Sign-In
Cart
THE GAMES OF GILDED SWEETNESS Part One The Confectionary Trials - Book One
Paperback
Currently unavailable to order
Please enter your email and a message will be sent to you when this product becomes available on our website.
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Jan 30 2026
Pages: 516
Weight: 1.50
Height: 1.04 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
In Candlegilt, beauty is never just beauty. It's bait. It's a blade. It's a stage light aimed straight at your throat.
Candlegilt is a city that glitters like a promise. Peppermint lanterns float like captured stars. Streets shine like spun sugar. Music drifts through the air as if celebration is the city's natural language.
But Candlegilt does not build beauty for joy.
It builds beauty for control.
Maren Vale has survived by being small-by keeping her head down, her dreams quiet, her hope hidden where no one can collect a fee for it. Until the Confectionary Trials reach into her ordinary life and tighten around what she loves most, forcing her into the Games-the spectacle the city lives for, the stage where strangers become entertainment.
Bound in a Duet tether to Cael Rook-dangerous, guarded, and far too easy to want-Maren discovers the Trials are not simply puzzles and prizes. They are obedience dressed in gold. And every choice comes with a hook already set.
Then Maren sees what Candlegilt keeps behind velvet and glass: the Marzipan Menagerie-mythic creatures crafted from enchantment and sweetness, breathtaking enough to make you forget the bars around them. Caramel deer. Marshmallow owls with moonlit eyes. Sugar-koi drifting through the air like living constellations.
And in the shadows where the Games aren't looking, a secret begins to stir.
A forbidden Token warming against Maren's skin.
A crack in the rules.
A boy named Rowan Saff, who knows too much and leaves warnings like prayers-because some of them are.
In Candlegilt, beauty is bait, and survival is theater.
And if Maren wants to keep her heart-and her family-she may have to risk the one thing the city punishes most:
hope that refuses to behave.
(This volume ends at the conclusion of Part One and continues in Part Two.)
Also from
Hawkins, Kristine
Unstealable Joy: A 30-Day Devotional of Scripture, Simple Practices, and Prayers for a Steady Heart
Hawkins, Kristine
Paperback
Not Always Rainbows: Simple, Scripture-Shaped Practices for Stormy Seasons
Hawkins, Kristine
Paperback
The Lion, the Lamb, and the Wild: A Journey Through Creation Toward Christ
Hawkins, Kristine
Paperback
Also in
Fantasy
The Knight and the Moth (The Stonewater Kingdom, Book 1) (Indie Exclusive Edition)
Gillig, Rachel
Paperback
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
Stevenson, Robert Louis
Paperback
Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution
Kuang, R. F.
Paperback
The Princess Bride Deluxe Limited Edition: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure
Goldman, William
Paperback
Japanese Gothic: A Folk Horror Novel of Japanese Mythology, Murder, and Family Duty Across Two Timelines
Baker, Kylie Lee
Hardcover
Assistant to the Villain: A Cozy Fantasy Romantic Comedy from a Tiktok Sensation
Maehrer, Hannah Nicole
Paperback
The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi: A New Fantasy Series Set a Thousand Years Before the City of Brass
Chakraborty, Shannon
Paperback