Ever since Scharlette’s parents gave her a name no one can really pronounce, she’s been stuck in a bit of a rut. She hates her job in airport security, making people take their belts off before they fly to exotic locations she can only dream about. She owns a small apartment with large repayments, drinks bargain bin red while she watches Star Trek, and misses her little sister, lost to an exploding sandwich press ten years ago.

Scharlette fears she might live out her entire existence without doing anything or mattering to anyone. It still comes as quite a surprise when a handsome time traveller named Tomothy appears out of nowhere and verifies she is correct – that, according to his records, she doesn’t matter at all.

Scharlette isn’t sure this news is as wonderful as Tomothy seems to think but, as he explains, since her life was to have no impact on the timeline whatsoever, Scharlette is free to travel time and space, and have amazing adventures with heedless abandon. 

“The book is charming and riotously funny. The most enjoyable aspect of the story is its unpredictability.” – Aurealis Magazine

Excerpt

Scharlette rubbed her temples as she woke, hastily compiling information. She was in a spaceship, high above the Earth, speaking with Gordon, an advanced AI from the future. Or perhaps she was in an insane asylum talking to a mouse? It was difficult to be sure. One thing was certain – she was definitely going to be late for work.
     ‘Gordon,’ she said, and then so many questions jostled for attention she had trouble focusing on one in particular.
     ‘Yes, Miss Scharlette?’
     ‘What’s the time?’
     ‘I’m afraid that is quite difficult to answer, as perspectives tend to differ wildly. However, internal ship time is currently 64:38:91.’
     ‘Right.’
     ‘PM.’

“It’s hard to describe why this book is good without spoiling a single part of it.” – Two Doctors Media Collaborative

Reader Reviews

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “So refreshingly different” – Goodreads

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “a solid sci-fi romp, and this is one of the few times when "romp" is exactly the right description” – Goodreads

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “I have never laughed so much while reading a book!” – Amazon US

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “absolutely the best treatment of time travel all wrapped up in chuckles and spurts of laughter punctuated with moments of sheer terror culminating in a very satisfying ending.” – Amazon US

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “The time travel genre has a great new top candidate” – Amazon US

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “Scharlette is intelligent, real, relatable and very witty.” – Goodreads

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “dazzlingly colourful, endlessly endearing” – Goodreads

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “genuinely fun ... a proper joy.

As Scharlette journeys to the time travelling space station known as Panoptica, she has no idea how she’ll be received by its crazily futuristic inhabitants.

Do they know she’s a runaway from ancestral Earth? The first person-from-the-past ever to drop by and say hi? Oh, and that she helped foil an elaborate plot to stop their president from ever existing in the first place?

Will everyone want to give her a medal, maybe?

Instead President Charkie thanks Scharlette by asking her to save humanity from a terrifying alien race of vicious murderbugs known as the Germs. These sons-of-peaches will eviscerate anything they can fix their eyeball stalks on – and they’re harder to squash than ever, now that they’ve stolen Panoptician time travel tech.

Scharlette isn’t sure that assigning such a monumentally important task to a woman with basically zero experience in galactic warfare is such a great idea. She isn’t sure about that at all.

The Panopticians are sure though – they think it’s a great idea!

Join Scharlette for a second wild ride through time and space, as she blasts off once again with handsome time agent Tomothy Dartle and their trusty spaceship Gordon.

'Prophecy's Ruin may just be the start of the next big thing in Australian Fantasy.' Weekend Australian

'two of the most intriguing protagonists I've encountered in a long time' AustralianBookseller + Publisher

For a millennium the lands of Kainordas and Fenvarrow have been at war, ever since the gods of shadow and light broke the Great Well of Souls. In the absence of victory, they have settled into an uneasy stalemate - until a prophecy foretells of a child of power who will finally break the balance. Each side races to find the child, and when they do, a battle ensues with unexpected consequences - in a terrible accident, the child's very soul is ripped in two. Each side retreats with their own part of the child, uncertain as to whether they now possess the one capable of finally ending their age-old battle.

PROPHECY'S RUIN tells the story of the two boys as they grow to be men. Bel becomes a charismatic though troubled warrior, Losara an enigmatic and thoughtful mage. Both are powerful young men, yet incomplete. As they struggle to discover their place in the world and the shape of their destinies, inevitably each has to ask the ultimate question: will he, one day, have to face himself?

'One of the coolest fantasy series to come along in an age' AurealisXpress

** Includes preview chapters of Book 2 in the Broken Well trilogy: DESTINY'S RIFT **

Sam Bowring is a stand-up comedian and writer living in Sydney, Australia. Author of the acclaimed Broken Well Trilogy and the Strange Threads Duology, he has also written children's books and for a number of television shows.

For more about Sam, visit sambowring.com.

Sam, Jake and Dylan are degenerate losers who live on the 42nd floor of Hazy Towers, the worst apartment block in the known universe.

They don't work, or buy food, or pay a single cent of rent to their spineless landlord, Mr Hayes, because it's cheaper just to slam the door in his pitiful face. Still, booze doesn’t buy itself, so the boys are always looking out for a crazy way to make a buck. 

In Episode One, Black Market Prawns, Jake strikes a deal with a dodgy mariner to acquire one tonne of illegally obtained prawns from the polluted harbour. Sounds like a good way to earn some coin, but during the height of Summer, and without adequate refrigeration, the race is on to offload the goods before the funk really sets in.

Will Sam, Jake and Dylan convince the owner of the crappy restaurant downstairs to buy their ripening stock? Or perhaps their brand new drink, Prawnshakes ('Prawns and milk, together at last') will prove a hit with the unsuspecting public? Or what?

Find out the answers to these, and other dumb questions you never would have thought to ask, in the brief and stupid tale that is ‘Black Market Prawns’.

Written by Australian comedian and author Sam Bowring.

The world is crumbling. Fissures crack the shaking ground, babes are born with twisted limbs and the taste of apples is just a memory.

Rostigan and the Priestess Yalenna must face those Wardens who remain bent on steeping the land in ruin and, somehow, close the growing Wound in the Great Spell. Standing in their way is a pitiless army commanded by a madman, a sky full of silkjaws and, worst of all, an old friend, once betrayed, whom they must now convince to join them again.

There is only one thing for it - Rostigan must break an ancient oath and use powers he has dared not touch, powers that could tip the balance in favour of the spreading corruption. Caught in a web of his own deceit, he struggles to live the lies he has spun, for if he cannot, Aorn itself may well be doomed.