Steven Brust

Fresh from the collapse of his marriage, and with the criminal Jhereg organization out to eliminate him, Vlad Taltos decides to hide out among his relatives in faraway Fenario. All he knows about them is that their family name is Merss and that they live in a papermaking industrial town called Burz.--From publisher description.

On the run for years after a devastating betrayal, short-statured former Jhereg captain, Vlad Taltos, secretly returns to his imperial city home to find that the rackets he once commanded are under the control of a mysterious cabal of women.

An omnibus featuring assassin Vlad Talot and his dragon companion contains "Taltos," in which Vlad pursues a thieving Dragaeran employee to the lair of Sethra Lavode, and "Phoenix," in which he must repay a debt to the Demon-Goddess with his professionalservices as an assassin.

In a Dragaera decimated by Adron's Disaster, an experiment in wizardry gone horribly wrong, the descendants of Khaavren, Pel, Aerich, and Tazendra join forces with a surviving Phoenix heir to take on the enemies of their Empire.

"Vlad Taltos' latest adventures take place after the conclusion of Orca (1996). Still on the run from the Jhereg, Vlad is tracked down by Lady Teldra of Castle Black. Both Morrolan and Aliera have disappeared, and sorcery, telepathy, and even Sethra Lavode can't find them. It is feared that they are captives of neither the dead nor the gods but of the Jenoine, the ancient creators of Dragaera and its gods. So what is an ex-assassin (Vlad) to do?"--Amazon.com.

From back cover Tor paperback March 1994: [Agyar], a suave and mysterious drifter who shares an abandoned house with a compassionate African-American ghost, spends his nights seducing various inhabitants of an Ohio college town. Few can resist him, but he eventually finds himself obsessed with two women, one a beautiful young dancer, the other a harsh taskmistress of indeterminate age. One offers him salvation, the second seeks to destroy him...

The story takes place 500 years after the events portrayed in the author's previous novel, The Phoenix Guard. Four Empire loyalists, Khaavren, Perl, Aerich and Tazendra, battle a plot to destroy the Orb of the Empire and overthrow the Emperor.