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C.J. Bernstein

“By the end of the book, it’s thrilling to think that, as an objective reader who believes himself to be at a safe distance from a story, the very act of reading this volume may have enlisted you into the secret army that you’ve been reading about!” – Christopher J. Connolly

“This book inspired me to finally actually get involved with the forums. It made everyone feel that much more human, that much more real, continuing to blur the line of magiq happening in our world. I absolutely adore the books, and cannot wait for more. ” – Michela Bader

Dark forces stir between the pages of an ancient book. A deadly day of reckoning looms. Can a determined young character and her real life allies defeat a centuries-old evil? 

The groundbreaking interactive fantasy experience continues in The Monarch Papers: Cosmos & Time…

After solving one impossible mystery, Deirdre Green remains stumped by the remaining clues left by her late father. Every time she makes progress with The Monarch Papers, she realizes his cryptic riddles have only created more questions. As Deirdre begins to walk stranger, more dangerous paths, she finds that dark forces hellbent on her destruction wait in the shadows… 

Witnessing a dark magician's last performance has left Martin Rank traumatized. But when the journalist hears a cry for help, he buries his fear to investigate a shadowy tech company with connections to the dead mage. After he stumbles upon a hidden lab and horrific experiments, he resolves to put his tragic past behind him to mount a dangerous rescue. 

As Deirdre discovers a plan to unleash malevolent magic, Martin begins to tie together his terrifying discovery to a deadly countdown and an ancient conspiracy. Can they defeat the darkest force earth has ever faced, or will the ancient enemy wipe out humanity with one powerful blow? 

The Monarch Papers: Cosmos and Time is the thrilling continuation to an epic contemporary fantasy that began as an interactive online reader experience. If you like powerful magic, chilling conspiracies, and high-stakes heroics, then you'll love C. J. Bernstein's extraordinary novel.

Ackerly Green Publishing

The Briar Archive

The Monarch Papers: Cosmos & Time

Artifacts lost in time, supernatural alliances, and a desperate choice that changed the world. The adventure that began with The Monarch Papers continues with Ackerly Green’s Secret Society.

When Deirdre Green places the stewardship of Ackerly Green Publishing in author C. J. Bernstein’s hands, he expects his days to be filled with copy edits, contracts, and cover designs. 

But when a box of collectible pins is discovered in a long-forgotten storage room, it triggers the reformation of The Ackerly Green Secret Society, a fan club from the company’s lost history. Armed with the pins, the Mountaineers begin to find themselves inexplicably drawn to forgotten magimystic corners of the world, and it becomes clear that there is more to the society than simply honoring Ackerly Green’s enigmatic past.

As magimystic artifacts from the alternate timeline begin surfacing, CJ and the Mountaineers realize a new story is rising from the ashes of The Monarch Papers.

Ackerly Green’s Secret Society

So much of magic is still a mystery to the Mountaineers, but there’s one thing they know for certain: What little is left of magic is running out. 

It’s been over a year since they’ve heard from any of their friends from The Monarch Papers — Martin Rank, Deirdre Green, even the old Basecamp leaders, like Ascender, Endri, and Eaves. Despite the fact that new recruits are pouring into the forum every day, it seems like the Mountaineers are the last bastion of magimystic knowledge in this world.

That is, until, a new recruit with connections to the Low finds a mysterious social media campaign called “Search for Magiq.” With time running out, and the magimystic walls hiding them from the world steadily closing in, the Mountaineers take their chances and join the cause. 

Their search leads them to the Sanctuary, a secret group of adepts and allies that include old faces and new, working together to protect those affected by magic from a threat once thought vanquished. The Silver are back and desperate to possess all that remains of magic.

Will the Mountaineers be able to see the Sanctuary to safety before the Silver attack? And what will be lost and found again when the Book of Kings closes forever, and the Book of Briars is born at last?

The follow-up to the narrative events of The Ackerly Green Secret Society, The Search for Magiq guides readers into a new age of spellbinding Briarverse adventures, setting the stage for C.J. Bernstein’s long-awaited novel, The Book of Briars.

The Search For Magiq

No one remembered the books but her.

Alistair Mead only remembers one thing from the year she went missing as a child: A series of books that don’t exist. After years of searching, she stumbles on a clue that proves the books were real but were somehow erased from existence. 

Desperate for answers, Alistair is drawn into an ancient literary underworld whose members believe she might be the key to unravelling the books, and the altered history of the world.

Ben Kriminger hasn’t written in a year. Traumatized by the fanatical reaction to his novel about unsolved disappearances, Ben is still trying to undo the bloody damage caused by his writing and the unhinged reader who couldn’t tell fiction from fact.

When book pages about a young woman named Alistair begin showing up on Ben’s doorstep, he finds that her story mirrors events in his own ill-fated novel. Still unsure if what he’s reading is fiction, Ben can’t help but act when the pages depict the same people who destroyed his life turning their twisted attention on Alistair.

As their parallel paths spiral toward an impossible revelation, Ben and Alistair learn that seeing this story through may damn the world to darkness before the final page is turned.

The Book of Briars is a reality-smashing tale of fiction and fate, a story that explores what happens when the lines that separate memory, magic, and the mundane world are shattered beyond repair.

The Book of Briars

An ancient secret society, a new age of magic, and a question that could decide the fate of the world.

When a mysterious entity known only as “The Well” joins the forum and begins delivering strange ephemera from an alternate timeline, a select group of readers finds themselves faced with the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity—

To join a secret, centuries-old organization devoted to the preservation, study, and performance of magic. An organization called the Briar Society.

With the Well at the helm, and familiar faces joining their search, the newly-minted Briars chase one cryptic clue to the next in their quest for answers and magimystic knowledge while also connecting loose ends that begin with The Book of Briars and reach all the way back to The Monarch Papers.

From a nineteenth-century branch of the original society to Deirdre Green’s Manhattan brownstone, from the Cotswolds to the Pacific Northwest to rural Missouri, the adventures of the Briar Society span countries and centuries in their efforts to unravel a set of ever more convoluted “mystifications, ” all to answer a single, crucial question—

A question that, if answered, might finally reveal what waits for them in the shadows of the new age.