In Bookburners season 3, the world as we know it is under siege. Read an exclusive excerpt from episode 1 and enter a giveaway to win season passes to the series.
About ‘Bookburners’
Magic is real, and hungry — trapped in ancient texts and artifacts, only a few who discover it survive to fight back. Detective Sal Brooks is a survivor. Freshly awake to just what dangers are lurking, she joins a Vatican-backed black-ops anti-magic squad: Team Three of the Societas Librorum Occultorum. Together they stand between humanity and magical apocalypse. Some call them the Bookburners. They don’t like the label.
Get ‘Bookburners’ season 1 on sale for only $2.99 between July 12 and July 19!
Exclusive ‘Bookburners’ season 3 excerpt
“You have to help me!” the woman sobbed. “My sister, she is missing!”
Sal Brooks rounded the corner first. The fight, such as it was, had broken out in a long black hallway lined with cave painting reproductions, and concerned three individuals. One woman, dark hair, five eight or so, pale, round face, considerably upset, was being held off by another woman wearing a sweater-vest, who seemed even less comfortable holding someone off than folk who wore sweater-vests tended to be on average. Sal pegged the second woman as a research assistant, especially since the gray-haired man drawing back from them both wore a bow tie and khakis, and had the harried, uncomfortable expression of a certain sort of university professor unexpectedly confronted with strong emotion. “I am terribly sorry,” the professor said, adjusting his shirt, “but I do not understand what you think I can do to help! If your sister is missing, surely you should contact the, ah, police.”
Sal extended her arm without looking, and Liam ran into it from behind.
“You run the dig site. I know she is in there. Her name is Sylwia, she ran away from hotel, she must be down in your caves—”
“Madam.”
“My name is Agniezska, my sister Sylwia—”
“I assure you, your sister, whatever her name, is nowhere near our excavation. The site is closed. Had she entered, there would have been alarms. And there are no alarms.”
“She is in there. You do not understand. I saw her!”
“One for the security guards, then?” Liam said, sounding almost disappointed. Guards were, in fact, rounding the corner. Shadows clustered and bubbled on the walls.
Lost her sister. Sal felt a pang of guilt, and wished she could help. Then again, someone whose brother had half-merged with an angel, then disappeared, probably wasn’t the kind of help this young woman needed.
She was about to nod when the prehistoric painting on the wall exploded.
The hall went weird in a way Sal knew all too well, and a beast of shadow, twenty hands tall at the shoulder, towered in the center of the room. Enormous antlers drew sparks where they struck the ceiling. It shook its whole shaggy length, more or less like Sal would expect a creature imprisoned for twenty thousand years without physical form to do. Then it charged.
Of the two of them, Sal might have had more practice in the hundred-meter dash toward trouble, but Liam won hands down when it came to reacting to weird shit. By the time the beast charged, he had already tackled Agniezska out of the way. The research associate, too, fell clear. Sal tried to grab the man, but extinct Pleistocene beasts worked up speed quickly; before she could close the distance, the Megaloceros slammed into the professor.
And they both vanished.
The professor was gone, completely. Not even his clipboard remained. Sal ran to Liam, head up, ready for the walls to bubble again. “Save the pretty girl first, huh?”
“He was being a jerk. Jerks are save-the-world priority two. What the hell was that thing?”
“Extinct,” Sal said.
There weren’t many people shadow monsters set at ease, and Agniezska didn’t qualify. The research associate, though, recovered fast enough to ask the obvious question. “Where is Professor Gerondain?”
Sal had never been good at this part of the job. She still didn’t like that this was part of the job at all.
On the wall, where the painting of the Megaloceros had been, stood a crude, vivid drawing of a man with a clipboard and a bow tie.
“I don’t know,” she said, “but I don’t think he’s gone far.”
‘Bookburners’ giveaway
Thanks to Serial Box, we’re giving away five season passes to Bookburners seasons 1, 2, and 3. Enter below for your chance to win!
About Serial Box
While technology has rapidly evolved, the way publishers and writers bring books to readers really hasn’t. Storytelling in TV has become more sophisticated and multilayered, podcasts have risen to mainstream media status — but eBooks are just books on digital devices, not easier, more fun, or more social than they were before.
Serial Box is here to change all of that: artfully blending together the best of series television and the convenience of eBooks and audiobooks to bring readers a new form of story telling. Releasing fiction serials over the course of 10-16 week seasons, Serial Box is about delivering addictive episodes straight to the user’s digital device to be read or listened to anytime, anywhere.
Taking a few pages from the world of television, Serial Box hires a team of a talented and award-winning writers to collaborate on each serial, pulling the best ideas to develop great characters and craft a narrative that captivates readers over the course of the season. A new ensemble of writers works on each series, so each will vary in genre and length, but they’ll always be entertaining page-turners that keep you wondering what will happen in next week’s episode.