Dragon's Teeth

steps away from the modern world, with all the claws and teeth and cruelty intact. Camelot is dead. Arthur is dead. Law is dead. Power rules the Summer Country of Celtic myth, behind the Old Blood faces of beast-master Dougal, dark witch Fiona, and her cunning, treacherous twin brother Sean. Their plots entangle and threaten Maureen's sister Jo, Jo's human lover David, and Brian Albion -- the enigmatic Old Blood knight of the warrior Pendragons, who Maureen trusts about as far as she can throw him.

Maureen can become either a slave or a mighty witch, but her own dark past may be her worst enemy.

About The Winter Oak:

"Happily ever after" doesn't always work, even in fairy tales. Maureen Pierce has won her castle, her man, and her powers, after terrible suffering in The Summer Country. She has won a host of fierce enemies as well -- among them, the powerful dark witch Fiona and the deadly black dragon Khe'sha, who plot vengeance. Many of the Old Blood fear the change that she brings to the Summer Country of Celtic myth, and the warrior Pendragons believe that her lover, Brian Albion, has betrayed their secrets.

If that wasn't bad enough, Maureen hates her castle for the pain she suffered there. She fears her new-found powers. The ghosts of old trauma still haunt her and those close to her -- Brian, her sister Jo, and Jo's lover, the human bard David.

Against that, Maureen has the love of the Wildwood, the tangled, dangerous, above all magical forest surrounding the castle she won. She and those with her have honor -- a strange and rare and powerful concept in the Summer Country.

Holding her place turns out to be as hard as winning it, and she's going to need help.

Author Bio

James A. Hetley is also known as James A. Burton. He lives in the Maine setting of his Hetley-authored contemporary fantasy novels The Summer Country, The Winter Oak, Dragon’s Eye, and Dragon’s Teeth. His residence is an 1850s house suitable for a horror movie, with an electrical system installed while Thomas A. Edison still walked the earth, peeling lead-based paint, questionable plumbing, a furnace dating back to Teddy Roosevelt’s presidency, a roof perpetually in need of shingling, and windows that rattle in the winter gales. He's an architect. Not just any architect, but he specializes in renovation and adaptive reuse of old buildings. Go figure.

Other diverse connections to his writing include black belt rank in Kempo karate, three years in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, a ham radio license, and such jobs as an electronics instructor, auto mechanic, trash collector, and operating engineer in a refrigeration plant. He continues a life-long fascination with antique crafts and the hand-tool skills of working wood and metal.