Massachusetts Book Award Winner
Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist
In a world where words are power, there is nothing more dangerous than an unnamed thing.
"A parade of delights and nightmares, written with the kind of incantatory precision that the truest spells are made of."
—Kelly Link, Pulitzer Prize finalist
SWORDS, SORCERY, AND A SPOT OF TEA
“Conan the Barbarian meets Austen. Gormenghast meets The Hobbit. A mystery, a novel of manners, and a fantasy have the most delightful pile-up. Such fun.”
—Sarah Rees Brennan, New York Times bestselling author of Long Live Evil
New adventures unfold in the light of a stolen moon.
A fantasy campaign setting of mythic adventure in an Arthurian world gone strange, created for use with old-school tabletop RPGs.
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Upcoming Appearances
Jedediah Berry is the critically acclaimed author of The Naming Song, which won the Massachusetts Book Award for fiction and was an LA Times Book Prize finalist. His first novel, The Manual of Detection, won the Crawford Award and the Hammett Prize, and was adapted for broadcast by BBC Radio 4.His story in cards, The Family Arcana, was a finalist for a World Fantasy Award. He is the co-creator, with Andrew McAlpine, of the Wildendrem adventure game setting, which began with the Ennie Award-winning The Valley of Flowers.Together with his partner, writer Emily Houk, he runs Ninepin Press, an independent publisher of fiction, poetry, and games in unusual shapes. He lives in Western Massachusetts.For rights inquiries, please contact Maggie Cooper at Aevitas Creative Management.
Photo by Tristan Morgan Chambers
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Kill All Wizards
SWORDS, SORCERY, AND A SPOT OF TEA
Kill All Wizards is a blood-soaked romp through high society—picture Conan the Barbarian caught up in a comedy of manners, and you're almost prepared for this unmissable new series.
We could think of nothing but the barbarian. He had come here, surely, to murder or marry someone, to exact revenge, or to say or do something very scandalous. We could hardly wait to see which it was. We hoped it would be all of them.
The barbarian traveled far to consult the wizards of the empire. Instead of lending their aid, they ensorcelled him, exploited his strength, and stole his sword. They should not have done that.Now the barbarian plans to kill every wizard who wronged him, even if that means blending in with their vile society: dressing in finery, taking tea in exclusive clubs, and reserving the best box at the theater.Oh, he hates it all with the fiery passion of his savage heart—but not as much as he hates these wizards.
Tordotcom | June 2026 | ISBN: 9781250908056
Praise for Kill All Wizards
“Kill All Wizards made me remember how much I love sword and sorcery. How good is this book? So good it made me want to create a new genre label: Jedediah Berry puts the fun into ‘funtasy.’”
—Kelly Link, Pulitzer Prize finalist
“Conan the Barbarian meets Austen. Gormenghast meets The Hobbit. A mystery, a novel of manners, and a fantasy have the most delightful pile-up. Such fun.”
—Sarah Rees Brennan, New York Times bestselling author of Long Live Evil
“A sorcerously entertaining blend of strange lands, swinging swords, and oh yes—quite a lot of dead wizards. I want more!”
—Paolo Bacigalupi, Hugo Award-winning author of The Windup Girl
“Fast, fun, and as hard to put down as a box of magic candy. I read the whole thing in one sitting and I never do that.”
—Christopher Buehlman, USA Today bestselling author of The Blacktongue Thief
"Riveting, with a twist around every corner, Kill All Wizards combines the pleasures of high style with the utter glee of heroic sword and sorcery."
—Ellen Kushner, author of Swordspoint
“Hands-down the best thing I've read in years. Its flawless mingling of wit, wisdom, and wry humor reminds me of Sir Terry Pratchett.”
—Nicholas Eames, author of Kings of the Wyld
“A must read for those who like to see scores settled, justice done, and violence committed with glorious artistry.”
—Seanan McGuire, Hugo Award-Winning author of Middlegame
“A fabulous mash-up of Conan and high society, the barbarian hero suited up and unleashed on the theater and the gentlemen's club. Full of wonderful characters in a wildly inventive world.”
—Django Wexler, author of How to Become a Dark Lord and Die Trying
“Seemingly cozy elements are juxtaposed with macabre dark sorcery, wry, knowing humor with desperate striving against cruel antagonists.”
—John C. Hocking, author of Conan: City of the Dead
“Weird, wonderful, twisted, this wildly inventive work is reminiscent of the Old Masters of Sword-and-Sorcery such as Fritz Leiber and Jack Vance but with an update for twenty-first century sensibilities.”
—Elizabeth Bear, author of The Folded Sky
“Delightfully weird, with some of the best prose and strangest magic I've encountered in years.”
—Daniel M. Ford, author of The Warden
The Naming Song
Winner of the Massachusetts Book Award for Fiction
A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist
In a world where words are power, there is nothing more dangerous than an unnamed thing.
When the words went away, the world changed.All meaning was lost, and every border fell. Monsters slipped from dreams to haunt the waking while ghosts wandered the land in futile reveries. Only with the rise of the committees of the named—Maps, Ghosts, Dreams, and Names—could the people stand against the terrors of the nameless wilds. They built borders around their world and within their minds, shackled ghosts and hunted monsters, and went to war against the unknown.For one unnamed courier of the Names Committee, the task of delivering new words preserves her place in a world that fears her. But after a series of monstrous attacks on the named, she is forced to flee her committee and seek her long-lost sister. Accompanied by a patchwork ghost, a fretful monster, and a nameless animal who prowls the shadows, her search for the truth of her past opens the door to a revolutionary future—for the words she carries will reshape the world.
“A brilliant, thrilling adventure. The Naming Song understands the fundamental magic of language, and breathes that magic onto every page.”
—Holly Black, #1 New York Times bestseller
Tor Books | Sept 2024 | ISBN: 9781250907981
➤ Signed / personalized copies available from Book Moon Books and Ninepin Press.
➤ Listen to the New England Public Media interview on The Fabulous 413.
➤ Check out the playlist at Largehearted Boy.
➤ Watch the un-unboxing video.
Praise for The Naming Song
"A parade of delights and nightmares, written with the kind of incantatory precision that the truest spells are made of."
—Kelly Link, author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist Get In Trouble
“The Naming Song is a genre-bending picaresque ode to the power of words and imagination. A breathlessly enjoyable tale.”
―Cassandra Clare, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Sword Catcher
“A haunting, glorious train ride of a novel that feels both new and old at the same time, a creature of post-apocalyptic myth.”
—Erin Morgenstern, #1 national bestselling author of The Starless Sea
“Deeply immersive, magnificently imagined, Jedediah Berry's The Naming Song is an epic tale of the fantastic, where language - quite literally - has the power to remake the world. This is a vast and sweeping wonder of a novel.”
―J. M. Miro, bestselling author of Ordinary Monsters
“With The Naming Song, Jedediah Berry offers a Genesis wrapped up in a Revelation―a mysterious, poetic, and invigorating post-apocalyptic adventure saga about how things can be reborn, and in some cases remade, after they have been undone. It's rare that a novel this substantial is also this strange and this fun.”
―Kevin Brockmeier, author of The Ghost Variations
“Fans of Patricia A. McKillip’s The Forgotten Beasts of Eld or Marie Brennan’s Driftwood will be in awe of Berry’s wonderfully odd ode to language, story, and family.”
―Library Journal, starred review
“Fantasy readers looking for a fresh and exciting new world to explore will be thrilled.”
―Publishers Weekly
“Berry creates both a familiar and unfamiliar landscape in a sweeping epic about the language and love between us, the humanity of the living and the dead, and the raw power of creation.”
―J. R. Dawson, author of The First Bright Thing
"In Jedediah Berry’s The Naming Song I perceive the simplicity and complexity of Richard Brautigan’s Watermelon Sugar, a structure that could have been borrowed from Berry’s own card game, The Family Arcana, and a nod to The Romance of the Rose. Still, it’s wholly its own engaging creature that engenders wonder and suggests a new kind of fiction."
―Jeffrey Ford, World Fantasy Award-winning author
“An anti-totalitarian, post-apocalyptic fable featuring mystical theater trains, impossible monsters, and the awesome power of story? Sign me the heck up. If we can rise against injustice even half as boldly as 'the courier' and her friends, there might just be hope for humanity yet. Jedediah Berry has delivered a true epic, thrumming with life.”
―GennaRose Nethercott, author of Thistlefoot and The Lumberjack's Dove
“Jedediah Berry’s The Naming Song brings the reader as close to magic as they are likely to ever get. Berry, like Ursula K. Le Guin, Iain M. Banks, or John Crowley picks up words at a different angle . . . and brings a whole new world to light. Every page is play.”
―Gavin Grant, Book Moon Books
“The Naming Song is not just one of the best told fantasy novels of the last twenty-five years, it is a masterpiece of storytelling destined to be extolled as a classic.”
―Howard Andrew Jones, author of Lord of a Shattered Land
The Valley of Flowers
A mythic setting for classic tabletop adventure games.
Ennie Award Winner (Silver, Best Setting)
Ennie Award Finalist (Product of the Year)
Golden Fez Award Finalist (Best Setting)
Inspired by Arthurian literature and weird fiction, this setting book for old-school tabletop RPGs features 144 full-color pages of locations, encounters, characters, rumors, adventure sites, and more. Co-written with Andrew McAlpine.
"Perhaps the best OSR module I've ever read... I think it's a masterpiece."
—Yochai Gal, Between Two Cairns
"An idiosyncratic vibe with a MONSTROUS number of things going on, and a tone that is magnificent."
—Ten Foot Pole
Phantom Mill Games | 2023 | ISBN: 9780996422031
Psychographia
A play-by-mail game of psychic deduction for two test subjects players.
As psychics in desperate trouble, you must reach out to each other with messages encoded in the pages of old books, magazines, and other literary flotsam. The goal? To help your partner guess your dire secrets. Your chances? Not good.You are not entirely powerless, however. By using your psychic abilities you can manipulate your pages in creative and dramatic ways:
Fold, tear, and crush your text with psychokinesis
Materialize new words from the bones of the old
Negate words on a page, erasing them from existence
Burn the page with your psychic rage(DO NOT DO THIS)And more!
To play, you’ll each need a text you feel comfortable destroying, as well as stamps and envelopes.
Phantom Mill Games | 2022
A game by Jedediah Berry and Andrew McAlpine
Illustrated by Andrew Cothren
The Family Arcana
A gothic story in cards: shuffle, cut, play, read.
A World Fantasy Award Finalist
The tale of a sprawling family bound to their decaying farmhouse by a web of passions and strange obsessions. Each shuffle of the deck reveals a new pattern of secrets, confessions, troubles, indictments, and dreams. The family grows, shrinks, and changes, trapped forever in its haunted house of cards.
"Haunting and lovely."
—Strange Horizons
“Recommended, especially for people who like Berry’s other writing; people who enjoyed Little, Big; people who collect unusual card and tarot decks; people interested in the way symbols can flex and bend and point towards different meanings.”
—Emily Short
Ninepin Press | 2015 | ISBN: 9780996422000
The Manual of Detection
Raymond Chandler meets Kafka in this inventive reimagining of the classic detective novel.
Winner of the Crawford Award
Winner of the Dashiell Hammett Prize
In an unnamed city always slick with rain, Charles Unwin is a humble file clerk working for a huge and imperious detective agency, and all he knows about solving mysteries comes from filing reports for the illustrious investigator Travis Sivart. When Sivart goes missing, and his supervisor turns up murdered, Unwin is suddenly promoted to detective, a rank for which he lacks both the skills and the stomach. His only guidance comes from his new assistant, who would be perfect if she weren't so sleepy, and from the pithy yet profound Manual of Detection.
"This debut novel weaves the kind of mannered fantasy that might result if Wes Anderson were to adapt Kafka."
—The New Yorker
“Jedediah Berry has an ear well-tuned to the styles of the detective story from Holmes to Spade and can reproduce atmosphere with loving skill.”
—Michael Moorcock, The Guardian
“A mind-blowing novel that’s both fun and thought provoking.”
—Nancy Pearl, NPR
The Penguin Press | Feb 2009 | ISBN: 9781594202117