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Afterhours
Paperback
Series: Venture City Novels
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ISBN13: 9798449182722
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Sep 8 2026
Pages: 398
Weight: 1.05
Height: 0.99 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Sep 8 2026
Pages: 398
Weight: 1.05
Height: 0.99 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Vice City is built on impossible compromises.
Heroes and villains drink at the same bar. Refugees from across the Atlantean Isles arrive every day hoping for another chance. Billionaires, monsters, mercenaries, spies, and ordinary people all gamble that tomorrow can be better than yesterday-if someone can keep the city from tearing itself apart.
Heroes and villains drink at the same bar. Refugees from across the Atlantean Isles arrive every day hoping for another chance. Billionaires, monsters, mercenaries, spies, and ordinary people all gamble that tomorrow can be better than yesterday-if someone can keep the city from tearing itself apart.
That someone is Starling Gentle Romano.
Owner of the neutral-ground bar Afterhours, widowed mother of infant twins, werewolf druid, and survivor of eight years imprisoned in a shipping container, Starling Romano believes the strongest communities are built not through fear or domination, but through opportunity, responsibility, and the freedom to choose a better life.
As Vice City expands under unprecedented growth, those ideals are put to the test. Organized crime begins probing the city's weakest points. A mysterious architect manipulates information from the shadows. Ancient powers stir beneath churches and behind corporate boardrooms. Gods, gang leaders, business executives, and refugees alike are forced to decide whether power exists to control people-or to help them rise.
At the center of it all stands Afterhours, the one place where nearly everyone can meet without starting a war.
For now.
Because someone has begun pushing Vice City toward a future built on fear, and the first battle will not be fought over territory.
It will be fought over what kind of city deserves to survive. Afterhours is a civic urban fantasy about whether power-political, criminal, magical, social, or personal-is used to merely contain vulnerable people, or to create real mobility. Superpowers, villains, heroes, and factions remain essential setting texture, but the true heart of the novel is systemic: governance, opportunity, exploitation, reform, and what people choose to build with the power they possess.
Owner of the neutral-ground bar Afterhours, widowed mother of infant twins, werewolf druid, and survivor of eight years imprisoned in a shipping container, Starling Romano believes the strongest communities are built not through fear or domination, but through opportunity, responsibility, and the freedom to choose a better life.
As Vice City expands under unprecedented growth, those ideals are put to the test. Organized crime begins probing the city's weakest points. A mysterious architect manipulates information from the shadows. Ancient powers stir beneath churches and behind corporate boardrooms. Gods, gang leaders, business executives, and refugees alike are forced to decide whether power exists to control people-or to help them rise.
At the center of it all stands Afterhours, the one place where nearly everyone can meet without starting a war.
For now.
Because someone has begun pushing Vice City toward a future built on fear, and the first battle will not be fought over territory.
It will be fought over what kind of city deserves to survive. Afterhours is a civic urban fantasy about whether power-political, criminal, magical, social, or personal-is used to merely contain vulnerable people, or to create real mobility. Superpowers, villains, heroes, and factions remain essential setting texture, but the true heart of the novel is systemic: governance, opportunity, exploitation, reform, and what people choose to build with the power they possess.
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