Search Worlds Without End

The Stoker-award winning editor of the acclaimed, eclectic anthology The New Dead returns with 21st Century Dead, and an all-new lineup of authors from all corners of the fiction world, shining a dark light on our fascination with tales of death and resurrection... with ZOMBIES! The stellar stories in this volume includes a tale set in the world of Daniel H. Wilson's Robopocalypse, the first published fiction by Sons of Anarchy creator Kurt Sutter, and a tale of love, family, and resurrection from the legendary Orson Scott Card. This new volume also includes stories also from other award-winning and New York Times bestselling authors, such as: Simon R. Green, Chelsea Cain, Jonathan Maberry, Duane Swiercyznski, Caitlin Kittredge, Brian Keene, Amber Benson, John Skipp, S. G. Browne, Thomas E. Sniegoski, Hollywood screenwriter Stephen Susco, National Book Award nominee Dan Chaon, and more!

Table of Contents:

• Zombies Are Good for You: An Introduction - essay by Christopher Golden
• Biters - novelette by Mark Morris
• Why Mothers Let Their Babies Watch Television: A Just-So Horror Story - short fiction by Chelsea Cain
• Carousel - short story by Orson Scott CardReality Bites - short fiction by S. G. Browne
• The Drop - short fiction by Stephen Susco
• Antiparallelogram - short fiction by Amber Benson
• How We Escaped Our Certain Fate - short story by Dan Chaon
• A Mother's Love - short fiction by John McIlveen
• Down and Out In Dead Town - short fiction by Simon R. Green
• Devil Dust - short fiction by Caitlin Kittredge
• The Dead of Dromore - short fiction by Ken Bruen
• All the Comforts of Home: A Beacon Story - short fiction by John Skipp and Cody Goodfellow
• Ghost Dog & Pup: Stay - short fiction by Thomas E. Sniegoski
• Tic Boom: A Slice of Love - short fiction by Kurt Sutter
• Jack and Jill - juvenile - short fiction by Jonathan Maberry
• Tender as Teeth - short fiction by Stephanie Crawford and Duane Swierczynski
• Couch Potato - short fiction by Brian Keene
• The Happy Bird and Other Tales - short fiction by Rio Youers
• Parasite - short story by Daniel H. Wilson

It's Halloween night, 1984, in Coventry, Massachusetts, and two families are unraveling. Up and down the street, secrets are being revealed, and all the while, mixed in with the trick-or-treaters of all ages, four children who do not belong are walking door to door, merging with the kids of Parmenter Road. Children in vintage costumes with faded, eerie makeup. They seem terrified, and beg the neighborhood kids to hide them away, to keep them safe from The Cunning Man.

There's a small clearing in the woods now that was never there before, and a blackthorn tree that doesn't belong at all. These odd children claim that The Cunning Man is coming for them... and they want the local kids to protect them. But with families falling apart and the neighborhood splintered by bitterness, who will save the children of Parmenter Road?

From celebrated comic artist Mike Mignola and award-winning novelist Christopher Golden comes a work of gothic storytelling like no other. Reminiscent of the illustrated tales of old, here is a lyrical, atmospheric novel of the paranormal-and a chilling allegory for the nature of war.

"Why do dead men rise up to torment the living?" Captain Henry Baltimore asks the malevolent winged creature. The vampire shakes its head. "It was you called us. All of you, with your war. The roar of your cannons shook us from our quiet graves.... You killers. You berserkers.... You will never be rid of us now."

When Lord Henry Baltimore awakens the wrath of a vampire on the hellish battlefields of World War I, the world is forever changed. For a virulent plague has been unleashed-a plague that even death cannot end.

Now the lone soldier in an eternal struggle against darkness, Baltimore summons three old friends to a lonely inn-men whose travels and fantastical experiences incline them to fully believe in the evil that is devouring the soul of mankind.

As the men await their old friend, they share their tales of terror and misadventure, and contemplate what part they will play in Baltimore's timeless battle. Before the night is through, they will learn what is required to banish the plague-and the creature who named Baltimore his nemesis-once and for all.

In the great kingdom of Quandis, everyone is a slave. Some are slaves to the gods. Most are slaves to everyone else.

Blessed by the gods with lives of comfort and splendor, the royal elite routinely perform their duties, yet some chafe at their role. A young woman of stunning ambition, Princess Phela refuses to allow a few obstacles--including her mother the queen and her brother, the heir apparent--stand in the way of claiming ultimate power and glory for herself.

Far below the royals are the Bajuman. Poor and oppressed, members of this wretched caste have but two paths out of servitude: the priesthood... or death.

Because magic has been kept at bay in Quandis, royals and Bajuman have lived together in an uneasy peace for centuries. But Princess Phela's desire for power will disrupt the realm's order, setting into motion a series of events that will end with her becoming a goddess in her own right... or ultimately destroying Quandis and all its inhabitants.

In shadowy back alleys, crumbling brownstones, and gleaming skyscrapers, cities harbor unique forms of terror. Here lie malicious ghosts, cursed buildings, malignant deities, and personal demons of every kind.

Twenty of today's most talented writers bend their skills toward the darkness, creating brand-new tales guaranteed to keep you awake at night-- especially if you live in the dark cities.

Far worse than mythical creatures such as vampires and werewolves, these are horrors that lurk in the places you go every day--where you would never expect to find them. But they are there, and now that you know, you'll never again walk the streets alone.

Table of Contents:

• The Dogs by Scott Smith
• In Stone by Tim Lebbon
• The Wau She is with Strangers by Helen Marshall
• We'll Always Have Paris by M.R. Carey
• Good Night, Prison Kings by Cherie Priest
• Dear Diary by Scott Sigler
• What I've Always Done by Amber Benson
• Grit by Jonathan Maberry
• Dark Hill Run by Kasey Lansdale & Joe R. Lansdale
• Happy Forver by Simon R. Green
• The Society of the Monsterhood by Paul Tremblay
• The Maw by Nathan Ballingrud
• Field Trip by Tananarive Due
• Tje Revellers by Christopher Golden
• The Stilness by Ramsey Campbell
• Sanctuary by Kealan Patrick Burke
• Matter of Life and Death by Sherrilyn Kenyon
• Graffitti of the Lost and Dying Places by Seanan McGuire
• The Crack by Nick Cutter

Dark Duets is a feast of eerie and mesmerizing horror, thriller, and dark fantasy tales—an ambitious and unique anthology featuring biting and atmospheric original stories from seventeen pairs of acclaimed writers, all collaborating together for the first time, including New York Times bestselling authors Charlaine Harris, Rachel Caine, Holly Black, Cassandra Clare, Stuart MacBride, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Jonathan Maberry and David Liss.

Penned by two authors—and in one case, a trio—who have never worked together before, the stories in this enthralling literary chemistry blend diverse elements and rich themes into mesmerizing and highly combustible tales that delve deep into the shadowy, unexplored realms of the imagination.

On the night before Halloween, an unwitting young woman falls under the spell of a dangerous man—and into a terrifying multiverse—in "T Rhymer" by Gregory Frost and Jonathan Maberry. Sarah MacLean and Carrie Ryan explore the exquisite agony of eternal love in "She, Doomed Girl." "Welded" by Tom Piccirilli and T. M. Wright offers an unsettling vision of evil that infects and destroys lives.

Mixing the ordinary with the extraordinary, these bold and vivid stories offer a compelling survey of the supernatural world that is sure to frighten and enchant.

Tabel of Content

• An Introduction - (2014) - essay by Christopher Golden
• Trip Trap - (2014) - shortfiction by Sherrilyn Kenyon and Kevin J. Anderson
• Welded - (2014) - shortfiction by Tom Piccirilli and T. M. Wright
• Dark Witness - (2014) - shortfiction by Charlaine Harris and Rachel Caine
• Replacing Max - (2014) - shortfiction by Stuart B. MacBride and Allan Guthrie
• T. Rhymer - (2014) - shortfiction by Gregory Frost and Jonathan Maberry
• She, Doomed Girl - (2014) - shortfiction by Sarah MacLean and Carrie Ryan
• Hand Job - (2014) - shortfiction by Chelsea Cain and Lidia Yuknavitch
• Hollow Choices - (2014) - shortfiction by Robert Jackson Bennett and David Liss
• Amuse-Bouche - (2014) - shortfiction by Amber Benson and Jeff Mariotte
• Branches, Curving - (2014) - shortfiction by Tim Lebbon and Michael Marshall Smith
• Renascence - (2014) - shortfiction by Rhodi Hawk and F. Paul Wilson
• Blind Love - (2014) - shortfiction by Kasey Lansdale and Joe R. Lansdale
• Trapper Boy - (2014) - shortfiction by Holly Newstein and Rick Hautala
• Steward of the Blood - (2014) - shortfiction by Nate Kenyon and James A. Moore
• Calculating Route - (2014) - shortfiction by Michael Koryta and Jeffrey David Greene
• Sisters Before Misters - (2014) - shortfiction by Sarah Rees Brennan and Cassandra Clare and Holly Black
• Sins Like Scarlet - (2014) - shortfiction by Mark Morris and Rio Youers

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark: Blackwood's Guide to Dangerous Fairies is a dark and disturbing illustrated novel based on the world of Guillermo del Toro's film "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark." Taking place a hundred years before the movie begins, the book chronicles the travels and explorations of Emerson Blackwood, a young and ambitious natural scientist who quickly discovers there is a mysterious world beyond what his education and peers understand.

Follow Blackwood as he travels, discovering more and more about this secret world and the creatures that inhabit it -- creatures that Blackwood quickly realizes are just as interested in him as he is in them, particularly a long-lived and dangerous group of beings that have had centuries of encounters with humanity, creatures that live by eating enamel and bone....

The book, co-written by del Toro and the award-winning Christopher Golden, features illustrations by the director of "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark," Troy Nixey.

While taking part in an advanced scientific study, twenty-year-old Shane discovers a way to create an actual tornado, but when he is asked by the military to replicate his work in an enemy village in South America, Shane refuses to do so and soon is on the run from very dangerous people.

Eighteen stories of Christmas horror from bestselling, acclaimed authors including Scott Smith, Seanan McGuire, Josh Malerman, Michael Koryta, Sarah Pinborough, and many more.

That there is darkness at the heart of the Yuletide season should not surprise. Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol is filled with scenes that are unsettling. Marley untying the bandage that holds his jaws together. The hideous children--Want and Ignorance--beneath the robe of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. The heavy ledgers Marley drags by his chains. In the finest versions of this story, the best parts are the terrifying parts.

Bestselling author and editor Christopher Golden shares his love for Christmas horror stories with this anthology of all-new short fiction from some of the most talented and original writers of horror today.

Investigative reporter Nora Hesper spends her nights cloaked in shadows. As Indigo, she's become an urban myth, a brutal vigilante who can forge darkness into weapons and travel across the city by slipping from one patch of shadow to another. Her primary focus both as Nora and as Indigo has become a murderous criminal cult called the Children of Phonos. Children are being murdered in New York, and Nora is determined to make it stop, even if that means Indigo must eliminate every member. But in the aftermath of a bloody battle, a dying cultist makes claims that cause Indigo to question her own origin and memories.

Nora's parents were killed when she was nineteen years old. She took the life insurance money and went off to explore the world, leading to her becoming a student of meditation and strange magic in a mountaintop monastery in Nepal...a history that many would realize sounds suspiciously like the origins of several comic book characters. As Nora starts to pick apart her memory, it begins to unravel. Her parents are dead, but the rest is a series of lies. Where did she get the power inside her?

In a brilliant collaboration by New York Times and critically acclaimed coauthors Charlaine Harris, Christopher Golden, Kelley Armstrong, Jonathan Maberry, Kat Richardson, Seanan McGuire, Tim Lebbon, Cherie Priest, James A. Moore, and Mark Morris join forces to bring you a crime-solving novel like you've never read before.

In 1925, earthquakes and a rising sea level left Lower Manhattan submerged under more than thirty feet of water, so that its residents began to call it the Drowning City. Those unwilling to abandon their homes created a new life on streets turned to canals and in buildings whose first three stories were underwater. Fifty years have passed since then, and the Drowning City is full of scavengers and water rats, poor people trying to eke out an existence, and those too proud or stubborn to be defeated by circumstance.

Among them are fourteen-year-old Molly McHugh and her friend and employer, Felix Orlov. Once upon a time Orlov the Conjuror was a celebrated stage magician, but now he is an old man, a psychic medium, contacting the spirits of the departed for the grieving loved ones left behind. When a seance goes horribly wrong, Felix Orlov is abducted by strange men wearing gas masks and rubber suits, and Molly soon finds herself on the run.

Her flight will lead her into the company of a mysterious man, and his stalwart sidekick, Joe Golem, whose own past is a mystery to him, but who walks his own dreams as a man of stone and clay, brought to life for the sole purpose of hunting witches.

Sammi, TQ, Caryn, Letty, and Katsuko are floaters. None of them fits in with any particular group at Covington High School--except each other. One night, to cement their bond, the girls decide to get matching, unique tattoos. But when Sammi backs out at the last minute, everything changes. Faster than you can say "airbrush," Sammi is an outcast, and soon, her friends are behaving like total strangers. When they attack Sammi for trying to break up a brawl, Sammi spies something horrible on her friends' backs: the original tattoo has grown tendrils, snaking and curling over the girls' entire bodies. What has that creepy tattoo artist done to her friends? And what--if anything--can Sammi do to get them back?

Surrounded by barren trees in a snow-covered wilderness with a dim, dusky sky forever overhead, Siberia's Kolyma Highway is 1200 miles of gravel packed permafrost within driving distance of the Arctic Circle. A narrow path where drivers face such challenging conditions as icy surfaces, limited visibility, and an average temperature of sixty degrees below zero, fatal car accidents are common.

But motorists are not the only victims of the highway. Known as the Road of Bones, it is a massive graveyard for the former Soviet Union's gulag prisoners. Hundreds of thousands of people worked to death and left where their bodies fell, consumed by the frozen elements and plowed beneath the permafrost road.

Fascinated by the history, documentary producer Felix "Teig" Teigland is in Russia to drive the highway, envisioning a new series capturing Life and Death on the Road of Bones with a ride to the town of Akhust, "the coldest place on Earth", collecting ghost stories and local legends along the way. Only, when Teig and his team reach their destination, they find an abandoned town, save one catatonic nine-year-old girl?and a pack of predatory wolves, faster and smarter than any wild animals should be.

Pursued by the otherworldly beasts, Teig's companions confront even more uncanny and inexplicable phenomena along the Road of Bones, as if the ghosts of Stalin's victims were haunting them. It is a harrowing journey that will push Teig beyond endurance and force him to confront the sins of his past.

A blockbuster anthology of original, blood-curdling vampire fiction from New York Times bestselling and award-winning authors, including Charlaine Harris, whose novels were adapted into HBO's hit show True Blood, and Scott Smith, publishing his first work since The Ruins.

Before being transformed into romantic heroes and soft, emotional antiheroes, vampires were figures of overwhelming terror. Now, from some of the biggest names in horror and dark fiction, comes this stellar collection of short stories that make vampires frightening once again. Edited by New York Times bestselling author Christopher Golden and featuring all-new stories from such contributors as Charlaine Harris, John Ajvide Lindqvist, Scott Smith, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Michael Kortya, Kelley Armstrong, Brian Keene, David Wellington, Seanan McGuire, and Tim Lebbon, Seize the Night is old-school vampire fiction at its finest.

Table of Contents:

• Reclaiming the Shadows: An Introduction - essay by Christopher Golden
• Up in Old Vermont - short fiction by Scott Smith
• Something Lost, Something Gained - short fiction by Seanan McGuire
• On the Dark Side of Sunlight Basin - short fiction by Michael Koryta
• The Neighbors - short fiction by Sherrilyn Kenyon
• Paper Cuts - short fiction by Gary A. Braunbeck
• Miss Fondevant - short fiction by Charlaine Harris
• In a Cavern, in a Canyon - short fiction by Laird Barron
• Whiskey and Light - short fiction by Dana Cameron
• We Are All Monsters Here - short fiction by Kelley Armstrong
• May the End Be Good - short fiction by Tim Lebbon
• Mrs. Popkin - short fiction by Dan Chaon and Lynda Barry
• Direct Report - short fiction by Leigh Perry
• Shadow and Thirst - short fiction by John Langan
• Mother - short fiction by Joe McKinney
• Blood - short fiction by Robert Shearman
• The Yellow Death - short fiction by Lucy A. Snyder
• The Last Supper - short fiction by Brian Keene
• Separator - short fiction by Rio Youers
• What Kept You So Long? - short fiction by John Ajvide Lindqvist
• Blue Hell - short fiction by David Wellington

Twelve years ago the small town of Coventry, Massachusetts was in the grasp of a particularly brutal winter. And then came the Great Storm.

It hit hard. Not everyone saw the spring. Today the families, friends and lovers of the victims are still haunted by the ghosts of those they lost so suddenly. If only they could see them one more time, hold them close, tell them they love them.

It was the deadliest winter in living memory.

Until now.

When a new storm strikes, it doesn't just bring snow and ice, it brings the people of Coventry exactly what they've been wishing for. And the realisation their nightmare is only beginning.

It is the summer after eighth grade, the last three months of freedom for Kevin Murphy and his friends before they begin high school. The last chance to hang at the mall and goof off. And Kevin's last chance to confess his unrequited love for Nicole French.

But Nikki has a new boyfriend -- a rough eighteen-year-old named Pete Starling. Kevin knows Pete's no good for Nikki. And now Pete and his gang have taken Nikki away. To rescue her, Kevin and his friends must follow them into a land they were never even meant to know about. A life they cannot imagine.

A place from which they may never return...

As TJ Randall, he pens the tales of Strangewood, the most popular series of children's books since The Wizard of Oz. As Thomas Randall, he is a recently divorced father coping with joint custody, which permit him with only weekend visits with his young son. But when his son is hospitalized with an incurable catatonia, the reality and fantasy of Thomas's life start to merge... His son has been taken hostage into the world Randall created. Strangewood is at war.

A circus clown willing to give anything to be funny. A spectral gunslinger who must teach a young boy to defend the ones he loves. A lonely widower making a farewell tour of the places that meant the world to his late wife. A faded Hollywood actress out to deprive her ex-husband of his prize possession. A grieving mother who will wait by the railroad tracks for a ghostly train that always has room for one more. A young West Virginia miner whose only hope of survival is a bedtime story. These are just some of the characters to be found in Tell My Sorrows to the Stones.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (2013) - essay by Cherie Priest
• All Aboard - (2007) - novelette
• Under Cover of Night - (2007) - short story
• Put On a Happy Face - (2012) - short story
• Breathe My Name - (2007) - short story
• The Art of the Deal - (2006) - short story
• Quiet Bullets - (2009) - short story
• Thin Walls - (2010) - short story
• Mechanisms - (2009) - short story with Mike Mignola
• The Secret Backs of Things - (2005) - short story
• Nesting - (2008) - short story
• The Mournful Cry of Owls - (2007) - novelette
• The Hiss of Escaping Air - (2008) - short story

From a master of horror, dark fantasy, and suspense comes a compelling and uniquely original work of paranormal suspense in which one man finds himself trapped in a web of ever-shifting reality which threatens to remake the whole of the world--unless he can find a way to stop it.

For Will James, facing his tenth high school reunion is far from his finest hour--especially since his life has not gone exactly as he planned. Dumped at the altar by his high school sweetheart and with his dreams of being a prize-winning reporter dashed by his job at a Boston tabloid, he is not sure he is ready to face his former peers.

But what he does find at the reunion is far more than he bargained for. He soon learns that one of his buddies had died several years back--even though Will had received an e-mail from him only a few days before. It is not long before other people Will was convinced were alive are turning out to be dead as well--or married to other people, or childless where they used to have children. And new memories are swarming in to replace what Will is convinced was his old life, until he no longer knows what is real and what is not. The only thing he does know for certain is that he has to figure out why he alone remembers snatches of another life before everything dissolves into this new, darker reality.

Janine Hartschorn left David Bairstow for a man who abandoned her once he discovered she was pregnant with his child. A miscarriage almost ended her life. Now she and David are reaching for a second chance.

But something is determined to keep them apart. Something with the power to conjure up ghosts from David's past and make them real. Something Janine knows from her near-death experience.

A faded Hollywood actress sets out to deprive her ex-husband of his prize possession. From award-winning, bestselling writer and editor Christopher Golden's Tell My Sorrows to the Stones, this short story is one of a set of twelve haunting tales of human longing, magic when least expected, and terrible prices to be paid, willingly or not.

This short story can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2009, edited by Rich Horton. The story is included in the collection Tell My Sorrows To The Stones (2013).

Across Italy there are many half-empty towns, nearly abandoned by those who migrate to the coast or to cities. The beautiful, crumbling hilltop town of Becchina is among them, but its mayor has taken drastic measures to rebuild, selling abandoned homes to anyone in the world for a single Euro, as long as the buyer promises to live there for at least five years.

It's a no-brainer for American couple Tommy and Kate Puglisi. Both work remotely, and Becchina is the home of Tommy's grandparents, his closest living relatives. It feels like a romantic adventure, an opportunity the young couple would be crazy not to seize. But from the moment they move in, they both feel a shadow has fallen on them. Tommy's grandmother is furious, even a little frightened, when she realizes which house they've bought.

There are rooms in an annex at the back of the house that they didn't know were there. The place makes strange noises at night, locked doors are suddenly open, and when they go to a family gathering, they're certain people are whispering about them, and about their house, which one neighbor refers to as The House of Last Resort. Soon, they learn that the home was owned for generations by the Church, but the real secret, and the true dread, is unlocked when they finally learn what the priests were doing in this house for all those long years... and how many people died in the strange chapel inside. While down in the catacombs beneath Becchina... something stirs.

An all original anthology from some of todays hottest supernatural writers, featuring stories of monsters from the monster's point of view.

In most stories we get the perspective of the hero, the ordinary, the everyman, but we are all the hero of our own tale, and so it must be true for legions of monsters, from Lucifer to Mordred, from child-thieving fairies to Frankenstein's monster and the Wicked Witch of the West. From our point of view, they may very well be horrible, terrifying monstrosities, but of course they won't see themselves in the same light, and their point of view is what concerns us in these tales. Demons and goblins, dark gods and aliens, creatures of myth and legend, lurkers in darkness and beasts in human clothing... these are the subjects of The Monster's Corner. With contributions by Lauren Groff, Chelsea Cain, Simon R. Green, Sharyn McCrumb, Kelley Armstrong, David Liss, Kevin J. Anderson, Jonathan Maberry, and many others.

Table of Contents:

• The Awkward Age - shortfiction by David Liss
• Saint John - shortfiction by Jonathan Maberry
• Rue - shortfiction by Lauren Groff
• Succumb - shortfiction by John McIlveen
• Torn Stitches, Shattered Glass - shortfiction by Kevin J. Anderson
• Rattler and the Mothman - shortfiction by Sharyn McCrumb
• Big Man - shortfiction by David Moody
• Rakshasi - shortfiction by Kelley Armstrong
• Breeding the Demons - shortfiction by Nate Kenyon
• Siren Song - shortfiction by Dana Stabenow
• Less of a Girl - shortfiction by Chelsea Cain
• The Cruel Thief of Rosy Infants - shortfiction by Tom Piccirilli
• The Screaming Room - shortfiction by Sarah Pinborough
• Wicked Be - shortfiction by Heather Graham
• Specimen 313 - shortstory by Jeff Strand
• The Lake - (2011) - shortstory by Tananarive Due
• The Other One - shortfiction by Michael Marshall Smith
• And You Still Wonder Why Our First Impulse is to Kill You: An Alphabetized Faux-Manifesto transcribed, edited, and annotated (under duress and protest) - shortfiction by Gary A. Braunbeck
• Jesus and Satan Go Jogging in the Desert - shortfiction by Simon R. Green

Resurrection!

The hungry dead have risen. They shamble down the street. They hide in back yards, car lots, shopping malls. They devour neighbors, dogs and police officers. And they are here to stay. The real question is, what are you going to do about it? How will you survive?

How will the world change when the dead begin to rise?

Stoker-award-winning author Christopher Golden has assembled an original anthology of never-before-published zombie stories from an eclectic array of today's hottest writers. Inside there are stories about military might in the wake of an outbreak, survival in a wasted wasteland, the ardor of falling in love with a zombie, and a family outing at the circus. Here is a collection of new views on death and resurrection.

With stories from Joe Hill, John Connolly, Max Brooks, Kelley Armstrong, Tad Williams, David Wellington, David Liss, Aimee Bender, Jonathan Maberry, and many others, this is a wildly diverse and entertaining collection... the last word on The New Dead.

From the author of Wildwood Road, The Ferryman, and Mind the Gap (with Tim Lebbon), comes Christopher Golden's first-ever collection of short stories.

The Secret Backs of Things takes the readers into a realm rich with legends, folklore and myths, while still finding a place for some modern tales and even a couple Hellboy stories: A man learns that it would have been better to have not asked a beautiful woman why her body is covered with mysterious tattoos in "The Art of the Deal." A young boy accidentally finds out about his secret power when a childhood game goes too far in "Pa-Kow." A teenager finally understands why she always felt so alive running barefoot through the woods in "The Mournful Cry of Owls." And in the title story, "The Secret Backs of Things," the protagonist discovers that even if your secrets are never told, you can't always keep them from everyone...

In addition to all the new stories in the collection, readers will find a reprint of "The Shell Collector," long out of print and originally published as part of the acclaimed Cemetery Dance Novella Series.

Filled with illustrations by Glenn Chadbourne, The Secret Backs of Things is Christopher Golden at his best. Chilling, harrowing and, at times, more than slightly unsettling, this collection is sure to excite and entertain longtime Golden fans and new readers alike.

Legends say that on stormy nights, or during sunsets, there sometimes comes a strange whistling in the sky followed by sightings of enormous black dogs. But these are no ordinary dogs. They are demonic things, hounds loose from the Wild Hunt, and they are searching for lost souls. They are rarely sighted more than one at a time, but if all seven should come together, it will mean the end of the world.

In the picturesque New England town of Kingsbury, Vermont, a young woman named Rose Kerrigan mourns the death of her grandfather, the sweet but strange old man who raised her. Soon, Rose will learn the legend of the Seven Whistlers. They've come to Kingsbury in search of a soul that has been hidden from them, and they will not leave without it. First there was one, then two... then four... If they don't find what they're looking for soon, perhaps all seven will gather in Kingsbury. And if all seven should come together....

It's October in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where Richie Feehan was born and raised and has lived his whole life. He's a part-time lobsterman and full-time painter who sells his art at galleries in Rockport and Newburyport. Between the two jobs he makes enough money to get by, living in an in-law apartment in the family home owned by his brother Jim. Jim runs Feehan & Sons Funeral Home, a business started by their grandfather in 1921.

All in all, despite the tension with his brother, and despite the grumbling of his friends, whose business has suffered because of a lengthy red tide and a spectacularly bad overall fishing season, Richie enjoys his life very much. He's content, and believes that's pretty much all a man can ask from his life.

That is, until a horrible mystery begins to unfold in Gloucester.

Out lobstering, Richie sees something nightmarish in the surf one day, catches a bare glimpse of it beneath the surface. He doesn't dare speak of it for fear of what others might say-he doesn't want to become the town crazy. But he's having a hard time sleeping at night, and several days later, while out hauling in his traps for the winter, Richie finds one of them stuck on something. When he finally hauls it up, there's a corpse attached, a corpse that has been eaten at by sea creatures, including something large... the corpse of Greta Wagner, a woman who had been waked at Feehan & Sons two weeks earlier and buried a couple of days later.

Someone stole her corpse from the ground.

And her grave won't be the only one disturbed.

Economies are collapsing, environmental disasters are widespread and war the backdrop to life.

And so the military has developed a force of elite soldiers to keep the peace. A force like nothing seen before... codenamed Tin Man, soldiers are virtually transported to inhabit robot frames in war-torn countries.

When PFC Danny Kelso starts his day shift in Syria, an eerie silence welcomes him and a patrol confirms the area is totally deserted. But when a rogue electromagnetic pulse throws everything into darkness, Danny's conscious mind is trapped within his robot body.

The attack turns out to have been global - the world is facing a return to the dark ages with no electricity, no technology... no safe zones. And the Tin Men face a race against time to save not only themselves but society as we know it.

Michael and Jillian Dansky seemed to have it all-a happy marriage, two successful careers, a bright future. But late one October evening, all that changed. Driving home from a Halloween masquerade, Michael momentarily nods off behind the wheel-and wakes to find nothing is the same.

Standing by his car is the little girl he came within a breath of running down. She leads Michael to her "home," an empty house haunted by whispers, and sends him away with a haunting whisper of her own: "come find me." But in the weeks to follow, it's clear that someone-or some thing-doesn't want Michael to find her: ominous figures in grey coats with misshapen faces are following him everywhere. And then Jillian wakes one morning replaced by a cold, cruel, vindictive woman Michael hardly recognizes as his wife. Michael must now search not only for the lost girl, but for a way to find the Jillian he's always loved, and to do so he must return to where the nightmare began. Down an isolated lane where he'll find them, or die trying.

When Ellen Ripley finally returns to Earth, she learns that the planet LV-426--now called Acheron--has been colonized. But LV-426 is where Ripley and the crew of the Nostromo found the original Xenomorph--the killing machine known as the Alien.

Protected by the Colonial Marines, the colonists seek to terraform the storm-swept planet. Two such residents are Anne and Russell Jorden, seeking a fortune that eluded them on Earth. On Acheron, Anne gives birth to the colony's first newborn. Rebecca Jordan, also known as Newt.

The wildcatters discover a vast, decaying spaceship. The horseshoe-shaped vessel is of particular interest to Weyland-Yutani, and may be the answer to their dreams. But what Anne and Russ find on board proves to be the stuff, not of dreams, but of nightmares.

Twenty years the final episode of the Battlestar Galactica television series, the ragtag fleet of Colonial survivors continues its quest to find Earth, which is believed to be the home of the fabled Thirteenth Colony of Man.

The Galactica's commanding officer, Adama, is dead, Starbuck-the cocky fighter pilot-is missing and presumed dead, and Adams's son, Apollo, is about to take command of the fleet. Still pursued by the Cylons, seven-foot-tall cyborg warriors bent on wiping out all humans, the Colonials must also deal with the return of an old enemy: Count Iblis, an evil, god-like creature who has his own plans for Apollo.

Battlestar Galactica: Warhawk continues the adventures of the "ragtag fleet" fleeing the evil Cylon Emire and its allies through the universe.

In search of Earth, the Galactica crew comes across the Battlestar Pegasus, long thought lost in a conflict with the Cylons years ago. The crew of the Pegasus has established a colony and is preparing for another battle against the Cylons. However, unknown to the colonials, the Cylons are on the verge of entering into an alliance with a new, and deadly, alien race.

Meryam and Adam take risks for a living. But neither is prepared for what lies in the legendary heights of Mount Ararat, Turkey.

First to reach a massive cave revealed by an avalanche, they discover the hole in the mountain's heart is really an ancient ship, buried in time. A relic that some fervently believe is Noah's Ark.

Deep in its recesses stands a coffin inscribed with mysterious symbols that no one in their team of scholars, archaeologists and filmmakers can identify. Inside is a twisted, horned cadaver. Outside a storm threatens to break.

As terror begins to infiltrate their every thought, is it the raging blizzard that chases them down the mountain - or something far worse?

In one ancient variation on the myth of Pandora's Box, there were two jars, one for Pandora and one for her sister, Anesidora. One contained all the blessings of the gods, the other all the world's curses.

Now, in a subterranean city in Northern Iraq, archaeologist Sophie Durand has discovered a secret chamber covered in writing that confirms that version of the tale--a chamber which contains a single jar. "Weird shit" expert Ben Walker joins Sophie's team just as the mystery deepens and grows ugly. Those who believe the myth want to know which jar has been found in the Pandora Room, the one containing blessings, or the one full of curses. Governments rush to lay claim, but jihadi forces aren't waiting for the dust to settle. Whatever the jar contains, they want it, no matter who they have to kill...or what will emerge when they open it. For Sophie, Walker, and the others, the Pandora Room may soon become their tomb.

A car plows through the crowd at a July 4th parade. The driver climbs out, sick and stumbling, reaching out... and everyone he touches drops dead within seconds. Maeve Sinclair watches in horror as people she loves begin to die and she knows she must take action. But in the aftermath of this terror, it's Maeve who possesses that killing touch. Fleeing into the mountains, struggling with her own grief and confusion, Maeve faces the dawning realization that she will never be able to touch another human being again.

Weird s**t expert Ben Walker is surprised to get a call from Alena Boudreau, director of the newly restructured Global Science Research Coalition. There's an upheaval in the organization and she needs to send someone she can trust to Jericho Falls. Whoever finds Maeve Sinclair first will unravel the mystery of her death touch, and many are willing to kill her for that secret. Walker's assignment is to get her off the mountain alive. But as Maeve searches for a hiding place, hunted and growing sicker by the moment, she begins to hear an insidious voice in her head, and the yearning, the need... the hunger to touch another human being continues to grow.

When Walker and Maeve meet at last, they will unravel a stunning legacy of death and betrayal, and a malignant secret as old as history.

In 525 B.C., the Persian king Cambyses sent fifty thousand soldiers across the conquered Egyptian desert to take an oasis city not far from where the Libyan border stands today. According to Greek history, a hurricane-force sandstorm struck near the end of their six-hundred-mile trek. The army - all fifty thousand men - vanished without a single trace. Fast forward to 1986. A British archaeological team, sent to the edge of the Great Sand Sea to exhume evidence of the incident, has also gone missing. It's up to Hellboy to find the missing Brits and to discover what became of The Lost Army. This illustrated novel is written by Christopher Golden, best-selling author of the book Of Saints and Shadows. Hellboy creator Mike Mignola has done sixty-eight black-and-white illustrations for the story.

On the frozen shores of Sweden, lightning strikes from a clear sky. The skeleton of a huge man is revealed, its fingers clutched around the handle of an iron hammer. No one who comes to see this marvel from Norse mythology can lift it -- no one but Hellboy, who lifts the hammer just in time for lightning to strike again, welding it to his hand and leading him towards a bizarre series of visions and encounters.

Hellboy, a bloodred, cloven-hoofed demon raised by the United States government, is a top field agent for the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense. He questions the unknown -- then beats it into submission. In the upper reaches of the Himalayas, Hellboy's ex-girlfriend, archaeologist Anastasia Bransfield, believes she has found the location of the legendary "Dragon King Pool" -- thought to be the ancient dwelling of an evil dragon who inflicted horrific devastation on the land and its people. Every year the villagers would sacrifice a child to placate the beast, until one day an unlikely hero fought the dragon and won, bringing peace and prosperity to the land.

But Anastasia's triumph at her discovery is short-lived. Soon unearthly creatures are seen lurking around the dig site, someone is sabotaging the excavation with dire results, and the young daughter of one of the dig leaders goes missing. It looks like a job for Hellboy -- but his toughest challenge might be putting his past with Anastasia behind him...

Following the success of the 1996 illustrated novel Hellboy: The Lost Army, Dark Horse commissioned writer Christopher Golden to gather some of the brightest creative lights in horror and mystery fiction -- Brian Hodge, Poppy Z. Brite, Nancy A. Collins, Greg Rucka, Chet Williamson, legendary horror/humor cartoonist Gahan Wilson, and many more -- to produce a prose anthology of Hellboy short stories, presenting original tales of the world's greatest paranormal investigator. Illustrated by Hellboy creator Mike Mignola.

Table of Contents:

• Hellboy: Odd Jobs - interior artwork by Mike Mignola
• A Mother Cries At Midnight - shortfiction by Philip Nutman
• Medusa's Revenge - shortfiction by Yvonne Navarro
• Introduction (Hellboy: Odd Jobs) - essay by Mike Mignola
• Cartoon - interior artwork by Gahan Wilson
• Jigsaw - shortfiction by Stephen R. Bissette
• Delivered - shortfiction by Greg Rucka
• Folie á deux - shortfiction by Nancy Holder
• Demon Politics - shortfiction by Craig Shaw Gardner
• A Grim Fairy Tale - shortfiction by Nancy A. Collins
• Scared Crows - novelette by Rick Hautala and Jim Connolly
• Where Their Fire is not Quenched - shortfiction by Chet Williamson
• I Had Bigfoot's Baby! - shortfiction by Max Allan Collins
• The Nuckelavee - shortfiction by Christopher Golden and Mike Mignola
• A Night at the Beach - shortfiction by Matthew J. Costello
• Burn, Baby, Burn - shortfiction by Poppy Z. Brite
• Far Flew the Boast of Him - shortstory by Brian Hodge

Mike Mignola's award-winning series Hellboy has earned fans all over the world, among them some of the most respected horror, fantasy, and mystery novelists in the field, and some of Hollywood's most talented writers and directors. Now a who's who list of these writers are drawn together to tell their own tales of Hellboy, to play with the characters and worlds Mignola has created. As part of Dark Horse's celebration of Hellboy in 2004, Christopher Golden (author of the Hellboy novels The Lost Army and The Bones of Giants) has brought together a stellar array of talents including filmmakers Frank Darabont and Hellboy movie director Guillermo del Toro, and novelists Charles de Lint, Graham Joyce, and Sharyn McCrumb, as well as many others. Lavishly illustrated by creator Mike Mignola.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction (Hellboy: Odder Jobs) - essay by Frank Darabont
• The Brotherhood of the Gun - interior artwork by Mike Mignola
• The Brotherhood of the Gun - shortfiction by Frank Darabont
• From an Enchanter Fleeing - interior artwork by Mike Mignola
• From an Enchanter Fleeing - shortfiction by Peter Crowther
• Down in the Flood - interior artwork by Mike Mignola
• Down in the Flood - shortfiction by Scott Allie
• Newford Spook Squad - interior artwork by Mike Mignola
• Newford Spook Squad - [Newford] - shortfiction by Charles de Lint
• Water Music - interior artwork by Mike Mignola
• Water Music - shortfiction by David J. Schow
• The Vampire Brief - interior artwork by Mike Mignola
• The Vampire Brief - shortfiction by James L. Cambias
• Unfinished Business - interior artwork by Mike Mignola
• Unfinished Business - shortfiction by Ed Gorman and Richard Dean Starr
• Hellboy - interior artwork by Mike Mignola
• Saint Hellboy - interior artwork by Mike Mignola
• Saint Hellboy - shortfiction by Tom Piccirilli
• Sleepless in Manhattan - interior artwork by Mike Mignola
• Sleepless in Manhattan - shortfiction by Nancy Kilpatrick
• The Wish Hounds - interior artwork by Mike Mignola
• The Wish Hounds - shortfiction by Sharyn McCrumb
• Acts of Mercy - interior artwork by Mike Mignola
• Act of Mercy - shortfiction by Thomas E. Sniegoski
• The Thrice-Named Hill - interior artwork by Mike Mignola
• The Thrice-Named Hill - shortfiction by Graham Joyce
• Of Blood, of Clay - interior artwork by Mike Mignola
• Of Blood, of Clay - shortfiction by James A. Moore
• A Full and Satisfying Life - interior artwork by Mike Mignola
• A Full and Satisfying Life - shortfiction by Ray Garton
• The Glass Road - interior artwork by Mike Mignola
• The Glass Road - shortfiction by Tim Lebbon
• Tasty Teeth - interior artwork by Mike Mignola
• Tasty Teeth - shortfiction by Guillermo Del Toro and Matthew Robbins

And you thought Hell was weird... Longtime contributor to the Hellboy mythos Christopher Golden brings together a crew of luminaries including Joe R. Lansdale (Bubba HoTep) and China Miéville (King Rat), crossgenre sensation Barbara Hambly (The Windrose Chronicles), celebrated mystery writer Ken Bruen (The Dramatist), bestselling science fiction and fantasy novelist Tad Williams (Otherland), and a bevy of other skilled storytellers eager to spin a tale or two about the world's greatest paranormal detective, as some of the biggest names in horror, mystery, and fantasy come together to pay homage to Mike Mignola's Hellboy.

Table of Contents:

• Hellboy: Oddest Jobs - interior artwork by Mike Mignola
• Introduction (Hellboy: Oddest Jobs) - essay by Christopher Golden
• Jiving with Shadows and Dragons and Long, Black Trains - shortfiction by Joe R. Lansdale
• Straight, No Chaser - shortfiction by Mark Chadbourn
• Second Honeymoon - shortfiction by John Skipp and Cody Goodfellow
• Danny Boy - shortfiction by Ken Bruen
• Strange Fishing in the Western Highlands - shortstory by Garth Nix
• Salamander Blues - shortfiction by Brian Keene
• The Thursday Men - shortfiction by Tad Williams
• Produce - shortfiction by Amber Benson
• Repossession - shortfiction by Barbara Hambly
• In Cupboards and Bookshelves - shortfiction by Gary A. Braunbeck
• Feet of Sciron - shortfiction by Rhys Hughes
• Monster Boy - shortfiction by Stephen Volk
• Evolution and Hellhole Canyon - shortfiction by Don Winslow
• A Room of One's Own - shortfiction by China Miéville

You never know when you'll find yourself
falling through one of the cracks in the world....

Two of today's brightest stars of dark fantasy combine their award-winning, critically acclaimed talents in this spellbinding new tale of magic, terror, and adventure that begins when a young woman slips through the space between our everyday world and the one hiding just beneath it.

Always assume there's someone after you. That was the paranoid wisdom her mother had hardwired into Jasmine Towne ever since she was a little girl. Now, suddenly on her own, Jazz is going to need every skill she has ever been taught to survive enemies both seen and unseen. For her mother had given Jazz one last invaluable piece of advice, written in her own blood.

Jazz Hide Forever

All her life Jazz has known them only as the "Uncles," and her mother seemed to fear them as much as depend on them. Now these enigmatic, black-clad strangers are after Jazz for reasons she can't fathom, and her only escape is to slip into the forgotten tunnels of London's vast underground. Here she will meet a tribe of survivors calling themselves the United Kingdom and begin an adventure that links her to the ghosts of a city long past, a father she never knew, and a destiny she fears only slightly less than the relentless killers who'd commit any crime under heaven or earth to prevent her from fulfilling it.

What if you were given a map to a magic that could change the worst moment of your life... for a price?

From two all-stars of dark fantasy, Christopher Golden and Tim Lebbon, coauthors of Mind the Gap, comes this terrifying new thriller of magic and dangerous passions, where an ordinary man searches the magical landscape of an extraordinary city for the chance of a lifetime.

Barely six months after leaving New Orleans, history professor Max Corbett is returning to a place he hardly recognizes. The girl he'd loved-and lost-is dead, and the once-enchanted city has been devastated by Hurricane Katrina. Max has not thought much beyond Gabrielle's funeral-until a strange old man offers him a map, and an insane proposition...

"Forget all the stories about magic you think you know...."

It looks like an ordinary tourist map, but the old man claims that it is marked with a trail of magical moments from New Orleans's history that just might open a door to the past. But it is a journey fraught with peril as Max begins to uncover dark secrets about both his dead love and the city he never really got to know. How is Gabrielle linked to an evil group from the city's past? And can Max evade them long enough to turn back the clock and give Gabrielle one last chance at life?

From two masters of dark fantasy comes a chilling tale of magic and possession, set in--and beneath--fabulous Venice, a city slowly being swallowed by the very waters that have made it one of the wonders of the world.

Geena Hodge is an American archaeologist working to salvage Venice's past from the encroaching Adriatic Sea. When she and her lover, Nico, discover the lost library of Petrarch under the Piazza San Marco, they rejoice not only at the historical significance of the find but at the opportunity to bring worldwide attention--and much-needed funding--to their endeavors.

But that find soon leads to another, a room buried more deeply still: the fabled Chamber of Ten, where centuries ago the secret rulers of Venice, in their quest for absolute power, met to plot betrayals and murders. After entering the Chamber, Geena and Nico are thrust into the midst of an ancient feud, a deadly battle of wills and black magic that threatens to poison the city's future with the evils of its past.

From Beacon Hill to Southie, historic Boston is a town of vibrant neighborhoods knit into a seamless whole. But as Jim Banks and Trix Newcomb learn in a terrifying instant, it is also a city divided--split into three separate versions of itself by a mad magician once tasked with its protection.

Jim is happily married to Jenny, with whom he has a young daughter, Holly. Trix is Jenny's best friend, practically a member of the family--although she has secretly been in love with Jenny for years. Then Jenny and Holly inexplicably disappear--and leave behind a Boston in which they never existed. Only Jim and Trix remember them. Only Jim and Trix can bring them back.

With the help of Boston's Oracle, an elderly woman with magical powers, Jim and Trix travel between the fractured cities, for that is where Jenny and Holly have gone. But more is at stake than one family's happiness. If Jim and Trix should fail, the spell holding the separate Bostons apart will fail too, and the cities will reintegrate in a cataclysmic implosion. Someone, it seems, wants just that. Someone with deadly shadow men at their disposal.

The official novelization of the summer blockbuster The Predator, Shane Black's new movie with a screenplay by Shane Black and Fred Dekker.

For centuries Earth has been visited by warlike creatures that stalk mankind's finest warriors. Their goals unknown, these deadly hunters kill their prey and depart as invisibly as they arrived, leaving no trace other than a trail of bodies.

When a young boy accidentally triggers the universe's most lethal Hunters' return to earth, only a ragtag crew of ex-soldiers and a disgruntled science teacher can prevent the end of the human race.

A secret sect of the Catholic Church, armed with an ancient book of the undead called The Gospel of Shadows, has been slowly destroying vampires for centuries. Now the book has been stolen, and the sect races to retrieve it before their purpose is discovered: a final purge of all vampires. As the line between saints and shadows grows ominously faint, private eye Peter Octavian is drawn into the search. And he'll do anything to find the book... for Peter Octavian is also a vampire.

Ostracized by his kindred for refusing to take part in the 'blood song', he cannot stand by and watch while they are destroyed. In a deadly game with a driven, sadistic assassin, the trail leads to Venice at the time of carnival, where the Defiant Ones, as the vampires are known, are engaged in a savage battle for their lives. Filled with plot twists, mystery, sex and violent death, Of Saints and Shadows is a spine-tingling thriller which opens the door to the world of The Shadow Saga.

In the second book of The Shadow Saga the Shadows have been exposed as living amongst us and the ancient vampiric race now finds itself threatened by the most powerful demon of all: human prejudice. In a world where the good are no longer distinguishable from the bad and where Shadows are indeed the saints, a holy war is about to begin, pitting humans and vampires together against the dark forces of Hell.

And as they fight for their survival in the face of a betrayal by one of their own, the Shadows begin to discover at last the astonishing, long-hidden truth of what they are. What they will learn about their mysterious origins is more extraordinary -- and more explosive -- than they could possibly have imagined.

For the Shadows, nothing can ever be the same again. Their existence revealed to the world in Of Saints and Shadows, the truth of their divided heritage revealed to themselves in Angel Souls and Devil Hearts, they must now fight the hardest battle of all -- against others of their own kind. The fragile alliance of human and vampire was shattered forever by Hannibal, among the most ancient of Shadows, who turned on them both in their hour of greatest need. Driven by blood, he thirsts for dominion, and humankind to him will always be prey.

For those Shadows who walk a different path there is only one choice to be made. Hannibal must be destroyed before he destroys them all. But his followers are many, and those who oppose him are few...

The Gospel of Shadows enabled the Catholic Church to control all manner of supernatural beings for centuries. When the book was destroyed -- and the ruling body of the Church with it -- it enabled the Shadows, the vampires of legend, to learn the hidden truth of their triple nature: part human, part demonic, part divine. But it also weakened the barriers that exist between the worlds, and now beings of pure evil are breaking through -- creatures from other dimensions for which Hell is just a name.

Peter Octavian, once a powerful Shadow, now restored to humanity, is the only man with sufficient knowledge to stop them. Aided by a earthwitch, a vampire and a priest, and calling on the magical forces of mother nature herself, Octavian stands between the Earth and apocalypse, as entire cities are plunged into the abyss...

When chaos erupts in the small coastal town of Hawthorne, Massachusetts, former vampire-turned-mage Peter Octavian and earthwitch Keomany Shaw arrive to investigate. Years ago, Octavian helped expose the secret existence of vampires to the world, dismantling the Vatican's sorcery corps in order to save his fellow shadows from destruction.

But without the Vatican sorcerers, the magical barriers they spent centuries constructing to keep the forces of darkness out of our world are beginning to fail, and things are slipping through. Now an ancient god of chaos is awakening in Hawthorne, its influence spreading... and it's Octavian's fault. If he can't stop it, the blood of all human kind will be on his hands.

For centuries, Vatican sorcerers kept demons and monsters out of our world with the magic found in a grimoire called The Gospel of Shadows. Years ago, to save his people from madmen, Peter Octavian defeated those sorcerers and the Gospel of Shadows itself was banished from the Earth. Ever since, the evils and monstrosities lurking in parallel worlds have been waking to the realization that our magical defences are down - the barriers keeping them out of our world are crumbling. With massive demonic incursions in locations around the world, Octavian should be focused on using his own sorcery to drive the evil out and rebuild our defences.

But a renegade vampire named Cortez has murdered the person Octavian loves the most and, even with his friends and allies around him, he is so lost in grief that he can think of nothing but revenge. There are others who can fight the darkness - mages and Shadows, witches and Reapers and vampire samurai - but only the warrior-mage, Peter Octavian, can defeat it. If he will answer the call.

Peter Octavian's powerful sorcery guards his world against evil. Now he must go on a perilous journey to save those condemned to a fate worse than death itself... When Octavian called upon Gaea to rid the Earth of demons, her magic banished not only the demons but also the Shadows - vampires who had foresworn evil and fought alongside him, some for many years.

Together with two unlikely companions - a wise-cracking goblin with the ability to walk the paths between worlds, and a demon changeling struggling to come to terms with what he is - Octavian sets out on what seems to be an impossible mission: to free his friends from Hell. There he finds some unexpected figures from his past - and an enemy of his own making, driven by an implacable hatred, whose power is equal to his own and whose quest for vengeance is personal...

In this enthralling new tale from bestselling author Christopher Golden, one man is drawn into a realm just across the veil from our own, where every captivating myth and fairy tale is true, the vanished exist - and every fear is founded....

Yielding to his father's wishes, Oliver Bascombe abandoned his dream of being an actor and joined the family law firm. Now he will marry a lovely young woman bearing the Bascombe stamp of approval. But on the eve of his wedding, a blizzard sweeps in - bringing with it an icy legend who calls into question everything Oliver believes about the world and his place in it....

Pursued by a murderous creature who heeds no boundaries, Jack Frost needs Oliver's help to save both himself and his world - an alternate reality slowly being displaced by our own. To help him, Oliver Bascombe, attorney-at-law, will have to become Oliver Bascombe, adventurer, hero - and hunted. So begins a magnificent journey where he straddles two realities...and where, even amid danger, Oliver finds freedom for the very first time.

For centuries they lived amongst us. The frightful and wondrous, the angelic and bloodthirsty. Living in a reality just beyond the Veil, humanity's myths and legends are caught in a struggle for their very survival--against hunters far more powerful than they are.

Into this struggle has stepped a New England lawyer who once wanted to be an actor--a man who both longs for the mortal woman he was to marry and is desperate to rescue the sister who's been taken hostage. Neither hero nor warrior, Oliver Bascombe now finds himself brandishing a magical sword, walking in the company of a woman who sometimes appears as a fox and a man made of pure ice, and dueling with albino giants and winged killers. For in the world of the Borderkind--and the realms that exist beyond it--Oliver is discovering just how vulnerable are humankind's myths, the dire consequences of their extinction, and the reason he was chosen to save them....

Bestselling author Christopher Golden brings his epic, innovative trilogy, the Veil, to an astonishing conclusion as the mythic realm of heroes and monsters becomes the site of humanity's last--and greatest--showdown.

In the world of the legendary, every myth and folktale is real. That is what Oliver Bascombe learned on the other side of the Veil, where humanity's legends have hidden away for centuries. But even legends have legends, and Oliver has learned of a prophecy that many believe he and his sister, Collette, have come to the Two Kingdoms to fulfill. Before they can discover the truth, the Bascombe siblings must help to stop an apocalyptic war that threatens to destroy the Two Kingdoms, unravel a conspiracy, and prevent a powerful sorcerer from severing the world of humans from the realm of the legendary forever.

But first Oliver will have to plot an escape from an impregnable palace dungeon where he and his allies have been imprisoned... for regicide.

As old heroes and friends ally themselves for one last battle, even older enemies stand arrayed against them. Is humanity ready to face its legends head-on? For Oliver Bascombe, the price may be dearer than even he could ever imagine.