Enter a world of excess, of glittering parties, great palaces, beautiful people - and of course powerful words. In Tom Beckerlegge’s book The Carnival of Ash, the city of Cadenza with its skyline of libraries is under threat. Run by poets who care more about words than budgets and politics, the looming prospect of war with their rival Venice is ever-present. A war that threatens not only to destroy Cadenza but remove it from history altogether … Meet the Glitterati in Oliver K. Langmead’s latest novel, an elite living lives of luxury and leisure, slaves to the ever-changing tides – and brutal judgements - of fashion. When Simone accidentally starts a new fashion with a nosebleed at a party, another Glitterati takes the credit. Soon their rivalry threatens to raze their opulent utopia to the ground, as no one knows how to be vicious like the beautiful ones.
