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What could be scarier than the first day of school? Take a crash course in the paranormal from editors Charlaine Harris and Toni L. P. Kelner in An Apple for the Creature, featuring thirteen all-new tales out of school! Your schooldays are supposed to be the happiest days of your life - until you start thinking of your worst school nightmares: not knowing which is your classroom door, taking that maths test you never studied for, finding yourself naked in Assembly! But those fears will pale in comparison to these thirteen original stories that take academic anxiety to whole new realms. You'll need more than an apple to stave off the creatures in these thirteen original spooky scholastic stories!

Charlaine Harris' smash-hit Sookie Stackhouse series may have reached its conclusion, but the world of Bon Temps, Louisiana, lives on in this all-new collection of 15 stories. Written by a killer lineup of authors, including New York Times best-sellers Rachel Caine, MaryJanice Davidson, Jonathan Maberry and Seanan McGuire, and with introductions read by Charlaine herself, Dead but Not Forgotten puts your favorite characters center stage.

Table of Contents:

• Nobody's business - Rachel Caine
• Tyger, tyger - Christopher Golden
• The real Santa Claus - Leigh Perry
• Taproot - Jeffrey J. Mariotte
• Knit a sweater out of sky - Seanan McGuire
• Love story - Jeanne C. Stein
• The million-dollar hunt - Jonathan Maberry
• Borderline dead - Nicole Peeler
• Extreme makeover vamp edition - Leigh Evans
• Don't be cruel - Bill Crider
• What a dream I had - Nancy Holder
• Another dead fairy - Miranda James
• The bat-signal - Suzanne McLeod
• The sun, the moon, and the stars - Dana Cameron
• Widower's walk - MaryJanice Davidson

Everyone plays something - whether it's solitaire or squash or stockcar racing, World of Warcraft or World Wrestling Entertainment tournaments, darts or dodgeball. Games bring out the best in us, the worst in us, the thing-we-never-expected in us. Human beings just naturally like to test their limits, both mental and physical - and why should the supernaturals be any different?

In their latest anthology international superstar Charlaine Harris and award-winning mystery writer Toni Kelner have collected stories that feature ghostly players, bloodthirsty interruptions, and competitions with deadly outcomes, from some of the top writers in the fantasy, horror, crime and mystery genres. Game on!

There's nothing like home renovation for finding skeletons in the closet. Now here's the perfect treat for any homeowner who's ever wondered, 'What's that creaking sound?' Editors Charlaine Harris and Toni L. P. Kelner return with an all-new collection, this time on the paranormal perils of Do-It-Yourself.

As well as a brand-new Sookie Stackhouse story there are 13 more cautionary tales of home renovation by bestselling authors Patricia Briggs, Heather Graham and Melissa Marr, amongst others. This is an outstanding line-up of frightening and funny fixer-upper tales guaranteed to shake the foundations.

• "If I Had a Hammer" by Charlaine Harris
• "Wizard Home Security" by Victor Gischler
• "Gray" by Patricia Briggs
• "Squatters' Rights" by Rochelle Krich
• "Blood on the Wall" by Heather Graham
• "The Mansion of Imperatives" by James Grady
• "The Strength Inside" by Melissa Marr
• "Woolsley's Kitchen Nightmare" by E. E. Knight
• "Through this House" by Seanan McGuire
• "The Path" by S. J. Rozan
• "Rick the Brave" Stacia Kane
• "Full-Scale Demolition" Suzanne McLeod
• "It's All in the Rendering" by Simon R. Green
• "In Brightest Day" by Toni L.P. Kelner

Number-one New York Times best-seller Charlaine Harris (Sookie Stackhouse mysteries, True Blood, Midnight Crossroad) delivers the first thriller in a new trilogy that presents a chilling alternate history of the US where everyone believes in magic - but no one is sure whether they can trust it.

After the assassination of FDR in the 1930s, the US collapses and is picked off by the UK, Canada, Mexico, and Russia. We find ourselves in the Southwestern states, now known as Texoma. It is here that the gunnie Lizbeth Rose tries to piece out a life, running security on runs from Texoma across the border to Mexico, where work and prospects are stronger.

When two Russian magicians come looking for a man named Alex Karkarov, they hire Lizbeth to find him or his family, but there are problems: The man they're looking for is dead, but he has a daughter they now need to find, as an ever-growing set of sorcerers and gunnies do not want them to succeed. It's a good thing Lizbeth is a deadly gunfighter; too bad she hates sorcerers, even the ones on whom she has to learn to rely.

Number-one New York Times best-seller Charlaine Harris (Sookie Stackhouse mysteries, True Blood, Midnight Crossroad) returns to fantasy in a taut thriller set in a US where magic is an acknowledged truth, but disreputable.

In this second thrilling installment of the Gunnie Rose series, Lizbeth Rose is hired onto a new crew for a seemingly easy protection job, transporting a crate into Dixie, just about the last part of the former United States of America she wants to visit. But what seemed like a straight-forward job turns into a massacre as the crate is stolen. Up against a wall in Dixie, where social norms have stepped back into the last century, Lizbeth has to go undercover with an old friend to retrieve the crate as what's inside can spark a rebellion, if she can get it back in time.

Picking up right where A Longer Fall left off, this thrilling third installment follows Lizbeth Rose as she takes on one of her most dangerous missions yet: rescuing her estranged partner, Prince Eli, from the Holy Russian Empire. Once in San Diego, Lizbeth is going to have to rely upon her sister Felicia, and her growing Grigori powers to navigate her way through this strange new world of royalty and deception in order to get Eli freed from jail where he's being held for murder.

Russian Cage continues to ramp up the momentum with more of everything Harris' readers adore her for with romance, intrigue, and a deep dive into the mysterious Holy Russian Empir

Felicia, Lizbeth Rose's half-sister and a student at the Grigori Rasputin school in San Diego--capital of the Holy Russian Empire--is caught between her own secrets and powerful family struggles. As a granddaughter of Rasputin, she provides an essential service to the hemophiliac Tsar Alexei, providing him the blood transfusions that keep him alive.

Felicia is treated like a nonentity at the bedside of the tsar, and at the school she's seen as a charity case with no magical ability. But when Felicia is snatched outside the school, the facts of her heritage begin to surface. Felicia turns out to be far more than the Russian-Mexican Lizbeth rescued. As Felicia's history unravels and her true abilities become known, she becomes under attack from all directions. Only her courage will keep her alive.

Following the murderous events of The Serpent in Heaven, Lizbeth Rose is awaiting the arrival of her sister Felicia and her husband's younger brother Peter in Texoma. Both needed to leave the seat of the Holy Russian Empire in San Diego after Felicia's burgeoning wizardly power in death magic became the reason for kidnapping and assassination attempts from her mother's family of high-powered wizards in Mexico.

Yet bad news has traveled ahead of them, as Eli is called back to San Diego, taking Peter along with him, splitting them apart in more ways than one as their enemies' plans for revenge come to fruition.

Harper Connelly has what you might call a strange job: she finds dead people. She can sense the final location of a person who's passed, and share their very last moment. The way Harper sees it, she's providing a service to the dead while bringing some closure to the living-but she's used to most people treating her like a blood-sucking leech. Traveling with her step-brother Tolliver as manager and sometime-bodyguard, she's become an expert at getting in, getting paid, and getting out fast. Because for the living it's always urgent-even if the dead can wait forever.

Charlaine Harris is already a star and a New York Times bestseller with her vampire mysteries starring Sookie Stackhouse and her Lily Bard mysteries. This second installment to her new supernatural mystery series might just be her biggest hit yet. Grave Sight's Harper Connelly is back, and her ability to find the dead and see their last moments is in higher demand than ever...

A college class gets more than it bargained for when Harper gives a demonstration of her uncanny talent. Instead of just finding one body in an old grave, she finds two: the original occupant and a recently deceased girl whom Harper had tried, and failed, to find two years previously. To dispel suspicions about her own innocence, Harper and her stepbrother Tolliver undertake their own hunt to find the killer-only to find yet another body in the same grave.

Hired to find a boy gene missing in Doraville, North Carolina, Harper Connelly and her brother Tolliver head there-only to discover that the boy was only one of several who had disappeared over the previous five years. All of them teenagers. All unlikely runaways.

All calling for Harper.

Harper soon finds them-eight victims, buried in the half-frozen ground, all come to an unspeakable end. Afterwards, what she most wants to do is collect her fee and get out of town ahead of the media storm that's soon to descend. But when she's attacked and prevented from leaving, she reluctantly becomes a part of the investigation as she learns more than she cares to about the dark mysteries and long-hidden secrets of Doraville-knowledge that makes her the next person likely to rest in an ice-cold grave.

Lightning-struck sleuth Harper Connelly and her stepbrother Tolliver take a break from looking for the dead to visit the two little girls they both think of as sisters. But, as always happens when they travel to Texas, memories of their horrible childhood resurface.

To make matters worse, Tolliver learns from his older brother that their father is out of jail and trying to reestablish contact with other family members. Tolliver wants no part of the man- but he may not have a choice in the matter.

Soon, family secrets ensnare them both, as Harper finally discovers what happened to her missing sister, Cameron, so many years before.

And what she finds out will change her world forever.

Welcome to Midnight, Texas, a town with many boarded-up windows and few full-time inhabitants, located at the crossing of Witch Light Road and Davy Road. It's a pretty standard dried-up western town.

There's a pawnshop (someone lives in the basement and is seen only at night). There's a diner (people who are just passing through tend not to linger). And there's new resident Manfred Bernardo, who thinks he's found the perfect place to work in private (and who has secrets of his own).

Stop at the one traffic light in town, and everything looks normal. Stay awhile, and learn the truth...

There is no such thing as bad publicity, except in Midnight, Texas, where the residents like to keep to themselves. Even in a town full of secretive people, Olivia Charity is an enigma. She lives with the vampire Lemuel, but no one knows what she does; they only know that she's beautiful and dangerous.

Psychic Manfred Bernardo finds out just how dangerous when he goes on a working weekend to Dallas and sees Olivia there with a couple who are both found dead the next day. To make matters worse, one of Manfred's regular--and very wealthy--clients dies during a reading.

Manfred returns from Dallas embroiled in scandal and hounded by the press. He turns to Olivia for help; somehow he knows that the mysterious Olivia can get things back to normal. As normal as things get in Midnight...

At Midnight's local pawnshop, weapons are flying off the shelves--only to be used in sudden and dramatic suicides right at the main crossroads in town.

Who better to figure out why blood is being spilled than the vampire Lemuel, who, while translating mysterious texts, discovers what makes Midnight the town it is. There's a reason why witches and werewolves, killers and psychics, have been drawn to this place.

And now they must come together to stop the bloodshed in the heart of Midnight. For if all hell breaks loose--which just might happen--it will put the secretive town on the map, where no one wants it to be...

For the first time together in one volume, the complete short story collection starring Sookie Stackhouse--with a new introduction from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the series, Charlaine Harris.

For the first time together in one volume, here is the complete short story collection starring Louisiana's favorite telepathic waitress, Sookie Stackhouse--from #1 New York Times bestselling author Charlaine Harris. New fans can fill in the gaps in their Sookie lore while old friends can revisit some of their favorite moments and characters. From investigating the murder of a local fairy to learning that her cousin was a vampire, from remodeling her best friend's house to attending a wedding with her shapeshifting boss, Sam, Sookie navigates the perils and pitfalls of the paranormal world.

Belly up to the bar at Bon Temps's favorite watering hole and hear stories that will make you wish Sookie never left, including...

• "Fairy Dust"
• "One Word Answer"
• "Dracula Night"
• "Lucky"
• "Gift Wrap"
• "Two Blondes"
• "If I Had a Hammer"
• "Small-Town Wedding"
• "Playing Possum"
• "In the Blue Hereafter"

This definitive collection is the perfect binge read for people who like their stories with bite!

Sookie Stackhouse is just a small-time cocktail waitress in small-town Louisiana. Until the vampire of her dreams walks into her life-and one of her coworkers checks out....

Maybe having a vampire for a boyfriend isn't such a bright idea.

When a vampire asks Sookie Stackhouse to use her telepathic skills to find another missing vampire, she agrees under one condition: the bloodsuckers must promise to let the humans go unharmed.

Sookie's boyfriend has been very distant-in another state, distant. Now she's off to Mississippi to mingle with the underworld at Club Dead-a little haunt where the vampire elite go to chill out. But when she finally finds Bill-caught in an act of betrayal-she's not sure whether to save him...or sharpen some stakes.

When telepathic cocktail waitress Sookie Stackhouse sees a naked man on the side of the road, she doesn't just drive on by. Turns out the poor thing hasn't a clue who-or what-he is, but Sookie knows. It's the vampire Eric Northman-but now he's a kinder, gentler Eric. And a very frightened Eric, because it soon becomes obvious that whoever took his memory now wants his life.

When Sookie's brother Jason's eyes start to change, she knows he's about to turn into a were-panther for the first time. But her concern becomes cold fear when a sniper sets his deadly sights on the local changeling population-and Jason's new panther brethren suspect he may be the shooter. Now, Sookie has until the next full moon to find out who's behind the attacks, unless the killer decides to find her first.

As a person with so few living relatives, Louisiana cocktail waitress Sookie Stackhouse really hated to lose one. But she never guessed that it would be her cousin Hadley-a consort of the Vampire Queen of New Orleans. After all, technically speaking, Hadley was already dead. And now, as unexpected heir to Hadley's estate, Sookie discovers the inheritance definitely comes with a risk.

Someone doesn't want Sookie looking too deeply into Hadley's past-or for that matter, Hadley's possessions. And they're prepared to do anything in their power to stop her. But who? The range of suspects runs from the Rogue Weres who reject Sookie as a friend of the Pack to the Vampire Queen herself, who could be working through a particularly vulnerable subject-Sookie's first love, Bill.

Whoever it is, they're definitely dangerous-and Sookie's life is definitely on the line...

Louisiana cocktail waitress Sookie Stackhouse has her hands full dealing with every sort of undead and paranormal creature imaginable. And after being betrayed by her longtime vampire love, Sookie must not only deal with a new man in her life-the shapeshifter Quinn-but also contend with the long-planned vampire summit.

The summit is a tense situation. The vampire queen of Louisiana is in a precarious position, her power base weakened by hurricane damage to New Orleans. And there are some vamps who would like to finish what nature started. Soon, Sookie must decide what side she'll stand with. And her choice may mean the difference between survival and all-out catastrophe.

After the natural disaster of Hurricane Katrina and the manmade explosion at the vampire summit, everyone--human and otherwise--is stressed, including Louisiana cocktail waitress Sookie Stackhouse, who is trying to cope with the fact that her boyfriend Quinn has gone missing.

It's clear that things are changing--whether the weres and vamps of her corner of Louisiana like it or not. And Sookie--Friend to the Pack and blood-bonded to Eric Northman, leader of the local vampire community--is caught up in the changes.

In the ensuing battles, Sookie faces danger, death, and once more, betrayal by someone she loves. And when the fur has finished flying and the cold blood finished flowing, her world will be forever altered.

A new Sookie Stackhouse book is always a treat! Sookie is a sexy, sassy cocktail waitress who works at Merlotte's Bar in Bon Temps, Louisiana. She's just a regular gal, with all the normal hopes and fears, about dating, boys and life in general - oh, and she's telepathic. And her boyfriends have included Vampire Bill, her first love and the were-tiger Quinn. And Bon Temps is a pretty normal rural town, where murders are mercifully rare. Well, maybe not that rare.

If you think your family relationships are complicated, think again: youhaven't seen anything like the ones in Bon Temps, Louisiana. SookieStackhouse is dealing with a whole host of family problems, ranging from herown kin (a non-human fairy and a telepathic second cousin) demanding a placein her life, to her lover Eric's vampire sire, an ancient being who arriveswith Eric's 'brother' in tow at a most inopportune moment. And Sookie'stracking down a distant relation of her ailing neighbour (and ex), VampireBill Compton. In addition to the multitude of family issues complicating herlife, the werewolf pack of Shreveport has asked Sookie for a special favour,and since Sookie is an obliging young woman, she agrees. But this favour forthe wolves has dire results for Sookie, who is still recovering from thetrauma of her abduction during the Fairy War.

With her knack for being in trouble's way, Sookie witnesses the firebombing of Merlotte's, the bar where she works. Since Sam Merlotte is now known to be two-natured, suspicion falls immediately on the anti-shifters in the area. Sookie suspects otherwise, but her attention is divided when she realizes that her lover Eric Northman and his "child" Pam are plotting to kill the vampire who is now their master. Gradually, Sookie is drawn into the plot-which is much more complicated than she knows...

With Felipe de Castro, the Vampire King of Louisiana (and Arkansas and Nevada), in town, it's the worst possible time for a body to show up in Eric Northman's front yard--especially the body of a woman whose blood he just drank.

Now, it's up to Sookie and Bill, the official Area Five investigator, to solve the murder. Sookie thinks that, at least this time, the dead girl's fate has nothing to do with her. But she is wrong. She has an enemy, one far more devious than she would ever suspect, who's out to make Sookie's world come crashing down.

Sookie Stackhouse has one last adventure in store.

Life has taken her from a waitress in Merlotte's Bar, Bon Temps, to part owner; from social outcast to the heart of her community; from a vampire's girlfriend to the wife of one of the most powerful vampires in the state.

She has survived explosions, revolutions and attempts on her life. Sookie has endured betrayal, heartbreak and grief... and she has emerged a little stronger, and little wiser, every time.

But with life comes new trials...

The question is, in the end: who will love, who will live, and who will be dead ever after?