Unlikely Entomology, Glitter & Mayhem, Subterranean Online, and Jurassic London’s The Lowest Heaven and The Book of the Dead, Shimmer, Uncanny, as well as others.
“Queen of Kings” is the first stand alone novel and was released in 2011. The immortal story about Cleopatra.
Seduction and passion, history and mythology, warriors and witches combine to bring the timeless tale of Cleopatra to life like never before in this spellbinding and stunningly original debut.
30 BC. A messenger brings word to Queen Cleopatra that Antony, her beloved husband, has died by his own hand. Desperate to save her kingdom as well as resurrect her husband, Cleopatra summons Sekhmet, the most fearsome warrior goddess, and against the warnings of all her scholars she strikes a mortal bargain. However not even the wisest of her scholars could’ve predicted what would follow.
Cleopatra, in exchange for Antony’s soul, gets transformed into a vampiric creature of mythical proportions, an immortal shapeshifter with an insatiable hunger for human blood and superhuman strength, and is a being at once seductive and ferocious. And she’s bent on getting vengeance against those that have wrong her kingdom and her family. Clashing against monsters and witches, warriors and gods, she journeys out of the tombs in Egypt to the great amphitheaters of Rome to the ancient underworld, where she’ll meet her love once more, and where the fight between beast and man is going to determine the world’s fate.
“Magonia” is the first novel in the “Magonia” series and was released in 2011. Aza Ray’s drowning in thin air. Since Aza was a baby, she’s suffered from this mysterious lung disease which makes it ever harder for her to breathe, to live, and to speak. All that the doctors are able to do for her is give her drugs and hope they keep her alive. So when Aza catches a glimpse of this ship in the sky, her family chalks it up to a cruel side effect of the drug. However Aza does not think that this is a hallucination. She can hear somebody on the ship calling her name.
Only Jason, her best friend, listens to her. Jason, who has always been there and for whom she may have more-than-friendly feelings for. However before Aza is able to consider such a thrilling idea, something goes horribly wrong. Her sickness catches up to her. She’s lost to our world. And found, by another. Magonia.
Above the clouds, in a land of trading ships, she is not the dying and weak thing that she was. In Magonia, she is able to breathe for the first time. Better, she’s got immense power. And she is able to use it to change the world. While navigating this new life, she learns that war’s coming. Earth and Magonia are on the brink of a reckoning. In Aza’s own hands lies the whole of humanity, including the boy that loves her. Where do her loyalties actually lie?
“Aerie” is the second novel in the “Magonia” series and was released in 2012. The story of one girl that must make an impossible decision between two homes, two families, and two different versions of herself.
Aza Ray has returned to Earth. Jason, her boyfriend, is overjoyed. Her family’s healed. She lives a normal life, or as normal as can be if you have spent the previous year dying, waking on a sky ship, and learning your song can change the world. So not all that normal. There is part of her that yearns for the clouds, no matter just how much she loves the people back on the ground.
When Jason’s paranoia over her safety causes him to make one horrible mistake, she finds herself a fugitive in Magonia, tasked with opposing her bloodthirsty, radical, recently escaped mom, Zal Quel, and Dai, her singing partner. She has to travel to the very edge of the world in search of the Flock, a legendary weapon, in a journey through identity and fire which is going to transform her forever.
“The Dark Lady” is the second stand alone novel and was released in 2013. London in 1588. Spain’s Armada is forming and Queen Elizabeth I and Edward Kelley, John Dee, and Francis Walsingham have to prepare both for a mortal war as well as one waged against the magical interlopers all over the realm.
Christopher Marlowe, spy and poet, gets assigned the task of uncovering any magical threats in London and happens upon this cult in thrall to a godling: Madness, which is the Slaughterer child of Sekhmet, Egyptian Goddess of Chaos, and plots to steal Elizabeth’s queensoul so that they can resurrect the powers of its mom.
And drawn into the city is Cleopatra, who is still immortal and dedicated to keeping Sekhmet at bay and without any worshippers so that she herself may one day die and join Antony, her lost love. She’s fallen ointo a much calmer life, and a relationship with William Shakespeare, however Marlowe’s going to tempt her into her old ways. Together Shakespeare, Cleopatra, and Marlowe are going to battle against the rising power of Madness, and ultimately Spain’s attack and Sekhmet’s return.
Marlowe’s soul will be risked as magic and ambition take his pen over, and Cleopatra is going to be forced to pick between her own heart and her duty. Fireships and monsters, alchemy and sex, and England’s greatest playwrights entwined in a love triangle with an immortal queen. Cleopatra’s going to become Shakespeare’s Dark Lady. And England’s savior.
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