Twenty years ago, five master criminals known as the Demon Princes raided Mount Pleasant to enslave thousands of inhabitants in the lawless Beyond. Now Morwen Sabine, a daughter of captives, has escaped her cruel master and returns to Mount Pleasant to recover the hidden treasure she hopes will buy her parents' freedom. But Mount Pleasant has changed. Morwen must cope with mystic cultists, murderous drug-smugglers, undercover "weasels" of the Interplanetary Police Coordinating Company, and the henchmen of the vicious pirate lord who owns her parents and wants Morwen returned. So he can kill her slowly... Barbarians of the Beyond is a return to "Jack Vance Space" and space-opera derring-do that follows in the science fiction Grand­master's footsteps. "I really enjoyed Barbarians of the Beyond. Matthew Hughes does Jack Vance better than anyone except Jack himself." — George R. R. Martin "Lock the door, turn off the phone, get into a comfy...

"Fans of Lawrence Block's Keller stories are going to love One More Kill. I certainly did. Matt Hughes kept me up all night, turning pages."—George R.R. MartinHe was a trained killer, an orphaned kid who rose from raw recruit to the rank of major in the US Army Rangers. He was looking forward to retiring at the end of a thirty-year hitch, but when he developed a low-grade form of leukemia, the Army pushed him out and left him feeling alone and useless – until a fluke encounter with a rogue doctor tipped him into a new hobby: killing those who had done great harm and gotten away with it.But then a police detective starts to dig into his "operations," while a vicious old enemy resurfaces with a scheme to draw the Ranger into a web of contract killing and gun running. Pushed too far, the Ranger means to solve his problems with bombs, bullets, and his own bare hands.

Science Fiction. 39465 words long. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Feb-March 2007 Nebula Award Nominee

Here are nine tales of Henghis Hapthorn, foremost freelance discriminator of Old Earth in the planet's penultimate age. Included are the six stories that ran in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (and were previously collected in The Gist Hunter and Other Stories), leading up to the events that began the first Hapthorn novel, Majestrum, plus three more.Review"Hughes has made a name for himself as heir apparent to Jack Vance." Booklist "A tremendous amount of fun." George R. R. Martin "Hughes has been the best-kept secret in science fiction for too long: he's a towering talent" Robert J. Sawyer "Superlative. A droll narrative voice, dry humor, and an alternative universe that's accessible without excessive exposition" Publishers Weekly "Matthew Hughes is one of those writers whose witty, wry writing style is as enjoyable as the story he's writing about. His Archonate universe is a wonderfully compelling far future that mixes fantasy and science fiction." Kirkus Reviews About the AuthorThe name I answer to is Matt Hughes. I write science fiction, fantasy and suspense fiction. To keep two genres separate, I now use my full name, Matthew Hughes, for sff, and the shorter form for the crime stuff. I also write media tie-ins as Hugh Matthews. I’ve won the Crime Writers of Canada’s Arthur Ellis Award, and have been shortlisted for the Aurora, Nebula, Philip K. Dick, A.E. Van Vogt, and Derringer Awards. I was born sixty-four years ago in Liverpool, England, but my family moved to Canada when I was five. I’ve made my living as a writer all of my adult life, first as a journalist, then as a staff speechwriter to the Canadian Ministers of Justice and Environment, and — from 1979 until a few years back– as a freelance corporate and political speechwriter in British Columbia. I’m a university drop-out from a working poor background. Before getting into newspapers, I worked in a factory that made school desks, drove a grocery delivery truck, was night janitor in a GM dealership, and did a short stint as an orderly in a private mental hospital. As a teenager, I served a year as a volunteer with the Company of Young Canadians (something like VISTA in the US). I’ve been married to a very patient woman since the late 1960s, and I have three grown sons. In late 2007, I took up a secondary occupation — that of an unpaid housesitter — so that I can afford to keep on writing fiction yet still eat every day. These days, any snail-mail address of mine must be considered temporary; but you can send me an e-mail via the address on my web page: www.matthewhughes.org. I’m always interested to hear from people who’ve read my work. 

Chesney's efforts to Save The Day and Win the Girl make slow progress. Meanwhile, Boss Greeley's deal with the Devil makes him ever-stronger, and untouchable, while the Reverend Hardacre digs deeper and finds that not everything in reality is quite what it seems...File Under: Fantasy [ Everything's Meta | Britney's Peers | Dance With The Devil | The Demonic Duo ]e-book ISBN: 978-0-85766-140-1ReviewHughes continues to carve out a unique place for himself in the fantasy-mystery realm. A droll narrative voice, dry humor and an alternative universe that's accessible without exposition make this a winner.� - Publishers Weekly... �This is a funny and surprisingly endearing book� - The Guardian About the AuthorMatt Hughes was born sixty years ago in Liverpool, England, but his family moved to Canada when he was five. He' has made my living as a writer all of his adult life, first as a journalist, then as a staff speechwriter to the Canadian Ministers of Justice and Environment, and - from 1979 until a few years back - as a freelance corporate and political speechwriter in British Columbia. He is a former director of the Federation of British Columbia Writers and he used to belong to Mensa Canada, but these days he's conserving his energies to write fiction. The author lives in Ireland.

From Publishers WeeklyThe superior melding of fantasy, humor and detection seen in Majestrum (2006) is displayed to even better advantage in Hughes's second chronicle of Henghis Hapthorn, a discriminator (or consulting detective) on an alternate Earth. Aided by his intuitive inner self, Osk Rievor, and his faithful grinnet, an AI housed in an ape-cat body, Hapthorn accepts a request from wealthy socialite Effrayne Choweri to find her legendarily devoted and romantic husband, Chup, who vanished after looking into the purchase of a small spaceship. When the sleuth finds that several others who had considered buying the vessel also disappeared, he poses as a prospective buyer, only to be captured by a super-intelligent fungus seeking to expand its experience of reality by leeching the thoughts and knowledge of others. Hapthorn's wry first-person narration recalls Bertie Wooster, and Hughes effortlessly renders fantastic worlds and beings believable. News that a third adventure is in the works will surely please fans of many genres. (Sept.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.From BooklistResembling a futuristic hybrid of the arch escapades of Bertie Wooster and the thought-provoking cases of Sherlock Holmes, Hughes' Hengis Hapthorn novels delight intellect and imagination. As Old Earth's foremost discriminator (i.e., private detective), Hapthorn combines a logician's savvy and an aptitude for handling unforeseen perils with aplomb. In his latest adventure, his empirical skills face a serious challenge when he is unexpectedly transported centuries forward to a future in which magic has replaced physics as the universal modus operandi. Worse, Hapthorn's intuitive alter ego, Osk Rievor, has unaccountably abandoned him in a bewildering culture whose rival wizards appear bent on using Hapthorn as a hapless pawn in a magical power struggle. Only his wits and the erudition of his fruit-devouring mammalian personal assistant will save him from a fate involving either servitude or death. Hughes' masterfully eloquent style and clever plot twisting provide Hapthorn with an investigative panache rivaling those of the leading sleuths of mainstream detective fiction. Hays, Carl

Review“A tremendous amount of fun.”—George R. R. Martin"Superlative. A droll narrative voice, dry humor, and an alternative universe that's accessible without excessive exposition."— Publishers Weekly“An intriguing blend of far-future science fiction, fantasy, and mystery . . .”—Booklist"A bit Arthur Conan Doyle, a bit Jack Vance . . . [with] the lasting appeal of one of PG Wodehouse's Bertie Wooster books."—Seattle Times“Hughes serves up equal measures of wit, intrigue, and seat-of-the-pants action and even dabbles a little in Jungian psychology.”—Booklist

After accidentally summoning a demon, Chesney Anstruther refuses to sell his soul, which leads through various confusions to, well, Hell going on strike. Which means that nothing bad ever happens in the world... with disastrous consequences.File Under: Fantasy [ Expletives Deleted | Up Up And Away | Writer Of Life | No Demons ]ReviewPraise for Matthew Hughes"If you're an admirer of the science fantasies of Jack Vance, it's hard not to feel affection for the Archonate stories of Matthew Hughes... Hughes has strengths of his own to draw upon: his own considerable wit, and a flair for reified metaphysics surpassing anything conceived by Vance."- Nick Gevers, Locus"A bit Arthur Conan Doyle, a bit Jack Vance.... Henghis's escapades [have] the lasting appeal of one of PG Wodehouse's Bertie Wooster books."- Seattle Times"Hughes's successful blend of magic, the supernatural and high-tech with Sherlockian deductions (and cryptic observations straight out of Doyle's canon) suggests a long life for Hapthorn."- Publishers Weekly About the AuthorMatt Hughes was born sixty years ago in Liverpool, England, but his family moved to Canada when he was five. He' has made my living as a writer all of his adult life, first as a journalist, then as a staff speechwriter to the Canadian Ministers of Justice and Environment, and - from 1979 until a few years back - as a freelance corporate and political speechwriter in British Columbia. He is a former director of the Federation of British Columbia Writers and he used to belong to Mensa Canada, but these days he's conserving his energies to write fiction. The author lives in Ireland.

Boro Harkless has devoted his life to the service of the Archonite Bureau of Security, the force tasked with keeping the peace among and within the city-states of Old Earth. An idealist driven by the memory of his heroic father, he comes to the city of Sherit, seeking the notorious Luff Imbry.Luff Imbry has devoted his life to the enjoyment of wealth. A gourmet, a charmer, and an ever-so-stylish fop, he has come to the city of Sherit to pursue a new fortune. Not, mind you, his own, for Luff is also a mountebank, swindler, and forger of the first water. Tossed together by circumstance, they form an uneasy truce when they discover a common goal: capturing the grandest con-man of them all, Horselan Gebbling. Gebbling, who made off with Imbry's previous fortune, is posing as Father Olwyn, Sacerdotal Eminence of the Assembly of Tangible Unity, and has chosen as his prey the victims of the first new disease in millennia, the invariably fatal ailment known as the...

THE TALES OF HENGHIS HAPTHORN Henghis Hapthorn is the foremost penetrator of mysteries and uncoverer of secrets in a decadent, far-future Old Earth, one age before Jack Vance's Dying Earth. A superb rationalist, he has long disdained the notion that the universe has an alternative organizing principle: magic. But now a new age is dawning, overturning the very foundations of Hapthorn's existence, and he must struggle to survive in a world where all the rules are changing. In MAJESTRUM, Hapthorn is on the trail of an unknown killer who collects body parts from his victims. The search leads him off-planet, into the Ten Thousand Worlds of The Spray, then turns in an unexpected direction as the freelance discriminator learns that an ancient and evil power is plotting to reassert its dominion over Old Earth.From Publishers WeeklyThis start to a promising new far-future series (after 2005's The Gist Hunter) introduces Henghis Hapthorn, a sleuth who combines the confident brilliance of Sherlock Holmes with the amusing voice of P.G. Wodehouse's Bertie Wooster, in a fantastical mystery reminiscent of Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy novels. Hapthorn is a discriminator—what freelance detectives are called in his baroque world—who's drawn into political intrigue after receiving an apparently simple commission to vet a young man with designs on an aristocrat's daughter. An odd duo aids Hapthorn on his quest: his integrator, an artificial intelligence that has somehow become a furry frugivorous animal that perches on his shoulder, and Hapthorn's alternate personality, which split off during an earlier "transdimensional" voyage and operates according to intuition rather than analysis. Hughes's successful blend of magic, the supernatural and high-tech with Sherlockian deductions (and cryptic observations straight out of Doyle's canon) suggests a long life for Hapthorn. (Jan.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From BooklistUntil now, Hughes' erudite master detective, Hengis Hapthorn, has appeared only in a handful of tales recently collected in The Gist Hunter and Other Stories (2005). Renowned on Old Earth and throughout the Ten Thousand Worlds as the galaxy's foremost discriminator (i.e., private eye), Hapthorn is the far future's answer to Sherlock Holmes. After a thorny case involving demons and magical forces, Hapthorn finds himself saddled with an extra voice, personifying his intuition, inside his head. This alter ego becomes both boon and annoyance during a pair of cases that interconnect when a routine investigation into the true motives of a wealthy debutante's suitor gives way to a manhunt for an evildoer plotting to overthrow the ruling archon of Old Earth. Somehow intertwined with both pursuits is an indecipherable magical book with which the alter ego is obsessed to the point of threatening to relegate Hapthorn to a backseat in his own mind. Hughes artfully blends wit, colorful characterizations, and intriguing plot twists in a compelling yarn that detective-novel readers may like, too. Carl HaysCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Meet Stan Markowski or the Scranton PD's Occult Crimes Unit. "My name's Markowski. I carry a badge. Also, a crucifix, some wooden stakes, a big vial of holy water, and a 9mm Beretta loaded with silver bullets. A new supernatural gang is intent on invading Scranton and it looks like I'm going to have to work with the current mob to prevent a demonic gang war. If there's one thing I hate more than living with supernatural scumbags, it's working with them! But you know that they say, better the devil you know..." File Under: Urban Fantasy [ Fang Warfare | Invading Forces | Uneasy Alliances | The Devil You Know ]