Ace of Shades

Enne Salta was raised to be a proper young lady, groomed for finishing school and little else. But when her mother, a renegade journalist with a dangerous past, vanishes and misses a deadline that was supposed to mean she was safe, Enne breaks the rules of her sheltered upbringing to go looking for her — heading straight into New Reynes, the City of Sin.

Her only lead connects her to Levi Glaisyer, a street lord and con artist running his own precarious game in a city ruled by rival mafia families, the Torrens and the Augustines. Levi needs the money Enne is offering badly enough to take the job, and the two form an uneasy partnership that drags them through underground casinos, gambling dens, and the kind of trouble neither of them can outrun alone.

Ace of Shades opens Amanda Foody's Shadow Game trilogy, a fantasy series built around cons, card games, and a fully realized criminal underworld, in the vein of Six of Crows.