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Summer, Fireworks, and My Corpse

Otsuichi

Two short novels, including the title story and Black Fairy Tale, plus a bonus short story. Summer is a simple story of a nine-year-old girl who dies while on summer vacation. While her youthful killers try to hide her body, she tells us the story--from the point of view of her dead body--of the children's attempt to get away with murder.

Black Fairy Tale is classic J-horror: a young girl loses an eye in an accident, but receives a transplant. Now she can see again, but what she sees out of her new left eye is the experiences and memories of its previous owner. Its previous deceased owner.

Contains:

  • Summer, Fireworks, and My Corpse
  • Yuko
  • Black Fairy Tale

Throne of the Crescent Moon

Saladin Ahmed

The Crescent Moon Kingdoms, land of djenn and ghuls, holy warriors and heretics, Khalifs and killers, is at the boiling point of a power struggle between the iron-fisted Khalif and the mysterious master thief known as the Falcon Prince. In the midst of this brewing rebellion a series of brutal supernatural murders strikes at the heart of the Kingdoms. It is up to a handful of heroes to learn the truth behind these killings:

Doctor Adoulla Makhslood, "The last real ghul hunter in the great city of Dhamsawaat," just wants a quiet cup of tea. Three score and more years old, he has grown weary of hunting monsters and saving lives, and is more than ready to retire from his dangerous and demanding vocation. But when an old flame's family is murdered, Adoulla is drawn back to the hunter's path.

Raseed bas Raseed, Adoulla's young assistant, a hidebound holy warrior whose prowess is matched only by his piety, is eager to deliver God's justice. But even as Raseed's sword is tested by ghuls and manjackals, his soul is tested when he and Adoulla cross paths with the tribeswoman Zamia.

Zamia Badawi, Protector of the Band, has been gifted with the near-mythical power of the Lion-Shape, but shunned by her people for daring to take up a man's title. She lives only to avenge her father's death. Until she learns that Adoulla and his allies also hunt her father's killer. Until she meets Raseed.

When they learn that the murders and the Falcon Prince's brewing revolution are connected, the companions must race against time--and struggle against their own misgivings--to save the life of a vicious despot. In so doing they discover a plot for the Throne of the Crescent Moon that threatens to turn Dhamsawaat, and the world itself, into a blood-soaked ruin.

The Hysterical Girls of St Bernadette's

Hanna Alkaf

For over a hundred years, girls have fought to attend St. Bernadette's, with its reputation for shaping only the best and brightest young women.

Unfortunately, there is also the screaming.

When a student begins to scream in the middle of class, a chain reaction starts that impacts the entire school. By the end of the day, seventeen girls are affected - along with St Bernadette's stellar reputation.

Khadijah's got her own scars to tend to, and watching her friends succumb to hysteria only rips apart wounds she'd rather keep closed. But when her sister falls to the screams, Khad knows she's the only one who can save her.

Rachel has always been far too occupied trying to reconcile her overbearing mother's expectations with her own secret ambitions to pay attention to school antics. But just as Rachel finds her voice, it turns into screams.

Together, the two girls find themselves digging deeper into the school's dark history, hunting for the truth. Little do they know that a specter lurks in the darkness, watching, waiting, and hungry for its next victim...

Crow Shine

Alan Baxter

The dark fantasy collection features 19 stories, including the Australian Shadows Award-winning "Shadows of the Lonely Dead"; and original title story "Crow Shine" in addition to two other never before published stories. A sweeping collection of horror and dark fantasy stories, packed with misfits and devils, repentant fathers and clockwork miracles.

Devouring Dark

Alan Baxter

Matt McLeod is a man plagued since childhood by a malevolent darkness that threatens to consume him. Following a lifetime spent wrestling for control over this lethal onslaught, he's learned to wield his mysterious paranormal skill to achieve an odious goal: retribution as a supernatural vigilante.

When one such hit goes bad, McLeod finds himself ensnared in a multi-tentacled criminal enterprise caught between a corrupt cop and a brutal mobster. His only promise of salvation may be a bewitching young woman who shares his dark talent but has murderous designs of her own.

Devouring Dark is a genre-smashing supernatural thriller that masterfully blends elements of crime and horror in an adrenaline-fueled, life-or-death rollercoaster ride that's emblematic of the fiction from award-winning author Alan Baxter.

Hidden City

Alan Baxter

When the city is sick, everyone suffers.

Steven Hines listened to the city and the city spoke. Cleveport told him she was sick. With his unnatural connection to her, that meant Hines was sick too. But when his friend, Detective Abby Jones, comes to him for help investigating a series of deaths with no discernible cause, Hines can't say no. Then strange fungal growths begin to appear in the streets, affecting anyone who gets too close, turning them into violent lunatics.

As the mayhem escalates and officials start to seal Cleveport off from the rest of the world, Hines knows the trouble has only just begun.

Broken Monsters

Lauren Beukes

A criminal mastermind creates violent tableaus in abandoned Detroit warehouses in Lauren Beukes's new genre-bending novel of suspense.

Detective Gabriella Versado has seen a lot of bodies. But this one is unique even by Detroit's standards: half boy, half deer, somehow fused together. As stranger and more disturbing bodies are discovered, how can the city hold on to a reality that is already tearing at its seams?

If you're Detective Versado's geeky teenage daughter, Layla, you commence a dangerous flirtation with a potential predator online. If you're desperate freelance journalist Jonno, you do whatever it takes to get the exclusive on a horrific story. If you're Thomas Keen, known on the street as TK, you'll do what you can to keep your homeless family safe – and find the monster who is possessed by the dream of violently remaking the world.

If Lauren Beukes's internationally bestselling The Shining Girls was a time-jumping thrill ride through the past, her Broken Monsters is a genre-redefining thriller about broken cities, broken dreams, and broken people trying to put themselves back together again.

That Book Your Mad Ancestor Wrote

K. J. Bishop

Duellists in a decadent urban dream. Lost creatures in a bizarre post-apocalypse. Fables lingering into almost-modern worlds. From hallucinatory surrealism to human dramas at the fuzzy edges of reality, these stories and poems by the author of The Etched City are by turns exuberant, poignant, darkly funny and delightfully deranged, all showcasing the inventive magic of an acclaimed literary fantasist. Includes Aurealis Award winner The Heart of a Mouse and two stories in the world of The Etched City, one previously unpublished.

The Etched City

K. J. Bishop

Gwynn and Raule are rebels on the run, with little in common except being on the losing side of a hard-fought war. Gwynn is a gunslinger from the north, a loner, a survivor... a killer. Raule is a wandering surgeon, a healer who still believes in just - and lost - causes. Bound by a desire to escape the ghosts of the past, together they flee to the teeming city of Ashamoil, where Raule plies her trade among the desperate and destitute, and Gwynn becomes bodyguard and assassin for the household of a corrupt magnate. There, in the saving and taking of lives, they find themselves immersed in a world where art infects life, dream and waking fuse, and splendid and frightening miracles begin to bloom...

From the Dust Returned

Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury, America's most beloved storyteller, has spent a lifetime carrying readers to exhilarating and dangerous places, from dark street comers in unfamiliar cities and towns to the edge of the universe. Now, in an extraordinary flight of the imagination a half-century in the making, he takes us to a most wondrous destination: into the heart of an Eternal Family.

They have lived for centuries in a house of legend and mystery in upper Illinois -- and they are not like other midwesterners. Rarely encountered in daylight hours, their children are curious and wild; their old ones have survived since before the Sphinx first sank its paws deep in Egyptian sands. And some sleep in beds with lids.

Now the house is being readied in anticipation of the gala homecoming that will gather together the farflung branches of this odd and remarkable family. In the past-midnight stillness can be detected the soft fluttering of Uncle Einars wings. From her realm of sleep, Cecy, the fairest and most special daughter, can feel the approach of many a welcome being -- shapeshifter, telepath, somnambulist, vampire -- as she flies high in the consciousness of bird and bat.

But in the midst of eager anticipation, a sense of doom pervades. For the world is changing. And death, no stranger, will always shadow this most singular family: Father, arisen from the Earth; Mother, who never sleeps but dreams; A Thousand Times Great Grandmre; Grandfather, who keeps the wildness of youth between his ears.

And the boy who, more than anyone, carries the burden of time on his shoulders: Timothy, the sad and different foundling son who must share it all, remember, and tell...and who, alone out of all of them, must one day age and wither and die.

By turns lyrical, wistful, poignant, and chilling, From the Dust Returned is the long-awaited new novel by the peerless Ray Bradbury -- a book that will surely be numbered among his most enduring masterworks.

Quicker Than the Eye

Ray Bradbury

The internationally acclaimed author of The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, and Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury is a magician at the height of his powers, displaying his sorcerer's skill with twenty-one remarkable stories that run the gamut from total reality to light fantastic, from high noon to long after midnight. A true master tells all, revealing the strange secret of growing young and mad; opening a Witch Door that links two intolerant centuries; joining an ancient couple in their wild assassination games; celebrating life and dreams in the unique voice that has favored him across six decades and has enchanted millions of readers the world over.

The October Country

Ray Bradbury

Welcome to a land Ray Bradbury calls "the Undiscovered Country" of his imagination--that vast territory of ideas, concepts, notions and conceits where the stories you now hold were born. America's premier living author of short fiction, Bradbury has spent many lifetimes in this remarkable place--strolling through empty, shadow-washed fields at midnight; exploring long-forgotten rooms gathering dust behind doors bolted years ago to keep strangers locked out.. and secrets locked in. The nights are longer in this country. The cold hours of darkness move like autumn mists deeper and deeper toward winter. But the moonlight reveals great magic here--and a breathtaking vista.

The October Country is many places: a picturesque Mexican village where death is a tourist attraction; a city beneath the city where drowned lovers are silently reunited; a carnival midway where a tiny man's most cherished fantasy can be fulfilled night after night. The October Country's inhabitants live, dream, work, die--and sometimes live again--discovering, often too late, the high price of citizenship. Here a glass jar can hold memories and nightmares; a woman's newborn child can plot murder; and a man's skeleton can war against him. Here there is no escaping the dark stranger who lives upstairs...or the reaper who wields the world. Each of these stories is a wonder, imagined by an acclaimed tale-teller writing from a place shadows. But there is astonishing beauty in these shadows, born from a prose that enchants and enthralls. Ray Bradbury's The October Country is a land of metaphors that can chill like a long-after-midnight wind...as they lift the reader high above a sleeping Earth on the strange wings of Uncle Einar.

Table of Contents:

  • The Crowd - (1943) - short story
  • The Emissary - (1947) - short story
  • Jack-in-the-Box - (1947) - short story
  • The Jar - (1944) - short story
  • The Lake - (1944) - short story
  • The Man Upstairs - (1947) - short story
  • The Scythe - (1943) - short story
  • Skeleton - (1945) - short story
  • The Small Assassin - (1946) - short story
  • There Was an Old Woman - (1944) - short story
  • Uncle Einar - [The Elliott Family] - (1947) - short story
  • The Dwarf - (1954) - short story
  • The Next in Line - (1947) - novelette
  • The Watchful Poker Chip of H. Matisse - (1954) - short story
  • The Wind - (1943) - short story
  • The Cistern - (1947) - short story
  • Homecoming - [The Elliott Family] - (1947) - short story (variant of The Homecoming 1946)
  • The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone - (1954) - short story
  • Touched with Fire - (1954) - short story

The Brief History of the Dead

Kevin Brockmeier

Award-winning author Kevin Brockmeier delivers a spellbinding, supernatural tale of love, memories, and human connection. All residents of the City have recently died, and they will remain in the City only as long as someone still living on Earth remembers them. On Earth, however, the population has been devastated by a terrible pandemic. Laura Byrd, isolated at an Antarctic research station, may be the only person to have survived the pandemic. But she's running out of time and supplies, and her memories are fading.

Slewfoot: A Tale of Bewitchery

Brom

Connecticut, 1666: An ancient spirit awakens in a dark wood. The wildfolk call him Father, slayer, protector.

The colonists call him Slewfoot, demon, devil.

To Abitha, a recently widowed outcast, alone and vulnerable in her pious village, he is the only one she can turn to for help.

Together, they ignite a battle between pagan and Puritan -- one that threatens to destroy the entire village, leaving nothing but ashes and bloodshed in their wake.

The Deep Sea Diver's Syndrome

Serge Brussolo

In The Deep Sea Diver's Syndrome, lucid dreamers called mediums dive into their dreams to retrieve ectoplasms--sticky blobs with curiously soothing properties that are the only form of art in the world. The more elaborate the dream, the better the ectoplasm.

David Sarella is a medium whose dream identity is a professional thief. With his beautiful accomplice Nadia, he breaks into jewelry stores and museums, lifts precious diamonds, and when he wakes, the loot turns into ectoplasms to be sold and displayed.

Only the dives require an extraordinary amount of physical effort, and as David ages, they become more difficult. His dream world -- or is it the real world? -- grows unstable. Any dive could be his last, forever tearing him away from Nadia and their high-octane, Bond-like adventures.

David decides to go down one final time, in the deepest, most extravagant dive ever attempted. But midway through, he begins to lose control, and the figures in the massive painting he's trying to steal suddenly come to life... and start shooting.

Agyar

Steven Brust

Born over a century ago, Agyar was once a frivolous young man, before he found unwanted immortality in a woman's blood-red lips. Now he goes from woman to woman, and decade to decade, finding himself at last in an Midwestern college town, where he must choose between the seductions of salvation-and of destruction.

To Reign in Hell

Steven Brust

This is a story of Creation. There is a substance of raw chaos: cacoastrum; and stuff of order: illiaster. From the illiaster came consciousness that resulted in the firstborn angels: Yaweh, Satan, Michael, Lucifer, Raphael, Leviathan and Belial. The firstborn create Heaven in order to protect themselves from the cacoastrum, which threatens to destroy them. This event is later referred to as the 'First Wave.' The walls of heaven have collapsed two times since then, resulting in the Second and Third Waves, creating, respectively, the archangels and angels.

Trouble arises when Yaweh, worried about the imminent Fourth Wave, devises The Plan: the blueprint for a new, larger Heaven (Earth), with walls that the cacoastrum cannot destroy. Unfortunately, at least a thousand angels will die during the construction of his new Paradise. Yaweh charges Satan with securing the cooperation of every angel in Heaven, and Satan finds himself wondering if they have the ethical right to coerce anyone into participating.

In this novel, Brust has created an epic, imaginative retelling of Milton's Paradise Lost.

The Lesser Dead

Christopher Buehlman

The secret is, vampires are real and I am one.

The secret is, I'm stealing from you what is most truly yours and I'm not sorry...

New York City in 1978 is a dirty, dangerous place to live. And die. Joey Peacock knows this as well as anybody—he has spent the last forty years as an adolescent vampire, perfecting the routine he now enjoys: womanizing in punk clubs and discotheques, feeding by night, and sleeping by day with others of his kind in the macabre labyrinth under the city's sidewalks.

The subways are his playground and his highway, shuttling him throughout Manhattan to bleed the unsuspecting in the Sheep Meadow of Central Park or in the backseats of Checker cabs, or even those in their own apartments who are too hypnotized by sitcoms to notice him opening their windows. It's almost too easy.

Until one night he sees them hunting on his beloved subway. The children with the merry eyes. Vampires, like him... or not like him. Whatever they are, whatever their appearance means, the undead in the tunnels of Manhattan are not as safe as they once were.

And neither are the rest of us.

Naked Lunch

William S. Burroughs

Naked Lunch is one of the most important novels of the twentieth century, a book that redefined not just literature but American culture. An unnerving tale of a narcotics addict unmoored in New York, Tangiers, and ultimately a nightmarish wasteland known as interzone, its formal innovation, formerly taboo subject matter, and tour de force execution have exerted their influence on the work of authors like Thomas Pynchon, J. G. Ballard, and William Gibson; on the relationship of art and obscenity; and on the shape of music, film and media generally. Naked Lunch: The Restored Text includes many editorial corrections on the text, several essays he wrote over the years about the book, and an appendix of 20 percent new material and alternate drafts from the original manuscript, which predates the first published version. For the Burroughs enthusiast and the neophyte, this volume is a valuable and fresh experience of this classic of our culture.

The Hearing Trumpet

Leonora Carrington

Leonora Carrington (1917-2011), the distinguished British-born Surrealist painter who made her home in Mexico City, was also a writer of extraordinary imagination and charm, and The Hearing Trumpet is perhaps her best loved book. It tells the story of 92-year-old Marian Leatherby, who is given the gift of a hearing trumpet only to discover that her family has been plotting to have her committed to an institution. But this is an institution where the buildings are shaped like birthday cakes and igloos, where the Winking Abbess and the Queen Bee reign, and where the gateway to the underworld is wide open. It is also the scene of a mysterious murder. Occult twin to Alice in Wonderland, The Hearing Trumpet is a classic of fantastic literature that has been translated and celebrated throughout the world.

The Land of Laughs

Jonathan Carroll

Have you ever loved a magical book above all others? Have you ever wished the magic were real? Welcome to The Land of Laughs. A novel about how terrifying that would be.

Schoolteacher Thomas Abbey, unsure son of a film star, doesn't know who he is or what he wants--in life, in love, or in his relationship with the strange and intense Saxony Gardner. What he knows is that in his whole life nothing has touched him so deeply as the novels of Marshall France, a reclusive author of fabulous children's tales who died at forty-four.

Now Thomas and Saxony have come to France's hometown, the dreamy Midwestern town of Galen, Missouri, to write France's biography. Warned in advance that France's family may oppose them, they're surprised to find France's daughter warmly welcoming instead. But slowly they begin to see that something fantastic and horrible is happening. The magic of Marshall France has extended far beyond the printed page... leaving them with a terrifying task to undertake.

Voice of Our Shadow

Jonathan Carroll

For Joe Lennox, successful young writer, Vienna provides a refuge from the tragedy of his brother's death, until he starts up a friendship with the eccentric India Tate and her magician husband Paul. Gradually Joe falls in love with India, but Paul finds out - before he suddenly drops dread. And now Joe has two deaths on his conscience and another voice calling from beyond the grave...

The Queen of the Cicadas

V. Castro

2018 - Belinda Alvarez has returned to Texas for the wedding of her best friend Veronica. The farm is the site of the urban legend, La Reina de Las Chicharras - The Queen of The Cicadas.

In 1950s south Texas a farmworke r- Milagros from San Luis Potosi, Mexico, is murdered. Her death is ignored by the town, but not the Aztec goddess of death, Mictecacíhuatl. The goddess hears the dying cries of Milagros and creates a plan for both to be physically reborn by feeding on vengeance and worship.

Belinda and the new owner of the farmhouse - Hector, find themselves immersed in the legend and realize it is part of their fate as well.

The Last Tale of the Flower Bride

Roshani Chokshi

Once upon a time, a man who believed in fairy tales married a beautiful, mysterious woman named Indigo Maxwell-Casteñada. He was a scholar of myths. She was heiress to a fortune. They exchanged gifts and stories and believed they would live happily ever after--and in exchange for her love, Indigo extracted a promise: that her bridegroom would never pry into her past.

But when Indigo learns that her estranged aunt is dying and the couple is forced to return to her childhood home, the House of Dreams, the bridegroom will soon find himself unable to resist. For within the crumbling manor's extravagant rooms and musty halls, there lurks the shadow of another girl: Azure, Indigo's dearest childhood friend who suddenly disappeared. As the house slowly reveals his wife's secrets, the bridegroom will be forced to choose between reality and fantasy, even if doing so threatens to destroy their marriage... or their lives.

Ring Shout

P. Djèlí Clark

In America, demons wear white hoods.

In 1915, The Birth of a Nation cast a spell across America, swelling the Klan's ranks and drinking deep from the darkest thoughts of white folk. All across the nation they ride, spreading fear and violence among the vulnerable. They plan to bring Hell to Earth. But even Ku Kluxes can die.

Standing in their way is Maryse Boudreaux and her fellow resistance fighters, a foul-mouthed sharpshooter and a Harlem Hellfighter. Armed with blade, bullet, and bomb, they hunt their hunters and send the Klan's demons straight to Hell. But something awful's brewing in Macon, and the war on Hell is about to heat up.

Can Maryse stop the Klan before it ends the world?

Case of the Bedevilled Poet: A Sherlock Holmes Enigma

Simon Clark

After narrowly escaping a bomb blast during the Blitz, poet Jack Crofton is threatened with death and worse by a mysterious soldier. Fleeing through the war-torn streets of London, he seeks sanctuary in a pub and falls into company with two elderly gentlemen who claim to be Holmes and Watson, the real life detectives who inspired Conan Doyle's famous fictions. Unconvinced but desperate, Jack shares his story, and Holmes agrees to take his case...

Simon Clark is the author of several acclaimed novels including The Night of the Triffids--the official sequel to John Wyndham's classic The Day of the Triffids--and is widely acknowledged as one of the most original voices in modern dark fiction and horror.

Desdemona and the Deep

C.S.E. Cooney

In Desdemona and the Deep, the spoiled daughter of a rich mining family must retrieve the tithe of men her father promised to the world below. On the surface, her world is rife with industrial pollution that ruins the health of poor factory workers while the idle rich indulge themselves in unheard-of luxury. Below are goblins, mysterious kingdoms, and an entirely different hierarchy.

This is a novella of approximately 42,000 words.

The Devourers

Indra Das

For readers of Neil Gaiman, Margaret Atwood, China Miéville, and David Mitchell comes a striking debut novel by a storyteller of keen insight and captivating imagination.

On a cool evening in Kolkata, India, beneath a full moon, as the whirling rhythms of traveling musicians fill the night, college professor Alok encounters a mysterious stranger with a bizarre confession and an extraordinary story. Tantalized by the man's unfinished tale, Alok will do anything to hear its completion. So Alok agrees, at the stranger's behest, to transcribe a collection of battered notebooks, weathered parchments, and once-living skins.

From these documents spills the chronicle of a race of people at once more than human yet kin to beasts, ruled by instincts and desires blood-deep and ages-old. The tale features a rough wanderer in seventeenth-century Mughal India who finds himself irrevocably drawn to a defiant woman--and destined to be torn asunder by two clashing worlds. With every passing chapter of beauty and brutality, Alok's interest in the stranger grows and evolves into something darker and more urgent.

Shifting dreamlike between present and past withintoxicating language, visceral action, compelling characters, and stark emotion, The Devourers offers a reading experience quite unlike any other novel.

The Book Eaters

Sunyi Dean

Out on the Yorkshire Moors lives a secret line of people for whom books are food, and who retain all of a book's content after eating it. To them, spy novels are a peppery snack; romance novels are sweet and delicious. Eating a map can help them remember destinations, and children, when they misbehave, are forced to eat dry, musty pages from dictionaries.

Devon is part of The Family, an old and reclusive clan of book eaters. Her brothers grow up feasting on stories of valor and adventure, and Devon--like all other book eater women--is raised on a carefully curated diet of fairy tales and cautionary stories.

But real life doesn't always come with happy endings, as Devon learns when her son is born with a rare and darker kind of hunger--not for books, but for human minds.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Junot Diaz

Oscar is a sweet but disastrously overweight ghetto nerd who--from the New Jersey home he shares with his old world mother and rebellious sister--dreams of becoming the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien and, most of all, finding love. But Oscar may never get what he wants. Blame the fukú--a curse that has haunted Oscar's family for generations, following them on their epic journey from Santo Domingo to the USA. Encapsulating Dominican-American history, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao opens our eyes to an astonishing vision of the contemporary American experience and explores the endless human capacity to persevere--and risk it all--in the name of love.

Please Undo This Hurt

Seth Dickinson

Ever feel like you care too much? After a breakup, after the funeral... it feels like the way to win at life is to care the least.

That's not an option for Dominga, an EMT who cares too much, or her drinking buddy Nico, who just lost his poor cat. Life hurts. They drink. They talk:

Nico's tired of hurting people. He wants out. Not suicide, not that - he'd just hurt everyone who loves him. But what if he could erase his whole life? Undo the fact of his birth? Wouldn't Dominga be having a better night, right now, if she didn't have to take care of him?

And when Dominga finds a way to do just that, when she is gifted or armed with a terrible cosmic mercy, she still cares enough to say:

I am not letting him have this. I am not letting Nico go without a fight.

This short story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2016, edited by Rich Horton, and Worlds Seen in Passing: Ten Years of Tor.com Short Fiction (2018), edited by Irene Gallo.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

Empire of Wild

Cherie Dimaline

Joan has been searching for her missing husband, Victor, for nearly a year--ever since that terrible night they'd had their first serious argument hours before he mysteriously vanished. Her Métis family has lived in their tightly knit rural community for generations, but no one keeps the old ways... until they have to. That moment has arrived for Joan.

One morning, grieving and severely hungover, Joan hears a shocking sound coming from inside a revival tent in a gritty Walmart parking lot. It is the unmistakable voice of Victor. Drawn inside, she sees him. He has the same face, the same eyes, the same hands, though his hair is much shorter and he's wearing a suit. But he doesn't seem to recognize Joan at all. He insists his name is Eugene Wolff, and that he is a reverend whose mission is to spread the word of Jesus and grow His flock. Yet Joan suspects there is something dark and terrifying within this charismatic preacher who professes to be a man of God... something old and very dangerous.

Joan turns to Ajean, an elderly foul-mouthed card shark who is one of the few among her community steeped in the traditions of her people and knowledgeable about their ancient enemies. With the help of the old Métis and her peculiar Johnny-Cash-loving, twelve-year-old nephew Zeus, Joan must find a way to uncover the truth and remind Reverend Wolff who he really is... if he really is. Her life, and those of everyone she loves, depends upon it.

Dreams of Shreds and Tatters

Amanda Downum

When Liz Drake's best friend vanishes, nothing can stop her nightmares. Driven by the certainty he needs her help, she crosses a continent to search for him. She finds Blake comatose in a Vancouver hospital, victim of a mysterious accident that claimed his lover's life - in her dreams he drowns.

Blake's new circle of artists and mystics draws her in, but all of them are lying or keeping dangerous secrets. Soon nightmare creatures stalk the waking city, and Liz can't fight a dream from the daylight world: to rescue Blake she must brave the darkest depths of the Dreamlands.

Even the attempt could kill her, or leave her mind trapped or broken. And if she succeeds, she must face the monstrous Yellow King, whose slave Blake is on the verge of becoming forever.

The Prey of Gods

Nicky Drayden

A new voice in the tradition of Lauren Beukes, Ian McDonald, and Nnedi Okorafor comes The Prey of Gods, a fantastic, boundary-challenging tale, set in a South African locale both familiar and yet utterly new, which braids elements of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and dark humor.

In South Africa, the future looks promising. Personal robots are making life easier for the working class. The government is harnessing renewable energy to provide infrastructure for the poor. And in the bustling coastal town of Port Elizabeth, the economy is booming thanks to the genetic engineering industry which has found a welcome home there. Yes--the days to come are looking very good for South Africans. That is, if they can survive the present challenges:

A new hallucinogenic drug sweeping the country...

An emerging AI uprising...

And an ancient demigoddess hellbent on regaining her former status by preying on the blood and sweat (but mostly blood) of every human she encounters.

It's up to a young Zulu girl powerful enough to destroy her entire township, a queer teen plagued with the ability to control minds, a pop diva with serious daddy issues, and a politician with even more serious mommy issues to band together to ensure there's a future left to worry about.

Fun and fantastic, Nicky Drayden takes her brilliance as a short story writer and weaves together an elaborate tale that will capture your heart... even as one particular demigoddess threatens to rip it out.

Deathbird Stories: A Pantheon of Modern Gods

Harlan Ellison

Harlan Ellison's masterwork of myth and terror as he seduces all innocence on a mind-freezing odyssey into the darkest reaches of mortal terror and the most dazzling heights of Olympian hell in his finest collection.

Deathbird Stories is a collection of 19 of Harlan Ellison's best stories, including Edgar and Hugo winners, originally published between 1960 and 1974. The collection contains some of Ellison's best stories from earlier collections and is judged by some to be his most consistently high quality collection of short fiction.

The theme of the collection can be loosely defined as God, or Gods. Sometimes they're dead or dying, some of them are as brand-new as today's technology. Unlike some of Ellison's collections, the introductory notes to each story can be as short as a phrase and rarely run more than a sentence or two. One story took a Locus Poll Award, the two final ones both garnered Hugo Awards and Locus Poll awards, and the final one also received a Jupiter Award from the Instructors of Science Fiction in Higher Education (discontinued in 1979).

When the collection was published in Britain, it won the 1979 British Science Fiction Award for Short Fiction. His stories will rivet you to the floor and change your heartbeat... as unforgettable a chamber of horror, fantasy and reality as you'll ever experience. -Gallery

"Brutally and flamboyantly shocking, frequently brilliant, and always irresistibly mesmerizing." -Richmond Times-Dispatch

Table of Contents:

A Natural History of Hell

Jeffrey Ford

World Fantasy Award-winning Collection

Emily Dickinson takes a carriage ride with Death. A couple are invited over to a neighbor's daughter's exorcism. A country witch with a sea-captain's head in a glass globe intercedes on behalf of abused and abandoned children. In July of 1915, in Hardin County, Ohio, a boy sees ghosts. Explore contemporary natural history in a baker's dozen of exhilarating visions.

Table of Contents:

  • The Blameless
  • Word Doll
  • The Angel Seems
  • Mount Chary Galore
  • A Natural History of Autumn
  • The Fairy Enterprise
  • The Thyme Fiend
  • The Last Triangle
  • Hibbler's Minions
  • Rocket Ship to Hell
  • The Prelate's Commission
  • A Terror
  • Blood Drive

Out of Body

Jeffrey Ford

A small-town librarian witnesses a murder at his local deli, and what had been routine sleep paralysis begins to transform into something far more disturbing. The trauma of holding a dying girl in his arms drives him out of his own body. The town he knows so well is suddenly revealed to him from a whole new perspective. Secrets are everywhere and demons fester behind closed doors.

Worst of all, he discovers a serial killer who has been preying on the area for over a century, one capable of traveling with him through his dreams.

Coraline

Neil Gaiman

Hugo-, Nebula-, BSFA-, Stoker, and Locus-winning, and Mythopoeic-, World-Fantasy-, and IHG-nominated Novella

When Coraline explores her new home, she steps through a door and into another house just like her own... except that it's different. It's a marvelous adventure until Coraline discovers that there's also another mother and another father in the house. They want Coraline to stay with them and be their little girl. They want to keep her forever!

Coraline must use all of her wits and every ounce of courage in order to save herself and return home.

Hear this novella read on a podcast from Harper Teen.

Good Omens

Neil Gaiman
Terry Pratchett

There is a distinct hint of Armageddon in the air. According to The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (recorded, thankfully, in 1655, before she blew up her entire village and all its inhabitants, who had gathered to watch her burn), the world will end on a Saturday. Next Saturday, in fact. So the armies of Good and Evil are amassing, the Four Bikers of the Apocalypse are revving up their mighty hogs and hitting the road, and the world's last two remaining witch-finders are getting ready to fight the good fight, armed with awkwardly antiquated instructions and stick pins. Atlantis is rising, frogs are falling, tempers are flaring.... Right. Everything appears to be going according to Divine Plan.

Except that a somewhat fussy angel and a fast-living demon -- each of whom has lived among Earth's mortals for many millennia and has grown rather fond of the lifestyle -- are not particularly looking forward to the coming Rapture. If Crowley and Aziraphale are going to stop it from happening, they've got to find and kill the Antichrist (which is a shame, as he's a really nice kid). There's just one glitch: someone seems to have misplaced him....

Neverwhere

Neil Gaiman

Richard Mayhew is a young man with a good heart and an ordinary life, which is changed forever when he stops to help a girl he finds bleeding on a London sidewalk. His small act of kindness propels him into a world he never dreamed existed. There are people who fall through the cracks, and Richard has become one of them. And he must learn to survive in this city of shadows and darkness, monsters and saints, murderers and angels, if he is ever to return to the London that he knew.

The Graveyard Book

Neil Gaiman

Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a normal boy.

He would be completely normal if he didn't live in a sprawling graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor of the dead.

There are dangers and adventures in the graveyard for a boy-an ancient Indigo Man beneath the hill, a gateway to a desert leading to an abandoned city of ghouls, the strange and terrible menace of the Sleer.

But if Bod leaves the graveyard, then he will come under attack from the man Jack-who has already killed Bod's family...

The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains: A Tale of Travel and Darkness with Pictures of All

Neil Gaiman

You ask me if I can forgive myself? I can forgive myself for many things. For where I left him. For what I did.

The text of The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains was first published in the collection anthology Stories: All New Tales edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio (2010). This gorgeous full-color illustrated book version was born of a unique collaboration between writer Neil Gaiman and artist Eddie Campbell, who brought to vivid life the characters and landscape of Gaiman's story.

Castle of the Cursed

Romina Garber

THE HOUSE IS ALWAYS HUNGRY...

After a mysterious attack claims the lives of her parents, all Estela has left is her determination to solve the case. Suffering from survivor's guilt so intense that she might be losing her grip on reality, she accepts an invitation to live overseas with an estranged aunt at their ancestral Spanish castle, la Sombra.

Beneath its gothic façade, la Sombra harbors a trove of family secrets, and Estela begins to suspect her parents' deaths may be linked to their past. Her investigation takes a supernatural turn when she crosses paths with a silver-eyed boy only she can see. Estela worries Sebastián is a hallucination, but he claims he's been trapped in the castle. They grudgingly team up to find answers and as their investigation ignites, so does a romance, mistrust twined with every caress.

As the mysteries pile up, it feels to Estela like everyone in the tiny town of Oscuro is lying and that whoever was behind the attack has followed her to Spain. The deeper she ventures into la Sombra's secrets, the more certain she becomes that the suspect she's chasing has already found her... and they're closer than she ever realized.

A Spectral Hue

Craig Laurance Gidney

For generations, the marsh-surrounded town of Shimmer, Maryland has played host to a loose movement of African-American artists, all working in different media, but all utilizing the same haunting color. Landscape paintings, trompe l'oeil quilts, decorated dolls, mixed-media assemblages, and more, all featuring the same peculiar hue, a shifting pigment somewhere between purple and pink, the color of the saltmarsh orchid, a rare and indigenous flower.

Graduate student Xavier Wentworth has been drawn to Shimmer, hoping to study the work of artists like quilter Hazel Whitby and landscape painter Shadrach Grayson in detail, having experienced something akin to an epiphany when viewing a Hazel Whitby tapestry as a child. Xavier will find that others, too, have been drawn to Shimmer, called by something more than art, something in the marsh itself, a mysterious, spectral hue.

A Girl's Guide to Guns and Monsters

Martin H. Greenberg
Kerrie L. Hughes

Thirteen urban and paranormal tales of strong women, armed with weapons they are not afraid to use, as well as fists and feet of fury, who face monsters and bad guys-and are not above rescuing men in the process.

Table of Contents:

  • 1 - Introduction (A Girl's Guide to Guns and Monsters) - essay by Kerrie Hughes
  • 3 - The Drifter - short story by Jane Lindskold
  • 36 - Our Lady of the Vampires - short story by Nancy Holder
  • 56 - Best Friends - short story by Lilith Saintcrow
  • 81 - Elizabeth and Anna's Big Adventure - short story by Jeanne C. Stein
  • 92 - Lupercalia - short story by Anton Strout
  • 114 - Murder, She Workshopped - short story by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
  • 138 - Heart of Ash - [Magic Ex Libris] - short story by Jim C. Hines
  • 154 - Jiang Shi - short story by Elizabeth Vaughan
  • 178 - No Matter Where You Go - [Victory Nelson, Investigator] - short story by Tanya Huff
  • 206 - Signed in Blood - short story by Irene Radford
  • 226 - Broch de Shlang - short story by Mickey Zucker Reichert
  • 252 - The Wooly Mountains - short story by Alexander Potter
  • 282 - Invasive Species - short story by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
  • 300 - About the Authors (A Girl's Guide to Guns and Monsters)
  • 305 - About the Editors (A Girl's Guide to Guns and Monsters)

The Affair of the Mysterious Letter

Alexis Hall

Upon returning to the city of Khelathra-Ven after five years fighting a war in another universe, Captain John Wyndham finds himself looking for somewhere to live, and expediency forces him to take lodgings at 221b Martyrs Walk. His new housemate is Ms. Shaharazad Haas, a consulting sorceress of mercurial temperament and dark reputation.

When Ms. Haas is enlisted to solve a case of blackmail against one of her former lovers, Miss Eirene Viola, Captain Wyndham is drawn into a mystery that leads him from the salons of the literary set to the drowned back-alleys of Ven and even to a prison cell in lost Carcosa. Along the way he is beset by criminals, menaced by pirates, molested by vampires, almost devoured by mad gods, and called upon to punch a shark.

But the further the companions go in pursuit of the elusive blackmailer, the more impossible the case appears. Then again, in Khelathra-Ven reality is flexible, and the impossible is Ms. Haas' stock-in-trade.

Bride of the Rat God

Barbara Hambly

After donning a cursed necklace for the cameras, a silent screen starlet and her entourage are terrorized by an ancient demon

It is 1923, and silent film reigns in Hollywood. Of all the starlets, none is more beloved than Chrysanda Flamande, a diva as brilliant as she is difficult to manage. Handling her falls to Norah, widow of Chrysanda's dead brother. She has always done her job well, but she was never equipped to deal with murder.

When a violent killing shocks Chrysanda's entourage, and other weird happenings swiftly follow, Norah begins to suspect that some strange power is stalking the star. In Chinatown she receives warning that a curse has been placed on the actress as vengeance for wearing a sacred amulet in one of her films--and this curse could mean death for all who surround her.

Waking the Moon

Elizabeth Hand

Beginning her first year at the University of the Archangels, Katherine Sweeney Cassidy accidentally discovers the existence of the Benandanti, a clandestine order that has been secretly manipulating the world's governments and institutions.

Wylding Hall

Elizabeth Hand

When the young members of a British acid-folk band are compelled by their manager to record their unique music, they hole up at Wylding Hall, an ancient country house with dark secrets. There they create the album that will make their reputation, but at a terrifying cost: Julian Blake, the group's lead singer, disappears within the mansion and is never seen or heard from again.

Now, years later, the surviving musicians, along with their friends and lovers – including a psychic, a photographer, and the band's manager – meet with a young documentary filmmaker to tell their own versions of what happened that summer. But whose story is true? And what really happened to Julian Blake?

This is a short novel of approximately 43,500 words.

A Face Like Glass

Frances Hardinge

In the underground city of Caverna the world's most skilled craftsmen toil in the darkness to create delicacies beyond compare - wines that can remove memories, cheeses that can make you hallucinate and perfumes that convince you to trust the wearer, even as they slit your throat. The people of Caverna are more ordinary, but for one thing: their faces are as blank as untouched snow. Expressions must be learned, and only the famous Facesmiths can teach a person to show (or fake) joy, despair or fear - at a price. Into this dark and distrustful world comes Neverfell, a little girl with no memory of her past and a face so terrifying to those around her that she must wear a mask at all times. For Neverfell's emotions are as obvious on her face as those of the most skilled Facesmiths, though entirely genuine. And that makes her very dangerous indeed ...

The Lie Tree

Frances Hardinge

Read this thought-provoking, critically acclaimed novel from Frances Hardinge, winner of the Costa Book of the Year and Costa Children's Book Awards.

Faith Sunderly leads a double life. To most people, she is reliable, dull, trustworthy--a proper young lady who knows her place as inferior to men. But inside, Faith is full of questions and curiosity, and she cannot resist mysteries: an unattended envelope, an unlocked door. She knows secrets no one suspects her of knowing. She knows that her family moved to the close-knit island of Vane because her famous scientist father was fleeing a reputation-destroying scandal. And she knows, when her father is discovered dead shortly thereafter, that he was murdered.

In pursuit of justice and revenge, Faith hunts through her father's possessions and discovers a strange tree. The tree bears fruit only when she whispers a lie to it. The fruit of the tree, when eaten, delivers a hidden truth. The tree might hold the key to her father's murder--or it may lure the murderer directly to Faith herself. Frances Hardinge is the a

Unraveller

Frances Hardinge

A dark YA fantasy about learning to use your power and finding peace...

In a world where anyone can create a life-destroying curse, only one person has the power to unravel them.

Kellen does not fully understand his talent, but helps those transformed maliciously--including Nettle. Recovered from entrapment in bird form, she is now his constant companion and closest ally.

But Kellen has also been cursed, and unless he and Nettle can remove his curse, Kellen is in danger of unravelling everything--and everyone--around him...

The Library at Mount Char

Scott Hawkins

A missing God. A library with the secrets to the universe. A woman too busy to notice her heart slipping away.

Carolyn's not so different from the other people around her. She likes guacamole and cigarettes and steak. She knows how to use a phone. Clothes are a bit tricky, but everyone says nice things about her outfit with the Christmas sweater over the gold bicycle shorts.

After all, she was a normal American herself once.

That was a long time ago, of course. Before her parents died. Before she and the others were taken in by the man they called Father.

In the years since then, Carolyn hasn't had a chance to get out much. Instead, she and her adopted siblings have been raised according to Father's ancient customs. They've studied the books in his Library and learned some of the secrets of his power. And sometimes, they've wondered if their cruel tutor might secretly be God.

Now, Father is missing--perhaps even dead--and the Library that holds his secrets stands unguarded. And with it, control over all of creation.

As Carolyn gathers the tools she needs for the battle to come, fierce competitors for this prize align against her, all of them with powers that far exceed her own.

But Carolyn has accounted for this.

And Carolyn has a plan.

The only trouble is that in the war to make a new God, she's forgotten to protect the things that make her human.

Populated by an unforgettable cast of characters and propelled by a plot that will shock you again and again, The Library at Mount Char is at once horrifying and hilarious, mind-blowingly alien and heartbreakingly human, sweepingly visionary and nail-bitingly thrilling--and signals the arrival of a major new voice in fantasy.

The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag

Robert A. Heinlein

Jonathan Hoag has a curious problem. Every evening, he finds a mysterious reddish substance under his fingernails, with no memory what he was doing during the day to get it there. Jonathan hires the husband and wife detective team of Ted and Cynthia Randall to follow him during the day and find out. But Ted and Cynthia find themselves instantly out of their depth. Jonathan leaves no fingerprints. His few memories about his profession turn out to be false. Even stranger, Ted and Cynthia's own memories of what happens during their investigation do not match. There is a thirteenth floor to Jonathan's building that does not exist, there are mysterious and threatening beings living inside mirrors, and all of reality is not what they thought it was. Part supernatural thriller, part noir detective story, Heinlein's trip down the rabbit hole leads where you never expected.

Originally published in Unknown Worlds, October 1942, and later collected in The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag, The Fantasies of Robert A. Heinlein, and The Best of Robert Heinlein 1939-1959.

The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag (collection)

Robert A. Heinlein

Jonathon Hoag discovers a mysterious substance under his fingernails and can't remember what he does for a living or how he spends his days. He enlists private detectives Edward and Cynthia Randall to follow him and uncover his identity, entangling them in a web of intrigue and nightmarish encounters... causing all to question their own and each others' sanity.

This and five other classic Heinlein stories make up the eponymous collection.

(Note that this collection is the same as All You Zombies..., except for the addition of the titular story.)

Table of Contents:

  • The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag - (1942) - novella
  • The Man Who Traveled in Elephants - (1957) - short story
  • "--All You Zombies--" - (1961) - short story (variant of "All You Zombies..." 1959)
  • They - (1941) - short story
  • Our Fair City - (1949) - short story
  • "--And He Built a Crooked House--" - (1941) - novelette

The Year of the Witching

Alexis Henderson

A young woman living in a rigid, puritanical society discovers dark powers within herself in this stunning, feminist fantasy debut.

In the lands of Bethel, where the Prophet's word is law, Immanuelle Moore's very existence is blasphemy. Her mother's union with an outsider of a different race cast her once-proud family into disgrace, so Immanuelle does her best to worship the Father, follow Holy Protocol, and lead a life of submission, devotion, and absolute conformity, like all the other women in the settlement.

But a mishap lures her into the forbidden Darkwood surrounding Bethel, where the first prophet once chased and killed four powerful witches. Their spirits are still lurking there, and they bestow a gift on Immanuelle: the journal of her dead mother, who Immanuelle is shocked to learn once sought sanctuary in the wood.

Fascinated by the secrets in the diary, Immanuelle finds herself struggling to understand how her mother could have consorted with the witches. But when she begins to learn grim truths about the Church and its history, she realizes the true threat to Bethel is its own darkness. And she starts to understand that if Bethel is to change, it must begin with her.

The Inheritance and Other Stories

Robin Hobb
Megan Lindholm

Megan Lindholm (Wizard of the Pigeons) writes tightly constructed SF and fantasy with a distinctly contemporary feel. Robin Hobb (Assassin's Quest) writes sprawling, multi-volume fantasies set in imaginary realms. These two writers, apparently so different, are, of course, the same person, each reflecting an aspect of a single multifaceted imagination.

Inheritance gathers the best of Hobb and Lindholm's shorter fiction into one irreplaceable volume containing ten stories and novellas (seven by Lindholm, three by Hobb), together with a revealing introduction and extensive, highly readable story notes. The Lindholm section leads off with the Hugo and Nebula-nominated novella 'A Touch of Lavender,' a powerful account of love, music, poverty, and addiction set against an extended encounter between human and alien societies. Other memorable entries include 'Cut,' a reflection on the complex consequences of freedom, and the newly published 'Drum Machine,' an equally absorbing meditation on the chaotic nature of the creative impulse. Two of Robin Hobb's contributions revisit the world of her popular Live Traders series. 'Homecoming' enlarges the earlier history of those novels through the journal entries of Lady Carillion Carrock, while 'The Inheritance' concerns a disenfranchised young woman who comes to understand the true nature of her grandmother's legacy. And in 'Cat's Meat,' a long and wonderful story written expressly for this collection, an embattled single mother reclaims her life with the help of a gifted--and utterly ruthless--cat.

Inheritance offers the best of two separate but related fictional worlds. Whatever their differences, the Hobb and Lindholm stories have certain crucial elements in common: their intelligence, their attention to detail, and their instant, almost effortless accessibility. Together, these beautifully crafted tales constitute a unique and important collection that offers both offers both intellectual pleasure and pure narrative excitement on virtually every page.

Table of Contents:

  • A Touch of Lavender - (1989) - novella by Megan Lindholm
  • Silver Lady and the Fortyish Man - (1989) - novelette by Megan Lindholm
  • Cut - (2001) - shortstory by Megan Lindholm
  • The Fifth Squashed Cat - (1994) - novelette by Megan Lindholm
  • Strays - (1998) - novelette by Megan Lindholm
  • Finis - (2011) - shortstory by Megan Lindholm
  • Drum Machine - (2011) - shortstory by Megan Lindholm
  • Homecoming - (2003) - novella by Robin Hobb
  • The Inheritance - (2000) - novelette by Robin Hobb
  • Cat's Meat - (2011) - novella by Robin Hobb

Elephants and Corpses

Kameron Hurley

The corpse-jumping body mercenary Nev is used to filling other people's shoes. When his assistant Tera recognizes the most recent waterlogged cadaver they bought off the street, though, he finds that his new body is carrying more trouble than he bargained for.

This short story is included in the anthology Worlds Seen in Passing: Ten Years of Tor.com Short Fiction (2018), edited by Irene Gallo.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

Where the Trains Turn

Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen

World Fantasy-nominated Novella

I don't like to think about the past. But I cannot stop remembering my son.

Emma Nightingale prefers to remain grounded in reality as much as possible. Yet she's willing to indulge her nine year-old son Rupert's fascination with trains, as it brings him closer to his father, Gunnar, from whom she is separated. Once a month, Gunnar and Rupert venture out to follow the rails and watch the trains pass. Their trips have been pleasant, if uneventful, until one afternoon Rupert returns in tears. "The train tried to kill us," he tells her.

Rupert's terror strikes Emma as merely the product of an overactive imagination. After all, his fears could not be based in reality, could they?

Published here for the first time in English, "Where the Trains Turn" won first prize in the Finnish science-fiction magazine Portti's annual short story competition and then went on to win the Atorox Award for best Finnish science fiction or fantasy short story. Anthologized in Paula Guran's The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Novellas 2015.

Read this story online for free at Tor.com.

Day Boy

Trent Jamieson

Mark is a Day Boy.

In a post-traumatic future the Masters--formerly human, now practically immortal--rule a world that bends to their will and a human population upon which they feed. Invincible by night, all but helpless by day, each relies on his Day Boy to serve and protect him.

Mark has been lucky in his Master: Dain has treated him well. But as he grows to manhood and his time as a Day Boy draws to a close, there are choices to be made.

Will Mark undergo the Change and become, himself, a Master--or throw in his lot with his fellow humans? As the tensions in his conflicted world reach crisis point, Mark's decision may be crucial.

In Day Boy Trent Jamieson reimagines the elements of the vampire myth in a wholly original way. This is a beautifully written and surprisingly tender novel about fathers and sons, and what it may mean to become a man.

Or to remain one.

The Stone Road

Trent Jamieson

On the day Jean was born, the dead howled. A thin scratch of black smoke began to rise behind the hills west of town: Furnace had been lit, and soon its siren call began to draw the people of Casement Rise to it, never to return.

Casement Rise is a dusty town at the end of days, a harsh world of grit and arcane dangers. While Jean's stern, overprotective Nan has always kept Casement Rise safe from monsters, she may have waited too long to teach Jean how to face them on her own. On Jean's twelfth birthday, a mysterious graceful man appears, an ethereal and terrifying being tied to her family's secrets.

Now, Nan must rush Jean's education in monsters, magic, and the breaking of the world in ages past. If Jean is to combat the graceful man and finally understand the ancient evil that powers Furnace, she will have to embrace her legacy, endure her Nan's lessons, and learn all she can--before Furnace burns down her world and everyone in it.

Memoirs of a Master Forger

Graham Joyce

William is a dissolute book-forger. A talented writer in his own right he would rather scribble poems anonymously for an asian friend (who is becoming increasingly successful as a result), and create forgeries of Jane Austen first editions to sell to gullible collectors. He's not all bad. The money from the forgeries goes straight to a homeless hostel and William's crimes don't really hurt anyone.

And there are reasons William hasn't amounted to more. He did something he was ashamed of when he was a student, he drinks far too much and he can't commit to any relationships. Oh and he sees demons. Shadowy figures at the shoulder of everyone around him (except the woman who runs the hostel, she remains untouched), waiting for a moment's weakness. Or is it just that William can see the suffering of the world?

And then an extraordinary woman, who may just be able to save him from the world's suffering, walks into his life. This is William's own story. But who can believe a master forger?

Willian Heaney is a pseudonym for author Graham Joyce. Memoirs of a Master Forger was also published under Joyce's name as How to Make Friends with Demons.

The Tooth Fairy

Graham Joyce

Sam and his friends are like any normal gang of normal young boys. Roaming wild around the outskirts of their car-factory town. Daring adults to challenge their freedom.

Until the day Sam wakes to find the Tooth Fairy sitting on the edge of his bed. Not the benign figure of childhood myth, but an enigmatic presence that both torments and seduces him, changing his life forever.

The Metamorphosis

Franz Kafka

Waking after a night of troubled dreams, Gregor is surprised to find himself trapped in the body of a hideous man-sized bug. As he lies on his shell and gazes into space, his mother and father begin calling to him from outside his bedroom door. He must get out of bed, they tell him. He has to go to work. They need his money to live. Gregor replies to them nervously, his voice sounding strange to his ears. He'll be out very soon, he says. He's just getting ready! But he can't keep saying that forever.

The Ape's Wife and Other Stories

Caitlín R. Kiernan

In The Ape's Wife and Other Stories -- Kiernan's twelfth collection of short fiction since 2001 -- she displays the impressive range that characterizes her work. With her usual disregard for genre boundaries, she masterfully navigates the territories that have traditionally been labeled dark fantasy, sword and sorcery, science fiction, steampunk, and neo-noir. From the subtle horror of 'One Tree Hill (The World as Cataclysm)' and 'Tall Bodies' to a demon-haunted, alternate reality Manhattan, from Mars to a near-future Philadelphia, and from ghoulish urban legends of New England to a feminist-queer retelling of Beowulf, these thirteen stories keep reader always on their toes, ever uncertain of the next twist or turn.

Table of Contents:

  • The Ape's Wife and Other Stories - interior artwork by Vince Locke
  • The Steam Dancer (1896) - (2008) - short story
  • The Maltese Unicorn - (2011) - novelette
  • One Tree Hill (The World as Cataclysm) - (2013) - short story
  • The Colliers' Venus (1893) - (2011) - novelette
  • Galápagos - (2009) - novelette
  • Tall Bodies - (2012) - short story
  • As Red as Red - (2010) - short story
  • Hydraguros - (2011) - novelette
  • Slouching Towards the House of Glass Coffins - (2011) - short story
  • Tidal Forces - (2011) - short story
  • The Sea Troll's Daughter - (2010) - novelette
  • Random Notes Before a Fatal Crash - (2012) - novelette
  • The Ape's Wife - (2007) - short story
  • Notes (The Ape's Wife and Other Stories) - essay

The Drowning Girl

Caitlín R. Kiernan

India Morgan Phelps-Imp to her friends-is schizophrenic. Struggling with her perceptions of reality, Imp must uncover the truth about her encounters with creatures out of myth-or from something far, far stranger...

Fairy Tale

Stephen King

Charlie Reade looks like a regular high school kid, great at baseball and football, a decent student. But he carries a heavy load. His mom was killed in a hit-and-run accident when he was ten, and grief drove his dad to drink. Charlie learned how to take care of himself--and his dad. When Charlie is seventeen, he meets a dog named Radar and her aging master, Howard Bowditch, a recluse in a big house at the top of a big hill, with a locked shed in the backyard. Sometimes strange sounds emerge from it.

Charlie starts doing jobs for Mr. Bowditch and loses his heart to Radar. Then, when Bowditch dies, he leaves Charlie a cassette tape telling a story no one would believe. What Bowditch knows, and has kept secret all his long life, is that inside the shed is a portal to another world.

Lisey's Story

Stephen King

Every marriage has two hearts, one light and one dark...

Lisey Landon shared a profound and sometimes frightening intimacy with her husband, Scott, a celebrated bestselling novelist -- and a man with many secrets. One was the place where his gifts of imagination came from, a place that could heal or destroy him. Now, two years after his death, it's Lisey's turn to face Scott's demons on a nearly fatal journey into the darkness he inhabited....

The Eyes of the Dragon

Stephen King

"Once, in a kingdom called Delain, there was a king with two sons...."

Thus begins one of the most unique tales that master storyteller Stephen King has ever written--a sprawling fantasy of dark magic and the struggle for absolute power that utterly transforms the destinies of two brothers born into royalty. Through this enthralling masterpiece of mythical adventure, intrigue, and terror, you will thrill to this unforgettable narrative filled with relentless, wicked enchantment, and the most terrible of secrets....

The Absolute Book

Elizabeth Knox

Taryn Cornick believes that the past - her sister's violent death, and her own ill-conceived revenge - is behind her, and she can get on with her life. She has written a successful book about the things that threaten libraries: insects, damp, light, fire, carelessness and uncaring... but not all of the attention it brings her is good.

A policeman, Jacob Berger, questions her about a cold case. Then there are questions about a fire in the library at her grandparents' house and an ancient scroll box known as the Firestarter, as well as threatening phone calls and a mysterious illness. Finally a shadowy young man named Shift appears, forcing Taryn and Jacob toward a reckoning felt in more than one world.

Dr. Rat

William Kotzwinkle

There has never been a rat like Doctor Rat, PHD. Frenzied survivor of medicine's most vicious experiments; brilliant eunuch; insane prophet of progress through genocide.

Babel: An Arcane History

R. F. Kuang

Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal.

1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he'll enroll in Oxford University's prestigious Royal Institute of Translation -- also known as Babel.

Babel is the world's center of translation and, more importantly, of silver-working: the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation through enchanted silver bars, to magical effect. Silver-working has made the British Empire unparalleled in power, and Babel's research in foreign languages serves the Empire's quest to colonize everything it encounters.

Oxford, the city of dreaming spires, is a fairytale for Robin; a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge serves power, and for Robin, a Chinese boy raised in Britain, serving Babel inevitably means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to sabotaging the silver-working that supports imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide: Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence? What is he willing to sacrifice to bring Babel down?

Babel -- a thematic response to The Secret History and a tonal response to Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell -- grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of translation as a tool of empire.

Something in the Mermaid Way

Carrie Laben

This Shirley Jackson Award nominated short story originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, #6 March 2007. It can also be found in the anthologies Realms: The First Year of Clarkesworld Magazine (2007), edited by Sean Wallace and Nick Mamatas, and Fantasy: The Best of the Year, 2008 Edition, edited by Rich Horton.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

Tender Morsels

Margo Lanagan

Tender Morsels is a dark and vivid story, set in two worlds and worrying at the border between them. Liga lives modestly in her own personal heaven, a world given to her in exchange for her earthly life. Her two daughters grow up in this soft place, protected from the violence that once harmed their mother. But the real world cannot be denied forever - magicked men and wild bears break down the borders of Liga's refuge. Now, having known Heaven, how will these three women survive in a world where beauty and brutality lie side by side?

Untethered Sky

Fonda Lee

Ester's family was torn apart when a manticore killed her mother and baby brother, leaving her with nothing but her father's painful silence and a single, overwhelming need to kill the monsters that took her family.

Ester's path leads her to the King's Royal Mews, where the giant rocs of legend are flown to hunt manticores by their brave and dedicated ruhkers. Paired with a fledgling roc named Zahra, Ester finds purpose and acclaim by devoting herself to a calling that demands absolute sacrifice and a creature that will never return her love. The terrifying partnership between woman and roc leads Ester not only on the empire's most dangerous manticore hunt, but on a journey of perseverance and acceptance.

Nunc Dimittis

Tanith Lee

WFA nominated novelette. It originally appeared in the anthology The Dodd, Mead Gallery of Horror (1983), edited by Charles L. Grant. It has been rerprinted many times. The story can be found in:

It is included in the collections Dreams of Dark and Light: The Great Short Fiction of Tanith Lee (1986) and Blood 20: Tales of Vampire Horror (2015).

Combustion Hour

Yoon Ha Lee

Combustion Hour by Yoon Ha Lee is a story about the eschatology of shadow puppets.

This story has been anthologized in Paula Guran's The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2015.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

Our Lady of Darkness

Fritz Leiber

HIGH IN THE SAN FRANSCISCO HILLS, SOMETHING STIRS, AND AWAKENS....

Deep in the heart of the city, Franz Westen watches and waits, gripped by a nameless fear. Poised at the heart of the unknown, he feels the terror grow.

Now he walks the ciry, no longer safe in his own home. Neither locked doors nor crowded streets can protect Franz Westen frm the ancient evil that has chosen him. Soon now he must step into his lover's cold and eternal embrace. Soon now he must give in...

The Woods

Stephen Leigh

There is a certain magic growing up with life-long friends. The charmed existence became almost dream-like with two young boys growing up in a small neighborhood surrounded by an old, dense forest.

But what happens when fantasies start becoming all too real? Grotesque and bloody rites give rise to a fey and magical girl who threatens to destroy the last remnants of the boys' idyllic childhood existence...whose mere presence may set the jealous boys at each other's throats.

Hidden among the trees they know so well, Rob and Mark confront a grim, violent solution to their problems. This is a story of choices, a tale where the wild, romanticized dream-scape of youth intersects the gray world beyond, where fantasy collides and merges with reality.

The Glittering World

Robert Levy

Lambda Award Finalist

When up-and-coming chef Michael "Blue" Whitley returns with three friends to the remote Canadian community of his birth, it appears to be the perfect getaway from New York. He soon discovers, however, that everything he thought he knew about himself is a carefully orchestrated lie. Though he had no recollection of the event, as a young boy, Blue and another child went missing for weeks in the idyllic, mysterious woods of Starling Cove. Soon thereafter, his mother suddenly fled with him to America, their homeland left behind.

But then Blue begins to remember. And once the shocking truth starts bleeding back into his life, his closest friends -- Elisa, his former partner in crime; her stalwart husband, Jason; and Gabe, Blue's young and admiring coworker -- must unravel the secrets of Starling Cove and the artists' colony it once harbored. All four will face their troubled pasts, their most private demons, and a mysterious race of beings that inhabits the land, spoken of by the locals only as the Other Kind...

The Tangleroot Palace

Marjorie M. Liu

Concluding with a gorgeous full-length novella, Marjorie Liu's first short fiction collection is an unflinching sojourn into her thorny tales of love, revenge, and new beginnings.

Briar, bodyguard for a body-stealing sorceress, discovers her love for Rose, whose true soul emerges only once a week. An apprentice witch seeks her freedom through betrayal, the bones of the innocent, and a meticulously plotted spell. In a world powered by crystal skulls, a warrior returns to save China from invasion by her jealous ex. A princess runs away from an arranged marriage, finding family in a strange troupe of traveling actors at the border of the kingdom's deep, dark woods.

Table of Contents

  • Sympathy for the Bones - short fiction
  • Briar and the Rose - short fiction
  • Call Her Savage - short fiction
  • The Last Dignity of Man - short fiction
  • Where the Heart Lives - short fiction
  • After the Blood - short fiction
  • Robber Bride - short fiction
  • Tangleroot Palace - novella

Help Me Follow My Sister into the Land of the Dead

Carmen Maria Machado

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed, July 2014. It can also be found in the anthologies Help Fund My Robot Army!!! and Other Improbable Crowdfunding Projects (2014), edited by John Joseph Adams, and The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015, edited by Joe Hill and John Joseph Adams.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

The Language of Knives

Haralambi Markov

"The Language of Knives" by Haralambi Markov is about the death rituals of this secondary world. A strong-willed daughter is guided by her unloved parent in the customs of how to respect the remains of her favorite parent.

This story was anthologized in The Apex Book of Wold SF 4, edited by Mahvesh Murad, Wilde Stories 2016: The Year's Best Gay Speculative Fiction (2016), edited by Steve Berman, and Worlds Seen in Passing: Ten Years of Tor.com Short Fiction (2018), edited by Irene Gallo.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

We Are Here

Michael Marshall

It should've been the greatest day in David's life. A trip to New York, wife by his side, to visit his new publisher. Finally it looks as though the gods of fate are going to lift him from schoolteacher to writer. But on his way back to Penn Station, a chance encounter changes all of that. David bumps into a stranger who covertly follows him, and then, just before they board the train home, passes him by close enough to whisper: "Remember me."

The stranger follows them back to where they live, and it isn't long before David realizes that this man wants something from him... something very personal, that he may have no choice but to surrender.

Fevre Dream

George R. R. Martin

Marsh meant to turn down York's offer. It was too full of secrets that spelled danger. But the promise of both gold and a grand new boat that could make history crushed his resolve-coupled with the terrible force of York's mesmerizing gaze. Not until the maiden voyage of his new sidewheeler Fevre Dream would Marsh realize he had joined a mission both more sinister, and perhaps more noble, than his most fantastic nightmare...and mankind's most impossible dream. Here is the spellbinding tale of a vampire's quest to unite his race with humanity, of a garrulous riverman's dream of immortality, and of the undying legends of the steamboat era and a majestic, ancient river.

Seven Deaths of an Empire

G. R. Matthews

The Emperor is dead. Long live the Empire.

General Bordan has a lifetime of duty and sacrifice behind him in the service of the Empire. But with rebellion brewing in the countryside, and assassins, thieves and politicians vying for power in the city, it is all Bordan can do to protect the heir to the throne.

Apprentice Magician Kyron is assigned to the late Emperor's honour guard escorting his body on the long road back to the capital. Mistrusted and feared by his own people, even a magician's power may fail when enemies emerge from the forests, for whoever is in control of the Emperor's body, controls the succession.

Seven lives and seven deaths to seal the fate of the Empire.

Boy's Life

Robert R. McCammon

In 1964, on a cold day, Cory Mackenson is helping his father on his morning milk delivery when a car appears in the road before them and plunges into a lake. Cory's father tries to save the driver, but the driver is handcuffed to the steering wheel. Cory decides to find out what happened.

Swan Song

Robert R. McCammon

An ancient evil roams the desolate landscape of an America ravaged by nuclear war.

He is the Man with the Scarlet Eye, a malevolent force that feeds on the dark desires of the countless followers he has gathered into his service. His only desire is to find a special child named Swan -- and destroy her. But those who would protect the girl are determined to fight for what is left of the world?and their souls.

In a wasteland born of rage, populated by monstrous creatures and marauding armies, the last survivors on earth have been drawn into the final battle between good and evil that will decide the fate of humanity....

American Ghoul

Michelle McGill-Vargas

You can't kill someone who's already dead.

That's what Lavinia keeps telling her jailer after - allegedly - killing her mistress, Simone Arceneau. But how could Simone be dead when she was taking callers just a few minutes before? And why was her house always so dark?

Lavinia, a recently freed slave, met Simone, a recently undead vampire, by chance on a plantation in post-Civil War Georgia. With nothing remaining for either woman in the South, the two form a fast friendship and head north. However, Lavinia quickly learns that teaming up with this white woman may be more than she bargained for.

Simone is reckless and impulsive - which would've been bad enough on its own, but when combined with her particular diet, Lavinia finds herself in way over her head. As she is forced to repeatedly compromise her morals and struggles to make lasting human connections, Lavinia begins to wonder, is she truly free or has she merely exchanged one form of enslavement for another? As bodies start to pile up in the small Indiana town they've settled in, people start to take a second look at the two newcomers, and Simone and Lavinia's relationship is stretched to its breaking point ...

Each to Each

Seanan McGuire

Novelette on the 2015 Tiptree Honor list.

A post-humanist analogy of weaponized femininity, where essentialist notions of gender are deployed by a patriarchal military structure looking for the perfect soldier in a particular niche. The unintended result is a women-centered subculture with the power and opportunity to strike out on their own, for those with the inclination and independence to trade some of the trappings of humanity for that freedom. It's a fascinating, nuanced, and furious exploration of a range of ideas around women and beauty, the military, body modification, and loyalty.

The story originally appeared in Lightspeed: Women Destroy Science Fiction! Special Issue, June 2016. It can also be found in the anthology Mermaids and Other Mysteries of the Deep (2015), edited by Paula Guran.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Sunshine

Robin McKinley

There hadn't been any trouble out at the lake in years. Sunshine just needed a spot where she could be alone with her thoughts for a minute. But then the vampires found her . . . Now, chained and imprisoned in a once-beautiful decaying mansion, alone but for the vampire, Constantine, shackled next to her, Sunshine realizes that she must call on her own hidden strength if she is to survive. But Constantine is not what she expected of a vampire, and soon Sunshine discovers that it is he who needs her, more than either of them know.

Moby Dick

Herman Melville

The outcast youth Ishmael, succumbing to wanderlust during a dreary New England autumn, signs up for passage aboard a whaling ship. The Pequod sails under the command of the one-legged Captain Ahab, who has set himself on a monomaniacal quest to capture the cunning white whale that robbed him of his leg: Moby-Dick. Capturing life on the sea with robust realism, Melville details the adventures of the colorful crew aboard the ship as Ahab pursues his crusade of revenge, heedless of all cost.

Kraken

China Miéville

With this outrageous new novel, China Miéville has written one of the strangest, funniest, and flat-out scariest books you will read this--or any other--year. The London that comes to life in Kraken is a weird metropolis awash in secret currents of myth and magic, where criminals, police, cultists, and wizards are locked in a war to bring about--or prevent--the End of All Things.

In the Darwin Centre at London's Natural History Museum, Billy Harrow, a cephalopod specialist, is conducting a tour whose climax is meant to be the Centre's prize specimen of a rare Architeuthis dux--better known as the Giant Squid. But Billy's tour takes an unexpected turn when the squid suddenly and impossibly vanishes into thin air.

As Billy soon discovers, this is the precipitating act in a struggle to the death between mysterious but powerful forces in a London whose existence he has been blissfully ignorant of until now, a city whose denizens--human and otherwise--are adept in magic and murder.

There is the Congregation of God Kraken, a sect of squid worshippers whose roots go back to the dawn of humanity--and beyond. There is the criminal mastermind known as the Tattoo, a merciless maniac inked onto the flesh of a hapless victim. There is the FSRC--the Fundamentalist and Sect-Related Crime Unit--a branch of London's finest that fights sorcery with sorcery. There is Wati, a spirit from ancient Egypt who leads a ragtag union of magical familiars. There are the Londonmancers, who read the future in the city's entrails. There is Grisamentum, London's greatest wizard, whose shadow lingers long after his death. And then there is Goss and Subby, an ageless old man and a cretinous boy who, together, constitute a terrifying--yet darkly charismatic--demonic duo.

All of them--and others--are in pursuit of Billy, who inadvertently holds the key to the missing squid, an embryonic god whose powers, properly harnessed, can destroy all that is, was, and ever shall be.

The Butcher of the Forest

Premee Mohamed

At the northern edge of a valley conquered by a merciless foreign tyrant lies a wild forest ruled by dangerous magic. The local people know never to enter--for no one who strays into the north woods is ever seen again. No one, that is, except Veris Thorn.

When the children of the Tyrant vanish into the woods, Veris is summoned to rescue them. Veris knows she has only one day before the creatures in the wood claim the children for their own. If she fails, the Tyrant will destroy everything she loves.

If she is to succeed, Veris must evade traps and trickery, ancient monsters and false friends, and the haunting memory of her last journey into the woods.

Time is running short. One misstep will cost everything.

Black Gods and Scarlet Dreams

C. L. Moore

Jirel of Joiry, the first of the great female warriors, the beautiful commander of the strongest fortress in the kingdom, would face any danger to defend her beloved country. She wielded her bright sword against mighty armies, the sinister magic of evil sorcerers and fearsome castles guarded by the dead, even daring to descend into Hell itself...

Northwest Smith, the scarred and weathered outlaw, the legendary hero of the spaceways, forced to confront the terrible mysteries, the terrifying, mythic monsters of the universe...

Jirel of Joiry and Northwest Smith are C.L. Moore's greatest creations and she used them not only to spin spellbinding tales but also to explore the mysteries of the human psyche.

This is the omnibus edition of the collections Jirel of Joiry (aka Black Gods) and Scarlet Dream (aka Northwest Smith).

Jirel of Joiry

C. L. Moore

The fierce, proud, and relentless commander of warriors, standing tall above her enemies and simmering with rage, Jirel bids farewell to the world of treacherous men and walks through a forbidden door into Hell itself in pursuit of freedom, justice, and revenge.

Table of Contents:

Creatures: The Legacy of Frankenstein

David Thomas Moore

A new anthology bringing together five great new and established writers to explore the world of Mary Shelley's all-time classic, Frankenstein

"My spirit will sleep in peace; or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus. Farewell."

Victor Frankenstein was the first to unlock the key to life, but he would not be the last. Through two centuries of scientific enquiry and relentless advancement, five more minds found the secret, and five more creatures were made. Five more stories ended in tragedy.

From the 1840s to the modern day, from the race to publish the first anatomy to the desperate search for weapons to win the Second World War, telling the stories of the creatures that never were.

Certain Dark Things

Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Welcome to Mexico City... An Oasis In A Sea Of Vampires...

Domingo, a lonely garbage-collecting street kid, is busy eeking out a living when a jaded vampire on the run swoops into his life.

Atl, the descendant of Aztec blood drinkers, must feast on the young to survive and Domingo looks especially tasty. Smart, beautiful, and dangerous, Atl needs to escape to South America, far from the rival narco-vampire clan pursuing her. Domingo is smitten.

Her plan doesn't include developing any real attachment to Domingo. Hell, the only living creature she loves is her trusty Doberman. Little by little, Atl finds herself warming up to the scrappy young man and his effervescent charm.

And then there's Ana, a cop who suddenly finds herself following a trail of corpses and winds up smack in the middle of vampire gang rivalries.

Vampires, humans, cops, and gangsters collide in the dark streets of Mexico City. Do Atl and Domingo even stand a chance of making it out alive?

Nadya: The Wolf Chronicles

Pat Murphy

Growing up on the edge of the Missouri wilderness in the 1830s, Nadya knew she was not like other girls. But when she became a woman and the Change came, she discovered just how different she was. For Nadya was a shapechanger, a werewolf like her mother and father before her.

Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart: And Other Stories

GennaRose Nethercott

From the author of the breakout fantasy novel Thistlefoot: a collection of dark fairytales and fractured folklore exploring all the ways love can save us--or go monstrously wrong.

The stories in Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart are about the abomination that resides within us all. That churning, clawing, hungry the desire to be loved, and seen, and known. And the terror of those things to be loved too well, or not enough, or for long enough. To be laid bare before your sweetheart, to their horror. To be known and recognized as the monstrous thing you are.

Two young women working at a sinister roadside attraction called the Eternal Staircase explore its secrets--and their own doomed summer love. A group of witchy teens concoct the perfect plan to induce the hated new girl into their ranks. A woman moves into a new house with her acclaimed artist boyfriend and finds her body slowly shifting into something specially constructed to accommodate his needs and whims. And two outcasts, a vampire and a goat woman, find solace in each other, even as the world's lack of understanding might bring about its own end.

In these lush, beautifully written stories, GennaRose Nethercott explores love in all its diamond-dark facets to create a collection that will redefine what you see as a beast, and make you beg to have your heart broken.

Table of Contents:

  • Sundown at the Eternal Staircase - short story by GennaRose Nethercott
  • A Diviner's Abecedarian - short story
  • The Thread Boy - short story
  • Fox Jaw - short story
  • The War of Fog - short story
  • Drowning Lessons - short story
  • The Autumn Kill - short story
  • Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart - short story
  • A Lily Is a Lily - short fiction
  • Dear Henrietta - short story
  • Possessions - short story
  • Homebody - short story
  • A Haunted Calendar - short story
  • The Plums at the End of the World - short story

From Dark Places

Emma Newman

The debut anthology from Emma Newman is a dark and twisting journey across the urban landscape, mining the rich seam of human frailties with insight and humour. The stories traverse the magical and the mundane, where supernatural beings are indistinguishable from their mortal counterparts in their complexity and complicity.

Table of Contents

  • From Dark Places
  • The Straw
  • The Need to Create
  • Burnt
  • Someone to Watch Over Her
  • The Perfect Escape
  • The Tenth Lord
  • Sunday Lunch
  • The Art of Desire
  • No Surprise
  • Seeing Him Again
  • Shedding
  • The Victim
  • The Letter
  • The Unwoven Heart
  • And Then There Were None
  • Everything in its Place
  • The Best Pie in the World
  • The Handsome Dragon
  • The Bell
  • In the Bag
  • Her Fall
  • The Supporting Statement
  • Idolised
  • Getting Fixed

Touch

Claire North

The electrifying new thriller from the acclaimed author of The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August.

He tried to take my life. Instead I took his.

It was a long time ago. I remember it was dark, and I didn't see my killer until it was too late. As I died, my hand touched his. That's when the first switch took place.

Suddenly, I was looking through the eyes of my killer, and I was watching myself die.

Now switching is easy. I can jump from body to body, have any life, be anyone.

Some people touch lives. Others take them. I do both.

Spinning Silver

Naomi Novik

Miryem is the daughter and granddaughter of moneylenders, but her father is not a very good one. Free to lend and reluctant to collect, he has left his family on the edge of poverty -- until Miryem intercedes. Hardening her heart, she sets out to retrieve what is owed, and soon gains a reputation for being able to turn silver into gold. But when an ill-advised boast brings her to the attention of the cold creatures who haunt the wood, nothing will be the same again. For words have power, and the fate of a kingdom will be forever altered by the challenge she is issued.

Channeling the heart of the classic fairy tale, Novik deftly interweaves six distinct narrative voices--each learning valuable lessons about sacrifice, power and love--into a rich, multilayered fantasy that readers will want to return to again and again.

Uprooted

Naomi Novik

"Our Dragon doesn't eat the girls he takes, no matter what stories they tell outside our valley. We hear them sometimes, from travelers passing through. They talk as though we were doing human sacrifice, and he were a real dragon. Of course that's not true: he may be a wizard and immortal, but he's still a man, and our fathers would band together and kill him if he wanted to eat one of us every ten years. He protects us against the Wood, and we're grateful, but not that grateful."

Agnieszka loves her valley home, her quiet village, the forests and the bright shining river. But the corrupted Wood stands on the border, full of malevolent power, and its shadow lies over her life.

Her people rely on the cold, driven wizard known only as the Dragon to keep its powers at bay. But he demands a terrible price for his help: one young woman handed over to serve him for ten years, a fate almost as terrible as falling to the Wood.

The next choosing is fast approaching, and Agnieszka is afraid. She knows - everyone knows - that the Dragon will take Kasia: beautiful, graceful, brave Kasia, all the things Agnieszka isn't, and her dearest friend in the world. And there is no way to save her.

But Agnieszka fears the wrong things. For when the Dragon comes, it is not Kasia he will choose.

The Quick

Lauren Owen

London, 1892: James Norbury, a shy would-be poet newly down from Oxford, finds lodging with a charming young aristocrat. Through this new friendship, he is introduced to the drawing-rooms of high society, and finds love in an unexpected quarter. Then, suddenly, he vanishes without a trace. Unnerved, his sister, Charlotte, sets out from their crumbling country estate determined to find him. In the sinister, labyrinthine city that greets her, she uncovers a secret world at the margins populated by unforgettable characters: a female rope walker turned vigilante, a street urchin with a deadly secret, and the chilling "Doctor Knife." But the answer to her brother's disappearance ultimately lies within the doors of one of the country's preeminent and mysterious institutions: The Aegolius Club, whose members include the most ambitious, and most dangerous, men in England.

White is for Witching

Helen Oyeyemi

“Miranda is at home-homesick, home sick ...”

As a child, Miranda Silver developed pica, a rare eating disorder that causes its victims to consume nonedible substances. The death of her mother when Miranda is sixteen exacerbates her condition; nothing, however, satisfies a strange hunger passed down through the women in her family. And then there’s the family house in Dover, England, converted to a bed-and-breakfast by Miranda’s father. Dover has long been known for its hostility toward outsiders. But the Silver House manifests a more conscious malice toward strangers, dispatching those visitors it despises. Enraged by the constant stream of foreign staff and guests, the house finally unleashes its most destructive power.

With distinct originality and grace, and an extraordinary gift for making the fantastic believable, Helen Oyeyemi spins the politics of family and nation into a riveting and unforgettable mystery.

The Last Witness

K. J. Parker

When you need a memory to be wiped, call me.

Transferring unwanted memories to my own mind is the only form of magic I've ever mastered. But now, I'm holding so many memories I'm not always sure which ones are actually mine, any more.

Some of them are sensitive; all of them are private. And there are those who are willing to kill to access the secrets I'm trying to bury...

A classic Parker tale with a strong supporting cast of princes, courtiers, merchants, academics, and generally unsavory people.

This novella was originally published as a chapbook. It was anthologized in The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Novellas 2016 edited by Paula Guran, and collected in The Father of Lies (2018).

At the Edge of Waking

Holly Phillips

With In the Palace of Repose, her debut collection of mostly unpublished work, Holly Phillips accomplished the improbable. The unknown Canadian author received critical acclaim and numerous honors including the 2006 Sunburst Award and nominations for the World Fantasy and Crawford Awards. Her accomplished prose sang with a unique voice, seamlessly blending emotion, insight, and craft.

Now, At the Edge of Waking presents her latest tales written with even more depth and range-including a new, never-published story. Portraying human reaction to dire change or extreme circumstance, combining the real intruded upon by the fantastic or the fantastic grounded in reality, Phillips describes the world as it is, as it may be, as something impossible yet entirely acceptable, enthralling the reader with her words.

Contents:

  • Introduction (At the Edge of Waking) - (2012) - essay by Peter S. Beagle
  • Brother of the Moon - (2007) - short story
  • Castle Rock - (2012) - short story
  • Cold Water Survival - (2009) - short story
  • Country Mothers' Sons - (2010) - short story
  • Gin - (2006) - short story
  • Proving the Rule - (2008) - novella
  • Queen of the Butterfly Kingdom - (2007) - short story
  • Story Notes (At the Edge of Waking) - (2012) - essay
  • The Long, Cold Goodbye - (2009) - novelette
  • The Rescue - (2010) - short story
  • Three Days of Rain - (2007) - short story
  • Virgin of the Sands - (2006) - short story

In the Palace of Repose

Holly Phillips

'The essential Holly Phillips story begins like this: In a world that felt too little, there lived a girl who saw too much.' - Sean Stewart

In the Palace of Repose is a collection of nine such stories, ranging from the delightfully fantastic 'In the Palace of Repose,' to the delicately horrific 'One of the Hungry Ones,' to the hauntingly literary 'The Other Grace.' Here indeed are young women, and young men, who have seen too much, and who have been abandoned to wrestle alone with the strange, the wonderful, the terrifying. Some triumph, some tragically fail. Most struggle on beyond the boundaries of their stories, carrying their wonders and horrors into their lives, into their worlds-worlds, and lives, startlingly like our own.

Contents:

  • Introduction - (2005) - essay by Sean Stewart
  • In the Palace of Repose - (2004) - novelette
  • The Other Grace - (2005) - novelette
  • The New Ecology - (2002) - novelette
  • A Woman's Bones - (2005) - short story
  • Pen & Ink - (2005) - short story
  • One of the Hungry Ones - (2005) - novelette
  • By the Light of Tomorrow's Sun - (2005) - short story
  • Summer Ice - (2005) - short story
  • Variations on a Theme - (2005) - novelette

The Court Magician

Sarah Pinsker

Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award-nominated Short Story

This story originally appeared in Lightspeed, January 2018.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed Magazine.

Tales of Mystery and Imagination

Edgar Allan Poe

This collection of Poe's best stories contains all the terrifying and bewildering tales that characterise his work. As well as the Gothic horror of such famous stories as 'The Pit and the Pendulum', 'The Fall of the House of Usher', 'The Premature Burial' and 'The Tell-Tale Heart', all of Poe's Auguste Dupin stories are included. These are the first modern detective stories and include 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue', 'The Mystery of Marie Roget' and 'The Purloined Letter'.

Table of Contents:

  • Ms. Found in a Bottle
  • Berenice
  • Morella
  • Some Passages in the Life of a Lion (Lionizing)
  • The Assignation
  • Bon-Bon
  • King Pest
  • Metzengerstein
  • Silence
  • A Descent into the Maelstrom
  • Ligeia
  • The Fall of the House of Usher
  • William Wilson
  • The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion
  • The Man of the Crowd
  • The Murders in the Rue Morgue
  • The Mystery of Marie Rogèt
  • The Colloquy of Monos and Una
  • The Masque of the Red Death
  • The Pit and the Pendulum
  • The Tell-Tale Heart
  • The Gold Bug
  • The Black Cat
  • The Spectacles
  • The Premature Burial
  • The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar
  • The Oblong Box
  • The Cask of Amontillado
  • Landor's Cottage

The Builders

Daniel Polansky

Hugo-nominated Novella

A missing eye.
A broken wing.
A stolen country.

The last job didn't end well.

Years go by, and scars fade, but memories only fester. For the animals of the Captain's company, survival has meant keeping a low profile, building a new life, and trying to forget the war they lost. But now the Captain's whiskers are twitching at the idea of evening the score.

Even Though I Knew the End

C. L. Polk

A magical detective dives into the affairs of Chicago's divine monsters to secure a future with the love of her life. This sapphic period piece will dazzle anyone looking for mystery, intrigue, romance, magic, or all of the above.

An exiled augur who sold her soul to save her brother's life is offered one last job before serving an eternity in hell. When she turns it down, her client sweetens the pot by offering up the one payment she can't resist?the chance to have a future where she grows old with the woman she loves.

To succeed, she is given three days to track down the White City Vampire, Chicago's most notorious serial killer. If she fails, only hell and heartbreak await.

Ragged Alice

Gareth L. Powell

Orphaned at an early age, DCI Holly Craig grew up in the small Welsh coastal town of Pontyrhudd. As soon as she was old enough, she ran away to London and joined the police. Now, fifteen years later, she's back in her old hometown to investigate what seems at first to be a simple hit-and-run, but which soon escalates into something far deadlier and unexpectedly personal -- something that will take all of her peculiar talents to solve.

After Many a Summer

Tim Powers

After Many a Summer borrows its title from a line in Tennyson's famous poem "Tithonus." An elegiac appeal for death on the part of the titular figure from myth, a man who was granted the everlasting life he had originally begged from the gods, only to have their gift turn to ashes in his mouth, only, as Tennyson wrote, to become someone whom "only cruel immortality consumes."

What does this have to do with homelessness, troubled movie production companies, kidnapped heiresses, prophecies delivered by taxidermized heads, and a Los Angeles County rendered with such masterful, lived in, bone deep attention to physical detail that to read the opening is to feel the heat from cracked asphalt rising through your shoes and to taste cheap fortified wine grown warm in the sun cloying your tongue? Can all these seemingly disparate things be connected, cohered, clarified?

Of course they can.

Conrad is a down on his luck screenwriter who takes a very strange assignment that leads him to encounter a kidnapped heiress after delivering her ransom--a hundred-year-old mummified head fond of cryptic utterances. Nothing goes Conrad's way, though, because nothing, no matter how bizarre, is what it seems.

Declare

Tim Powers

As a young double agent infiltrating the Soviet spy network in Nazi-occupied Paris, Andrew Hale finds himself caught up in a secret, even more ruthless war. Two decades later, in 1963, he will be forced to confront again the nightmare that has haunted his adult life: a lethal unfinished operation code-named Declare.

From the corridors of Whitehall to the Arabian desert, from post-war Berlin to the streets of Cold War Moscow, Hale's desperate quest draws him into international politics and gritty espionage tradecraft -- and inexorably drives Hale, the fiery and beautiful Communist agent Elena Teresa Ceniza-Bendiga, and Kim Philby, mysterious traitor to the British cause, to a deadly confrontation on the high glaciers of Mount Ararat, in the very shadow of the fabulous and perilous Ark.

Down and Out in Purgatory

Tim Powers

What do you do if the man you've vowed to kill dies before you can kill him?

In college, Tom Holbrook worshipped Shasta DiMaio from afar, but she married the arrogant John Atwater -- and Atwater eventually murdered her.

All that's left for Tom is revenge. He has devoted the rest of his life to finding Atwater and killing him -- but when he finally finds him, Atwater is in a bag in the Los Angeles County morgue.

How do you kill a man who has already died?

Strange Itineraries

Tim Powers

Strange Itineraries takes you on an unforgettable excursion into the strange and dangerous worlds of Tim Powers. Vengeful and cooperative spirits, mutant tomatoes, and the ever-mysterious Ether Bunnies roam these pages, treading paths both frightening and droll. This fully retrospective Powers collection also features three collaborations with James Blaylock, author of The Paper Grail and The Last Coin.

Table of Contents:

  • In Which Corner of the Compass Is Ago? - essay by Paul Di Filippo
  • Itinerary - (1999) - short story
  • The Way Down the Hill - (1982) - novelette
  • Pat Moore - (2004) - novelette
  • Fifty Cents - (2003) - novelette (with James P. Blaylock)
  • Through and Through - (2003) - novelette
  • We Traverse Afar - (1993) - short story (with James P. Blaylock)
  • Where They Are Hid - (1995) - novella
  • The Better Boy - (1991) - novelette (with James P. Blaylock)
  • Night Moves - (1986) - novelettes

The Properties of Rooftop Air

Tim Powers

In the slum known as the St. Giles rookery in 19th century London, the beggar guild run by Horrabin the Clown is the last resort of the down-and-out. Horrabin is rumored to maim his people to make them more effective mendicants, and when dimwitted beggar Isaac Fairchild is summoned by the clown, he fears the worst.

But in the subterranean chamber known as the Nursery, Fairchild learns that Horrabin's purpose is to greatly increase his intelligence, by grafting his rudimentary mind into the group mind shared by Horrabin's gang of Spoonsize Boys - alchemically-hatched homunculi, two-inch-tall men employed by the clown for subtle thefts and assassinations.

Fairchild yearns to be able at last to think clearly, understand conversations - read books! - but there's a cost.

Brimstone

Cherie Priest

In the trenches of Europe during the Great War, Tomás Cordero operated a weapon more devastating than any gun: a flame projector that doused the enemy in liquid fire. Having left the battlefield a shattered man, he comes home to find yet more tragedy -- for in his absence, his wife has died of the flu. Haunted by memories of the woman he loved and the atrocities he perpetrated, Tomás dreams of fire and finds himself setting match to flame when awake.

Alice Dartle is a talented clairvoyant living among others who share her gifts in the community of Cassadaga, Florida. She too dreams of fire, knowing her nightmares are connected to the shell-shocked war veteran and widower. And she believes she can bring peace to him and his wife's spirit.

But the inferno that threatens to consume Tomás and Alice was set ablaze centuries ago by someone whose hatred transcended death itself...

The Prestige

Christopher Priest

In 1878, two young stage magicians clash in the dark during the course of a fraudulent seance. From this moment on, their lives become webs of deceit and revelation as they vie to outwit and expose one another.

Their rivalry will take them to the peaks of their careers, but with terrible consequences. In the course of pursuing each other's ruin, they will deploy all the deception their magicians' craft can command--the highest misdirection and the darkest science.

Blood will be spilled, but it will not be enough. In the end, their legacy will pass on for generations... to descendants who must, for their sanity's sake, untangle the puzzle left to them.

The Crying of Lot 49

Thomas Pynchon

The highly original satire about Oedipa Maas, a woman who finds herself enmeshed in a worldwide conspiracy, meets some extremely interesting characters, and attains a not inconsiderable amount of self knowledge.

The Mothers of Voorhisville

Mary Rickert

Nebula-nominated Novella

From multiple World Fantasy Award winner and Nebula, Bram Stoker, International Horror Guild, Sturgeon, and British Science Fiction Award nominated author Mary Rickert comes a gorgeous and terrifying vision of the Mothers of Voorhisville, who love their babies just as intensely as any mother anywhere. Of course they do! And nothing in this world will change that, even if every single one of those tiny babies was born with an even tinier set of wings.

Anthologized in Paula Guran's The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Novellas 2015.

Read this story online for free at Tor.com.

The Warrior Who Carried Life

Geoff Ryman

The story of a quest for revenge which becomes a quest for the infinite. Cara was five years old when her mother was killed. She was killed for going down into the wells of vision, where only men were allowed. Cara in turn seeks justice by transforming herself into a male warrior.

Was

Geoff Ryman

WAS is the story of Dorothy. Orphaned as a child in the 1870s, she goes to live in Kansas with her Aunty Em and Uncle Henry. They face drought and poverty. They face each other. Alone, abused, Dorothy meets an itinerant actor called Frank and inspires a masterpiece. From the settling of the West and the heyday of the Hollwywood studios to the glittering megalopolis of modern Los Angeles, WAS is the story of all our childhoods.

A Small Charred Face

Kazuki Sakuraba

Even monsters need families.

What are the "bamboo"?

They are from China.

They look just like us.

They live by night.

They drink human lifeblood, but otherwise keep their distance.

And every century, they grow white blooming flowers.

A boy name Kyo is saved from the precipice of death by Bamboo, a vampire born of the tall grasses. They start an enjoyable, yet strange shared life together, Kyo and the gentle Bamboo. But for Bamboo, communication with a human being is the greatest sin.

Among the Thorns

Veronica Schanoes

Among the Thorns, by Veronica Schanoes, is a dark fantasy taking place in seventeenth century Germany, about a young woman who is intent on avenging the brutal murder of her peddler father many years earlier, by a vagabond with a magic fiddle.

This novelette is included in the anthology Worlds Seen in Passing: Ten Years of Tor.com Short Fiction (2018), edited by Irene Gallo.

Read this story online for free at Tor.com.

Burning Girls and Other Stories

Veronica Schanoes

In Burning Girls and Other Stories, Veronica Schanoes crosses borders and genres with stories of fierce women at the margins of society burning their way toward the center. This debut collection introduces readers to a fantasist in the vein of Karen Russell and Kelly Link, with a voice all her own.

Emma Goldman- yes, that Emma Goldman - takes tea with the Baba Yaga and truths unfold inside of exquisitely crafted lies. In Among the Thorns, a young woman in seventeenth century Germany is intent on avenging the brutal murder of her peddler father, but discovers that vengeance may consume all that it touches. In the showstopping, awards finalist title story, Burning Girls, Schanoes invests the immigrant narrative with a fearsome fairytale quality that tells a story about America we may not want - but need - to hear.

Dreamy, dangerous, and precise, with the weight of the very oldest tales we tell, Burning Girls and Other Stories introduces a writer pushing the boundaries of both fantasy and contemporary fiction.

Gallant

V. E. Schwab

Everything casts a shadow. Even the world we live in. And as with every shadow, there is a place where it must touch. A seam, where the shadow meets its source.

Olivia Prior has grown up in Merilance School for girls, and all she has of her past is her mother's journal--which seems to unravel into madness. Then, a letter invites Olivia to come home--to Gallant. Yet when Olivia arrives, no one is expecting her. But Olivia is not about to leave the first place that feels like home, it doesn't matter if her cousin Matthew is hostile or if she sees half-formed ghouls haunting the hallways.

Olivia knows that Gallant is hiding secrets, and she is determined to uncover them. When she crosses a ruined wall at just the right moment, Olivia finds herself in a place that is Gallant--but not. The manor is crumbling, the ghouls are solid, and a mysterious figure rules over all. Now Olivia sees what has unraveled generations of her family, and where her father may have come from.

Olivia has always wanted to belong somewhere, but will she take her place as a Prior, protecting our world against the Master of the House? Or will she take her place beside him?

Snakewood

Adrian Selby

Once they were a band of mercenaries who shook the pillars of the world through their cunning, their closely guarded alchemical brews and stone cold steel. Whoever met their price won.

Now, their glory days behind them and their genius leader in hiding, the warriors known as the 'Twenty' are being hunted down and eliminated one by one.

A lifetime of enemies has its own price.

Rag and Bone

Priya Sharma

Rag and Bone, by Priya Sharma, is about Tom, who buys unwanted household items and scavenges other materials (including bones) and resells them in an alternative 19th century Liverpool in which the wealthy use the poor for parts from the inside out, should they need them. Colorful, disturbing, and moving as Tom maneuvers warily between the masters he serves and the poor from whom he scavenges.

This story in included in Jonathan Strahan's The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year: Volume Eight and Paula Guran's The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2014.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

The Jaguar Hunter

Lucius Shepard

Nebula and World Fantasy Award-nominated Novelette.

"It was his wife's debt to Onofrio Esteves, the appliance dealer, that brought Esteban Caax to town for the first time in almost a year" is the sentence which opens "The Jaguar Hunter", a tense tale of a man forced to hunt a jaguar to make up for his wife's desire to improve her social status.

Published originally by The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in May 1985, this story was later anthologized in The Year's Best Science Fiction: Third Annual Collection (1986), The 1986 Annual World's Best SF (aka World's Best SF 5) (1986), Magicats II (1991), Killing Me Softly: Erotic Tales of Unearthly Love (1995), The Fantasy Hall of Fame (expanded) (1998) and Tails of Wonder and Imagination (2010), and collected in The Jaguar Hunter (1987) and The Best of Lucius Shepard (2008).

Read this story online for free at Infinity Plus.

The Book of Skulls

Robert Silverberg

Seeking the immortality promised in an ancient manuscript, The Book of Skulls, four friends, college roommates, go on a spring break trip to Arizona: Eli, the scholar, who found and translated the book; Timothy, scion of an American dynasty, born and bred to lead; Ned, poet and cynic; and Oliver, the brilliant farm boy obsessed with death.

Somewhere in the desert lies the House of Skulls, where a mystic brotherhood guards the secret of eternal life. There, the four aspirants will present themselves–and a horrific price will be demanded.

For immortality requires sacrifice. Two victims to balance two survivors. One by suicide, one by murder.

Now, beneath the gaze of grinning skulls, the terror begins....

Drood

Dan Simmons

On June 9, 1865, while traveling by train to London with his secret mistress, 53-year-old Charles Dickens--at the height of his powers and popularity, the most famous and successful novelist in the world and perhaps in the history of the world--hurtled into a disaster that changed his life forever.

Did Dickens begin living a dark double life after the accident? Were his nightly forays into the worst slums of London and his deepening obsession with corpses, crypts, murder, opium dens, the use of lime pits to dissolve bodies, and a hidden subterranean London mere research... or something more terrifying?

Just as he did in The Terror, Dan Simmons draws impeccably from history to create a gloriously engaging and terrifying narrative. Based on the historical details of Charles Dickens's life and narrated by Wilkie Collins (Dickens's friend, frequent collaborator, and Salieri-style secret rival), DROOD explores the still-unsolved mysteries of the famous author's last years and may provide the key to Dickens's final, unfinished work: The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Chilling, haunting, and utterly original, DROOD is Dan Simmons at his powerful best.

Song of Kali

Dan Simmons

Think you know true fear? You don't.

Think you've read the most chilling book? Not even close.

Think you can't be shocked? Good luck!

Maybe you're ready for the most truly frightening reading experience of your life, the World Fantasy Award-winning novel that's been terrifying readers for over a decade.

Song of Kali.

Not Before Sundown

Johanna Sinisalo

Mikael, a young gay photographer, finds in the courtyard of his apartment block a small, man-like creature. It is a young troll, known from mythology as a wild beast, now considered extinct. Mikael takes the troll, whom he has named Pessi, back to his apartment. But Mikael does not discover that trolls exude pheromones that smell like a Calvin Klein aftershave and that this has a profound aphrodisiac effect on all those around him. Shooting an assignment for the ultra-hip Stalker jeans, Mikael finds himself fast-tracked into a dangerous liaison with Martes, the art director of the advertising agency, while a couple of his friends in turn fall in love with him because he carries the troll's scent. What Mikael fails above all to learn, with tragic consequences, is that Pessi the troll is the interpreter of man's darkest, most forbidden feelings.

Finnegan's Field

Angela Slatter

Finnegan's Field by Angela Slatter is a dark fantasy novelette about a six year old child who mysteriously disappears for three years, only to return home just as mysteriously--but not quite the same. At least, not to her mother.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

The Briar Book of the Dead

Angela Slatter

Ellie Briar is the first non-witch to be born into her family for generations. The Briar family of witches run the town of Silverton, caring for its inhabitants with their skills and magic. In the usual scheme of things, they would be burnt for their sorcery, but the church has given them dispensation in return for their protection of the borders of the Darklands, where the much-feared Leech Lords hold sway.

Ellie is being trained as a steward, administering for the town, and warding off the insistent interest of the church. When her grandmother dies suddenly, Ellie's cousin Audra rises to the position of Briar Witch, propelling Ellie into her new role. As she navigates fresh challenges, an unexpected new ability to see and speak to the dead leads her to uncover sinister family secrets, stories of burnings, lost grimoires and evil spells. Reeling from one revelation to the next, she seeks answers from the long dead and is forced to decide who to trust, as a devastating plot threatens to destroy everything the Briar witches have sacrificed so much to build.

The Deep

Rivers Solomon

The water-breathing descendants of African slave women tossed overboard have built their own underwater society – and must reclaim the memories of their past to shape their future in this brilliantly imaginative novella inspired by the Hugo Award nominated song "The Deep" from Daveed Diggs' rap group Clipping.

Yetu holds the memories for her people – water-dwelling descendants of pregnant African slave women thrown overboard by slave owners – who live idyllic lives in the deep. Their past, too traumatic to be remembered regularly, is forgotten by everyone, save one – the historian. This demanding role has been bestowed on Yetu.

Yetu remembers for everyone, and the memories, painful and wonderful, traumatic and terrible and miraculous, are destroying her. And so, she flees to the surface, escaping the memories, the expectations, and the responsibilities – and discovers a world her people left behind long ago.

Yetu will learn more than she ever expected to about her own past – and about the future of her people. If they are all to survive, they'll need to reclaim the memories, reclaim their identity – and own who they really are.

Inspired by a song produced by the rap group Clipping for the This American Life episode "We Are In The Future," The Deep is vividly original and uniquely affecting.

Beneath the Citadel

Destiny Soria

In the city of Eldra, people are ruled by ancient prophecies. For centuries, the high council has stayed in power by virtue of the prophecies of the elder seers. After the last infallible prophecy came to pass, growing unrest led to murders and an eventual rebellion that raged for more than a decade. In the present day, Cassa, the orphaned daughter of rebels, is determined to fight back against the high council, which governs Eldra from behind the walls of the citadel.

Her only allies are no-nonsense Alys, easygoing Evander, and perpetually underestimated Newt. Cassa struggles to come to terms with the legacy of rebellion her dead parents have left her, and the fear that she may be inadequate to shoulder the burden. But by the time Cassa and her friends uncover the mystery of the final infallible prophecy, it may be too late to save the city--or themselves.

Scale-Bright

Benjanun Sriduangkaew

Julienne's aunts are the archer who shot down the suns and the woman who lives on the moon. They teach her that there's more to the city of her birth than meets the eye – that beneath the modern chrome and glass of Hong Kong there are demons, gods, and the seethe of ancient feuds. As a mortal Julienne is to give them wide berth, for unlike her divine aunts she is painfully vulnerable, and choice prey for any demon.

Until one day, she comes across a wounded, bleeding woman no one else can see, and is drawn into an old, old story of love, snake women, and the deathless monk who hunts them.

Yellow Jessamine

Caitlin Starling

Shipping magnate Evelyn Perdanu controls the dying city of Delphinium with trade deals and secrets. But when mysterious sickness sparks death and obsession, all leading back to her, Evelyn's brittle existence is strained to breaking. She retreats to her estate, amidst paranoia and poisonous secrets, intent on rooting out this plague before it destroys everything she has built.

Skullsworn

Brian Staveley

Pyrre Lakatur is not, to her mind, an assassin, not a murderer--she is a priestess. At least, she will be once she passes her final trial.

The problem isn't the killing. The problem, rather, is love. For to complete her trial, Pyrre has ten days to kill the seven people enumerated in an ancient song, including "the one who made your mind and body sing with love / who will not come again."

Pyrre isn't sure she's ever been in love. And if she fails to find someone who can draw such passion from her, or fails to kill that someone, her order will give her to their god, the God of Death. Pyrre's not afraid to die, but she hates to fail, and so, as her trial is set to begin, she returns to the city of her birth in the hope of finding love... and ending it on the edge of her sword.

Perfect Circle

Sean Stewart

When William Kennedy is six years old, he sees his Uncle Billy at a family reunion. The only problem is his uncle died 3 weeks ago at an explosion in a Petroleum plant. For William, this is only the start. Nicknamed Dead Kennedy, he realises he can see dead people all around him. With time, this just becomes part of life, although it does have its practical implications - for instance he can't drive a car because he keeps swerving to avoid the ghosts.

Now aged 32, Dead Kennedy is approached by a distant cousin who needs help - the ghost of a girl is living in his garage and he thinks William can persuade her to leave. But when William Kennedy arrives at his cousin's house, he discovers that the girl was raped and murdered and that the perpetrator was the very man who is now asking for his help. In a twist, William kills the man and ends up being haunted himself. Meanwhile William is trying to get the rest of his life back on track - his relationship with his 12-ear-old daughter Megan and the ex-wife he is still in love with.

The Memory Theater

Karin Tidbeck

In a world just parallel to ours exists a mystical realm known only as the Gardens. It's a place where feasts never end, games of croquet have devastating consequences, and teenagers are punished for growing up. For a select group of Masters, it's a decadent paradise where time stands still. But for those who serve them, it's a slow torture where their lives can be ended in a blink.

In a bid to escape before their youth betrays them, Dora and Thistle – best friends and confidants – set out on a remarkable journey through time and space. Traveling between their world and ours, they hunt for the one person who can grant them freedom. Along the way, they encounter a mysterious traveler who trades in favors and never forgets debts, a crossroads at the center of the universe, our own world on the brink of war, and a traveling troupe of actors with the ability to unlock the fabric of reality.

The Story of Kullervo

J. R. R. Tolkien

The world first publication of a previously unknown work of fantasy by J.R.R. Tolkien, which tells the powerful story of a doomed young man who is sold into slavery and who swears revenge on the magician who killed his father.

Kullervo son of Kalervo is perhaps the darkest and most tragic of all J.R.R. Tolkien's characters. 'Hapless Kullervo', as Tolkien called him, is a luckless orphan boy with supernatural powers and a tragic destiny.

Brought up in the homestead of the dark magician Untamo, who killed his father, kidnapped his mother, and who tries three times to kill him when still a boy, Kullervo is alone save for the love of his twin sister, Wanona, and guarded by the magical powers of the black dog, Musti. When Kullervo is sold into slavery he swears revenge on the magician, but he will learn that even at the point of vengeance there is no escape from the cruellest of fates.

Tolkien wrote that The Story of Kullervo was 'the germ of my attempt to write legends of my own', and was 'a major matter in the legends of the First Age'; his Kullervo was the ancestor of Túrin Turambar, tragic incestuous hero of The Silmarillion. In addition to being a powerful story in its own right, The Story of Kullervo – published here for the first time with the author's drafts, notes and lecture-essays on its source-work, The Kalevala, is a foundation stone in the structure of Tolkien's invented world.

Ink Blood Sister Scribe

Emma Törzs

For generations, the Kalotay family has guarded a collection of ancient and rare books. Books that let a person walk through walls or manipulate the elements--books of magic that half-sisters Joanna and Esther have been raised to revere and protect.

All magic comes with a price, though, and for years the sisters have been separated. Esther has fled to a remote base in Antarctica to escape the fate that killed her own mother, and Joanna's isolated herself in their family home in Vermont, devoting her life to the study of these cherished volumes. But after their father dies suddenly while reading a book Joanna has never seen before, the sisters must reunite to preserve their family legacy. In the process, they'll uncover a world of magic far bigger and more dangerous than they ever imagined, and all the secrets their parents kept hidden; secrets that span centuries, continents, and even other libraries...

Something More Than Night

Ian Tregillis

Ian Tregillis's Something More Than Night is a Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler inspired murder mystery set in Thomas Aquinas's vision of Heaven. It's a noir detective story starring fallen angels, the heavenly choir, nightclub stigmatics, a priest with a dirty secret, a femme fatale, and the Voice of God.

Somebody has murdered the angel Gabriel. Worse, the Jericho Trumpet has gone missing, putting Heaven on the brink of a truly cosmic crisis. But the twisty plot that unfolds from the murder investigation leads to something much bigger: a con job one billion years in the making.

Because this is no mere murder. A small band of angels has decided to break out of heaven, but they need a human patsy to make their plan work.

Much of the story is told from the point of view of Bayliss, a cynical fallen angel who has modeled himself on Philip Marlowe. The yarn he spins follows the progression of a Marlowe novel--the mysterious dame who needs his help, getting grilled by the bulls, finding a stiff, getting slipped a mickey.

Angels and gunsels, dames with eyes like fire, and a grand maguffin, Something More Than Night is a murder mystery for the cosmos.

Cat Out of Hell

Lynne Truss

For people who both love and hate cats comes the tale of Alec Charlesworth, a librarian who finds himself suddenly alone: he's lost his job, his beloved wife has just died. Overcome by grief, he searches for clues about her disappearance in a file of interviews between a man called "Wiggy" and a cat, Roger. Who speaks to him.

It takes a while for Alec to realize he's not gone mad from grief, that the cat is actually speaking to Wiggy... and that much of what we fear about cats is true. They do think they're smarter than humans, for one thing. And, well, it seems they are! What's more, they do have nine lives. Or at least this one does - Roger's older than Methuselah, and his unblinking stare comes from the fact that he's seen it all.

And he's got a tale to tell, a tale of shocking local history and dark forces that may link not only the death of Alec's wife, but also several other local deaths. But will the cat help Alec, or is he one of the dark forces?

The Silence of the Wilting Skin

Tlotlo Tsamaase

In an African city, a nameless young woman living in the wards slowly begins to lose her identity: her skin color is peeling off, people are becoming invisible, and the city plans to destroy the train where they bury their dead. After the narrator is given a warning by her grandmother's dreamskin, things begin to fall apart. Struggling to hold onto a fluctuating reality, she prescribes herself insomnia in a desperate attempt to save her family.

Comfort Me With Apples

Catherynne M. Valente

Locus Award nominated novella.

Sophia was made for him. Her perfect husband. She can feel it in her bones. He is perfect. Their home together in Arcadia Gardens is perfect. Everything is perfect.

It's just that he's away so much. So often. He works so hard. She misses him. And he misses her. He says he does, so it must be true. He is the perfect husband and everything is perfect.

But sometimes Sophia wonders about things. Strange things. Dark things. The look on her husband's face when he comes back from a long business trip. The questions he will not answer. The locked basement she is never allowed to enter. And whenever she asks the neighbors, they can't quite meet her gaze....

But everything is perfect. Isn't it?

Veniss Underground

Jeff VanderMeer

In his debut novel, literary alchemist Jeff VanderMeer takes us on an unforgettable journey, a triumph of the imagination that reveals the magical and mysterious city of Veniss through three intertwined voices. First, Nicholas, a would-be Living Artist, seeks to escape his demons in the shadowy underground–but in doing so makes a deal with the devil himself. In her fevered search for him, his twin sister, Nicola, spins her own unusual and hypnotic tale as she discovers the hidden secrets of the city. And finally, haunted by Nicola's sudden, mysterious disappearance and gripped by despair, Shadrach, Nicola's lover, embarks on a mythic journey to the nightmarish levels deep beneath the surface of the city to bring his love back to light. There he will find wonders beyond imagining…and horrors greater than the heart can bear.

By turns beautiful, horrifying, delicate, and powerful, Veniss Underground explores the limits of love, memory, and obsession in a landscape that defies the boundaries of the imagination. This special edition includes the short stories "The Sea, Mendeho, and Moonlight"; "Detectives and Cadavers"; and "A Heart for Lucretia" and the novella Balzac's War, offering a complete tour of the fantastic world of Veniss.

A Sorceress Comes to Call

T. Kingfisher

Cordelia knows her mother is... unusual. Their house doesn't have any doors between rooms - there are no secrets in this house - and her mother doesn't allow Cordelia to have a single friend. Unless you count Falada, her mother's beautiful white horse. The only time Cordelia feels truly free is on her daily rides with him.

But more than simple eccentricity sets her mother apart. Other mothers don't force their daughters to be silent and motionless for hours, sometimes days, on end. Other mothers aren't evil sorcerers.

When her mother unexpectedly moves them into the manor home of a wealthy older Squire and his kind but keen-eyed sister, Hester, Cordelia knows this welcoming pair are to be her mother's next victims. But Cordelia feels at home for the very first time among these people, and as her mother's plans darken, she must decide how to face the woman who raised her to save the people who have become like family.

The Seventh Bride

T. Kingfisher

Young Rhea is a miller's daughter of low birth, so she is understandably surprised when a mysterious nobleman, Lord Crevan, shows up on her doorstep and proposes marriage. Since commoners don't turn down lords -- no matter how sinister they may seem -- Rhea is forced to agree to the engagement.

Lord Crevan demands that Rhea visit his remote manor before their wedding. Upon arrival, she discovers that not only was her betrothed married six times before, but his previous wives are all imprisoned in his enchanted castle. Determined not to share their same fate, Rhea asserts her desire for freedom. In answer, Lord Crevan gives Rhea a series of magical tasks to complete, with the threat "Come back before dawn, or else I'll marry you."

With time running out and each task more dangerous and bizarre than the last, Rhea must use her resourcefulness, compassion, and bravery to rally the other wives and defeat the sorcerer before he binds her to him forever.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Oscar Wilde

In this celebrated work, his only novel, Wilde forged a devastating portrait of the effects of evil and debauchery on a young aesthete in late-19th-century England. Combining elements of the Gothic horror novel and decadent French fiction, the book centers on a striking premise: As Dorian Gray sinks into a life of crime and gross sensuality, his body retains perfect youth and vigor while his recently painted portrait grows day by day into a hideous record of evil, which he must keep hidden from the world. For over a century, this mesmerizing tale of horror and suspense has enjoyed wide popularity. It ranks as one of Wilde's most important creations and among the classic achievements of its kind.

Shadowdrop

Chris Willrich

This novella originally appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, #261, in September 2018.

Read the full story for free at Beneath Ceaseless Skies.

The Devil in America

Kai Ashante Wilson

Scant years after the Civil War, a mysterious family confronts the legacy that has pursued them across centuries, out of slavery, and finally to the idyllic peace of the town of Rosetree. The shattering consequences of this confrontation echo backwards and forwards in time, even to the present day.

This novelette is included in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Nine (2015), edited by Jonathan Strahan, Nebula Awards Showcase 2016, edited by Mercedes Lackey, and Worlds Seen in Passing: Ten Years of Tor.com Short Fiction (2018), edited by Irene Gallo.

Read this story online for free at Tor.com.

Innocents Aboard: New Fantasy Stories

Gene Wolfe

Gene Wolfe may be the single best writer in fantasy and SF today. His quotes and reviews certainly support that contention, and so does his impressive short fiction oeuvre. Innocents Aboard gathers fantasy and horror stories from the last decade that have never before been in a Wolfe collection. Highlights from the twenty-two stories include "The Tree is my Hat," adventure and horror in the South Seas, "The Night Chough," a Long Sun story, "The Walking Sticks," a darkly humorous tale of a supernatural inheritance, and "Houston, 1943," lurid adventures in a dream that has no end. This is fantastic fiction at its best.

Peace

Gene Wolfe

Living out his final days in a small midwestern town, an embittered elderly man, Alden Dennis Weer, explores his unique imagination, which has the power to obliterate time and reshape reality.

In the Sight of Akresa

Ray Wood

Claire's lover has no tongue. A slave liberated from a heathen temple, Aya cannot tell the story of her stolen voice, or of her and Claire's unfolding love. She cannot speak her pain, her joy, or her sorrow. And if she sees that which eludes the blind goddess of justice, she cannot bear witness. "In the Sight of Akresa" is a tragic fantasy romance from debut author Ray Wood.

This short story can also be found in the anthology Worlds Seen in Passing: Ten Years of Tor.com Short Fiction (2018), edited by Irene Gallo.

Read the full story on Tor.com.

The Midnight Circus

Jane Yolen

Welcome to the Midnight Circus – and watch your step. The dark imaginings of fantasy icon Jane Yolen are not for the faint of heart. In these sixteen brilliantly unnerving tales and poems, Central Park becomes a carnival where you can – but probably shouldn't – transform into a wild beast. The Red Sea will be deadly to cross due to a plague of voracious angels. Meanwhile, the South Pole is no place for even a good man, regardless of whether he is living or dead.

Wicked, solemn, and chilling, the circus is ready for your visit – just don't arrive late.

Table of Contents

  • Introduction: Welcome to the Midnight Circus - essay by Theodora Goss
  • Who Knew I Was a Writer of Dark Stones? - essay
  • The White Seal Maid - short fiction
  • The Weaver of Tomorrow - short fiction
  • The Snatchers - short fiction
  • Wilding - short fiction
  • Requiem Antarctica (with Robert J. Harris) - short fiction
  • Night Wolves - short fiction
  • The House of Seven Angels - short fiction
  • Great Gray - short fiction
  • Little Red (with Adam Stemple) - short fiction
  • Winter's King - short fiction
  • Inscription - short fiction
  • Dog Boy Remembers - short fiction
  • The Fisherman's Wife - short fiction
  • Become a Warrior - short fiction
  • An Infestation of Angels - short fiction
  • Names - short fiction
  • Story Notes and Poems
    • The Weaver of Tomorrow - essay / "The Wheel Spins" - poem
    • The White Seal Maid - essay / "Ballad of the White Seal Maid" - poem
    • Snatchers - essay / "Lou Leaving Home" - poem
    • Wilding - essay / "Deer, Dances" - poem
    • Requiem Antarctica - essay / "Vampyr" - poem
    • Night Wolves - essay / "Bad Dreams" - poem
    • The House of the Seven Angels - essay / "Anticipation" - poem
    • Great Gray - essay / "Remembering the Great Gray" - poem
    • Little Red - essay / "Red at Eighty-One" - poem
    • Winters King - essay / "If Winter" - poem
    • Inscription - essay / "Stone Ring" - poem
    • Dog Boy Remembers - essay / "The Path" - poem
    • The Fisherman's Wife - essay / "Undine" - poem
    • Become a Warrior - essay / "The Princess Turns" - poem
    • An Infestation of Angels - essay / "Work Days" - poem
    • Names - essay / "What the Oven Is Not" - poem
  • Afterword: From the Princess to the Queen - essay by Alethea Kontis
  • About the Author

The Replacement

Brenna Yovanoff

Mackie Doyle is not one of us. Though he lives in the small town of Gentry, he comes from a world of tunnels and black murky water, a world of living dead girls ruled by a little tattooed princess. He is a Replacement, left in the crib of a human baby sixteen years ago. Now, because of fatal allergies to iron, blood, and consecrated ground, Mackie is fighting to survive in the human world.

Mackie would give anything to live among us, to practice on his bass or spend time with his crush, Tate. But when Tate's baby sister goes missing, Mackie is drawn irrevocably into the underworld of Gentry, known as Mayhem. He must face the dark creatures of the Slag Heaps and find his rightful place, in our world, or theirs.

Edward Scissorhands meets The Catcher in the Rye in this wildly imaginative and frighteningly beautiful horror novel about an unusual boy and his search for a place to belong.

A Night in the Lonesome October

Roger Zelazny

Snuff is a watchdog, and together with his master they walk the streets of Soho at night looking for evil. Halloween is a particulary busy time for them, as well as for Greymalk the cat, Nightwind the owl and for all the other animals, as they accompany their various masters about their business.

Jack of Shadows

Roger Zelazny

They're going to have a devil of a time trying to catch the sharpest thief in hell....

Black Wine

Candas Jane Dorsey

An old woman hangs in a cage; a young woman slaves on a rich lord's estate. How does a woman discover and assert her identity in a primeval, barbaric world? From slave dens to merchant cities to isolated mountains, Candas Jane Dorsey's first novel is a powerful exploration of gender, identity, and freedom.

Lunar Park

Bret Easton Ellis

Imagine becoming a best-selling novelist, and almost immediately famous and wealthy, while still in college, and before long seeing your insufferable father reduced to a bag of ashes in a safety-deposit box, while after American Psycho your celebrity drowns in a sea of vilification, booze, and drugs.

Then imagine having a second chance ten years later, as the Bret Easton Ellis of this remarkable novel is given, with a wife, children, and suburban sobriety—only to watch this new life shatter beyond recognition in a matter of days. At a fateful Halloween party he glimpses a disturbing (fictional) character driving a car identical to his late father’s, his stepdaughter’s doll violently “malfunctions,” and their house undergoes bizarre transformations both within and without. Connecting these aberrations to graver events—a series of grotesque murders that no longer seem random and the epidemic disappearance of boys his son’s age—Ellis struggles to defend his family against this escalating menace even as his wife, their therapists, and the police insist that his apprehensions are rooted instead in substance abuse and egomania.

Lunar Park
confounds one expectation after another, passing through comedy and mounting horror, both psychological and supernatural, toward an astonishing resolution—about love and loss, fathers and sons—in what is surely the most powerfully original and deeply moving novel of an extraordinary career.

Imagine becoming a best-selling novelist, and almost immediately famous and wealthy, while still in college, and before long seeing your insufferable father reduced to a bag of ashes in a safety-deposit box, while after American Psycho your celebrity drowns in a sea of vilification, booze, and drugs.

Then imagine having a second chance ten years later, as the Bret Easton Ellis of this remarkable novel is given, with a wife, children, and suburban sobriety—only to watch this new life shatter beyond recognition in a matter of days. At a fateful Halloween party he glimpses a disturbing (fictional) character driving a car identical to his late father’s, his stepdaughter’s doll violently “malfunctions,” and their house undergoes bizarre transformations both within and without. Connecting these aberrations to graver events—a series of grotesque murders that no longer seem random and the epidemic disappearance of boys his son’s age—Ellis struggles to defend his family against this escalating menace even as his wife, their therapists, and the police insist that his apprehensions are rooted instead in substance abuse and egomania.

Lunar Park
confounds one expectation after another, passing through comedy and mounting horror, both psychological and supernatural, toward an astonishing resolution—about love and loss, fathers and sons—in what is surely the most powerfully original and deeply moving novel of an extraordinary career.

Miserere: An Autumn Tale

Teresa Frohock

Exiled exorcist Lucian Negru deserted his lover in Hell in exchange for saving his sister Catarina's soul, but Catarina doesn't want salvation. She wants Lucian to help her fulfill her dark covenant with the Fallen Angels by using his power to open the Hell Gates. Catarina intends to lead the Fallen's hordes out of Hell and into the parallel dimension of Woerld, Heaven's frontline of defense between Earth and Hell. When Lucian refuses to help his sister, she imprisons and cripples him, but Lucian learns that Rachael, the lover he betrayed and abandoned in Hell, is dying from a demonic possession. Determined to rescue Rachael from the demon he unleashed on her soul, Lucian flees his sister, but Catarina's wrath isn't so easy to escape!

Grendel

John Gardner

A retelling of the Beowulf mythology from the perspective of Grendel, the monster who preys upon the Anglo-Saxons of Hrothgar's tribe. Grendel is a nihilist who opposes the rationalism and self-abnegation of human beings and fears the advent of the society they are attempting to construct. He is defeated by Beowulf in the end.

Uncle Silas

Sheridan Le Fanu

As the November winds wail in ivied chimneys we are drawn into a Victorian Gothic atmosphere of menacing, sombre gloom and ebony shadows. Sheridan Le Fanu leaves us in no doubt that we are in for a feast of exciting drama, luring us into the intensely claustrophobic world of the nineteenth century sensational novel. Le Fanu is amongst the top-notch exponents of the creepy, the criminal and the oppressive. In this tale of the orphaned teenage heiress Maud Ruthyn, fearing for her life at the hands of her sinister uncle, he has created a rattling good plot with the depth of a social novel and the power of high romance.

Deerskin

Robin McKinley

As Princess Lissar reaches womanhood, it is clear to all the kingdom that in her breathtaking beauty she is the mirror image of her mother, the queen. But this seeming blessing forces her to flee for safety from her father's lust and madness. With her loyal dog Ash at her side, Lissar will unlock a door to a world of magic, where she will find the key to her survival-and an adventure beyond her wildest dreams.

The Music of Razors

Cameron Rogers

In nineteenth-century Boston, a young doctor on the run from the law falls in with a British confidence artist. Together–and with dire consequences–they bring back to the light something meant to be forgotten.

A world away in London, an absent father, haunted by the voice of a banished angel, presents his daughter with an impossible friend–a clockwork ballerina.

For two centuries, a bullet-removal specialist has wielded instruments of angel bone in service to a forgotten power . . . and now he vows to find someone else to shoulder the burden, someone with a conscience of their own, a strong mind, and a broken will. For a hundred years he has searched for the perfect contender, and now he has found two: a brother and a sister. Walter and Hope. Either will do.

Last night something stepped from little Walter’s closet and he never woke up. Now he travels the dark road between worlds, no longer entirely boy nor wholly beast, but with one goal in mind: to prevent his sister from suffering the same fate as he. Only the creature he has become can save Hope. But is it too late to save himself?

The Safety of Unknown Cities

Lucy Taylor

In search of transcendence, Val Petrillo makes a perilous journey to North Africa in search of a magical city where all one's sexual yearnings can come to life. In the vastness of the forbidden continent, she ends up finding more than she expected in a world of unbridled sexuality and horror.

A Darker Shade of Magic

A Darker Shade of Magic: Book 1

V. E. Schwab

Most people only know one London; but what if there were several? Kell is one of the last Travelers-magicians with a rare ability to travel between parallel Londons. There's Grey London, dirty and crowded and without magic, home to the mad king George III. There's Red London, where life and magic are revered. Then, White London, ruled by whoever has murdered their way to the throne. But once upon a time, there was Black London...

A Clash of Kings

A Song of Ice and Fire: Book 2

George R. R. Martin

George R. R. Martin, a writer of unsurpassed vision, power, and imagination, has created a landmark of fantasy fiction. In his widely acclaimed A Game of Thrones, he introduced us to an extraordinary world of wonder, intrigue, and adventure. Now, in the eagerly awaited second volume in this epic saga, he once again proves himself a master myth-maker, setting a standard against which all other fantasy novels will be measured for years to come.

Time is out of joint. The summer of peace and plenty, ten years long, is drawing to a close, and the harsh, chill winter approaches like an angry beast. Two great leaders--Lord Eddard Stark and Robert Baratheon--who held sway over an age of enforced peace are dead...victims of royal treachery. Now, from the ancient citadel of Dragonstone to the forbidding shores of Winterfell, chaos reigns, as pretenders to the Iron Throne of the Seven Kingdoms prepare to stake their claims through tempest, turmoil, and war.

As a prophecy of doom cuts across the sky--a comet the color of blood and flame--six factions struggle for control of a divided land. Eddard's son Robb has declared himself King in the North. In the south, Joffrey, the heir apparent, rules in name only, victim of the scheming courtiers who teem over King's Landing. Robert's two brothers each seek their own dominion, while a disfavored house turns once more to conquest. And a continent away, an exiled queen, the Mother of Dragons, risks everything to lead her precious brood across a hard hot desert to win back the crown that is rightfully hers.

A Clash of Kings transports us into a magnificent, forgotten land of revelry and revenge, wizardry and warfare. It is a tale in which maidens cavort with madmen, brother plots against brother, and the dead rise to walk in the night. Here a princess masquerades as an orphan boy; a knight of the mind prepares a poison for a treacherous sorceress; and wild men descend from the Mountains of the Moon to ravage the countryside.

Against a backdrop of incest and fratricide, alchemy and murder, the price of glory may be measured in blood. And the spoils of victory may just go to the men and women possessed of the coldest steel...and the coldest hearts. For when rulers clash, all of the land feels the tremors.

Audacious, inventive, brilliantly imagined, A Clash of Kings is a novel of dazzling beauty and boundless enchantment--a tale of pure excitement you will never forget.

A Storm of Swords

A Song of Ice and Fire: Book 3

George R. R. Martin

Of the five contenders for power, one is dead, another in disfavor, and still the wars rage as violently as ever, as alliances are made and broken. Joffrey, of House Lannister, sits on the Iron Throne, the uneasy ruler of the land of the Seven Kingdoms. His most bitter rival, Lord Stannis, stands defeated and disgraced, the victim of the jealous sorceress who holds him in her evil thrall. But young Robb, of House Stark, still rules the North from the fortress of Riverrun. Robb plots against his despised Lannister enemies, even as they hold his sister hostage at King's Landing, the seat of the Iron Throne. Meanwhile, making her way across a blood-drenched continent is the exiled queen, Daenerys, mistress of the only three dragons still left in the world....

But as opposing forces maneuver for the final titanic showdown, an army of barbaric wildlings arrives from the outermost line of civilization. In their vanguard is a horde of mythical Others--a supernatural army of the living dead whose animated corpses are unstoppable. As the future of the land hangs in the balance, no one will rest until the Seven Kingdoms have exploded in a veritable storm of swords...

A Feast for Crows

A Song of Ice and Fire: Book 4

George R. R. Martin

Few books have captivated the imagination and won the devotion and praise of readers and critics everywhere as has George R. R. Martin's monumental epic cycle of high fantasy. Now, in A Feast for Crows, Martin delivers the long-awaited fourth book of his landmark series, as a kingdom torn asunder finds itself at last on the brink of peace... only to be launched on an even more terrifying course of destruction.

A Feast for Crows

It seems too good to be true. After centuries of bitter strife and fatal treachery, the seven powers dividing the land have decimated one another into an uneasy truce. Or so it appears.... With the death of the monstrous King Joffrey, Cersei is ruling as regent in King's Landing. Robb Stark's demise has broken the back of the Northern rebels, and his siblings are scattered throughout the kingdom like seeds on barren soil. Few legitimate claims to the once desperately sought Iron Throne still exist -- or they are held in hands too weak or too distant to wield them effectively. The war, which raged out of control for so long, has burned itself out.

But as in the aftermath of any climactic struggle, it is not long before the survivors, outlaws, renegades, and carrion eaters start to gather, picking over the bones of the dead and fighting for the spoils of the soon-to-be dead. Now in the Seven Kingdoms, as the human crows assemble over a banquet of ashes, daring new plots and dangerous new alliances are formed, while surprising faces -- some familiar, others only just appearing -- are seen emerging from an ominous twilight of past struggles and chaos to take up the challenges ahead.

It is a time when the wise and the ambitious, the deceitful and the strong will acquire the skills, the power, and the magic to survive the stark and terrible times that lie before them. It is a time for nobles and commoners, soldiers and sorcerers, assassins and sages to come together and stake their fortunes... and their lives. For at a feast for crows, many are the guests -- but only a few are the survivors.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms

A Song of Ice and Fire: Dunk and Egg

George R. R. Martin

Taking place nearly a century before the events of A Game of Thrones, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms compiles the first three official prequel novellas to George R. R. Martin's ongoing masterwork, A Song of Ice and Fire. These never-before-collected adventures recount an age when the Targaryen line still holds the Iron Throne, and the memory of the last dragon has not yet passed from living consciousness.

Before Tyrion Lannister and Podrick Payne, there was Dunk and Egg. A young, naïve but ultimately courageous hedge knight, Ser Duncan the Tall towers above his rivals--in stature if not experience. Tagging along is his diminutive squire, a boy called Egg--whose true name (hidden from all he and Dunk encounter) is Aegon Targaryen. Though more improbable heroes may not be found in all of Westeros, great destinies lay ahead for these two... as do powerful foes, royal intrigue, and outrageous exploits.

Featuring more than 160 all-new illustrations by Gary Gianni, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is a must-have collection that proves chivalry isn't dead--yet.

White Trash Warlock

Adam Binder: Book 1

David R. Slayton

Not all magicians go to schools of magic.

Adam Binder has the Sight. It's a power that runs in his bloodline: the ability to see beyond this world and into another, a realm of magic populated by elves, gnomes, and spirits of every kind. But for much of Adam's life, that power has been a curse, hindering friendships, worrying his backwoods family, and fueling his abusive father's rage.

Years after his brother, Bobby, had him committed to a psych ward, Adam is ready to come to grips with who he is, to live his life on his terms, to find love, and maybe even use his magic to do some good. Hoping to track down his missing father, Adam follows a trail of cursed artifacts to Denver, only to discover that an ancient and horrifying spirit has taken possession of Bobby's wife.

It isn't long before Adam becomes the spirit's next target. To survive the confrontation, save his sister-in-law, and learn the truth about his father, Adam will have to risk bargaining with very dangerous beings... including his first love.

Deadbeat Druid

Adam Binder: Book 3

David R. Slayton

The living cannot be allowed to infect the dead.

Adam Binder has lost what matters most to him. Having finally learned the true identity of the warlock preying on his family, what was supposed to be a final confrontation with the fiend instead became a trap that sent Adam's beloved Vicente into the realm of the dead, where none living are meant to be.

Bound by debt, oath, and love, Adam blazes his own trail into the underworld to get Vicente back, and to end the threat of the warlock once and for all. But the road to hell is paved with far more than good intentions. Demons are hungry, and ghosts are relentless, and what awaits Adam in the underworld is nothing he is prepared to face.

If that weren't enough, Adam has one more thing he must do if he and Vicente are to return to the world of the living: find the lost heart of Death herself.

The Day After Judgment

After Such Knowledge: The Devil's Day: Book 2

James Blish

Baines is a bored businessman with a taste for the macabre -- a munitions dealer accustomed to fomenting war wherever and whenever he can. But nuclear proliferation has, ironically, been bad for business, and Baines needs something, anything to reverse that trend. His restless mind conceives a notion that satisfies his desire for profit and amusement both -- a scheme for letting lose all the demons of Hell for one night of unfettered destruction -- and he commissions Theron Ware, the great Black Magician, to carry out the plan.

Ware alone has the ability -- and the power -- to call up those chained to the darkness. Crimes of violence, chiefly murder, are his specialty. He will arrange for demons to kill almost anyone...for a price. As his scruples are invoked, the fee rises. But for Baines' commission, the payment can't be high enough. For Theron Ware has never before attempted to work his evil skill on such a monstrous scale. And if he cannot call the demons home again, their liberation will be permanent -- a catastrophe for the entire human race.

Ninth House

Alex Stern: Book 1

Leigh Bardugo

Galaxy "Alex" Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale's freshman class. Raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands by a hippie mom, Alex dropped out of school early and into a world of shady drug-dealer boyfriends, dead-end jobs, and much, much worse. In fact, by age twenty, she is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide. Some might say she's thrown her life away. But at her hospital bed, Alex is offered a second chance: to attend one of the world's most prestigious universities on a full ride. What's the catch, and why her?

Still searching for answers, Alex arrives in New Haven tasked by her mysterious benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale's secret societies. Their eight windowless "tombs" are the well-known haunts of the rich and powerful, from high-ranking politicos to Wall Street's biggest players. But their occult activities are more sinister and more extraordinary than any paranoid imagination might conceive. They tamper with forbidden magic. They raise the dead. And, sometimes, they prey on the living.

Hell Bent

Alex Stern: Book 2

Leigh Bardugo

Find a gateway to the underworld. Steal a soul out of hell. A simple plan, except people who make this particular journey rarely come back. But Galaxy "Alex" Stern is determined to break Darlington out of purgatory?even if it costs her a future at Lethe and at Yale.

Forbidden from attempting a rescue, Alex and Dawes can't call on the Ninth House for help, so they assemble a team of dubious allies to save the gentleman of Lethe. Together, they will have to navigate a maze of arcane texts and bizarre artifacts to uncover the societies' most closely guarded secrets, and break every rule doing it. But when faculty members begin to die off, Alex knows these aren't just accidents. Something deadly is at work in New Haven, and if she is going to survive, she'll have to reckon with the monsters of her past and a darkness built into the university's very walls.

A Discovery of Witches

All Souls: Book 1

Deborah Harkness

In this tale of passion and obsession, Diana Bishop, a young scholar and the descendant of witches, discovers a long-lost and enchanted alchemical manuscript deep in Oxford's Bodleian Library. Its reappearance summons a fantastical underworld, which she navigates with her leading man, vampire geneticist Matthew Clairmont.

Shadow of Night

All Souls: Book 2

Deborah Harkness

Deborah Harkness exploded onto the literary scene with her debut novel, A Discovery of Witches, Book One of the magical All Souls Trilogy and an international publishing phenomenon. The novel introduced Diana Bishop, Oxford scholar and reluctant witch, and the handsome geneticist and vampire Matthew Clairmont; together they found themselves at the center of a supernatural battle over an enchanted manuscript known as Ashmole 782.

Now, picking up from A Discovery of Witches' cliffhanger ending, Shadow of Night plunges Diana and Matthew into Elizabethan London, a world of spies, subterfuge, and a coterie of Matthew's old friends, the mysterious School of Night that includes Christopher Marlowe and Walter Raleigh. Here, Diana must locate a witch to tutor her in magic, Matthew is forced to confront a past he thought he had put to rest, and the mystery of Ashmole 782 deepens.

Deborah Harkness has crafted a gripping journey through a world of alchemy, time travel, and magical discoveries, delivering one of the most hotly anticipated novels of the season.

Ambergris

Ambergris

Jeff VanderMeer

From the author of Borne and Annihilation comes the one-volume hardcover reissue of his cult classic Ambergris Trilogy.

Before Area X, there was Ambergris. Jeff VanderMeer conceived what would become his first cult classic series of speculative works: the Ambergris Trilogy. Now, for the first time ever, the story of the sprawling metropolis of Ambergris is collected into a single volume, including City of Saints and Madmen, Shriek: An Afterword, andFinch.

Shriek: An Afterword

Ambergris: Book 2

Jeff VanderMeer

Narrated with flamboyant intensity by one-time society figure Janice Shriek, and presenting a vivid gallery of strange characters and even stranger events, this is an account of the adventures of her brother Duncan, a historian obsessed with a doomed love affair and a dark secret that may kill or transform him. It involves, too, a war between rival publishing houses which threatens to change Ambergris forever, and rivalry with a marginalised race known as the "grey caps" who, armed with advanced fungal technologies, wait underground for their chance to recover the city that was once theirs. This story of the family Shriek is an exotic and colourful novel of love, life and death which brings to fruition the author's genius for capturing the truly weird.

Finch

Ambergris: Book 3

Jeff VanderMeer

In Finch, mysterious underground inhabitants known as the gray caps have reconquered the failed fantasy state Ambergris and put it under martial law. They have disbanded House Hoegbotton and are controlling the human inhabitants with strange addictive drugs, internment in camps, and random acts of terror. The rebel resistance is scattered, and the gray caps are using human labor to build two strange towers.

Against this backdrop, John Finch, who lives alone with a cat and a lizard, must solve an impossible double murder for his gray cap masters while trying to make contact with the rebels. Nothing is as it seems as Finch and his disintegrating partner Wyte negotiate their way through a landscape of spies, rebels, and deception. Trapped by his job and the city, Finch is about to come face to face with a series of mysteries that will change him and Ambergris forever.

American Gods

American Gods: Book 1

Neil Gaiman

The storm was coming....

Shadow spent three years in prison, keeping his head down, doing his time. All he wanted was to get back to the loving arms of his wife and to stay out of trouble for the rest of his life. But days before his scheduled release, he learns that his wife has been killed in an accident, and his world becomes a colder place.

On the plane ride home to the funeral, Shadow meets a grizzled man who calls himself Mr. Wednesday. A self-styled grifter and rogue, Wednesday offers Shadow a job. And Shadow, a man with nothing to lose, accepts.

But working for the enigmatic Wednesday is not without its price, and Shadow soon learns that his role in Wednesday's schemes will be far more dangerous than he ever could have imagined. Entangled in a world of secrets, he embarks on a wild road trip and encounters, among others, the murderous Czernobog, the impish Mr. Nancy, and the beautiful Easter -- all of whom seem to know more about Shadow than he himself does.

Shadow will learn that the past does not die, that everyone, including his late wife, had secrets, and that the stakes are higher than anyone could have imagined.

All around them a storm of epic proportions threatens to break. Soon Shadow and Wednesday will be swept up into a conflict as old as humanity itself. For beneath the placid surface of everyday life a war is being fought -- and the prize is the very soul of America.

As unsettling as it is exhilarating, American Gods is a dark and kaleidoscopic journey deep into myth and across an America at once eerily familiar and utterly alien. Magnificently told, this work of literary magic will haunt the reader far beyond the final page.

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi

Amina al-Sirafi: Book 1

Shannon Chakraborty

Amina al-Sirafi should be content. After a storied and scandalous career as one of the Indian Ocean's most notorious pirates, she's survived backstabbing rogues, vengeful merchant princes, several husbands, and one actual demon to retire peacefully with her family to a life of piety, motherhood, and absolutely nothing that hints of the supernatural.

But when she's tracked down by the obscenely wealthy mother of a former crewman, she's offered a job no bandit could refuse: retrieve her comrade's kidnapped daughter for a kingly sum. The chance to have one last adventure with her crew, do right by an old friend, and win a fortune that will secure her family's future forever? It seems like such an obvious choice that it must be God's will.

Yet the deeper Amina dives, the more it becomes alarmingly clear there's more to this job, and the girl's disappearance, than she was led to believe. For there's always risk in wanting to become a legend, to seize one last chance at glory, to savor just a bit more power... and the price might be your very soul.

Burnt Offerings

Anita Blake: Book 7

Laurell K. Hamilton

An Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, novel

'You can't trust anyone who sleeps with the monsters.'

That's what I've always said. That's what I've always believed. But now I'm the one sharing a bed with the Master Vampire of the City.

I'm Anita Blake, the woman the vampires call the Executioner. From part of the solution, I've become part of the problem. So it hits close to home when an arsonist begins to target vampire-owned businesses all over town – an arsonist who seems to want to destroy more than just property.

It's the monsters who are in danger now. And it's up to the Executioner to save them from the inferno.

The Broken Lands

Arcane: Book 2

Kate Milford

A crossroads can be a place of great power. So begins this deliciously spine-tingling prequel to Kate Milford’s The Boneshaker, set in the colorful world of nineteenth-century Coney Island and New York City. Few crossroads compare to the one being formed by the Brooklyn Bridge and the East River, and as the bridge’s construction progresses, forces of unimaginable evil seek to bend that power to their advantage. Only two orphans with unusual skills stand in their way. Can the teenagers Sam, a card sharp, and Jin, a fireworks expert, stop them before it’s too late? Here is a richly textured, slow-burning thriller about friendship, courage, and the age-old fight between good and evil.

The Atlas Six

Atlas (Blake): Book 1

Olivie Blake

Each decade, only the six most uniquely talented magicians are selected to earn a place in the Alexandrian Society, the foremost secret society in the world. The chosen will secure a life of power and prestige beyond their wildest dreams.

But at what cost?

Each of the six newest recruits has their reasons for accepting the Society's elusive invitation. Even if it means growing closer than they could have imagined to their most dangerous enemies? or risking unforgivable betrayal from their most trusted allies? they will fight tooth and nail for the right to join the ranks of the Alexandrians.

Even if it means they won't all survive the year.

The Atlas Paradox

Atlas (Blake): Book 2

Olivie Blake

Six magicians were presented with the opportunity of a lifetime.

Five are now members of the Society.

Two paths lie before them.

All must pick a side.

Alliances will be tested, hearts will be broken, and The Society of Alexandrians will be revealed for what it is: a secret society with raw, world-changing power, headed by a man whose plans to change life as we know it are already under way.

The Atlas Complex

Atlas (Blake): Book 3

Olivie Blake

Only the extraordinary are chosen. Only the cunning survive.

An explosive return to the library leaves the six Alexandrians lethally vulnerable to the terms of their recruitment, driving the fractured alliances to opposing strategies. While those who remain with the archives wrestle with the ethics of their astronomical abilities, an unlikely partnership seeks to influence politics on a global stage.

While each member of the erstwhile cohort does what it takes to secure their place on the board, the outside world mobilizes to destroy them, and the Caretaker himself, Atlas Blakely, may yet succeed with a plan foreseen to have world-ending stakes. It';s a race to survive as the six Society recruits are faced with the question of what they're willing to betray for limitless power?and who will be destroyed along the way.

The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath

Ballantine Adult Fantasy: Book 15

H. P. Lovecraft

Collection of early Lovecraft stories inspired by Lord Dunsany.

Table of Contents:

  • About The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath and H. P. Lovecraft: Through the Gates of Deeper Slumber - essay by Lin Carter
  • The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath - (1943) - novella
  • Celephais - (1922) - shortstory
  • The Silver Key - (1929) - shortstory
  • Through the Gates of the Silver Key - (1934) - novelette by H. P. Lovecraft and E. Hoffmann Price
  • The White Ship - (1919) - shortstory
  • The Strange High House in the Mist - (1931) - shortstory
  • Postscript About The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath and H. P. Lovecraft - (1966) - poem by Lin Carter

Zothique

Ballantine Adult Fantasy: Book 16

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith's influential Zothique sequence of stories, the majority of which were orignally published during the 1930s, collected in a signle volume. Number 16 in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, edited by Lin Carter.

Contents:

  • About Zothique, and Clark Ashton Smith: When the World Grows Old - essay by Lin Carter
  • Map of Zothique
  • Zothique (1951 poem)
  • Xeethra (1934)
  • Necromancy in Naat (1936)
  • The Empire of the Necromancers (1932)
  • The Master of the Crabs (1948)
  • The Death of Ilalotha (1937)
  • The Weaver in the Vault (1934)
  • The Witchcraft of Ulua (1934)
  • The Charnel God (1934)
  • The Dark Eidolon (1935)
  • Morthylla (1953)
  • The Black Abbot of Puthuum (1936)
  • The Tomb-Spawn (1934)
  • The Last Hieroglyph (1935)
  • The Isle of the Torturers (1933)
  • The Garden of Adompha (1938)
  • The Voyage of King Euvoran (1933)
  • Epilogue: The Sequence of the Zothique Tales - essay by Lin Carter

The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare

Ballantine Adult Fantasy: Book 32

G. K. Chesterton

Can you trust yourself when you don't know who you are? Syme uses his new acquaintance to go undercover in Europe's Central Anarchist Council and infiltrate their deadly mission, even managing to have himself voted to the position of 'Thursday'. In a park in London, secret policeman Gabriel Syme strikes up a conversation with an anarchist. Sworn to do his duty, when Syme discovers another undercover policeman on the Council, however, he starts to question his role in their operations. And as a desperate chase across Europe begins, his confusion grows, as well as his confidence in his ability to outwit his enemies. But he has still to face the greatest terror that the Council has - its leader: a man named Sunday, whose true nature is worse than Syme could ever have imagined...

Berserk of Gluttony, Vol. 1

Berserk of Gluttony: Book 1

Ichika Isshiki

HE'LL DEVOUR YOUR SOUL

Fate Graphite is one of the forsaken. Cursed with the skill "Gluttony," he is ever starving, never sated... until the day he kills a dying thief and devours the man's strength--and his soul. The true hunger of Fate's Gluttony has awakened, and if he can learn to control his power, he will at last be the master of his own destiny.

Berserk of Gluttony, Vol. 2

Berserk of Gluttony: Book 2

Ichika Isshiki

THE ROAD TO HELL

Fate wants nothing more than to save Roxy from certain death in Galia, a death to which her fellow holy knights condemned her. As he follows Roxy's trail, he encounters a Galian girl he once met: Myne, who wields a black axe that eerily resembles Fate's own black sword. Myne agrees to help Fate fight the monsters between him and Galia--but once they get there, he must repay her favor in kind.

Berserk of Gluttony, Vol. 3

Berserk of Gluttony: Book 3

Ichika Isshiki

HEART OF DARKNESS

At last, Fate reaches Babylon, the border town on the edge of Galia where Roxy is stationed. But the moment Fate arrives, a mysterious woman calling herself Eris intercepts him to deliver an ominous message: "Roxy Hart must die." If Fate wants to rescue the girl who saved him, he must journey into the heart of vast, monster-ridden Galia and face whatever darkness lies within.

Berserk of Gluttony, Vol. 4

Berserk of Gluttony: Book 4

Ichika Isshiki

ROTTEN TO THE CORE

Blessed with new power after his trials in Galia, Fate returns to Seifort. He intends to wield his influence to uplift the downtrodden--those forsaken by the world for their "unnecessary" skills. But standing in his way are his cruel old employers, the powerful Vlerick family. Now, in order to save the soul of Seifort, Fate must expose the terrifying truth hidden within the Vlerick estate.

Berserk of Gluttony, Vol. 5

Berserk of Gluttony: Book 5

Ichika Isshiki

FRIEND, FOE--AND FAMILY

Myne’s disappearance has left Fate reeling, but as the new head of the Barbatos family, he must be strong. At first he's focused on reforging a bond with his former tormenter and new sister, Memil. Then a grim encounter critically endangers Roxy's soul, and Fate must find a way to protect her before his Gluttony devours her once and for all. But as he searches, unexpected answers to old mysteries begin to emerge--and the truths Fate uncovers about his own heritage prove as dangerous and strange as they are difficult to swallow.

Berserk of Gluttony, Vol. 6

Berserk of Gluttony: Book 6

Ichika Isshiki

HUNGRY HUNTER

Fate has a new quest: chase down Myne and close the Door to Distant Lands--and maybe get some answers out of his resurrected father. This time, however, he's heading out with a whole party in tow, including Eris, Memil, and Roxy. But Fate's not the only one wrestling with this new camaraderie. Roxy's glad to finally be fighting by Fate's side, but she knows she won't be able to stay there unless she too reaches the Domain of E... if she can survive it.

Berserk of Gluttony, Vol. 7

Berserk of Gluttony: Book 7

Ichika Isshiki

THE SINS OF WRATH

Fate finally locates Myne in Hausen, the domain of which he is lord and protector. It has always been Fate's aim to save Myne from herself, but now the alternative comes at too high a cost to bear: should Fate fail to rescue his errant companion, the mysterious Libra threatens to rain destruction on everything he holds dear. But Fate will have to overcome more than Myne in the depths of Hausen--he'll have to face the darkness of her past and the truth of their forsaken world.

The Chronicles of The Black Company

Black Company: Tales of the Black Company: Book 1

Glen Cook

Darkness wars with darkness as the hard-bitten men of the Black Company take their pay and do what they must. They bury their doubts with their dead.

Then comes the prophecy: The White Rose has been reborn, somewhere, to embody good once more....

This omnibus edition comprises The Black Company, Shadows Linger, and The White Rose.

The Books of the South

Black Company: Tales of the Black Company: Book 2

Glen Cook

Marching south after the ghastly battle at the Tower of Charm, the Black Company is hounded by shadowy figures every inch of the way.

The game is on: the Company versus the Shadowmasters, deadly creatures that deal in darkness and sorrow.

When hope dies, there's still survival. And there's still the Black Company.

This omnibus edition collects Shadow Games, Dreams of Steel, and The Silver Spike.

The Black Company

Black Company: The Book of the North: Book 1

Glen Cook

Some feel the Lady, newly risen from centuries in thrall, stands between humankind and evil. Some feel she is evil itself. The hardbitten men of the Black Company take their pay and do what they must, burying their doubts with their dead.

Until the prophesy: The White Rose has been reborn, somewhere, to embody good once more.

There must be a way for The Black Company to find her...

Shadows Linger

Black Company: The Book of the North: Book 2

Glen Cook

Mercenary soldiers in the service of the Lady, the Black Company stands against the rebels of the White Rose. They are tough men, proud of honoring their contracts. The Lady is evil, but so, too, are those who falsely profess to follow the White Rose, reincarnation of a centuries-dead heroine. Yet now some of the Company have discovered that the mute girl they rescued and sheltered is truly the White Rose reborn. Now there may be a path to the light, even for such as they. If they can survive it.

The White Rose

Black Company: The Book of the North: Book 3

Glen Cook

She is the last hope of good in the war against the evil sorceress known as the Lady. From a secret base on the Plains of Fear, where even the Lady hesitates to go, the Black Company, once in service to the Lady, now fights to bring victory to the White Rose. But now an even greater evil threatens the world. All the great battles that have gone before will seem a skirmishes when the Dominator rises from the grave.

Daughter of the Blood

Black Jewels: Book 1

Anne Bishop

The Dark Kingdom is preparing itself for the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy the arrival of a new Queen, a Witch who will wield more power than even the High Lord of Hell himself. But this new ruler is young, and very susceptible to influence and corruption; whoever controls her controls the Darkness. And now, three sworn enemies begin a ruthless game of politics and intrigue, magic and betrayal...and the destiny of an entire world is at stake....

Heir to the Shadows

Black Jewels: Book 2

Anne Bishop

Ambitions unfurl as the realm's dreams of a liberator have finally been made flesh: Jaenelle, singled out by prophecy as the living embodiment of magic, is haunted by the cruel battles the Blood have fought over her - for not all of them await her as their Savior.

Queen of the Darkness

Black Jewels: Book 3

Anne Bishop

Jaenelle Angelline now reigns as Queen-protector of the Shadow Realm. No longer will the corrupt Blood slaughter her people and defile her lands. But where one chapter ends, a final, unseen battle remains to be written, and Jaenelle must unleash the terrible power that is Witch to destroy her enemies once and for all.Even so, she cannot stand alone. Somewhere, long lost in madness, is Daemon, her promised Consort.

The Invisible Ring

Black Jewels: Book 4

Anne Bishop

Jared is a Red-Jeweled Warlord bound as a pleasure slave by the Ring of Obedience. After suffering nine years of torment as a slave, he murdered his owner and escaped - only to be caught and sold into slavery once again. The notorious queen who has purchased him, known as the Gray Lady, may not be what she seems. Soon, Jared faces a difficult choice: his freedom, or his honor.

Tangled Webs

Black Jewels: Book 6

Anne Bishop

The invitation is signed "Jaenelle Angelline," and it summons her family to a special soirée. But when her guests enter the house, they find themselves trapped in a living nightmare created by the Black Widow witches - and if they try to use Craft as protection, they risk being sealed in the house forever. But Jaenelle did not send the invitation. And now she and the rest of her family must rescue the others inside - and then find out who has created such a place, and why....

The Shadow Queen

Black Jewels: Book 7

Anne Bishop

Now, only 100 Warlord Princes stand - without a leader and without hope. Theran Grayhaven is the last of his line, desperate to find the key that reveals a treasure great enough to restore Dena Nehele. But first he needs to find a Queen who remembers the Blood's code of honor and lives by the Old Ways. The woman chosen to rule Dena Nehele, Lady Cassidy, is not beautiful and believes she is not strong. But she may be the only one able to convince bitter men to serve once again.

Twilight's Dawn

Black Jewels: Book 9

Anne Bishop

Anne Bishop returns to the Blood realm with four all-new captivating novellas.

The Queen's Bargain

Black Jewels: Book 10

Anne Bishop

POWER HAS A PRICE. SO DOES LOVE.

Return to the dark, sensual, and powerful world of the Black Jewels...

After a youthful mistake, Lord Dillon's reputation is in tatters, leaving him vulnerable to aristo girls looking for a bit of fun. To restore his reputation and honor, he needs a handfast--a one-year contract of marriage. He sets his sights on Jillian, a young Eyrien witch from Ebon Rih, who he believes has only a flimsy connection to the noble society that spurned him. Unfortunately for Dillon, he is unaware of Jillian's true connections until he finds himself facing Lucivar Yaslana, the volatile Warlord Prince of Ebon Rih.

Meanwhile, Surreal SaDiablo's marriage is crumbling. Daemon Sadi, the Warlord Prince of Dhemlan, recognizes there is something wrong between him and Surreal, but he doesn't realize that his attempt to suppress his own nature in order to spare his wife is causing his mind to splinter. To save Daemon, and the Realm of Kaeleer if he breaks, help must be sought from someone who no longer exists in any of the Realms--the only Queen powerful enough to control Daemon Sadi. The Queen known as Witch.

As Jillian rides the winds of first love with Dillon, Daemon and Surreal struggle to survive the wounds of a marriage turned stormy--and Lucivar has to find a way to keep everyone in his family safe... even from each other.

Dreamer's Pool

Blackthorn & Grim: Book 1

Juliet Marillier

In exchange for help escaping her long and wrongful imprisonment, embittered magical healer Blackthorn has vowed to set aside her bid for vengeance against the man who destroyed all that she once held dear. Followed by a former prison mate, a silent hulk of a man named Grim, she travels north to Dalriada. There she'll live on the fringe of a mysterious forest, duty bound for seven years to assist anyone who asks for her help.

Oran, crown prince of Dalriada, has waited anxiously for the arrival of his future bride, Lady Flidais. He knows her only from a portrait and sweetly poetic correspondence that have convinced him Flidais is his destined true love. But Oran discovers letters can lie. For although his intended exactly resembles her portrait, her brutality upon arrival proves she is nothing like the sensitive woman of the letters.

With the strategic marriage imminent, Oran sees no way out of his dilemma. Word has spread that Blackthorn possesses a remarkable gift for solving knotty problems, so the prince asks her for help. To save Oran from his treacherous nuptials, Blackthorn and Grim will need all their resources: courage, ingenuity, leaps of deduction, and more than a little magic.

The Blacktongue Thief

Blacktongue: Book 1

Christopher Buehlman

A traveller walks down a forest road alone.

A thief waits by the roadside.

But today, Kinch has chosen the wrong mark. Galva is a knight, a survivor of the brutal goblin wars, and patron of the goddess of death. She is searching for her missing queen, whom no one has seen since her city fell to giants.

After Kinch's attempt to rob Galva goes horribly wrong, his fate becomes locked to hers. Thief and knight must traverse lands where goblins hunger for kynd flesh, krakens hunt in dark waters, and the gods only laugh when you ask them for help.

Yet far worse are the dangers that lie in wait at their journey's end...

Blood Heir

Blood Heir: Book 1

Amélie Wen Zhao

In the Cyrilian Empire, Affinites are reviled. Their varied gifts to control the world around them are unnatural--dangerous. And Anastacya Mikhailov, the crown princess, has a terrifying secret. Her deadly Affinity to blood is her curse and the reason she has lived her life hidden behind palace walls.

When Ana's father, the emperor, is murdered, her world is shattered. Framed as his killer, Ana must flee the palace to save her life. And to clear her name, she must find her father's murderer on her own. But the Cyrilia beyond the palace walls is far different from the one she thought she knew. Corruption rules the land, and a greater conspiracy is at work--one that threatens the very balance of her world. And there is only one person corrupt enough to help Ana get to its core: Ramson Quicktongue.

A cunning crime lord of the Cyrilian underworld, Ramson has sinister plans--though he might have met his match in Ana. Because in this story, the princess might be the most dangerous player of all.

Anyway: Angie

Bone Street Rumba

Daniel José Older

Reza's job has put her in the face of every kind of death. Thanks to her guns, her car, and her dapper style, she came through the Bad Years alive, but since losing Angie things haven't been right. Tonight's job threatens to bring the worst terrors of that time skittering back to life."Anyway: Angie" is a new urban fantasy story with more than a touch of horror from rising star Daniel José Older, set in the world of his upcoming Bone Street Rumba series.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

Ginga

Bone Street Rumba

Daniel José Older

Between her obscenely muscular new capoeira teacher, her crush going off with a new girl in their favorite park, and trigonometry homework, Kia figures she has enough going on without some creepy ghost causing car crashes and hit-and-runs in her neighborhood. Carlos Delacruz, the half-dead half-resurrected soulcatcher for the New York Council of the Dead, would love to keep her out of it, but things don't usually go the way he intends. From the world of Daniel José Older's immensely popular Bone Street Rumba series.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

Updraft

Bone Universe: Book 1

Fran Wilde

Welcome to a world of wind and bone, songs and silence, betrayal and courage.

Kirit Densira cannot wait to pass her wingtest and begin flying as a trader by her mother's side, being in service to her beloved home tower and exploring the skies beyond. When Kirit inadvertently breaks Tower Law, the city's secretive governing body, the Singers, demand that she become one of them instead. In an attempt to save her family from greater censure, Kirit must give up her dreams to throw herself into the dangerous training at the Spire, the tallest, most forbidding tower, deep at the heart of the City.

As she grows in knowledge and power, she starts to uncover the depths of Spire secrets. Kirit begins to doubt her world and its unassailable Laws, setting in motion a chain of events that will lead to a haunting choice, and may well change the city forever-if it isn't destroyed outright.

Red Sister

Book of the Ancestor: Book 1

Mark Lawrence

At the Convent of Sweet Mercy, young girls are raised to be killers. In some few children the old bloods show, gifting rare talents that can be honed to deadly or mystic effect. But even the mistresses of sword and shadow don't truly understand what they have purchased when Nona Grey is brought to their halls.

A bloodstained child of nine falsely accused of murder, guilty of worse, Nona is stolen from the shadow of the noose. It takes ten years to educate a Red Sister in the ways of blade and fist, but under Abbess Glass's care there is much more to learn than the arts of death. Among her class Nona finds a new family--and new enemies.

Despite the security and isolation of the convent, Nona's secret and violent past finds her out, drawing with it the tangled politics of a crumbling empire. Her arrival sparks old feuds to life, igniting vicious struggles within the church and even drawing the eye of the emperor himself.

Beneath a dying sun, Nona Grey must master her inner demons, then loose them on those who stand in her way.

Grey Sister

Book of the Ancestor: Book 2

Mark Lawrence

Behind its walls, the Convent of Sweet Mercy has trained young girls to hone their skills for centuries. In Mystic Class, Novice Nona Grey has begun to learn the secrets of the universe. But so often even the deepest truths just make our choices harder. Before she leaves the convent, Nona must choose which order to dedicate herself to--and whether her path will lead to a life of prayer and service or one of the blade and the fist.

All that stands between her and these choices are the pride of a thwarted assassin, the designs of a would-be empress wielding the Inquisition like a knife, and the vengeance of the empire's richest lord.

As the world narrows around her, and her enemies attack her through the system she is sworn to, Nona must find her own path despite the competing pulls of friendship, revenge, ambition, and loyalty.

And in all this only one thing is certain: there will be blood.

Holy Sister

Book of the Ancestor: Book 3

Mark Lawrence

The searing conclusion of the thrilling epic fantasy trilogy that saw a young girl trained by an arcane order of nuns grow into the fiercest of warriors...

They came against her as a child. Now they face the woman.

The ice is advancing, the Corridor narrowing, and the empire is under siege from the Scithrowl in the east and the Durns in the west. Everywhere, the emperor's armies are in retreat.

Nona Grey faces the final challenges that must be overcome if she is to become a full sister in the order of her choice. But it seems unlikely that she and her friends will have time to earn a nun's habit before war is on their doorstep.

Even a warrior like Nona cannot hope to turn the tide of war.

The shiphearts offer strength that she might use to protect those she loves, but it's a power that corrupts. A final battle is coming in which she will be torn between friends, unable to save them all. A battle in which her own demons will try to unmake her.

A battle in which hearts will be broken, lovers lost, thrones burned.

Seventy Seven Clocks

Bryant & May: Book 3

Christopher Fowler

A mysterious stranger in outlandish Edwardian garb defaces a Pre-Raphaelite painting in the National Gallery. Then a guest at the exclusive Savoy Hotel is fatally bitten by a marshland snake. Over the next several days, an outbreak of increasingly bizarre crimes will hit London-and, fittingly, come to the attention of the Peculiar Crimes Unit. Art vandalism, an exploding suspect, pornography, rat poison, Gilbert and Sullivan musicals, secret societies... and not a single suspect in sight. The killer they're chasing has a dark history, a habit of staying hidden, and time itself on his side. Detectives May and Bryant are racing the clock and this time the bell may be tolling for them.

Lost Souls

Cainsville

Kelley Armstrong

The disappearing hitchhiker is one of the hoariest urban legends, and no one knows that better than Gabriel Walsh, a lawyer who grew up on folklore and myth. When Patrick -- author of books on the supernatural -- brings him the case of a hitchhiking woman in white who vanished on a country road after accepting a ride from a businessman, Gabriel knows the Cainsville elder is just trying to wheedle into his good graces. But Gabriel is a man in need of a mystery, one that will get him back into someone else's good graces. His investigator, Olivia Taylor-Jones, has blown town supposedly on a simple vacation. But when she left there was a rift between them and... he misses her.

Gabriel is well aware the only thing Olivia loves more than a good mystery is a weird one, and this hitchhiker case more than fits the bill. As Gabriel digs into the case, though, he's forced to face ghosts of his own and admit that the woman in white isn't the only one who has lost her way.

The Year of Our War

Castle: Book 1

Steph Swainston

Jant is the Messenger, one of The Circle, a cadre of 50 immortals who serve the Emperor, and the only who can fly. The Emperor seeks to protect mankind from the hordes of giant insects who have plagued the land for centuries. But he must also contend with the rivalries of his chosen immortals.

The Providence of Fire

Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne: Book 2

Brian Staveley

The conspiracy to destroy the ruling family of the Annurian Empire is far from over.

Having learned the identity of her father's assassin, Adare flees the Dawn Palace in search of allies to challenge the coup against her family. Few trust her, but when she is believed to be touched by Intarra, patron goddess of the empire, the people rally to help her retake the capital city. As armies prepare to clash, the threat of invasion from barbarian hordes compels the rival forces to unite against their common enemy. Unknown to Adare, her brother Valyn, renegade member of the empire's most elite fighting force, has allied with the invading nomads. The terrible choices each of them has made may make war between them inevitable.

Between Valyn and Adare is their brother Kaden, rightful heir to the Unhewn Throne, who has infiltrated the Annurian capital with the help of two strange companions. The knowledge they possess of the secret history that shapes these events could save Annur or destroy it.

The Last Mortal Bond

Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne: Book 3

Brian Staveley

DEATH IS NEAR, ARMIES ARE GATHERED, AND THE FUTURE RESTS ON A KNIFE-EDGE

The Annurian Empire is losing a war on two fronts - and it's unclear who is in command. Adare is stationed in the thick of battle and now calls herself Emperor. However, she can't hold back the nomadic Urgul forces for much longer. She needs her brilliant general, Ran il Tornja, but will he betray her again?

Her brother Kaden is the true heir, yet he'll accept a Republic to save his divided people. And he faces something even more terrible than war. He's unmasked Ran il Tornja as a remnant of an ancient race who attempted to destroy mankind. The general plans to finish what they started, and is amassing all the power he needs.

The empire calls on the Kettral, its toughest soldiers, but their order has been decimated. Its last fighters are in disarray, but could they still turn the tide of war? Most disturbingly of all, capricious gods walk the earth in human guise. And their desires could seal the fate of a world.

Alice

Chronicles of Alice: Book 1

Christina Henry

In a warren of crumbling buildings and desperate people called the Old City, there stands a hospital with cinderblock walls which echo the screams of the poor souls inside.

In the hospital, there is a woman. Her hair, once blond, hangs in tangles down her back. She doesn't remember why she's in such a terrible place. Just a tea party long ago, and long ears, and blood...

Then, one night, a fire at the hospital gives the woman a chance to escape, tumbling out of the hole that imprisoned her, leaving her free to uncover the truth about what happened to her all those years ago.

Only something else has escaped with her. Something dark. Something powerful.

And to find the truth, she will have to track this beast to the very heart of the Old City, where the rabbit waits for his Alice.

Cast In Shadow

Chronicles of Elantra: Book 1

Michelle Sagara

Seven years ago, Kaylin fled the crime-riddled streets of Nightshade, knowing that something was after her. Children were being murdered— and all had the same odd markings that mysteriously appeared on her own skin….

Since then, she's learned to read, she's learned to fight and she's become one of the vaunted Hawks who patrol and police the City of Elantra. Alongside the winged Aerians and the immortal Barrani, she's made a place for herself, far from the mean streets of her birth.

But children are once again dying, and a dark and familiar pattern is emerging. Kaylin is ordered back into Nightshade with a partner she knows she can't trust, a Dragon lord for a companion and a device to contain her powers—powers that no other human has. Her task is simple—find the killer, stop the murders… and survive the attentions of those who claim to be her allies!

Blood and Ivory: A Tapestry: The Collected Tales of Jamethiel Priest's-Bane

Chronicles of the Kencyrath

P. C. Hodgell

Warning: Spoilers for the Chronicles of the Kencyrath in this synopsis and in the collection's stories

Jamethiel Priest's-Bane first entered our lives when she walked out of the Haunted Lands on the opening page of God Stalk in 1982 with the haunts on her trail, searching for her ten-year-older twin brother Tori to give him their father's sword and ring. But what was she doing in the Haunted Lands in the first place? What happened that caused her to leave her home?

For the past 20 years, this has been one of the biggest mysteries of Jame's background. The answers to those questions -- and others -- are found in the pages of this collection.

Blood & Ivory: A Tapestry presents eight original stories by P. C. Hodgell, three of them written especially for this collection. These stories explore different facets of Jame's life and background and weave a lush and complex picture of this enigmatic figure. Also included are new introductions to the stories, as well as maps and drawings by P. C. Hodgell.

This collection was first released in 1994 containing 5 stories; an expanded version, with 3 additional new stories plus maps and artwork, was released in 2002.

Table of Contents:

  • Hearts of Woven Shadow (2002) - short story (read online)
  • Lost Knots (2002) - short story (read online)
  • Among the Dead (2002) - short story (read online)
  • Child of Darkness (1980) - novelette
  • A Matter of Honor (1977) - novelette
  • Bones (1984) - novelette
  • Stranger Blood (1985) - novelette
  • A Ballad of the White Plague - [Sherlock Holmes] (1998) - novelette
  • Maps (2002) - interior artwork
  • Art (2002) - interior artwork
  • An introduction to P. C. Hodgell - essay

God Stalk

Chronicles of the Kencyrath: Book 1

P. C. Hodgell

Jame is a Kencyr. Kencyrs are not native to the planet where they now live. For thirty centuries they have been the weapon that their Three-Faced God has used against the power of the Perimal Darkling. And though they have fought well, the Darkling has come to planet after planet, and the Kencyrs have moved on.

Jame knows this as she stumbles out of the hilly, barren Haunted Lands into the city of Tai-tastigon. But she knows little else. She does not remember where she has been or what she has done for the last ten years of her life. Her memory goes back only a week or two -- to finding her home destroyed and all her family dead.

In Tai-tastigon Jame begins a new life that seems to be at odds with all that the Kencyrs stand for. Kencyrs are honest and just, but Jame becomes an apprentice to the most renowned thief in the powerful Thieves' Guild. Kencyrs are confirmed monotheists, yet Jame explores the rituals and activities of the thousands of gods, templed and untempled, in this religious center; she even kills a god and then resurrects him. And at the inn, the Res aB'tyrr, where she lives, she finds herself using the most sacred dances of her people, dances she does not even remember learning, for the entertainment and sometimes the destruction of the inn's patrons.

Within herself Jame finds power she does not want and doubts she defies her heredity to harbor. She moves through the rich and bloody stew of Tai-tastigon like a hot spice. Her probings, to find herself and to discover what her powers mean to her and her people, combined with influences already at work, very nearly destroy the city. And yet, they bring her face to face with a destiny she must accept.

Dark of the Moon

Chronicles of the Kencyrath: Book 2

P. C. Hodgell

Tai-tastigon is burning.

The whole city is in an uproar. And the cause, Jame, and her friend Marc have fled. They are making their way through mountain passes, far too late in the season, hoping to find Jame's brother Tori somewhere on the other side.

Nothing ever goes easily for Jame, least of all this journey. As hints of the past she has forgotten -- of dark and horrid years in the house of Gerridon, betrayer of her people, the Kencyrath, and her god -- come to the surface, she encounters changers from the house of Gerridon, wanting to bring her back into that dark place. Arrin-ken, catlike creatures who are nevertheless a part of her own people, find and judge her. Bandits, brigands and strange remnants from the past of her people--which suggest a dim future for them, their god and their hope of defeating the great enemy, Perimal Darkling -- arise to haunt her. But her determination to find her brother and to avoid falling into eternal darkness only grows stronger.

Meanwhile Tori, who is Highlord of the Kencyrath, leads the wayward lords of the Kencyrath with uneasy grace. He is a compromise for them, a way of avoiding endless battle between them. But he can bind them together only so long as he can tread a narrow way between their varied needs and desires. When a vast and unexpected danger threatens, he must call up the host -- the troops that each lord must muster -- but in so doing he threatens his own position and his sanity, for he cannot avoid the attention this calls to him, attention that seems to bring changers who want to kill him, and odd nightmares that seem to suggest a future he does not want and the reappearance of a sister he both loves and fears.

Seeker's Mask

Chronicles of the Kencyrath: Book 3

P. C. Hodgell

These are the duties of a Highborn lady, and like the veils, masks and tight-fitting underskirts female Kencyr students are obliged to wear, Jame finds them damnably constricting. Sent here by her brother Torisen, Highlord of the Kencyrath, she has tried valiantly to fit in, but the unruly girl can't help throwing the quiet Women's Halls into an uproar.

It's not entirely Jame's fault, though. While Tori's vain and vicious consort treats her like an underling, the Kencyr Matriarchs, determined to winnow out her secrets, scheme to use her to their own advantage. And her own brother wants nothing to do with her. On top of this, Shadow Guild assassins have come hunting her, eager to fulfill a long-held contract to dispose of the last of the powerful Knorth clan. It's no wonder that Jame decamps.

In the company of her telepathic hunting cat, Jorin, a runaway priestling named Kindrie, and a chance-met squad of cadets, she sets out to rescue a friend from a cruel and ambitious Kencyr lord who seeks the deadly Book Bound in Pale Leather. Dodging ghostwalkers and shadow assassins, riding weirdingstorms and peripatetic trees, Jame discovers that her life is tangled up in a much larger purpose. For the war against Perimal Darkling cannot resume until three terrible objects of power, and the avatars who will wield them, appear. And she just might be one of them...

To Ride a Rathorn

Chronicles of the Kencyrath: Book 4

P. C. Hodgell

These are the chronicles of Jamethiel Priest's-bane, otherwise known as Jame, as she struggles to find a place in a universe full of danger, intrigue, and more than a bit of downright lunacy. The current novel's title To Ride a Rathorn, comes from the Kencyr phrase that refers to someone attempting something insane, but it is too dangerous for them to stop. The reference is also to a certain young rathorn (think of an armor-plated, carnivorous unicorn with a nasty temper) who is after Jame for killing his mother and about to catch up with her.

At Tentir, Jame faces cut-throat competition and finds even more buried, poisonous family secrets. Not only is the Caineron heir sent to humiliate her but a charming Ardeth Highborn arrives hell-bent on seducing her. Then too, what is she to make of the mysterious White Lady who haunts her dreams or of the growling monster and prowls Tentir's hallways and is said to eat young cadets for breakfast? For she is learning Tentir has secrets of its own. And it is fighting for its soul. Under political pressure that threatens to compromise its independence, it looks to its Commandant, an honorable man; but also a Caineron. As the college tests Jame, so she tests it. "Some things need to be broken."

Honor's Paradox

Chronicles of the Kencyrath: Book 6

P. C. Hodgell

Jame is one of the last of the Kencyrath line, born to battle a world-destroying Lord of Darkness and resuscitate her ancestral heritage. Jame's youth was spent hard and low in a desert wasteland. Now she has discovered her past and her heritage as Highborn - and, with it, the power to call souls out of their bodies and slay the occasional god or two (as well as to resurrect them).

First, though, Jame must survive the politics and dangers of haunted Tentir College, a school for warriors where she's a student. At Tentir, Jame saves a young protÉgÉ from possession by a powerful, evil soul in search of a body, while combating jealous students who see her as a danger to their ambition for power and want her expelled - and blinded and dead, in the bargain! Then, just as graduation approaches, Jame's exemption from the sacred laws of the tribe of her youth expires and she is expected to wed immediately, plus take on a family. To make matters worse, she's challenged to a mounted combat duel to decide who is Tentir 'top gun' - a competition she must win to graduation. It's trial by fire, as Jame moves closer to a magnificent destiny she both fears - and knows she must face.

The Gates of Tagmeth

Chronicles of the Kencyrath: Book 8

P. C. Hodgell

Destruction is in Jame Knorth's nature. Literally. She is the avatar of of a god known at That-Which-Destroys, the god of chaos and ruin. Yet Jame is also a noblewoman within an ancient race, and the designated heir of her twin brother Torisen Knorth, High Lord of the Kencyrath. Jame's people are fleeing, world by world, from a terrible enemy that has pursued them through a multitude of universes. Its name is Perimal Darkling.

Obeying instructions from her brother, Jame sets out with a force of Southron warriors to reestablish the long-fallen castle keep of Tagmeth. By Jame's side is Lyra, a devious Kencyrath noble girl who is determined not to be forced into a marriage with a man she despises. Jame's old friends Mark and Brier Iron-thorn stand with her, as well: Marc, steward and organizer of Jame's household and Brier, the only captain under her command wholly sworn to support Jame no matter the cost. Jame finds more allies in the forest surrounding the ancient keep where the wild people of the woodlands, the Merikit, hold court. And Jame's adopted mother, Gran Cyd, matriarch and queen of the Merikit, may once again provide the voice of calm that Jame requires to survive her own tempestuous nature.

Jame sets about establishing Tagmeth as an outpost against the gathering power of Perimal Darkling. But Tagmeth hides a secret, a gateway to a mystery that may save this world from eternal darkness--or plunge it to destruction and ruin all the sooner. It is up to Jame to find her way through Perimal Darkling's traps, and to come to terms with the god of pandemonium and destruction within her who grows stronger every day. If she succeeds it may be that Perimal Darkling can finally be defeated after eons of fear and flight. And if she fails, yet another world will fall to darkness forever.

By Demons Possessed

Chronicles of the Kencyrath: Book 9

P. C. Hodgell

Something is preying on the gods of Tai-Tastigon.

A crucial moment draws nigh leading to the ultimate showdown between Jame Knorth and Perimal Darkling, the supernatural entity that has pursued Jame's people, the Kencyr, across multiple universes, destroying all in its wake. Can the Kencyr finally make an effective stand, or will another world fall into shadow?

But now news arrives from Tai-tastigon, the vast city that formed Jame into the master thief, wily fighter, and godling-in-the-making that she has become.

It seems something is preying on the gods of Tai-tastigon. The new Pantheon is falling, and the ancient city is in turmoil. The self-serving, beguiling demi-god leader of the Thieves Guild has coerced Jame into finding the soul of his missing brother by holding hostage people she loves. Jame She reluctantly returns to find a Tai-tastigon in turmoil, with citizen pitted against citizen, and day and night-time folk at one another's throats. It seems many in the vast Lower Town have lost their shadows - not so funny when you realize that a shadow is cast by a soul.

Disappearing Souls

Some of the affected have gone mad. Some wander like ravening wraiths, attacking even family members by tooth and nail. Which means something is taking - or destroying - souls in the city.

What's more, in the city's Temple District fearful gods are finding their very beings drained. Some have become so diminished they hide in the robes of their priests like mewling babes. Across the city, murder and mayhem have erupted. But whatever demon-wrought madness is afoot in Tai-tastigon will have to face the ultimate avatar of god That-Which-Destroys Itself. That would be one Jame Knorth.

Where Jame Knorth goes, Chaos will follow!

Elric: The Stealer of Souls

Chronicles of the Last Emperor of Melnibone: Book 1

Michael Moorcock

When Michael Moorcock began chronicling the adventures of the albino sorcerer Elric, last king of decadent Melniboné, and his sentient vampiric sword, Stormbringer, he set out to create a new kind of fantasy adventure, one that broke with tradition and reflected a more up-to-date sophistication of theme and style. The result was a bold and unique hero–weak in body, subtle in mind, dependent on drugs for the vitality to sustain himself–with great crimes behind him and a greater destiny ahead: a rock-and-roll antihero who would channel all the violent excesses of the sixties into one enduring archetype.

Now, with a major film in development, here is the first volume of a dazzling collection of stories containing the seminal appearances of Elric and lavishly illustrated by award-winning artist John Picacio–plus essays, letters, maps, and other material. Adventures include "The Dreaming City," "While the Gods Laugh," "Kings in Darkness," "Dead God's Homecoming," "Black Sword's Brothers," and "Sad Giant's Shield."

An indispensable addition to any fantasy collection, Elric: The Stealer of Souls is an unmatched introduction to a brilliant writer and his most famous–or infamous–creation.

Wolfsangel

Claw: Book 1

M. D. Lachlan

The Viking king Authun leads his men on a raid against an Anglo-Saxon village. Men and women are killed indiscriminately, but Authun demands that no child be touched. He is acting on prophecy-a prophecy that tells him that the Saxons have stolen a child from the gods. If Authun, in turn, takes the child and raises him as an heir, the child will lead his people to glory.

But Authun discovers not one child, but twin baby boys. After ensuring that his faithful warriors, witnesses to what has happened, die during the raid, Authun takes the children and their mother home, back to the witches who live on the troll wall. And he places his destiny in their hands.

So begins a stunning multivolume fantasy epic that will take a werewolf from his beginnings as the heir to a brutal Viking king down through the ages. It is a journey that will see him hunt for his lost love through centuries and lives, and see the endless battle between the wolf, Odin, and Loki, the eternal trickster, spill over into countless bloody conflicts from our history and our lives.

This is the myth of the werewolf as it has never been told before and marks the beginning of an extraordinary new fantasy series.

Black Sun Rising

Coldfire Trilogy: Book 1

C. S. Friedman

The Coldfire trilogy tells a story of discovery and battle against evil on a planet where a force of nature exists that is capable of reshaping the world in response to psychic stimulus. This terrifying force, much like magic, has the power to prey upon the human mind, drawing forth a person's worst nightmare images or most treasured dreams and indiscriminately giving them life. This is the story of two men: one, a warrior priest ready to sacrifice anything and everything for the cause of humanity's progress; the other, a sorcerer who has survived for countless centuries by a total submission to evil. They are absolute enemies who must unite to conquer an evil greater than anything their world has ever known.

When True Night Falls

Coldfire Trilogy: Book 2

C. S. Friedman

The second novel in the groundbreaking Coldfire trilogy.

Two men, absolute enemies, must unite to conquer an evil greater than anything their world has ever known. One is a warrior priest ready to sacrifice anything and everything for the cause of humanity's progress; the other, a sorcerer who has survived for countless centuries by a total submission to evil. In their joint quest, both will be irrevocably changed.

Crown of Shadows

Coldfire Trilogy: Book 3

C. S. Friedman

Unlikely allies Damien and Tarrant are faced with an enemy who may prove invulnerable-a demon who has declared war on mankind. Called Calesta, he is a master of illusion and devourer of pain, and he plans to remake the human species until it exists only to sate his unquenchable thirst for suffering. The war against Calesta will take Damien and Tarrant from the depths of Hell to the birthplace of demons and beyond-in a battle that could cost them not only their lives, but the very soul of mankind.

Conan the Conqueror

Conan: Lancer/Ace: Book 9

Robert E. Howard

In this epic, Conan fights to recover the throne of Aquilonia from Nemedian invaders aided by the Acheronian wizard Xaltoltun.

Mistborn: The Final Empire

Cosmere: Mistborn: Book 1

Brandon Sanderson

Brandon Sanderson, fantasy's newest master tale spinner, author of the acclaimed debut Elantris, dares to turn a genre on its head by asking a simple question: What if the hero of prophecy fails? What kind of world results when the Dark Lord is in charge? The answer will be found in the Mistborn Trilogy, a saga of surprises and magical martial-arts action that begins in Mistborn.

For a thousand years the ash fell and no flowers bloomed. For a thousand years the Skaa slaved in misery and lived in fear. For a thousand years the Lord Ruler, the "Sliver of Infinity," reigned with absolute power and ultimate terror, divinely invincible. Then, when hope was so long lost that not even its memory remained, a terribly scarred, heart-broken half-Skaa rediscovered it in the depths of the Lord Ruler's most hellish prison. Kelsier "snapped" and found in himself the powers of a Mistborn. A brilliant thief and natural leader, he turned his talents to the ultimate caper, with the Lord Ruler himself as the mark.

Kelsier recruited the underworld's elite, the smartest and most trustworthy allomancers, each of whom shares one of his many powers, and all of whom relish a high-stakes challenge. Only then does he reveal his ultimate dream, not just the greatest heist in history, but the downfall of the divine despot.

But even with the best criminal crew ever assembled, Kel's plan looks more like the ultimate long shot, until luck brings a ragged girl named Vin into his life. Like him, she's a half-Skaa orphan, but she's lived a much harsher life. Vin has learned to expect betrayal from everyone she meets, and gotten it. She will have to learn to trust, if Kel is to help her master powers of which she never dreamed.

Readers of Elantris thought they'd discovered someone special in Brandon Sanderson. Mistborn proves they were right.

The Well of Ascension

Cosmere: Mistborn: Book 2

Brandon Sanderson

Evil has been defeated. The war has just begun.

They did the impossible, deposing the godlike being whose brutal rule had lasted a thousand years. Now Vin, the street urchin who has grown into the most powerful Mistborn in the land, and Elend Venture, the idealistic young nobleman who loves her, must build a healthy new society in the ashes of an empire.

They have barely begun when three separate armies attack. As the siege tightens, an ancient legend seems to offer a glimmer of hope. But even if it really exists, no one knows where to find the Well of Ascension or what manner of power it bestows.

It may just be that killing the Lord Ruler was the easy part. Surviving the aftermath of his fall is going to be the real challenge.

The Hero of Ages

Cosmere: Mistborn: Book 3

Brandon Sanderson

Who is the Hero of Ages?

To end the Final Empire and restore freedom, Vin killed the Lord Ruler. But as a result, the Deepness---the lethal form of the ubiquitous mists--is back, along with increasingly heavy ashfalls and ever more powerful earthquakes. Humanity appears to be doomed.

Having escaped death at the climax of The Well of Ascension only by becoming a Mistborn himself, Emperor Elend Venture hopes to find clues left behind by the Lord Ruler that will allow him to save the world. Vin is consumed with guilt at having been tricked into releasing the mystic force known as Ruin from the Well. Ruin wants to end the world, and its near omniscience and ability to warp reality make stopping it seem impossible. She can't even discuss it with Elend lest Ruin learn their plans!

The conclusion of the Mistborn trilogy fulfills all the promise of the first two books. Revelations abound, connections rooted in early chapters of the series click into place, and surprises, as satisfying as they are stunning, blossom like fireworks to dazzle and delight. It all leads up to a finale unmatched for originality and audacity that will leave readers rubbing their eyes in wonder, as if awaking from an amazing dream.

The Alloy of Law

Cosmere: Mistborn: Wax and Wayne: Book 1

Brandon Sanderson

Three hundred years after the events of the Mistborn trilogy, Scadrial is now on the verge of modernity, with railroads to supplement the canals, electric lighting in the streets and the homes of the wealthy, and the first steel-framed skyscrapers racing for the clouds.

Kelsier, Vin, Elend, Sazed, Spook, and the rest are now part of history-or religion. Yet even as science and technology are reaching new heights, the old magics of Allomancy and Feruchemy continue to play a role in this reborn world. Out in the frontier lands known as the Roughs, they are crucial tools for the brave men and women attempting to establish order and justice.

One such is Waxillium Ladrian, a rare Twinborn, who can Push on metals with his Allomancy and use Feruchemy to become lighter or heavier at will. After twenty years in the Roughs, Wax has been forced by family tragedy to return to the metropolis of Elendel. Now he must reluctantly put away his guns and assume the duties and dignity incumbent upon the head of a noble house. Or so he thinks, until he learns the hard way that the mansions and elegant tree-lined streets of the city can be even more dangerous than the dusty plains of the Roughs.

A Crown for Cold Silver

Crimson Empire / Cobalt Zosia: Book 1

Alex Marshall

"It was all going so nicely, right up until the massacre."

Twenty years ago, feared general Cobalt Zosia led her five villainous captains and mercenary army into battle, wrestling monsters and toppling an empire. When there were no more titles to win and no more worlds to conquer, she retired and gave up her legend to history.

Now the peace she carved for herself has been shattered by the unprovoked slaughter of her village. Seeking bloody vengeance, Zosia heads for battle once more, but to find justice she must confront grudge-bearing enemies, once-loyal allies, and an unknown army that marches under a familiar banner.

FIVE VILLAINS. ONE LEGENDARY GENERAL. A FINAL QUEST FOR VENGEANCE.

The Atrocity Engine

Custodians of the Cosmos: Book 1

Tim Waggoner

Creatures from dark dimensions infesting your home? Demonic beings trying to drive you insane? Alien gods attempting to destroy your universe?

Just call Maintenance.

This underpaid and overworked secret organization is dedicated to battling forces that seek to speed up Entropy and hasten the Omniverse's inevitable death.

Neal Hudson is a twenty-year veteran of Maintenance. A surveyor who drives through the streets of Ash Creek, Ohio constantly scanning for the deadly energy known as Corruption. Since the death of his previous partner, Neal prefers to work alone, and he's not happy when he's assigned to mentor a rookie.

But they better learn to get along fast.

The Multitude, a group of godlike beings who seek to increase Entropy at every opportunity, are creating an Atrocity Engine. This foul magical device can destroy the Earth, and they don't care how many innocent lives it takes to build it. (Spoiler alert: It's a lot!)

Just another day on the job...

White Tiger

Dark Heavens: Book 1

Kylie Chan

When Emma Donahoe becomes a nanny to John Chen's daughter Simone, she does not expect to be drawn into a world of martial arts, magic and extreme danger, where both gods and demons can exist in the mortal world.

Red Phoenix

Dark Heavens: Book 2

Kylie Chan

The second book in Australian author Kylie Chan's ingenious urban fantasy saga—a tale of  ancient gods and foul demons doing battle in the modern world—Red Phoenix combines Chinese mythology with martial arts, paranormal romance, and magic in a story that takes off like a rocket and never slows down.  The action moves from Hong Kong to Europe as heroine Emma Donahoe finds a demonic circle of death closing around her and the people she loves: the breathtaking and powerful god she is bound to and his innocent young daughter whom Emma has sworn to protect. Red Phoenix is gripping globe-trotting adventure, urban fantasy, and Kung Fu all rolled into one spectacular package that fans of Lilith Saintcrow, Liz Williams, Karen Chance, Devon Monk, and Ilona Andrews are going to flip over.

Blue Dragon

Dark Heavens: Book 3

Kylie Chan

Australian author Kylie Chan concludes her action-packed contemporary urban fantasy trilogy with Blue Dragon—a most satisfying end to her electrifying tale of ancient gods and malevolent demons, of love and extraordinary destiny. Once again, the author of White Tiger and Red Phoenix draws from Chinese mythology and ingeniously combines magic, martial arts, and Taoist philosophy with paranormal romance, as heroine Emma Donahoe must battle supernatural evil in numerous foul forms in order to save her beloved husband, a 3000 year old Chinese god whose power is being drained by living in the mortal world. A breathtaking blend of urban fantasy and Kung Fu, Blue Dragon and the other books in Chan's spectacular series will delight fans of Lilith Saintcrow, Liz Williams, Karen Chance, Devon Monk, Ilona Andrews, and any fantasy lover looking for something distinctly different.

Dark Rise

Dark Rise: Book 1

C. S. Pacat

Sixteen-year-old dock boy Will is on the run, pursued by the men who killed his mother. Then an old servant tells him of his destiny to fight beside the Stewards, who have sworn to protect humanity if the Dark King ever returns. Will is thrust into a world of magic, where he starts training for a vital role in the oncoming battle against the Dark.

As London is threatened and old enmities are awakened, Will must stand with the last heroes of the Light to prevent the fate that destroyed their world from returning to destroy his own.

Black Leopard, Red Wolf

Dark Star Trilogy: Book 1

Marlon James

Tracker is known far and wide for his skills as a hunter: "He has a nose," people say. Engaged to track down a mysterious boy who disappeared three years earlier, Tracker breaks his own rule of always working alone when he finds himself part of a group that comes together to search for the boy. The band is a hodgepodge, full of unusual characters with secrets of their own, including a shape-shifting man-animal known as Leopard.

As Tracker follows the boy's scent--from one ancient city to another; into dense forests and across deep rivers--he and the band are set upon by creatures intent on destroying them. As he struggles to survive, Tracker starts to wonder: Who, really, is this boy? Why has he been missing for so long? Why do so many people want to keep Tracker from finding him? And perhaps the most important questions of all: Who is telling the truth, and who is lying?

Icefalcon's Quest

Darwath: Book 5

Barbara Hambly

While chaos reigned in the Eastern Lands, the Keep of Dare stood as a bastion against war and bandits and the spawn of unnatural sorceries. Then twin blows rocked the citadel: the fearsome Alketch army mounted siege, even as young Prince Tir was snatched from the heart of the Keep. Behind the terror was the depraved, hook-handed general Vair na-Chandros. He had learned that the royal child possessed forbidden wisdom: a secret with which the bloodthirsty Vair intended to conquer the world.

One single man posed a threat to Vair's vaunting ambition: the legendary warrior known as the Icefalcon. Banished by his own people and scorned as a barbarian by others, only he could hope to free the boy from Vair's clutches. With his sister Cold Death--a sorcerer whose magic was as sharp as her tongue--the Icefalcon embarked on a dangerous mission of rescue and redemption.

Braving nightmare demons and the endless hordes of Vair's inhuman soldiers, he shadowed Vair and his small captive beyond the reaches of the known world. And when the boy led Vair to the forgotten Keep of the Shadow at the End of Time, the Icefalcon would face his greatest battle . . . for his prince, for his honor, and for all eternity.

Scar Night

Deepgate Codex: Book 1

Alan Campbell

Suspended by chains over a seemingly bottomless abyss, the ancient city of Deepgate is home to a young angel, an assassin, and a psychotic murderer hungry for revenge--or redemption. But soon a shocking betrayal will unite all three in a desperate quest....

The last of his line, Dill is descended from legendary Battle-archons who once defended the city. Forbidden to fly and untrained even to wield the great sword inherited from his forebears, he has become a figurehead for a dying tradition. Now he lives a sheltered existence in one of Deepgate's crumbling temple spires under the watchful eye of the Presbyter who rules the city.

Spine assassin Rachel Hael has better things to do than oversee the Presbyter's angel. Each dark moon she must fight for her life among the city chains, hunting an immortal predator with a taste for blood.

But when a traitor brings enemies to Deepgate's doorstep, Dill and Rachel are forced into an uneasy alliance with the city's oldest and most dangerous foe. They must journey down into the uncharted chasm to save their sprawling metropolis--and themselves--from annihilation. Once they descend however, they learn that what lies below is far more sinister than what they've been taught to expect.

Iron Angel

Deepgate Codex: Book 2

Alan Campbell

In this stunning follow-up to his epic fantasy debut, Alan Campbell propels readers into a captivating city battling for its own survival—and that of humankind—in a world of deities and demons, fallen angels and killers.

After a destructive battle, the ancient swaying city of Deepgate has been overtaken. Most of the chains that suspend it have given way, and the temple now dangles upside down above the once-uncharted abyss. The victorious Spine have initiated martial law and are ruthlessly pursuing all who attempt to leave. But amid the turmoil, two captives are returned: the young angel Dill, now toughened by war, and traitor assassin Rachel Hael.

Incarcerated in the crumbling temple, the prisoners await their fate—while ghosts rise through the abyss from the open gates of Hell. But as the city teeters on the brink, plans for vengeance are set in motion. And in the coming battle between gods, it is the world of men that is at stake.

London Falling

Detective Inspector James Quill: Book 1

Paul Cornell

Police officers Quill, Costain, Sefton, and Ross know the worst of London—or they think they do. While investigating a mobster's mysterious death, they come into contact with a strange artifact and accidentally develop the Sight. Suddenly they can see the true evil haunting London's streets.

Armed with police instincts and procedures, the four officers take on the otherworldly creatures secretly prowling London. Football lore and the tragic history of a Tudor queen become entwined in their pursuit of an age-old witch with a penchant for child sacrifice. But when London's monsters become aware of their meddling, the officers must decide what they are willing to sacrifice to clean up their city, in London Falling by Paul Cornell.

Mort

Discworld: Book 4

Terry Pratchett

In this Discworld installment, Death comes to Mort with an offer he can't refuse -- especially since being, well, dead isn't compulsory.As Death's apprentice, he'll have free board and lodging, use of the company horse, and he won't need time off for family funerals. The position is everything Mort thought he'd ever wanted, until he discovers that this perfect job can be a killer on his love life.

Inferno

Divine Comedy: Book 1

Dante Alighieri

Inferno (Italian for "Hell") is the first part of Dante Alighieri's 14th-century epic poem Divine Comedy. It is followed by Purgatorio and Paradiso. It is an allegory telling of the journey of Dante through what is largely the medieval concept of Hell, guided by the Roman poet Virgil. In the poem, Hell is depicted as nine circles of suffering located within the Earth. Allegorically, the Divine Comedy represents the journey of the soul towards God, with the Inferno describing the recognition and rejection of sin.

Note that the exact original date of publication is unknown.

Purgatorio

Divine Comedy: Book 2

Dante Alighieri

Purgatorio (Italian for "Purgatory") is the second part of Dante's Divine Comedy, following the Inferno, and preceding the Paradiso. The poem was written in the early 14th century. It is an allegory telling of the climb of Dante up the Mount of Purgatory, guided by the Roman poet Virgil. In the poem, Purgatory is depicted as a mountain in the Southern Hemisphere, consisting of a bottom section (Ante-Purgatory), seven levels of suffering and spiritual growth (associated with the seven deadly sins), and finally the Earthly Paradise at the top. Allegorically, the poem represents the Christian life, and in describing the climb Dante discusses the nature of sin, examples of vice and virtue, and moral issues in politics and in the Church. The poem outlines a theory that all sin arises from love - either perverted love directed towards others' harm, or deficient love, or the disordered love of good things.

Note that the exact original date of publication is unknown.

Paradiso

Divine Comedy: Book 3

Dante Alighieri

Paradiso (Italian for "Paradise" or "Heaven") is the third and final part of Dante's Divine Comedy, following the Inferno and the Purgatorio. It is an allegory telling of Dante's journey through Heaven, guided by Beatrice, who symbolises theology. In the poem, Paradise is depicted as a series of concentric spheres surrounding the earth, consisting of the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the Fixed Stars, the Primum Mobile and finally, the Empyrean. It was written in the early 14th century. Allegorically, the poem represents the soul's ascent to God.

Note that the exact original date of publication is unknown.

The House of Binding Thorns

Dominion of the Fallen: Book 2

Aliette de Bodard

As the city rebuilds from the onslaught of sorcery that nearly destroyed it, the great Houses of Paris, ruled by fallen angels, still contest one another for control over the capital.

House Silverspires was once the most powerful, but just as it sought to rise again, an ancient evil brought it low. Phillippe, an immortal who escaped the carnage, has a singular goal -- to resurrect someone he lost. But the cost of such magic might be more than he can bear.

In House Hawthorn, Madeleine the alchemist has had her addiction to angel essence savagely broken. Struggling to live on, she is forced on a perilous diplomatic mission to the underwater dragon kingdom -- and finds herself in the midst of intrigues that have already caused one previous emissary to mysteriously disappear...

As the Houses seek a peace more devastating than war, those caught between new fears and old hatreds must find strength -- or fall prey to a magic that seeks to bind all to its will.

The Mall

Downside: Book 1

S. L. Grey

A deliciously terrifying mash-up of horror, fantasy, thriller and satire: Saw crossed with Fight Club, with an extra shot of adrenaline!

Dan is an angsty emo-kid who works in a deadly dull shopping mall. He hates his job.

Rhoda is a junkie whose babysitting charge ran off while she was scoring cocaine. She hates her life. Rhoda bullies Dan into helping her search, but as they explore the neon-lit corridors behind the mall, disturbing text messages lure them into the bowels of the building, where old mannequins are stored in grave-like piles and raw sewage drips off the ceiling. The only escape is down.

Plummeting into the earth in a disused service lift playing head-splitting Musak, Dan and Rhoda enter a sinister underworld that mirrors their worst fears. They finally escape, but something feels different. Why are the shoppers all pumped full of silicone? Why are the shop assistants chained to their counters? And why is a café called McColon's selling lumps of bleeding meat?

Just when they think they've made it back to the mall, they realize the nightmare has only just begun...

The Killing Moon

Dreamblood: Book 1

N. K. Jemisin

The city burned beneath the Dreaming Moon.

In the ancient city-state of Gujaareh, peace is the only law. Upon its rooftops and amongst the shadows of its cobbled streets wait the Gatherers - the keepers of this peace. Priests of the dream-goddess, their duty is to harvest the magic of the sleeping mind and use it to heal, soothe . . . and kill those judged corrupt.

But when a conspiracy blooms within Gujaareh's great temple, Ehiru - the most famous of the city's Gatherers - must question everything he knows. Someone, or something, is murdering dreamers in the goddess' name, stalking its prey both in Gujaareh's alleys and the realm of dreams. Ehiru must now protect the woman he was sent to kill - or watch the city be devoured by war and forbidden magic.

The Shadowed Sun

Dreamblood: Book 2

N. K. Jemisin

Gujaareh, the city of dreams, suffers under the imperial rule of the Kisuati Protectorate. A city where the only law was peace now knows violence and oppression. And nightmares: a mysterious and deadly plague haunts the citizens of Gujaareh, dooming the infected to die screaming in their sleep. Trapped between dark dreams and cruel overlords, the people yearn to rise up -- but Gujaareh has known peace for too long.

Someone must show them the way.

Hope lies with two outcasts: the first woman ever allowed to join the dream goddess' priesthood and an exiled prince who longs to reclaim his birthright. Together, they must resist the Kisuati occupation and uncover the source of the killing dreams... before Gujaareh is lost forever.

Waylander

Drenai Saga: Book 3

David Gemmell

All of Waylander's instincts had screamed at him to spurn the contract from Kaem the cruel, the killer of nations. But he had ignored them. He had made his kill. And even as he went to collect his gold, he knew that he had been betrayed.

Now the Dark Brotherhood and the hounds of chaos were hunting him, even as Kaem's armies waged war on the Drenai lands, intent on killing every man, woman, and child. The Drenai soldiers were doomed to ultimate defeat, and chaos would soon reign.

Then a strange old man told Waylander that the only way to turn the tide of battle would be for Waylander himself to retrieve the legendary Armor of Bronze from its hiding place deep within a shadow-haunted land. He would be hunted. He was certain to fail. But he must try, the old man commanded--commanded in the name of his son, the king, who had been slain by an assassin...

Waylander was the most unlikely of heroes--for he was a traitor, the Slayer who had killed the king...

Waylander II: In the Realm of the Wolf

Drenai Saga: Book 5

David Gemmell

Enter the extraordinary, action-filled world that became Legend--as the exciting Drenai adventure continues to unfold . . .

A mighty warrior and a feared assassin among the Drenai, Waylander the Slayer is now a man hunted by his own people--with a fortune in gold offered as grim reward for his murder. But this is only one of many evils closing in on Waylander and his daughter, Miriel, the beautiful and deadly Battle Queen of Kar-Barzac.

For, once separated, father and daughter face certain death as the sorcerers and demons, soldiers and shamans of three empires summon their blackest, most destructive powers in an effort to annihilate these two most gifted Drenai warriors.

Manifest Recall

Eli Carver: Book 1

Alan Baxter

Following a psychotic break, Eli Carver finds himself on the run, behind the wheel of a car that's not his own, and in the company of a terrified woman he doesn't know. As layers of ugly truth are peeled back and dark secrets are revealed, the duo find themselves in a struggle for survival when they unravel a mystery that pits them against the most dangerous forces in their lives.

Recall Night

Eli Carver: Book 2

Alan Baxter

Back from self-imposed exile in Canada where he fled to avoid the law following the blood-stained events in Manifest Recall-the first installment of award-winning author Alan Baxter's latest supernatural thriller series-Eli Carver returns to the states with thoughts of starting over. But an accidental encounter on a train with a mysterious woman, one he soon learns has her own dangerous past, threatens to unravel his well-intended plans.

Upon their arrival in New York, the duo quickly find themselves entangled in an ongoing war between two rival crime syndicates. And with the ghosts of his own past continuing to torment him, Eli finds himself taking the darkest of turns as he's drawn down a perilous path into a world of ancient religion and deadly occult rituals.

White Silence

Elizabeth Cage: Book 1

Jodi Taylor

The first instalment in the new, gripping supernatural thriller series from international bestselling author, Jodi Taylor.

"I don't know who I am. I don't know what I am."

Elizabeth Cage is a child when she discovers that there are things in this world that only she can see. But she doesn't want to see them and she definitely doesn't want them to see her.

What is a curse to Elizabeth is a gift to others - a very valuable gift they want to control.

When her husband dies, Elizabeth's world descends into a nightmare. But as she tries to piece her life back together, she discovers that not everything is as it seems.

Alone in a strange and frightening world, she's a vulnerable target to forces beyond her control.

And she knows that she can't trust anyone...

White Silence is a twisty supernatural thriller that will have you on the edge of your seat.

Dark Light

Elizabeth Cage: Book 2

Jodi Taylor

From the frying pan into the fire... Betrayed, terrified and alone, Elizabeth Cage has fled her home. With no plan and no friends, she arrives at the picturesque village of Greyston and finds herself involved in an ages-old ceremony that will end in death. And that might be the least of her problems - the Sorensen Institute would very much like to know her whereabouts. And Michael Jones is still out there, somewhere, she hopes. No matter how far and how fast she can run, trouble will always find Elizabeth Cage.

Long Shadows

Elizabeth Cage: Book 3

Jodi Taylor

I don't know who I am. I don't know what I am.

The identity of Elizabeth Cage has always been a mystery. Even she doesn't know who, or what, she is. But she's learned to live with it.

Until now, when what should have been a peaceful holiday turns into anything but, and Elizabeth is forced to recognise that she isn't what she seems.

But neither is anyone else. Has her whole life been a lie?

Someone very badly wants to know the truth about Elizabeth Cage. And they'll do anything to find out. But who will live to regret it?

Empire of the Vampire

Empire of the Vampire: Book 1

Jay Kristoff

From holy cup comes holy light;
The faithful hand sets world aright.
And in the Seven Martyrs' sight,
Mere man shall end this endless night.

It has been twenty-seven long years since the last sunrise. For nearly three decades, vampires have waged war against humanity; building their eternal empire even as they tear down our own. Now, only a few tiny sparks of light endure in a sea of darkness.

Gabriel de León is a silversaint: a member of a holy brotherhood dedicated to defending realm and church from the creatures of the night. But even the Silver Order could not stem the tide once daylight failed us, and now, only Gabriel remains.

Imprisoned by the very monsters he vowed to destroy, the last silversaint is forced to tell his story. A story of legendary battles and forbidden love, of faith lost and friendships won, of the Wars of the Blood and the Forever King and the quest for humanity's last remaining hope:

The Holy Grail.

Empire of the Damned

Empire of the Vampire: Book 2

Jay Kristoff

From holy cup comes holy light;
The faithful hands sets world aright.
And in the Seven Martyrs' sight,
Mere man shall end this endless night.

Gabriel de León has saved the Holy Grail from death, but his chance to end the endless night is lost. Drawn into an uneasy alliance with the mysterious vampire Liathe, Gabriel must now deliver the Grail to ancients of the Blood Esani, and learn the truth of how Daysdeath might be finally undone.

But the Last Silversaint faces peril, within and without. Pursued by terrors of the Blood Voss, drawn into warfare between the Blood Dyvok and duskdancers of the frozen Highlands, and ravaged by his own rising bloodlust, Gabriel may not survive to see the Grail learn her truth.

And that truth may be too awful for any to imagine.

The Magicians

Fillory: Book 1

Lev Grossman

Like everyone else, precocious high school senior Quentin Coldwater assumes that magic isn't real, until he finds himself admitted to a very secretive and exclusive college of magic in upstate New York. There he indulges in joys of college-friendship, love, sex, and booze- and receives a rigorous education in modern sorcery. But magic doesn't bring the happiness and adventure Quentin thought it would. After graduation, he and his friends stumble upon a secret that sets them on a remarkable journey that may just fulfill Quentin's yearning. But their journey turns out to be darker and more dangerous than they'd imagined. Psychologically piercing and dazzlingly inventive, The Magicians is an enthralling coming-of-age tale about magic practiced in the real world-where good and evil aren't black and white, and power comes at a terrible price.

This novel won the 2010 Alex Award, given to ten adult books which are appealing to young adults

The Magician King

Fillory: Book 2

Lev Grossman

Return to Fillory in the riveting sequel to The New York Times bestseller and literary phenomenon of 2009--The Magicians.

The Magicians was praised as a triumph by readers and critics of both mainstream and fantasy literature. Now Grossman takes us back to Fillory, where the Brakebills graduates have fled the sorrows of the mundane world, only to face terrifying new challenges.

Quentin and his friends are now the kings and queens of Fillory, but the days and nights of royal luxury are starting to pall. After a morning hunt takes a sinister turn, Quentin and his old friend Julia charter a magical sailing ship and set out on an errand to the wild outer reaches of their kingdom. Their pleasure cruise becomes an adventure when the two are unceremoniously dumped back into the last place Quentin ever wants to see: his parent's house in Chesterton, Massachusetts. And only the black, twisted magic that Julia learned on the streets can save them.

The Magician King is a grand voyage into the dark, glittering heart of magic, an epic quest for the Harry Potter generation. It also introduces a powerful new voice, that of Julia, whose angry genius is thrilling. Once again Grossman proves that he is the modern heir to C.S. Lewis, and the cutting edge of literary fantasy.

Fool's Assassin

Fitz and the Fool: Book 1

Robin Hobb

FitzChivalry -- royal bastard and former king's assassin -- has left his life of intrigue behind. As far as the rest of the world knows, FitzChivalry Farseer is dead and buried. Masquerading as Tom Badgerlock, Fitz is now married to his childhood sweetheart, Molly, and leading the quiet life of a country squire.

Though Fitz is haunted by the disappearance of the Fool, who did so much to shape Fitz into the man he has become, such private hurts are put aside in the business of daily life, at least until the appearance of menacing, pale-skinned strangers casts a sinister shadow over Fitz's past...and his future.

Assassin's Fate

Fitz and the Fool: Book 3

Robin Hobb

Prince FitzChivalry Farseer's daughter Bee was violently abducted from Withywoods by Servants of the Four in their search for the Unexpected Son, foretold to wield great power. With Fitz in pursuit, the Servants fled through a Skill-pillar, leaving no trace. It seems certain that they and their young hostage have perished in the Skill-river.

Clerres, where White Prophets were trained by the Servants to set the world on a better path, has been corrupted by greed. Fitz is determined to reach the city and take vengeance on the Four, not only for the loss of Bee but also for their torture of the Fool. Accompanied by FitzVigilant, son of the assassin Chade, Chade's protg Spark and the stableboy Perseverance, Bee's only friend, their journey will take them from the Elderling city of Kelsingra, down the perilous Rain Wild River, and on to the Pirate Isles.

Their mission for revenge will become a voyage of discovery, as well as of reunions, transformations and heartrending shocks. Startling answers to old mysteries are revealed. What became of the liveships Paragon and Vivacia and their crews? What is the origin of the Others and their eerie beach? How are liveships and dragons connected?

But Fitz and his followers are not the only ones with a deadly grudge against the Four. An ancient wrong will bring them unlikely and dangerous allies in their quest. And if the corrupt society of Clerres is to be brought down, Fitz and the Fool will have to make a series of profound and fateful sacrifices.

The Rose of Sarifal

Forgotten Realms

Paulina Claiborne

Cloaked in mist and layered in magic, the denizens of Moonshae Isles move in secret circles as capricious rulers vie for power.

High Lady Ordalf wanted her niece, the princess known as the Rose of Sarifal, dead. Instead, the young regent was secreted away by the high lady's opponents. For years the eladrin queen of Gwynneth Isle has searched for evidence of her niece's death, and word has finally come in the form of a castaway's tale. The princess lives on the island of Moray--a mad beauty who leads a nation of lycanthropes.

As long as her niece is alive, Lady Ordalf cannot rest secure in her claim to the throne. Enlisting a band of adventurers to seek out the princess is the first step toward stemming the Rose of Sarifal and her tide of wolves. Will those heroes see the same threat the queen sees in the beautiful young maiden?

The Halls of Stormweather

Forgotten Realms: Sembia

Philip Athans

The Greatest Fantasy Setting of Our Generations Begins Here

Sembia is a land of wealth and power, where rival families buy and sell everything imaginable - even life itself.

In that unforgiving realm, the Uskevren family may hold the rarest commodity of all: honor.

But even they have their secrets, and at least as many enemies.

This anthology of seven stories introduces not just one realm of good and evil, not just one family of troubled heroes, but the whole of the remarkable Forgotten Realms world. Their adventure, and yours, begins here.

Featuring Forgotten Realms creator Ed Greenwood and The New York Times best-selling authors Lisa Smedman and Paul S. Kemp. Also featuring Clayton Emery, Dave Gross, Voronica Whitney-Robinson, and Richard Lee Byers.

Contents:

  • The Patriarch: The Burning Chalice by Ed Greenwood
  • The Matriarch: Song of Chaos by Richard Lee Byers
  • The Heir: Night School by Clayton Emery
  • The Daughter: The Price by Voronica Whitney-Robinson
  • The Second Son: Thirty Days by Dave Gross
  • The Butler: Resurrection by Paul S. Kemp
  • The Maid: Skin Deep by Lisa Smedman

Shadow's Witness

Forgotten Realms: Sembia: Book 2

Paul S. Kemp

Erevis Cale, loyal servant to the Uskevren family, can't keep his secret any longer.

From the nobles in their towers to the gangs in the streets, in the city of Selgaunt power belongs to the bold and no one's position is certain. When a thieves' guild attempts to eradicate a rival organization, something unspeakable breaks free - and it's hungry.

With Selgaunt in chaos, Erevis Cale must return to the shadowy life he left behind, to protect the family that has made him one of their own from the horrors of the Abyss.

Enter the greatest fantasy setting of our generation - enter the Realms.

The Shattered Mask

Forgotten Realms: Sembia: Book 3

Richard Lee Byers

When Shamur Uskevren, the matriarch of one of Sembia's oldest and most powerful merchant families, is tricked by an angry wizard into an assassination attempt on her own husband, her family is thrown into turmoil. Once the truth is dicovered, she and her husband must struggle to save their family and stop the sorcerer. But in her anger, she has fogotten one thing: in the world of intrigue and decption, of shadows and lies that is Sembia, nothing is ever what it seems.

Black Wolf

Forgotten Realms: Sembia: Book 4

Dave Gross

Talbot Uskevren, the second son of one of Selgaunt's most powerful families, fights a deadly battle within himself. Like most men of his station, Talbot spends his days honing his sword fighting skills, and unlike others, practicing the art of acting. Now, Talbot will put both of these talents to the test when a rival House comes looking for blood. The only way for Talbot to survive against the Black Brotherhood is to let the inner wolf loose, and the only way for him to live in Selgaunt's society is to keep the wolf chained.

Black Wolf continues the story of the Uskevrens' second son, introduced in the story "Thirty Days" from The Halls of Stormweather. An exciting tale of werewolves in the Forgotten Realms, this is the fouth book in the Sembia series.

Heirs of Prophecy

Forgotten Realms: Sembia: Book 5

Lisa Smedman

Introduce yourself to the Forgotten Realms world with New York Times best-selling author, Lisa Smedman.

Larajin, the unacknowledged daughter of Thamalon Uskevren and a half-elf, finds herself embroiled in a bitter war between elves and humans. In an effort to bring peace to both Sembia and the Dalelands, Larajin must confront the twin brother she doesn't know and save a half-brother whose fate hangs in the balance.

Sands of the Soul

Forgotten Realms: Sembia: Book 6

Voronica Whitney-Robinson

An exciting series especially for readers new to the Forgotten Realms!

Thazienne Uskevren, the only legitimate daughter of the wealthy Uskevren family, has suffered blow after blow to her body and spirit. Even as she struggles to mend her fractured soul, Tazi finds herself on a journey that will take her far from the safety of Selgaunt and into the deadly heart of the Calim Desert. There the shifting sands hide an old foe, who holds the key to Tazi's salvation--or the doom of Sembia.

Lord of Stormweather

Forgotten Realms: Sembia: Book 7

Dave Gross

The exciting finale to the Sembia: Gateway to the Realms series!

Thamalon Uskevren II, the heir to Stormweather Towers, never expected to inherit so much so quickly. When his parents and Erevis Cale vanish without a trace, Tamlin must rally what's left of his family and try to solve a mystery whose roots lie deep beneath Stormweather, before a deadly assassin ends the Uskevren line forever.

As with the previous titles in this series, Lord of Stormweather is perfect for introducing new readers to the magic, mystery, and intrigue of the Forgotten Realms world.

Unclean

Forgotten Realms: The Haunted Lands: Book 1

Richard Lee Byers

The latest title from popular Forgotten Realms® author Richard Lee Byers.

The dead are restless in the magic-rich realm of Thay, and an evil necromancer begins to gather them to his cause - a cause that will change the face of Faerûn forever.

Undead

Forgotten Realms: The Haunted Lands: Book 2

Richard Lee Byers

Join heroes fighting the undead hordes!

Undead armies have massed and march to the beat of an evil necromancer's drum. The living citizens of the magic-rich realm of Thay must unite and mount a defense before they die and join their enemy's ranks.

The second book in The Haunted Lands series, the events in Undead will have tremendous impact on the Forgotten Realms world.

Unholy

Forgotten Realms: The Haunted Lands: Book 3

Richard Lee Byers

Join heroes fighting the undead hordes!

A powerful undead sorcerer reigns in Thay over a frightened people and hordes of undead. The mageocracy in exile, masters of no more than their beaten army, watch from distant shores as the new King of Thay prepares a great magical ritual--a ritual they cannot allow him to bring to completion.

Homeland

Forgotten Realms: The Legend of Drizzt 2: The Dark Elf Trilogy: Book 1

R. A. Salvatore

This is the paperback version of the stunning new release of the classic R.A. Salvatore novel that begins the tale of his signature dark elf character, Drizzt Do-Urden.

Unbroken Chain

Forgotten Realms: Unbroken Chain: Book 1

Jaleigh Johnson

A hero trapped on the edge of light and dark...

Ashok is a shadar-kai of the Shadowfell who is brought to the city of Ikemmu, a haven of shadar-kai who have learned to use their fierce need for adrenalin and danger to better their city and their civilization. Although he starts out eager to find the weaknesses in the strange city's armor and return with them to his vicious enclave, Ashok finds himself drawn in by the city.

As he struggles to find a balance for himself, his family finds the a way to bring down the city on the Shadowfell's border.

The Darker Road

Forgotten Realms: Unbroken Chain: Book 2

Jaleigh Johnson

The witch Ilvani's nightmares of a storm and a suffering soul are luring shadow creatures into Ikemmu, bent on hunting her down and killing her for reasons no one can ascertain. Ashok, however, is determined to find a way to stop it before the shadow creatures destroy the city he worked so hard to save. The trail leads him, the witch Ilvani, Cree, and Skagi along a caravan to Rashemen, where similarly strange attacks are happening among the secretive masked witches of the steppes.

Fear

Galaxy Science Fiction: Book 29

L. Ron Hubbard

Professor James Lowry didn't believe in spirits, or witches, or demons. Not until a gentle spring evening when his hat disappeared, and suddenly he couldn't remember the last four hours of his life. Now, the quiet university town of Atworthy is changing - slightly at first, then faster and more frighteningly each time he tries to remember. Lowry is pursued by a dark, secret evil that is turning his whole world against him while it whispers a warning from the shadows: If you find your hat you'll find your four hours. If you find your four hours then you will die...

The Serpent

Gameshouse: Book 1

Claire North

In 17th Century Venice exists a mysterious establishment known only as the Gameshouse.

There, fortunes are made and fortunes are broken over games of chess, backgammon and every other game under the sun.

But those whom fortune favours may be invited to compete in the higher league... a league where the games played are of politics and empires, of economics and kings. It is a league where Capture the Castle involves real castles, where hide and seek takes place on a scale as big as the British Isles.

Not everyone proves worthy of competing in the higher league. But one woman, who is about to play, may just exceed everyone's expectations.

Though she must always remember: the higher the stakes, the more deadly the rules...

Goblin Slayer, Vol. 1

Goblin Slayer: Book 1

Kumo Kagyu

In a world of fantasy, adventurers come far and wide to join the Guild, in order to complete contracts for whatever jobs are available.

A young priestess has formed her first adventuring party, but almost immediately they find themselves in distress. It's the Goblin Slayer who comes to their rescue--a man who's dedicated his life to the extermination of all goblins, by any means necessary. And when rumors of his feats begin to circulate, there's no telling who might come calling next...

Goblin Slayer, Vol. 2

Goblin Slayer: Book 2

Kumo Kagyu

One day, a certain person arrives at the Guild to ask for Goblin Slayer by name. The request comes from the Water District, a neighborhood in the prosperous capital of the Supreme God, and the Arch Bishop that hails form there. The Arch Bishop was once a Gold-ranked adventurer known as the Sword Maiden who defeated the Demon King, a true hero. Now, she comes forward with the details of goblins somehow appearing within the Water district...

Goblin Slayer, alongside his companions High Elf Archer, Priestess, Lizard Priest, and Dwarf Shaman, enter the catacombs beneath the Water District to get down to the bottom of the goblin disturbance!

Goblin Slayer, Vol. 3

Goblin Slayer: Book 3

Kumo Kagyu

With the arrival of autumn comes the Harvest Festival, and everyone is in a celebratory mood. Dwarf Shaman, Priestess, and even Female Knight help with preparations for the revelries, but Guild Girl has her eyes fixed on an even greater prize - a date with Goblin Slayer! With no goblins around, the awkward adventurer has no reason to refuse, but where does that leave his old friend Cow Girl...? Emotional entanglements are in the air, but Goblin Slayer senses some menace lurking behind these seemingly peaceful days...

Goblin Slayer, Vol. 4

Goblin Slayer: Book 4

Kumo Kagyu

Goblin Slayer, Spearman, and Heavy Warrior received a dangerous quest to bring the fight to the Demon's Castle. As they steel themselves for the challenge that lies ahead, Cow Girl and Priestess have a casual day out on the town. High Elf Archer tells a story about how she, Dwarf Shaman, and Lizard Priest came together, overcoming racial grudges to become close party members.

Goblin Slayer, Vol. 5

Goblin Slayer: Book 5

Kumo Kagyu

A young noblewoman has disappeared while out on a goblin hunting quest. When Goblin Slayer and his party set out to find her, they are stunned to discover a horde of goblins have built their nest within an ancient dwarven fortress...and these ones even appear to be followers of some primitive, sadistic cult! But what troubles Goblin Slayer most of all is their leader, who is stronger and more intelligent than any goblin he's faced before...

Goblin Slayer, Vol. 6

Goblin Slayer: Book 6

Kumo Kagyu

Spring has arrived, and a new crop of would-be adventurers has turned up at the Guild along with it. Among the newcomers is a haughty young wizard boy whose desire to hunt only goblins has Guild Girl slightly concerned. Meanwhile, there's a new adventurer-training facility being built not far from the frontier town, and Goblin Slayer happens to know the village that used to stand on that spot...

The party finds itself teaming up with the wizard boy and heading to an old mausoleum to deal with some goblins--but it looks like this brazen new adventurer might just be more trouble than he's worth!

Goblin Slayer, Vol. 7

Goblin Slayer: Book 7

Kumo Kagyu

He does not let anyone roll the dice.

After High Elf Archer receives notice of a wedding back in her home village, the party sets out for the forest of the elves - and joining them on their trip are Cow Girl and Guild Girl! Goblin Slayer and crew are long overdue for a vacation, and what better place is there to get some rest and relaxation than under the brilliant forest canopy?

But things take an unexpected turn when they head upriver for the elf homeland only to see the shadows of goblins looming... And what's more, there's talk of an ancient beast slumbering within the forest. With all this danger close at hand, will there even be a wedding for our heroes to celebrate?

Goblin Slayer, Vol. 8

Goblin Slayer: Book 8

Kumo Kagyu

He does not let anyone roll the dice.

Sword Maiden requests Goblin Slayer and his party to escort her to the royal capital as rumor has it that packs of wolf-mounted goblins inhabit the route there. However, there are whispers of an ill omen within the capital; then, whether by fate or by chance, the party arrives at a massive, eerie abyss known as the Dungeon of the Dead...

Goblin Slayer, Vol. 9

Goblin Slayer: Book 9

Kumo Kagyu

Goblin Slayer joins Cow Girl on what was supposed to be a typical delivery expedition only to be ambushed by a horde of goblins. And what's more, this ambush appears to be the work of the Unpraying!

Meanwhile, Goblin Slayer's party continues adventuring in his absence. Per a handout from Apprentice Cleric, they head for the snowy mountains to the north, a region locked in a perpetual winter under the control of an ice sorceress...

Goblin Slayer, Vol. 10

Goblin Slayer: Book 10

Kumo Kagyu

Spring has arrived, and Goblin Slayer's party is on the job guarding a vineyard as part of a goblin hunt. This vineyard happens to belong to the Temple of the Earth Mother where Priestess was raised, and one of the nuns most dear to her has become the subject of a disturbing rumor involving goblins...

Priestess is anguished by the cruel whispers, and a hesitant Goblin Slayer comes to a decision-one that may involve shady characters who operate under cover of darkness!

Goblin Slayer, Vol. 11

Goblin Slayer: Book 11

Kumo Kagyu

HE DOES NOT LET ANYONE ROLL THE DICE.

Summer is here, and Female Merchant pays Goblin Slayer and his party an unexpected visit at their usual tavern to make them a proposal. Her next trade route will take her through the vast eastern desert where goblins now run rampant, and she would like the party to escort her. They accept her request, and the group promptly sets out for the arid eastern borderlands with its different cultures, vicious traps, harsh climate, and shadowy desert figures. How will our heroes fare in this unforgiving foreign territory...?

Goblin Slayer, Vol. 12

Goblin Slayer: Book 12

Kumo Kagyu

There's rarely a dull moment in the Four-Cornered World: Harefolk Hunter's party is moving up the ranks and making a name for themselves on the frontier; Priestess, Female Knight, Witch, and High-Elf Archer get mixed up in a fortress siege battle; Goblin Slayer receives an invitation from Spearman and Heavy Warrior; and the people in the water town are up to their usual tricks. These are just a few of the ten stories you'll read in this latest installment of Goblin Slayer!

Goblin Slayer, Vol. 13

Goblin Slayer: Book 13

Kumo Kagyu

The dungeon exploration contest--a famous test of survival in an underground maze filled with deadly traps; the stuff of legends. And now the Guild wants to use this test to train rookie adventurers! A certain silver-ranked adventurer is drafted to oversee the competition while Guild Girl takes a surprising liking to setting the traps. But as preparations commence and an aspiring adventurer takes up her sword, the shadow of chaos looms just out of sight...

Goblin Slayer, Vol. 14

Goblin Slayer: Book 14

Kumo Kagyu

There is something strange about Goblin Slayer when he proposes a new adventure to the party--they are to travel north across snow-capped mountains into a country of darkest night. There, they encounter an indigenous epic, a strange new language and culture, and the beautiful woman who governs it all. It is said that ghosts lurk in the sea to the north, and no ships return to port. What awaits Goblin Slayer and his companions in this new land?

Goblin Slayer, Vol. 15

Goblin Slayer: Book 15

Kumo Kagyu

HE DOES NOT LET ANYONE ROLL THE DICE.

A centaur girl arrives at the frontier town and accosts Heavy Warrior, believing him responsible for the disappearance of her centaur princess. Thus, he asks Goblin Slayer to investigate the matter. The party ends up in the water town, which is in the throes of centaur racing fever, and Sword Maiden tells Goblin Slayer about another missing individual named Silver Blaze. Greed and shadowy plots collide... but only the pips of the dice will tell how the mystery unfolds!

Goblin Slayer Side Story II: Dai Katana, Vol. 1: The Singing Death

Goblin Slayer Side Story II: Book 1

Kumo Kagyu

Not so very long ago, the Death began stalking the continent. The King of Time issued a proclamation: "Find the source of this Death and seal it away."

The source: the Dungeon of the Dead. A fortress city that arose at the mouth of the dungeon serves adventurers who seek companions, challenge the dungeon, battle, find loot... and sometimes die.

Goblin Slayer Side Story II: Dai Katana, Vol. 2: The Singing Death

Goblin Slayer Side Story II: Book 2

Kumo Kagyu

The party has successfully made it past the initial dangers of the Dungeon of the Dead, but the struggle continues as they head deeper. Strange new monsters await our heroes, and that's not all--a group of adventurers somehow connected to Bishop declares a dungeon-exploration contest, bringing the party face-to-face with the infamous dark zone... "We don't have time to bother with the likes of goblins! Because I... we... are going to save the world!"

Goblin Slayer Side Story: Year One, Vol. 1

Goblin Slayer, Year One: Book 1

Kumo Kagyu

Three days after his sister was no more, he finally gained the will to move. In the aftermath of a goblin raid, a lone boy mourned his village, his family.

Five years later, he visited a city on the frontier and became an adventurer. It was five years earlier that the boy who had lost a place to call home was reunited with his childhood friend.

Despite being the lowest Porcelain rank, the boy readies himself and then sets off alone for a lair of goblins, marking the beginning of the legend of Goblin Slayer!

Goblin Slayer Side Story: Year One, Vol. 2

Goblin Slayer, Year One: Book 2

Kumo Kagyu

The die is cast.

During one of his usual raids, the young man who has come to be known as Goblin Slayer discovers a ring that glows with a mysterious, fiery light. In is quest to identify it, he's introduced to Arc Mage, an eccentric wizard who lives on the edge of town. She enlists Goblin Slayer's help in revising the Monster Manual, a task the Guild has entrusted to her. It just so happens that the article she's been assigned to write is about... goblins.

Arc Mage and the young Goblin Slayer's ongoing research takes them to the ends of the earth, where they eventually reach an ominous, dark tower... It'll take some teamwork to get all the way to the top!

Godblind

Godblind: Book 1

Anna Stephens

Fantasy's most anticipated debut of the year

There was a time when the Red Gods ruled the land. The Dark Lady and her horde dealt in death and blood and fire.

That time has long since passed and the neighbouring kingdoms of Mireces and Rilpor hold an uneasy truce. The only blood spilled is confined to the border where vigilantes known as Wolves protect their kin and territory at any cost.

But after the death of his wife, King Rastoth is plagued by grief, leaving the kingdom of Rilpor vulnerable.

Vulnerable to the blood-thirsty greed of the Warrior-King Liris and the Mireces army waiting in the mountains...

GODBLIND is an incredible debut from a dazzling new voice of the genre.

Empress of Mijak

Godspeaker: Book 1

Karen Miller

When a scrawny unwanted girl child is sold into slavery, a chain of events is set in motion that will have a profound impact on all the civilized world.

Hekat is taken in chains to Mijak's largest city, home of the warlord Raklion. She is sold into his service and learns all she can about power - its wielding and its uses - as she fetches and carries and cleans and serves. She grows into a beautiful woman and through ambition and manipulation, Hekat becomes a powerful woman, eventually taking over the rulership of Mijak... and then she sets about making it the greatest Empire ever known.

Something Wicked This Way Comes

Green Town: Book 3

Ray Bradbury

For those who still dream and remember, for those yet to experience the hypnotic power of its dark poetry: step inside - the show is about to begin...

It's the week before Hallowe'en, and Cooger and Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show has come to Green Town, Illinois. The siren song of the calliope entices all with promises of youth regained and dreams fulfilled, but everyone touched will be destroyed, for Mr Dark collects souls. And as two boys trembling on the brink of manhood set out to explore the mysteries of the dark carnival's smoke, mazes and mirrors, they will also discover the true price of innermost wishes . . .

Phantasm Japan: Fantasies Light and Dark, From and About Japan

Haikasoru Anthology Series: Book 2

Nick Mamatas
Masumi Washington

The secret history of the most famous secret agent in the world. A bunny costume that reveals the truth in our souls. The unsettling notion that Japan itself may be a dream. The tastiest meal you'll never have, a fedora-wearing neckbeard's deadly date with a yokai, and the worst work shift anyone--human or not--has ever lived through. Welcome to Phantasm Japan.

Table of Contents:

  • Gary A. Braunbeck: "Shikata Ga Nai: A Bag Lady's Tale"
  • Nadia Bulkin: "Girl, I Love You"
  • Quentin S. Crisp: "The Last Packet of Tea"
  • Project Itoh: "From the Nothing, With Love"
  • Yusaku Kitano: "Scissors or Claws, and Holes"
  • Jacqueline Koyanagi: "Kamigakari"
  • Alex Dally MacFarlane: "Inari Updates the Map of Rice Fields"
  • Zachary Mason: "Five Tales of Japan"
  • Miyuki Miyabe: "Chiyoko"
  • James A. Moore: "He Dreads the Cold"
  • Lauren Naturale: "Her Last Appearance"
  • Tim Pratt: "Those Who Hunt Monster Hunters"
  • Benjanun Sriduangkaew: "Ningyo"
  • Seia Tanabe: "The Parrot Stone"
  • Joseph Tomaras: "Thirty-Eight Observations on the Nature of the Self"
  • Dempow Torishima: "Sisyphean"
  • Sayuri Ueda: "Street of Fruiting Bodies"

Half World

Half World: Book 1

Hiromi Goto

Melanie Tamaki is human-but her parents aren't. They are from Half World, a Limbo between our world and the afterlife, and her father is still there. When her mother disappears, Melanie must follow her to Half World-and neither of them may return alive. Imagine Coraline as filmed by the Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki (Howl's Moving Castle), or Neil Gaiman collaborating with Charles de Lint. Half World is vivid, visceral, unforgettable, a combination of prose and images that will haunt you.

Shattersteel

Her Pitiless Command: Book 3

Benjanun Sriduangkaew

For her entire life, Nuawa has made herself a weapon to assassinate the Winter Queen.

She failed. Her secrets are laid bare and she has lost everything.

The queen keeps Nuawa as a tool, and soon a sacrifice as she brings her ultimate goal to fruition: to harness the divine power of her makers that'll make her lover General Lussadh immortal.

But Nuawa isn't done fighting yet. She has one final chance?and she will take it, trading her soul to try one last time to end winter's eternity... even if it means she must lose Lussadh forever.

The Unforsaken Hiero

Hiero Desteen: Book 2

Sterling E. Lanier

North America 5000 Years after the Death. Part two of Hiero's Journey scatters Hiero and his band of compatriots across the face of the continent. Hiero will face capture by the unclean, death by dehydration in the deserts of death, vicious attacks by murderous, mutated animals, and the most devastating terror of all... Hiero's loss of his unparalleled mental powers. He and his allies will be tested to the very limits of their abilities. They are bolstered only by a fierce determination to defeat the Unclean. It is that determination upon which their survival depends, and which must bring victory in their ultimate confrontation with the unclean if the remnants of civilization are to survive.

The Death of the Necromancer

Ile-Rien: Book 2

Martha Wells

Nicholas Valiarde is a passionate, embittered nobleman with an enigmatic past. Consumed by thoughts of vengeance, he is consoled only by thoughts of the beautiful, dangerous Madeline. He is also the greatest thief in all of Ile-Rien...

On the gas light streets of the city, he assumes the guise of a master criminal, stealing jewels from wealthy nobles to finance his quest for vengeance the murder of Count Montesq. Montesq orchestrated the wrongful execution of Nicholas's beloved godfather on false charges of necromancy--the art of divination through communion with spirits of the dead--a practice long outlawed in the kingdom of Ile-Rein.

But now Nicholas's murderous mission is being interrupted by a series of eerie, unexplainable, even fatal events. Someone with tremendous magical powers is opposing him. Children vanish, corpses assume the visage of real people, mortal spells are cast, and traces of necromantic power that hasn't been used for centuries are found. And when a spiritualist unwittingly leads Nicholas to a decrepit mansion, the monstrous nature of his peril finally emerges in harrowing detail.Nicholas and his compatriots must destroy an ancient and awesome evil. even teh help of Ile-Rien's greatest sorcerer may not be enough, for Nicholas faces a woefully mismatched battle--and unthinkable horrors await the loser.

Imaro

Imaro: Book 1

Charles R. Saunders

Saunders' novel fuses the narrative style of fantasy fiction with a pre-colonial, alternate Africa. Inspired by and directly addresses the alienation of growing up an African American fan of Science Fiction and Fantasy, which to this day remains a very ethnically homogonous genre. It addresses this both structurally (via its unique setting) and thematically (via its alienated, tribeless hero-protagonist). The tribal tensions and histories presented in this fantasy novel reflect actual African tribal histories and tensions, and provide a unique perspective to current and recent conflicts in Africa, particularly the Rwandan genocide and the ongoing conflict in The Sudan.

Note: Imaro is a fixup novel. In the Night Shade Edition one story is excanged for another compared to the original DAW edition.

Skinwalker

Jane Yellowrock: Book 1

Faith Hunter

Jane Yellowrock is the last of her kind-a skinwalker of Cherokee descent who can turn into any creature she desires and hunts vampires for a living. But now she's been hired by Katherine Fontaneau, one of the oldest vampires in New Orleans and the madam of Katie's Ladies, to hunt a powerful rogue vampire who's killing other vamps.

Blood Cross

Jane Yellowrock: Book 2

Faith Hunter

Jane Yellowrock is back on the prowl against the children of the night.

The vampire council has hired skinwalker Jane Yellowrock to hunt and kill one of their own who has broken sacred ancient rules-but Jane quickly realizes that in a community that is thousands of years old, loyalties run deep...

Mercy Blade

Jane Yellowrock: Book 3

Faith Hunter

Jane, a shapeshifting vampire-hunter-for-hire, crosses paths with a stranger who has arrived in New Orleans, enlisted to hunt vampires who have gone insane-or so he says.

Raven Cursed

Jane Yellowrock: Book 4

Faith Hunter

The vampires of Asheville, North Carolina, want to establish their own clan, but since they owe loyalty to the Master Vampire of New Orleans they must work out the terms with him. To come up with an equitable solution, he sends an envoy with the best bodyguard blood money can buy: Jane Yellowrock.

But when a group of local campers are attacked by something fanged, Jane goes from escort to investigator. Unless she wants to face a very angry mast vampire, she will have to work overtime to find the killer. It's a good thing she's worth every penny.

Death's Rival

Jane Yellowrock: Book 5

Faith Hunter

For a former vampire killer like Jane, having Leo Pellisier as boss took some getting used to. But now, someone is out to take his place as Master Vampire of the city of New Orleans, and they're not afraid to go through Jane to do it. After an attack that's tantamount to a war declaration, Leo knows his rival is both powerful and vicious, but Leo's not about to run scared. After all, he has Jane. But then, a plague strikes, one that takes down vampires but leaves humans untouched, as carriers of the dread disease.

Now, to uncover the identity of the vamp who wants Leo's territory, and to find the cause of the vamp-plague, Jane will have to venture into the underbelly of vamp society, where rules were made to be broken. As she circles closer to the truth, she finds the answers to the secret that could turn every vampire in the U.S. true-dead.

Blood Trade

Jane Yellowrock: Book 6

Faith Hunter

Jane Yellowrock is a shape-shifting skinwalker who's always up for a fight - even if it means putting her life on the line...

The Master of Natchez, Mississippi has a nasty problem on his hands. Rogue vampires - those who follow the Naturaleza and believe that humans should be nothing more than prey to be hunted - are terrorizing his city. Luckily, he knows the perfect skinwalker to call in to take back the streets.

But what he doesn't tell Jane is that there's something different about these vamps. Something that makes them harder to kill - even for a pro like Jane. Now, her simple job has turned into a fight to stay alive...and to protect the desperately ill child left in her care.

A Long Spoon

Johannes Cabal

Jonathan L. Howard

You may have heard of Johannes Cabal; he is a necromancer and a little infamous. He is also very sensitive to attempts on his life. When a murder of crows tries to... well, murder him, and the contents of his bath are transmuted into hot nitric acid, he suspects someone may mean him harm. The trail leads to one of the less travelled parts of Hell itself, and there Cabal will need a guide.

As Dante had his Virgil, so Cabal employs the services of a devil who is a monster, a predator, and -- most alien of all to Cabal -- a woman. The devil Zarenyia and he delve deep into Hell, even into Satan's greatest mistake, to confront challenges quite outside the ken of any mortal. But one should always use a long spoon when supping with a devil, and Cabal soon realises the unthinkable, a horror beyond his experience. He is actually beginning to like her.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

The Necromancer

Johannes Cabal: Book 1

Jonathan L. Howard

In this uproarious and clever debut, it's time to give the Devil his due.

Johannes Cabal, a brilliant scientist and notorious snob, is single-mindedly obsessed in heart and soul with raising the dead. Well, perhaps not soul... He hastily sold his years ago in order to learn the laws of necromancy. But now, tormented by a dark secret, he travels to the fiery pits of Hell to retrieve it. Satan, who is incredibly bored these days, proposes a little wager: Johannes has one year to persuade one hundred people to sign over their souls or he will be damned forever.

To make the bet even more interesting, Satan throws in that diabolical engine of deceit, seduction, and corruption known as a "traveling circus" to aid in the evil bidding. What better place exists to rob poor sad saps of their souls than the traveling carnivals historically run by hucksters and legendary con men?

With little time to lose, Johannes raises a motley crew from the dead and enlists his brother, Horst, a charismatic vampire (an unfortunate side effect of Johannes's early experiments with necromancy), to be the carnival's barker. On the road through the pastoral English countryside, this team of reprobates wields their black magic with masterful ease, resulting in mayhem at every turn.

Johannes may have the moral conscience of anthrax, but are his tricks sinful enough to beat the Devil at his own game? You'll never guess, and that's a promise!

Brilliantly written and wickedly funny, Johannes Cabal the Necromancer combines the chills and thrills of old-fashioned gothic tales like The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, the mischievous humor of Wicked, and the sophisticated charms of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell and spins the Faustian legend into a fresh, irreverent, and irresistible new adventure.

The Detective

Johannes Cabal: Book 2

Jonathan L. Howard

Johannes Cabal, necromancer of some little infamy, returns in this riotously clever and terrifically twisted tale of murder and international intrigue.

In this genre-twisting novel, infamous necromancer Johannes Cabal, after beating the Devil and being reunited with his soul, leads us on another raucous journey in a little-known corner of the world. This time he’s on the run from the local government.

Stealing the identity of a minor bureaucrat, Cabal takes passage on the Princess Hortense, a passenger aeroship that is leaving the country. The deception seems perfect, and Cabal looks forward to a quiet trip and a clean escape, until he comes face-to-face with Leonie Barrow, an enemy from the old days who could blow his cover. But when a fellow passenger throws himself to his death, or at least that is how it appears, Cabal begins to investigate out of curiosity. His minor efforts result in a vicious attempt on his own life-and then the gloves come off.

Cabal and Leonie-the only woman to ever match wits with him-reluctantly team up to discover the murderer. Before they are done, there will be more narrow escapes, involving sword fighting and newfangled flying machines. There will be massive destruction, not to mention resurrected dead . . .

Steampunk meets the classic Sherlockian mystery in this rip-roaring adventure where anything could happen . . . and does.

The Fear Institute

Johannes Cabal: Book 3

Jonathan L. Howard

Beyond the wall of sleep lies the Dreamlands. For countless millennia, they have been explored only by those philosophers, mystics, and poets with a certain detachment from mundane reality. Well, those halcyon days are over, beatniks.

Johannes Cabal is coming.

Cabal, a necromancer of some little infamy, is employed by the mysterious Fear Institute to lead an expedition into the Dreamlands to hunt and destroy the dread Phobic Animus, the very source of all the world's fear. Along the way, they will encounter witches, vile abominations, and far too many zebras.

And, when they finally come close to their goal, Cabal will have to face his own nightmares. But for a man who communes easily with devils and the dead, surely there is nothing left to fear....

The Brothers Cabal

Johannes Cabal: Book 4

Jonathan L. Howard

Horst Cabal has risen from the dead. Again. Horst, the most affable vampire one is ever likely to meet, is resurrected by an occult conspiracy that wants him as a general in a monstrous army. Their plan: to create a country of horrors, a supernatural homeland. As Horst sees the lengths to which they are prepared to go and the evil they cultivate, he realizes that he cannot fight them alone. What he really needs on his side is a sarcastic, amoral, heavily armed necromancer.

As luck would have it, this exactly describes his brother.

Join the brothers Cabal as they fearlessly lie quietly in bed, fight dreadful monsters from beyond reality, make soup, feel slightly sorry for zombies, banter lightly with secret societies that wish to destroy them, and--in passing--set out to save the world.*

*The author wishes to point out that there are no zebras this time, so don't get your hopes up on that count. There is, however, a werebadger, if that's something that's been missing from your life.

Earth to Hell

Journey to Wudang: Book 1

Kylie Chan

Author Kylie Chan has a boldly, brazenly unique take on urban fantasy—she combines it with Kung Fu. In Earth to Hell, Chan launches the characters from her Dark Heavens trilogy (White Tiger, Red Phoenix, Blue Dragon) on a new adventure that will take them from the teeming streets of Hong Kong through the portals of Hell to set free a friend—as demons and devils rise up to challenge them in life-or-death battle, forcing Emma Donahoe Chen, wife of God of the Northern Heavens, to seek the help of a sworn foe, the fearsome Demon King.

Hell to Heaven

Journey to Wudang: Book 2

Kylie Chan

A fantastic adventure featuring Chinese gods, horrific demons, bizarre creatures from Asian mythology, and electrifying martial arts action, Hell to Heaven is the second book in Kylie Chan's second fresh and exciting urban fantasy series. Fans of John Wu and other Hong Kong Kung Fu movie masters will thrill to the latest exploits Emma Donahoe Chen, badass wife of the God of the Northern Heavens, who faces the grim prospect of turning all-demon and vows to fight to the death to regain her imperiled humanity.

Heaven to Wudang

Journey to Wudang: Book 3

Kylie Chan

Human and demon, heaven and hell, battle for the fate of the world...

The demons that could control stones and elementals have been defeated, but the most powerful of Simon Wong's associates still remains to create almost undetectable copies of humans and Shen. This demon allies with Kitty Kwok to prepare a torturous trap for Emma and Simone, from which they may never return.

Wudang Mountain is enveloped by dark foreboding as Xuan Wu begins to reappear—sometimes human, sometimes turtle, but always without memory.

Emma and Simone are in a race against time as they try to rescue Xuan Wu... before the demons capture him.

Bloodstone

Kane: Book 2

Karl Edward Wagner

Kane. The Mystic Swordsman becomes the living link with the awesome power of a vanished superrace. In the dark swamp where toadmen croak and cower, slumbers a secret relic of the days when creatures from the stars ruled the Earth. In the booty captured in a savage raid, Kane discovers a ring, a bloodstone, which is key to the power that lies buried, inactive but not dead, within the forest. Now Kane, whose bloody sword has slashed and killed for the glory of other rulers, can scheme to rule the Earth - himself!

Dark Crusade

Kane: Book 3

Karl Edward Wagner

When a man proves himself to be more than human and a devotee of your dark god type he quickly develops a following with fervour.

After some initial military success he has his rabble smashed by a trained opposition. Kane sees an opportunity and volunteers his military mind to whip the bunch of crazies into shape. Kane has to see if he can stick around long enough given said bloke's delusions of competency for himself and followers.

Forge of Darkness

Kharkanas Trilogy: Book 1

Steven Erikson

Now is the time to tell the story of an ancient realm, a tragic tale that sets the stage for all the tales yet to come and all those already told...

It's a conflicted time in Kurald Galain, the realm of Darkness, where Mother Dark reigns. But this ancient land was once home to many a power. and even death is not quite eternal. The commoners' great hero, Vatha Urusander, is being promoted by his followers to take Mother Dark's hand in marriage, but her Consort, Lord Draconus, stands in the way of such ambitions. The impending clash sends fissures throughout the realm, and as the rumors of civil war burn through the masses, an ancient power emerges from the long dead seas. Caught in the middle of it all are the First Sons of Darkness, Anomander, Andarist, and Silchas Ruin of the Purake Hold...

Steven Erikson entered the pantheon of great fantasy writers with his debut Gardens of the Moon. Now he returns with the first novel in a trilogy that takes place millennia before the events of the Malazan Book of the Fallen and introduces readers to Kurald Galain, the warren of Darkness. It is the epic story of a realm whose fate plays a crucial role in shaping the world of the Malazan Empire.

Kingdom of Souls

Kingdom of Souls: Book 1

Rena Barron

Magic has a price--if you're willing to pay.

Born into a family of powerful witchdoctors, Arrah yearns for magic of her own. But each year she fails to call forth her ancestral powers, while her ambitious mother watches with growing disapproval.

There's only one thing Arrah hasn't tried, a deadly last resort: trading years of her own life for scraps of magic. Until the Kingdom's children begin to disappear, and Arrah is desperate to find the culprit.

She uncovers something worse. The long-imprisoned Demon King is stirring. And if he rises, his hunger for souls will bring the world to its knees... unless Arrah pays the price for the magic to stop him.

Inspired by tales of folk magic in her own community, Rena Barron spins a darkly magical tale about a girl caught between gods, monsters, and her own mother's schemes.

The Slow Regard of Silent Things

Kingkiller Chronicles

Patrick Rothfuss

The University, a renowned bastion of knowledge, attracts the brightest minds to unravel the mysteries of enlightened sciences like artificing and alchemy. Yet deep below its bustling halls lies a complex and cavernous maze of abandoned rooms and ancient passageways - and in the heart of it all lives Auri.

Formerly a student at the University, now Auri spends her days tending the world around her. She has learned that some mysteries are best left settled and safe. No longer fooled by the sharp rationality so treasured by the University, Auri sees beyond the surface of things, into subtle dangers and hidden names.

At once joyous and haunting, THE SLOW REGARD OF SILENT THINGS is a rich, atmospheric and lyrical tale, featuring one of the most beloved characters from Rothfuss' acclaimed fantasy series.

Kushiel's Avatar

Kushiel's Legacy: Book 3

Jacqueline Carey

The land of Terre d'Ange is a place of unsurpassed beauty and grace. It is said that angels found the land and saw it was good ... and the ensuing race that rose from the seed of angels and men live by one simple rule: Love as thou wilt.

Phèdre nó Delaunay is a woman pricked by Kushiel's Dart, chosen to forever experience pain and pleasure as one. Her path has been strange and dangerous, and through it all the devoted swordsman Joscelin has been at her side. Her very nature is a torturous thing for them both, but he is sworn to her and he has never violated his vow: to protect and serve.

But Phèdre's plans put Joscelin's pledge to the test, for she has never forgotten her childhood friend Hyacinthe. She has spent ten long years searching for the key to free him from his eternal indenture, a bargain he struck with the gods-- to take Phèdre's place as a sacrifice and save a nation. Phèdre cannot forgive-- herself or the gods. She is determined to seize one last hope to redeem her friend, even of it means her death.

The search will bring Phèdre and Joscelin across the world, to distant courts where madness reigns and souls are currency, and down a fabled river to a land forgotten by most of the world.

And to a power so mighty that none dare speak its name.

The Steel Remains

Land Fit For Heroes: Book 1

Richard K. Morgan

A dark lord will rise. Such is the prophecy that dogs Ringil Eskiath—Gil, for short—a washed-up mercenary and onetime war hero whose cynicism is surpassed only by the speed of his sword. Gil is estranged from his aristocratic family, but when his mother enlists his help in freeing a cousin sold into slavery, Gil sets out to track her down. But it soon becomes apparent that more is at stake than the fate of one young woman. Grim sorceries are awakening in the land. Some speak in whispers of the return of the Aldrain, a race of widely feared, cruel yet beautiful demons. Now Gil and two old comrades are all that stand in the way of a prophecy whose fulfillment will drown an entire world in blood. But with heroes like these, the cure is likely to be worse than the disease.

The Cold Commands

Land Fit for Heroes: Book 2

Richard K. Morgan

With The Steel Remains, award-winning science fiction writer Richard K. Morgan turned his talents to sword and sorcery. The result: a genre-busting masterwork hailed as a milestone in contemporary epic fantasy. Now Morgan continues the riveting saga of Ringil Eskiath-Gil, for short-a peerless warrior whose love for other men has made him an outcast and pariah.

Only a select few have earned the right to call Gil friend. One is Egar, the Dragonbane, a fierce Majak fighter who comes to respect a heart as savage and loyal as his own. Another is Archeth, the last remaining daughter of an otherworldly race called the Kiriath, who once used their advanced technology to save the world from the dark magic of the Aldrain-only to depart for reasons as mysterious as their arrival. Yet even Egar and Archeth have learned to fear the doom that clings to their friend like a grim shadow... or the curse of a bitter god.

Now one of the Kiriath's uncanny machine intelligences has fallen from orbit-with a message that humanity faces a grave new danger (or, rather, an ancient one): a creature called the Illwrack Changeling, a boy raised to manhood in the ghostly between-world realm of the Grey Places, home to the Aldrain. A human raised as one of them-and, some say, the lover of one of their greatest warriors-until, in a time lost to legend, he was vanquished. Wrapped in sorcerous slumber, hidden away on an island that drifts between this world and the Grey Places, the Illwrack Changeling is stirring. And when he wakes, the Aldrain will rally to him and return in force-this time without the Kiriath to stop them.

An expedition is outfitted for the long and arduous sea journey to find the lost island of the Illwrack Changeling. Aboard are Gil, Egar, and Archeth: each fleeing from ghosts of the past, each seeking redemption in whatever lies ahead. But redemption doesn't come cheap these days. Nor, for that matter, does survival. Not even for Ringil Eskiath. Or anyone-god or mortal-who would seek to use him as a pawn.

The Dark Defiles

Land Fit For Heroes: Book 3

Richard K. Morgan

Ringil Eskiath, a reluctant hero viewed as a corrupt degenerate by the very people who demand his help, has traveled far in search of the Illwrack Changeling, a deathless human sorcerer-warrior raised by the bloodthirsty Aldrain, former rulers of the world. Separated from his companions - Egar the Dragonbane and Archeth - Ringil risks his soul to master a deadly magic that alone can challenge the might of the Changeling. While Archeth and the Dragonbane embark on a trail of blood and tears that ends up exposing long-buried secrets, Ringil finds himself tested as never before, with his life and all existence hanging in the balance.

The House With a Clock in its Walls

Lewis Barnavelt: Book 1

John Bellairs

Orphaned Lewis Barnavelt comes to live with his Uncle Jonathan and quickly learns that both his uncle and his next-door neighbor are witches on a quest to discover the terrifying clock ticking within the walls of Jonathan's house. Can the three of them save the world from certain destruction?

Welcome to Lovecraft

Locke & Key: Book 1

Joe Hill
Gabriel Rodriguez

Acclaimed suspense novelist and New York Times best-selling author Joe Hill (Heart-Shaped Box) creates an all-new story of dark fantasy and wonder: Locke and Key. Written by Hill and featuring astounding artwork from Gabriel Rodriguez, Locke and Key tells of Keyhouse, an unlikely New England mansion, with fantastic doors that transform all who dare to walk through them... and home to a hate-filled and relentless creature that will not rest until it forces open the most terrible door of them all...

Clockworks

Locke & Key: Book 5

Joe Hill
Gabriel Rodriguez

The sprawling tale of the Locke family and their mastery of the whispering iron thunders to new heights as the true history of the family is revealed to Tyler and Kinsey. Zack Wells assumes a new form, Tyler and Kinsey travel through time, and surprises beyond imagination will be revealed.

Crypt of the Moon Spider

Lunar Gothic Trilogy: Book 1

Nathan Ballingrud

Years ago, in a cave beneath the dense forests and streams on the surface of the moon, a gargantuan spider once lived. Its silk granted its first worshippers immense faculties of power and awe.

It's now 1923 and Veronica Brinkley is touching down on the moon for her intake at the Barrowfield Home for Treatment of the Melancholy. A renowned facility, Dr. Barrington Cull's invasive and highly successful treatments have been lauded by many. And they're so simple! All it takes is a little spider silk in the amygdala, maybe a strand or two in the prefrontal cortex, and perhaps an inch in the hippocampus for near evisceration of those troublesome thoughts and ideas.

But patients aren't the only ones with trouble on their minds, and although the spider's been dead for years, its denizens are not. Someone or something is up to no good, and Veronica just might be the cause.

Made Things

Made Things: Book 1

Adrian Tchaikovsky

Making friends has never been so important.

Welcome to Fountains Parish -- a cesspit of trade and crime, where ambition curls up to die and desperation grows on its cobbled streets like mold on week-old bread.

Coppelia is a street thief, a trickster, a low-level con artist. But she has something other thieves don't... tiny puppet-like companions: some made of wood, some of metal. They don't entirely trust her, and she doesn't entirely understand them, but their partnership mostly works.

After a surprising discovery shakes their world to the core, Coppelia and her friends must re-examine everything they thought they knew about their world, while attempting to save their city from a seemingly impossible new threat.

Magical Girl Raising Project, Vol. 1

Magical Girl Raising Project: Book 1

Asari Endou

Sugar and spice--but not playing nice!

The hit smartphone game Magical Girl Raising Project is not only free, but one in tens of thousands of players will win real-life powers. In N City, sixteen of these lucky girls help the city's citizens--until upper management announces that each week, the least productive magical girl will lose her gifts. But this is no ordinary contest, and as the rules become increasingly sadistic, the competition to keep their powers becomes a vicious battle for the girls' very lives...

Magical Girl Raising Project, Vol. 2: Restart (Part 1)

Magical Girl Raising Project: Book 2

Asari Endou

The hit social network game "The Magical Girl Raising Project" selects one out of every tens of thousands of players to become a real life magical girl. The lucky chosen girls gain magic powers as well as incredibly good fortune, and spend their days blissfully.

But one day, an absolute announcement declares that the number of magical girls has risen too high and must be cut down to half. Sixteen young maidens are thrust into a merciless, deadly contest to survive...but how many will come out the other side?

Magical Girl Raising Project, Vol. 3: Restart (Part 2)

Magical Girl Raising Project: Book 3

Asari Endou

What makes for a true magical girl?

Just a few short weeks ago, sixteen magical girls were pulled into the new Magical Girl Raising Project, a video game-like world where they must work together to survive. But between the formations of factions, high tensions, and even a mysterious murder, trust and cooperation have proved difficult. As the heroines enter the final phase, can they band together and succeed? Or will their fear and weakness tear them apart?

And what is the master of this game truly after...?

Magical Girl Raising Project, Vol. 4: Episodes

Magical Girl Raising Project: Book 4

Asari Endou

The violence continues in the 4th installment of Magical Girl Raising Project. Numbers dwindle as alliances grow. Do these girls have what it takes to win it all!?

Magical Girl Raising Project, Vol. 5: Limited (Part 1)

Magical Girl Raising Project: Book 5

Asari Endou

A whole new batch of magical girls!

During what was supposed to be a typical after-school club meeting, a small fairy named Toko appears out of nowhere with incredible news: All seven attendees have what it takes to become full-fledged magical girls! In exchange for their newfound abilities, they promise to save Toko from the evil mages who are hunting her down. But the girls may be in over their heads, as these bad guys have special magical girl powers of their own...

Magical Girl Raising Project, Vol. 6: Limited (Part 2)

Magical Girl Raising Project: Book 6

Asari Endou

Who will be the last magical girl standing?

It's a battle between the hunters and the hunted in this life-or-death magical-girl manhunt game, now at its climax. One after another, the girls fall as the surrounding barrier's time limit draws closer. The line between friend and foe has blurred-it's every magical girl for herself. Which one will make it out of this bloodbath alive?

Magical Girl Raising Project, Vol. 7: Jokers

Magical Girl Raising Project: Book 7

Asari Endou

What makes a magical girl special?

Sakura Kagami is just an ordinary girl, and her magical-girl persona, Prism Cherry, is just as ordinary, too. After the same old tired routine of saving people with her boring magic in a peaceful town, Sakura learns that her classmate, Nami, is also a magical girl. The two of them become fast friends, but it doesn't take long before the veneer of magical-girl-hood falls apart to reveal something more sinister than they'd ever anticipated.

Magical Girl Raising Project, Vol. 8: Aces

Magical Girl Raising Project: Book 8

Asari Endou

A clash of magical-girl titans!

Snow White, a.k.a. the Magical-Girl Hunter, is searching for her dear friend Ripple when she's summoned by one of the Three Sages, the Magical Kingdom's highest authority. The Sage asks Snow White to locate a missing magical girl-a simple enough task that ends up throwing her into the middle of a bloody war between two opposing Sage factions. Meanwhile, Princess Deluge is on the warpath, hell-bent on avenging her fallen comrades... which puts her and Snow White's allies in conflict!

Magical Girl Raising Project, Vol. 9: Episodes Phi

Magical Girl Raising Project: Book 9

Asari Endou

Blood, sweat, tears, and some laughs in between!

From the very first Magical Girl Raising Project all the way to Magical Girl Raising Project ACES, dozens of magical girls have found a special place in our hearts. Though it may seem like they spend their days fighting one bloody battle after another, there's more to these magical girls than meets the eye! This collection of eleven bonus stories includes some of their lighter exploits and even gives a few glimpses of the girls' lives as regular teenagers!

Magical Girl Raising Project, Vol. 10: Peaceful Day of 16 Magical Girls

Magical Girl Raising Project: Book 10

Asari Endou

REVISIT THE ORIGINAL SIXTEEN!

Learn more about the sixteen magical girls from the very first Magical Girl Raising Project in this short story collection that perfectly complements the hit anime series. You'll read about the girls' normal, everyday lives, some surprising interactions, and even events that took place before the game's start! These sweet vignettes are positively bursting with magical-girl charm!

Magical Girl Raising Project, Vol. 11: Queens

Magical Girl Raising Project: Book 11

Asari Endou

WILL YOU BE MY FRIEND?

Puk Puck's plan to reform the Magical Kingdom is proceeding smoothly now that she has the help of her new friends Shadow Gale and Snow White... but friendship only goes so far. Uluru has defected from the Puk Faction in order to aid the magical girl Pfle, who has several risky tricks up her sleeve to stop Puk Puck's devious scheme. What kinds of drastic measures will Pfle and her allies take to rescue the brainwashed Shadow Gale and Snow White?

Magical Girl Raising Project, Vol. 12: Episodes Delta

Magical Girl Raising Project: Book 12

Asari Endou

MAGIC IS IN THE AIR!

The popular magical-girl battle royal series returns with a collection of short stories hot off the press! These vignettes are jam-packed with dozens of magical girls from across the series, from the very first entry up to Magical Girl Raising Project: QUEENS--and even a few characters from the web manga Magical Girl Raising Project: F2P. Whether you're a hard-core fan or have only seen the anime, this book has something for everyone!

Magical Girl Raising Project, Vol. 13: Black

Magical Girl Raising Project: Book 13

Asari Endou

SCHOOL IS NOW IN SESSION!

With only fifteen students in total, and all girls at that, Umemizaki Junior High's class 2-F is a bit peculiar. In fact, "peculiar" doesn't even cut it-this is a special class that the Magical Kingdom created to raise the next generation of legitimate magical girls! From the outside, these elite students represent a beacon of hope for the future. But behind closed doors, something terrible is brewing...

Magical Girl Raising Project, Vol. 14: Breakdown (Part 1)

Magical Girl Raising Project: Book 14

Asari Endou

An experiment gone wrong leads to the death of a famous mage, and the passing of this illustrious individual sends the Magical Kingdom into mourning. Then, a few months later, the deceased mage's relations receive letters from his proxy regarding the inheritance of his estate, inviting them to a tiny uninhabited island the mage had used as a getaway cottage/research lab. When Mana gets one of these letters, she's skeptical, but after careful consideration, she contacts two magical-girl friends to accompany her there...

Magical Girl Raising Project, Vol. 15: Breakdown (Part 2)

Magical Girl Raising Project: Book 15

Asari Endou

EVERYONE'S A SUSPECT

Although they've come up with stopgap measures to restore their powers, the great mage Sataborn's heirs and their magical-girl companions are now scattered across the island that is holding them captive. To escape, they must defeat the tyrannical goddess who has been slowly killing them off one by one. The survivors continue putting up a fight despite their struggles... but who is controlling this goddess, and for what purpose? Is the real enemy hiding in plain sight...?

Magical Girl Raising Project, Vol. 16: White

Magical Girl Raising Project: Book 16

Asari Endou

SECRETS, SCHEMES, AND SURPRISES AT EVERY TURN

Snow White has infiltrated a class of magical girls in order to stop a conspiracy to overthrow the Magical Kingdom, but an unforeseen plot sees one classmate after another falling victim to foul play. Meanwhile, Ripple comes out of hiding to take down Frederica with the support of the First Lapis Lazuline. Will she and Snow White finally be reunited?

Magical Girl Raising Project, Vol. 17: Episodes Sigma

Magical Girl Raising Project: Book 17

Asari Endou

EVERYONE'S GOT A STORY TO TELL

New magical girls arriving on the scene means a new collection of tales about their lives! You'll get to experience the bonus origin story "Snow White Raising Project" for the first time in print--a mustread as Snow White's character arc reaches its climax. Don't miss out on these episodes that are sure to add even more color and intrigue to the Magical Girl Raising Project series!

Feast of Souls

Magister Trilogy: Book 1

C. S. Friedman

A new trilogy of epic adventure from one of the finest writers in modern fantasy

C.S. Friedman, acclaimed author of The Coldfire Trilogy, returns to the epic style which has made her one of the most popular fantasy writers in the genre. In this first book of the trilogy, Friedman introduces readers to a world of high fantasy, replete with vampire-like magical powers, erotic interludes, treachery, war, sorcery, and a draconic creature of horrific power and evil that will have readers eagerly awaiting the next novel in the series.

Melusine

Melusine: Book 1

Sarah Monette

Mélusine-a city of secrets and lies, pleasure and pain, magic and corruption, and destinies lost and found...

Felix Harrowgate is a dashing, highly respected wizard. But the horrors of his past as an abused slave have returned, and threaten to destroy all he has since become.

As a cat burglar, Mildmay the Fox is used to being hunted. But now he has been caught by a wizard. And yet the wizard was looking not for Mildmay, but for Felix Harrowgate...

Thrown together by fate, these unlikely allies will uncover a shocking secret that will link them inexorably together.

Bone Crossed

Mercy Thompson: Book 4

Patricia Briggs

Shapeshifter Mercy Thompson hit the #1 spot on the bestseller list with Iron Kissed...

And she's planning a return trip.

Marsilia, the local vampire queen, has learned that Mercy crossed her by slaying a member of her clan. Now, she's out for blood. But since Mercy is protected from direct reprisal by the werewolf pack-and her relationship with its sexy Alpha-it's not Mercy's blood Marsilia is after...

The Children of Hurin

Middle Earth

Christopher Tolkien
J. R. R. Tolkien

The Children of Húrin, begun in 1918, was one of three "Great Tales" J.R.R. Tolkien worked on throughout his life, though he never realized his ambition to see it published. Though familiar to many fans from extracts and references within other Tolkien books, it has long been assumed that the story would forever remain an "unfinished tale." Now reconstructed by Christopher Tolkien, painstakingly editing together the complete work from his father's many drafts, this book is the culmination of a tireless thirty-year endeavor by him to bring J.R.R. Tolkien's vast body of unpublished work to a wide audience.

Christopher Tolkien said: "It has seemed to me for a long time that there was a good case for presenting my father's long version of the legend of The Children of Húrin as an independent work, between its own covers, with a minimum of editorial presence, and above all in continuous narrative without gaps or interruptions, if this could be done without distortion or invention, despite the unfinished state in which he left some parts of it."

Having drawn the distinctive maps for the original The Lord of the Rings more than fifty years ago, Christopher has also created a detailed new map for this book. In addition, it will include a jacket and color paintings by Alan Lee, illustrator of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings Centenary Edition and Oscar®-winning designer of the film trilogy.

Successor's Promise

Millennium's Rule: Book 3

Trudi Canavan

Five years have passed since the Rebels confronted the Raen. Five years, in which the boy Rielle rescued, Qall, has grown up among the Travellers, with no memory of the life that was stolen from him.

Five years of chaos, barely contained by Baluka and the Restorers. Worlds are at war, some overrun by deadly machines, some drained of magic by power-hungry sorcerers.

As Qall comes of age, and Rielle and Tyen's hard-won peace is threatened, their loyalties are tested--and Qall's very existence is at stake.

Because Dahli is still determined to restore Valhan to power, and he will stop at nothing to succeed.

Horn

Miriam Aster: Book 1

Peter M. Ball

There's a dead girl in a dumpster and a unicorn on the loose – and no-one knows how bad that combination can get better than Miriam Aster. What starts as a consulting job for city homicide quickly becomes a tangled knot of unexpected questions, and working out the link between the dead girl and the unicorn will draw Aster back into the world of the exiled fey she thought she'd left behind ten years ago. All in all, Miriam Aster isn't happy. The last time she worked a case like this it cost her a badge, a partner, and her life. This time things are going to get much, much worse.

Bleed

Miriam Aster: Book 2

Peter M. Ball

For ten years ex-cop Miriam Aster has been living with her one big mistake – agreeing to kill three men for the exiled Queen of Faerie. But when an old case comes back to haunt her, it brings a spectre of the past with it, forcing Aster to ally herself with a stuntwoman and a magic cat in order to rescue a kidnapped TV star from the land of Faerie and stop the half-breed sorcerer who needs Aster's blood.

Ten years ago Miriam Aster learnt a simple lesson: when a faerie asks you to kill someone, the worst thing you can say is sure. Today she's about to learn that worse things can happen when the past refuses to stay behind you.

The Border Keeper

Mkalis Cycle: Book 1

Kerstin Hall

She lived where the railway tracks met the saltpan, on the Ahri side of the shadowline. In the old days, when people still talked about her, she was known as the end-of-the-line woman.

Vasethe, a man with a troubled past, comes to seek a favor from a woman who is not what she seems, and must enter the nine hundred and ninety-nine realms of Mkalis, the world of spirits, where gods and demons wage endless war.

Ironside

Modern Faerie Tales: Book 3

Holly Black

In the realm of Faerie, the time has come for Roiben's coronation. Uneasy in the midst of the malevolent Unseelie Court, pixie Kaye is sure of only one thing -- her love for Roiben. But when Kaye, drunk on faerie wine, declares herself to Roiben, he sends her on a seemingly impossible quest. Now Kaye can't see or speak to Roiben unless she can find the one thing she knows doesn't exist: a faerie who can tell a lie.

Miserable and convinced she belongs nowhere, Kaye decides to tell her mother the truth -- that she is a changeling left in place of the human daughter stolen long ago. Her mother's shock and horror sends Kaye back to the world of Faerie to find her human counterpart and return her to Ironside. But once back in the faerie courts, Kaye finds herself a pawn in the games of Silarial, queen of the Seelie Court. Silarial wants Roiben's throne, and she will use Kaye, and any means necessary, to get it. In this game of wits and weapons, can a pixie outplay a queen?

Holly Black spins a seductive tale at once achingly real and chillingly enchanted, set in a dangerous world where pleasure mingles with pain and nothing is exactly as it appears.

This Savage Song

Monsters of Verity: Book 1

V. E. Schwab

There's no such thing as safe in a city at war, a city overrun with monsters. In this dark urban fantasy from acclaimed author Victoria Schwab, a young woman and a young man must choose whether to become heroes or villains--and friends or enemies--with the future of their home at stake. The first of two books, This Savage Song is a must-have for fans of Holly Black, Maggie Stiefvater, and Laini Taylor.

Kate Harker and August Flynn are the heirs to a divided city--a city where the violence has begun to breed actual monsters. All Kate wants is to be as ruthless as her father, who lets the monsters roam free and makes the humans pay for his protection. All August wants is to be human, as good-hearted as his own father, to play a bigger role in protecting the innocent--but he's one of the monsters. One who can steal a soul with a simple strain of music. When the chance arises to keep an eye on Kate, who's just been kicked out of her sixth boarding school and returned home, August jumps at it. But Kate discovers August's secret, and after a failed assassination attempt the pair must flee for their lives. In This Savage Song, Victoria Schwab creates a gritty, seething metropolis, one worthy of being compared to Gotham and to the four versions of London in her critically acclaimed fantasy for adults, A Darker Shade of Magic. Her heroes will face monsters intent on destroying them from every side--including the monsters within.

Our Dark Duet

Monsters of Verity: Book 2

V. E. Schwab

Kate Harker is a girl who isn't afraid of the dark. She's a girl who hunts monsters. And she's good at it. August Flynn is a monster who can never be human. No matter how much he once yearned for it. He has a part to play. And he will play it, no matter the cost.

Nearly six months after Kate and August were first thrown together, the war between the monsters and the humans is a terrifying reality. In Verity, August has become the leader he never wished to be, and in Prosperity, Kate has become the ruthless hunter she knew she could be. When a new monster emerges from the shadows--one who feeds on chaos and brings out its victim's inner demons--it lures Kate home, where she finds more than she bargained for. She'll face a monster she thought she killed, a boy she thought she knew, and a demon all her own.

Nevernight

Nevernight: Book 1

Jay Kristoff

Nevernight is the first in an epic new fantasy series from the New York Times bestselling author, Jay Kristoff.

In a land where three suns almost never set, a fledgling killer joins a school of assassins, seeking vengeance against the powers who destroyed her family.

Daughter of an executed traitor, Mia Corvere is barely able to escape her father's failed rebellion with her life. Alone and friendless, she hides in a city built from the bones of a dead god, hunted by the Senate and her father's former comrades. But her gift for speaking with the shadows leads her to the door of a retired killer, and a future she never imagined.

Now, a sixteen year old Mia is apprenticed to the deadliest flock of assassins in the entire Republic ? the Red Church. Treachery and trials await her with the Church's halls, and to fail is to die. But if she survives to initiation, Mia will be inducted among the chosen of the Lady of Blessed Murder, and one step closer to the only thing she desires.

Revenge.

Godsgrave

Nevernight: Book 2

Jay Kristoff

In a land where three suns almost never set, a ruthless assassin continues her quest for vengeance against the powers who destroyed her family.

Mia Corvere has found her place among the Blades of Our Lady of Blessed Murder, but many in the Red Church hierarchy think she's far from earned it. Plying her bloody trade in a backwater of the Republic, she's no closer to ending the men who destroyed her familia; in fact, she's told directly that Consul Scaeva is off limits. But after a deadly confrontation with an old enemy, Mia's suspicions about the Red Church's true motives begin to grow.

When it's announced that Scaeva will be making a rare public appearance at the conclusion of the grand games in Godsgrave, Mia defies the Church and sells herself to a gladiatorial collegium for a chance to finally end him. Upon the sands of the arena, Mia finds new allies, bitter rivals, and more questions about her strange affinity for the shadows. But as conspiracies unfold within the collegium walls, and the body count rises, Mia will be forced to choose between love and revenge, and uncover a secret that could change the very face of her world.

Darkdawn

Nevernight: Book 3

Jay Kristoff

The greatest games in Godsgrave's history have ended with the most audacious murders in the history of the Itreyan Republic.

Mia Corvere, gladiatii, escaped slave and infamous assassin, is on the run. Pursued by Blades of the Red Church and soldiers of the Luminatii legion, she may never escape the City of Bridges and Bones alive. Her mentor Mercurio is now in the clutches of her enemies. Her own family wishes her dead. And her nemesis, Consul Julius Scaeva, stands but a breath from total dominance over the Republic.

But beneath the city, a dark secret awaits. Together with her lover Ashlinn, brother Jonnen and a mysterious benefactor returned from beyond the veil of death, she must undertake a perilous journey across the Republic, seeking the final answer to the riddle of her life. Truedark approaches. Night is falling on the Republic for perhaps the final time.

Can Mia survive in a world where even daylight must die?

Perdido Street Station

New Crobuzon: Book 1

China Miéville

Beneath the towering bleached ribs of a dead, ancient beast lies New Crobuzon, a squalid city where humans, Re-mades, and arcane races live in perpetual fear of Parliament and its brutal militia. The air and rivers are thick with factory pollutants and the strange effluents of alchemy, and the ghettos contain a vast mix of workers, artists, spies, junkies, and whores. In New Crobuzon, the unsavory deal is stranger to none not even to Isaac, a brilliant scientist with a penchant for Crisis Theory.

Isaac has spent a lifetime quietly carrying out his unique research. But when a half-bird, half-human creature known as the Garuda comes to him from afar, Isaac is faced with challenges he has never before fathomed. Though the Garuda's request is scientifically daunting, Isaac is sparked by his own curiosity and an uncanny reverence for this curious stranger.

While Isaac's experiments for the Garuda turn into an obsession, one of his lab specimens demands attention: a brilliantly colored caterpillar that feeds on nothing but a hallucinatory drug and grows larger and more consuming by the day. What finally emerges from the silken cocoon will permeate every fiber of New Crobuzon and not even the Ambassador of Hell will challenge the malignant terror it invokes...

The Scar

New Crobuzon: Book 2

China Miéville

Aboard a vast seafaring vessel, a band of prisoners and slaves, their bodies remade into grotesque biological oddities, is being transported to the fledgling colony of New Crobuzon. But the journey is not theirs alone. They are joined by a handful of travelers, each with a reason for fleeing the city. Among them is Bellis Coldwine, a renowned linguist whose services as an interpreter grant her passageand escape from horrific punishment. For she is linked to Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin, the brilliant renegade scientist who has unwittingly unleashed a nightmare upon New Crobuzon.

For Bellis, the plan is clear: live among the new frontiersmen of the colony until it is safe to return home. But when the ship is besieged by pirates on the Swollen Ocean, the senior officers are summarily executed. The surviving passengers are brought to Armada, a city constructed from the hulls of pirated ships, a floating, landless mass ruled by the bizarre duality called the Lovers. On Armada, everyone is given work, and even Remades live as equals to humans, Cactae, and Cray. Yet no one may ever leave.

Lonely and embittered in her captivity, Bellis knows that to show dissent is a death sentence. Instead, she must furtively seek information about Armada's agenda. The answer lies in the dark, amorphous shapes that float undetected miles below the watersterrifying entities with a singular, chilling mission....

Iron Council

New Crobuzon: Book 3

China Miéville

Following Perdido Street Station and The Scar, acclaimed author China Miéville returns with his hugely anticipated Del Rey hardcover debut. With a fresh and fantastical band of characters, he carries us back to the decadent squalor of New Crobuzon-this time, decades later.

It is a time of wars and revolutions, conflict and intrigue. New Crobuzon is being ripped apart from without and within. War with the shadowy city-state of Tesh and rioting on the streets at home are pushing the teeming city to the brink. A mysterious masked figure spurs strange rebellion, while treachery and violence incubate in unexpected places.

In desperation, a small group of renegades escapes from the city and crosses strange and alien continents in the search for a lost hope.

In the blood and violence of New Crobuzon's most dangerous hour, there are whispers. It is the time of the iron council....

The bold originality that broke Miéville out as a new force of the genre is here once more in Iron Council: the voluminous, lyrical novel that is destined to seal his reputation as perhaps the edgiest mythmaker of the day.

Nifft the Lean

Nifft: Book 1

Michael Shea

Follow the adventures of Nifft the Lean, the master thief whose felonious appropriations and larcenous skills will lead you through Stygian realms to challenge your most lurid fantasies and errant imaginings. Places where horror, harm and long eerie calms flow past the traveller in endless, unpredictable succession.

Travel with the man whose long, rawboned, sticky fingers and stark length of arm will lead you down to the vermiculous grottoes of the demon sea, to stand beneath the subworld's lurid sky and battle monsters who seem the spiritual distillations of human evil itself!

We invite you to the very gates of Hell and beyond - come if you dare!

An Artificial Night

October Daye: Book 3

Seanan McGuire

Experience the thrill of the hunt in the third October Daye urban fantasy novel.

October "Toby" Daye is a changeling-half human and half fae-and the only one who has earned knighthood. Now she must take on a nightmarish new challenge. Someone is stealing the children of the fae as well as mortal children, and all signs point to Blind Michael. Toby has no choice but to track the villain down-even when there are only three magical roads by which to reach Blind Michael's realm, home of the Wild Hunt-and no road may be taken more than once. If Toby cannot escape with the children, she will fall prey to the Wild Hunt and Blind Michael's inescapable power.

Late Eclipses

October Daye: Book 4

Seanan McGuire

October "Toby" Daye is half-human, half-fae-the only changeling who's earned knighthood. But when someone begins targeting her nearest and dearest, it becomes clear that Toby is being set up to take the fall for everything that's happening.

One Salt Sea

October Daye: Book 5

Seanan McGuire

October "Toby" Daye is settling into her new role as Countess of Goldengreen. She's actually dating again, and she's taken on Quentin as her squire. So, of course, it's time for things to take a turn for the worse.

Someone has kidnapped the sons of the regent of the Undersea Duchy of Saltmist. To prevent a war between land and sea, Toby must find the missing boys and prove the Queen of the Mists was not behind their abduction. Toby's search will take her from the streets of San Francisco to the lands beneath the waves, and her deadline is firm: she must find the boys in three days' time, or all of the Mists will pay the price. But someone is determined to stop her-and whoever it is isn't playing by Oberon's Laws...

Ashes of Honor

October Daye: Book 6

Seanan McGuire

It's been almost a year since October "Toby" Daye averted a war, gave up a county, and suffered personal losses that have left her wishing for a good day's sleep. She's tried to focus on her responsibilities—training Quentin, upholding her position as Sylvester's knight, and paying the bills—but she can't help feeling like her world is crumbling around her, and her increasingly reckless behavior is beginning to worry even her staunchest supporters.

To make matters worse, Toby's just been asked to find another missing child…only this time it's the changeling daughter of her fellow knight, Etienne, who didn't even know he was a father until the girl went missing. Her name is Chelsea. She's a teleporter, like her father. She's also the kind of changeling the old stories warn about, the ones with all the strength and none of the control. She's opening doors that were never meant to be opened, releasing dangers that were sealed away centuries before—and there's a good chance she could destroy Faerie if she isn't stopped.

Now Toby must find Chelsea before time runs out, racing against an unknown deadline and through unknown worlds as she and her allies try to avert disaster. But danger is also stirring in the Court of Cats, and Tybalt may need Toby's help with the biggest challenge he's ever faced.

Toby thought the last year was bad. She has no idea.

The Winter Long

October Daye: Book 8

Seanan McGuire

Toby thought she understood her own past; she thought she knew the score.

She was wrong.

It's time to learn the truth.

A Red-Rose Chain

October Daye: Book 9

Seanan McGuire

Things are looking up.

For the first time in what feels like years, October "Toby" Daye has been able to pause long enough to take a breath and look at her life -- and she likes what she sees. She has friends. She has allies. She has a squire to train and a King of Cats to love, and maybe, just maybe, she can let her guard down for a change.

Or not. When Queen Windermere's seneschal is elf-shot and thrown into an enchanted sleep by agents from the neighboring Kingdom of Silences, Toby finds herself in a role she never expected to play: that of a diplomat. She must travel to Portland, Oregon, to convince King Rhys of Silences not to go to war against the Mists. But nothing is that simple, and what October finds in Silences is worse than she would ever have imagined.

How far will Toby go when lives are on the line, and when allies both old and new are threatened by a force she had never expected to face again? How much is October willing to give up, and how much is she willing to change? In Faerie, what's past is never really gone.

It's just waiting for an opportunity to pounce.

Once Broken Faith

October Daye: Book 10

Seanan McGuire

Politics have never been October "Toby" Daye's strong suit. When she traveled to the Kingdom of Silences to prevent them from going to war with her home, the Kingdom of the Mists, she wasn't expecting to return with a cure for elf-shot and a whole new set of political headaches.

Now the events she unwittingly set in motion could change the balance of modern Faerie forever, and she has been ordered to appear before a historic convocation of monarchs, hosted by Queen Windermere in the Mists and overseen by the High King and Queen themselves.

Naturally, things have barely gotten underway when the first dead body shows up. As the only changeling in attendance, Toby is already the target of suspicion and hostility. Now she needs to find a killer before they can strike again--and with the doors locked to keep the guilty from escaping, no one is safe.

As danger draws ever closer to her allies and the people she loves best, Toby will have to race against time to prevent the total political destabilization of the West Coast and to get the convocation back on track... and if she fails, the cure for elf-shot may be buried forever, along with the victims she was too slow to save.

Because there are worse fates than sleeping for a hundred years.

Contains the bonus novella Dreams and Slumbers, a direct sequel to Once Broken Faith, featuring Queen Arden Windermere.

The Brightest Fell

October Daye: Book 11

Seanan McGuire

Things are slow, and October "Toby" Daye couldn't be happier about that. The elf-shot cure has been approved, Arden Windermere is settling into her position as Queen in the Mists, and Toby doesn't have anything demanding her attention except for wedding planning and spending time with her family.

Maybe she should have realized that it was too good to last.

When Toby's mother, Amandine, appears on her doorstep with a demand for help, refusing her seems like the right thing to do... until Amandine starts taking hostages, and everything changes. Now Toby doesn't have a choice about whether or not she does as her mother asks. Not with Jazz and Tybalt's lives hanging in the balance. But who could possibly help her find a pureblood she's never met, one who's been missing for over a hundred years?

Enter Simon Torquill, elf-shot enemy turned awakened, uneasy ally. Together, the two of them must try to solve one of the greatest mysteries in the Mists: what happened to Amandine's oldest daughter, August, who disappeared in 1906.

This is one missing person case Toby can't afford to get wrong.

Includes an original bonus novella, "Of Things Unknown"

Night and Silence

October Daye: Book 12

Seanan McGuire

Things are not okay.

In the aftermath of Amandine's latest betrayal, October "Toby" Daye's fragile self-made family is on the verge of coming apart at the seams. Jazz can't sleep, Sylvester doesn't want to see her, and worst of all, Tybalt has withdrawn from her entirely, retreating into the Court of Cats as he tries to recover from his abduction. Toby is floundering, unable to help the people she loves most heal. She needs a distraction. She needs a quest.

What she doesn't need is the abduction of her estranged human daughter, Gillian. What she doesn't need is to be accused of kidnapping her own child by her ex-boyfriend and his new wife, who seems to be harboring secrets of her own. There's no question of whether she'll take the case. The only question is whether she's emotionally prepared to survive it.

Signs of Faerie's involvement are everywhere, and it's going to take all Toby's nerve and all her allies to get her through this web of old secrets, older hatreds, and new deceits. If she can't find Gillian before time runs out, her own child will pay the price. One question remains:

Who in Faerie remembered Gillian existed? And what do they stand to gain? No matter how this ends, Toby's life will never be the same.

Also contains the October Daye novella Suffer A Sea Change.

The Unkindest Tide

October Daye: Book 13

Seanan McGuire

Hundreds of years ago, the Selkies made a deal with the sea witch: they would have the sea for as long as she allowed it, and when the time came, she would call in all their debts at once. Many people assumed that day would never come. Those people were wrong.

When the Luidaeg - October "Toby" Daye's oldest and most dangerous ally - tells her the time has come for the Selkies to fulfill their side of the bargain, and that Toby must be a part of the process, Toby can't refuse. Literally. The Selkies aren't the only ones in debt to the Luidaeg, and Toby has to pay what she owes like anyone else. They will travel to the fabled Duchy of Ships and call a convocation of the Selkies, telling them to come and meet the Luidaeg's price... or face the consequences.

Of course, nothing is that simple. When Dianda Lorden's brother appears to arrest Dianda for treason against the Undersea, when a Selkie woman is stripped of her skin and then murdered, when everything is falling apart, that's when Toby will have to answer the real question of the hour.

Is she going to sink? Or is she going to swim?

Includes a bonus all-new October Daye novella Hope Is Swift.

A Killing Frost

October Daye: Book 14

Seanan McGuire

When October is informed that Simon Torquill - legally her father, due to Faerie's archaic marriage traditions - must be invited to her wedding or risk the ceremony throwing the Kingdom in the Mists into political turmoil, she finds herself setting out on a quest she was not yet prepared to undertake for the sake of her future... and the man who represents her family's past.

Contains the bonus novella Shine in Pearl.

Dreaming Death

Palace of Dreams: Book 1

J. Kathleen Cheney

Shironne Anjir's status as a sensitive is both a gift and a curse. Her augmented senses allow her to discover and feel things others can't, but her talents come with a price: a constant assault of emotions and sensations has left her blind. Determined to use her abilities as best she can, Shironne works tirelessly as an investigator for the Larossan army.

A member of the royal family's guard, Mikael Lee also possesses an overwhelming power--he dreams of the deaths of others, sometimes in vivid, shocking detail, and sometimes in cryptic fragments and half-remembered images.

But then a killer brings a reign of terror to the city, snuffing out his victims with an arcane and deadly blood magic. Only Shironne can sense and interpret Mikael's dim, dark dreams of the murders. And what they find together will lead them into a nightmare...

King's Property

Queen of the Orcs: Book 1

Morgan Howell

Born into hardship, Dar learns to rely on herself alone. When her family betrays her, Dar is conscripted into King Kregant's army and its brutal campaign to conquer a neighboring country. Now she is bound as a slave to a dreaded regiment of orcs, creatures legendary for their savagery and battle prowess.

Rather than cower, Dar rises to the challenge. She learns the unique culture and language of the orcs, survives treachery from both allies and enemies, and struggles to understand a mystical gift that brings her dark, prophetic visions. As the war escalates--amid nightmarish combat and shattering loss--Dar must seize a single chance at freedom.

Clan Daughter

Queen of the Orcs: Book 2

Morgan Howell

Enslaved by King Kregant's army, Dar survived by befriending the fierce orcs who were also forced to serve. Now she has escaped--only to find that the price of freedom may be her destiny.

Calling on her untried leadership abilities, Dar guides the surviving orc soldiers to the safety of their homeland--but the clan leaders refuse to accept her unless she can release their queen from Kregant's fortress. Shaken by her growing gift for dark prophecy and a fate she feels unprepared to accept, Dar must infiltrate the very heart of the despot's empire. There she will discover unexpected treachery and an ancient power that threatens the future of all.

Naondel

Red Abbey Chronicles: Book 2

Maria Turtschaninoff

Imprisoned in a harem by a dangerous man with a dark magic that grants him power over life and death, the First Sisters must overcome their mistrust of one another in order to escape. But they can only do so at a great cost, both for those who leave and for those left behind. Told in alternating points of view, this novel is a vivid, riveting look at a world of oppression and exploitation, the mirror opposite of the idyllic Red Abbey.

Reign of the Fallen

Reign of the Fallen: Book 1

Sarah Glenn Marsh

Odessa is one of Karthia's master necromancers, catering to the kingdom's ruling Dead. Whenever a noble dies, it's Odessa's job to raise them by retrieving their soul from a dreamy and dangerous shadow world called the Deadlands. But there is a cost to being raised: the Dead must remain shrouded. If even a hint of flesh is exposed, a grotesque transformation begins, turning the Dead into terrifying, bloodthirsty Shades.

A dramatic uptick in Shade attacks raises suspicions and fears around the kingdom. Soon, a crushing loss of one of her closest companions leaves Odessa shattered, and reveals a disturbing conspiracy in Karthia: Someone is intentionally creating Shades by tearing shrouds from the Dead--and training them to attack. Odessa is forced to contemplate a terrifying question: What if her magic is the weapon that brings the kingdom to its knees?

Fighting alongside her fellow mages--and a powerful girl as enthralling as she is infuriating--Odessa must untangle the gruesome plot to destroy Karthia before the Shades take everything she loves.

Song of the Dead

Reign of the Fallen: Book 2

Sarah Glenn Marsh

Karthia is nothing like it used to be. The kingdom's borders are open for the first time in nearly three hundred years, and raising the dead has been outlawed. Odessa is determined to explore the world beyond Karthia's waters, hoping to heal a heart broken in more ways than she can count. But with Meredy joining the ocean voyage, vanquishing her sorrow will be a difficult task.

Despite the daily reminder of the history they share, Odessa and Meredy are fascinated when their journey takes them to a land where the Dead rule the night and dragons roam the streets. Odessa can't help being mesmerized by the new magic--and by the girl at her side. But just as she and Meredy are beginning to explore the new world, a terrifying development in Karthia summons them home at once.

Growing political unrest on top of threats from foreign invaders means Odessa and Meredy are thrust back into the lives they tried to leave behind while specters from their past haunt their tenuous relationship. Gathering a force big enough to ward off enemies seems impossible, until one of Queen Valoria's mages creates a weapon that could make them invincible. As danger continues to mount inside the palace, Odessa fears that without the Dead, even the greatest invention won't be enough to save them.

In this enthralling, heartrending sequel to Reign of the Fallen, Odessa faces the fight of her life as the boundaries between the Dead and the living are challenged in a way more gruesome than ever before.

Galveston

Resurrection Man: Book 3

Sean Stewart

Galveston had been baptized twice. Once by water in the fall of 1900. Again by magic during Mardi Gras, 2004. Creatures were born of survivors' joy and sufferers' pain: scorpions the size of dogs, the Crying Clown, the Widow who ate her victims. And the Island of Galveston would forever be divided--between the real city and a city locked in a sort of constant Carnival, an endless Mardi Gras...

Bloodring

Rogue Mage: Book 1

Faith Hunter

In a novel filled with lush imagery and exhilarating action, Faith Hunter creates a near-future world caught in the throes of an ambiguous apocalypse-where a woman with everything to hide finds her true destiny revealed.

As humanity struggles with religious strife and seraphs and demons fight a never-ending battle, a new species has arisen. "Neomages" are human in appearance, but able to twist left-over creation energy to their will. A threat to both humans and seraphs, they are confined in luxurious Enclaves.

Thorn St. Croix is no ordinary neomage. Nearly driven insane by her powers, she is smuggled out of an Enclave and now lives among humans, channeling her gift of stone-magery into jewelry making. But when Thaddeus Bartholomew, a dangerously attractive policeman, tells her that her ex-husband has been kidnapped, Thorn risks revealing her identity to find him. And for Thorn, the punishment for revelation is death.

Saint Death's Daughter

Saint Death: Book 1

C.S.E. Cooney

Nothing complicates life like Death.

Lanie Stones, the daughter of the Royal Assassin and Chief Executioner of Liriat, has never led a normal life. Born with a gift for necromancy and a literal allergy to violence, she was raised in isolation in the family's crumbling mansion by her oldest friend, the ancient revenant Goody Graves.

When her parents are murdered, it falls on Lanie and her cheerfully psychotic sister Nita to settle their extensive debts or lose their ancestral home--and Goody with it. Appeals to Liriat's ruler to protect them fall on indifferent ears... until she, too, is murdered, throwing the nation's future into doubt.

Hunted by Liriat's enemies, hounded by her family's creditors and terrorised by the ghost of her great-grandfather, Lanie will need more than luck to get through the next few months--but when the goddess of Death is on your side, anything is possible.

Sandman Slim

Sandman Slim: Book 1

Richard Kadrey

Life sucks, then you die. Period.

Unless you're James Stark, a hitman in Hell for eleven years before escaping back up to Hell-on-earth L.A.—looking for revenge, absolution . . . love, maybe.

But Hell's not through with Stark.Heaven's not either.

Kill City Blues

Sandman Slim: Book 5

Richard Kadrey

A smart, kick-arse Urban Fantasy from a new master of the genre. Kill City Blues is the fifth book in the fantastic Sandman Slim series.

James Stark, aka Sandman Slim, has managed to get out of Hell – again – renounce his title as the new Lucifer, and settle back into life in LA. But he's not out of trouble yet. Somewhere along the way he misplaced a weapon from the banished older gods who now want it back.

The hunt leads Stark to an abandoned shopping mall — a multi-storey copy of LA — infested with Lurkers and bottom-feeding Sub Rosa families, squatters who have formed tight tribes to guard their tiny patches of territory. Somewhere in the kill zone of the former mall is a dead man with the answers Stark needs.

All Stark has to do is find the dead man, get back out alive, and outrun some angry old gods — with a few killers on his tail.

A Deadly Education

Scholomance: Book 1

Naomi Novik

I decided that Orion Lake needed to die after the second time he saved my life.

Everyone loves Orion Lake. Everyone else, that is. Far as I'm concerned, he can keep his flashy combat magic to himself. I'm not joining his pack of adoring fans.

I don't need help surviving the Scholomance, even if they do. Forget the hordes of monsters and cursed artifacts. I'm probably the most dangerous thing in the place. Just give me a chance and I'll level mountains and kill untold millions, make myself the dark queen of the world.

At least, that's what the world expects me to do. Most of the other students in here would be delighted if Orion killed me like one more evil thing that's crawled out of the drains. Sometimes I think they want me to turn into the evil witch they assume I am. The school itself certainly does.

But the Scholomance isn't getting what it wants from me. And neither is Orion Lake. I may not be anyone's idea of the shining hero, but I'm going to make it out of this place alive, and I'm not going to slaughter thousands to do it, either.

Although I'm giving serious consideration to just one.

The Last Graduate

Scholomance: Book 2

Naomi Novik

At the Scholomance, El, Orion, and the other students are faced with their final year - and the looming specter of graduation, a deadly ritual that leaves few students alive in its wake. El is determined that her chosen group will survive, but it is a prospect that is looking harder by the day as the savagery of the school ramps up. Until El realizes that sometimes winning the game means throwing out all the rules

When the Bough Breaks

SERRAted Edge: Book 3

Holly Lisle
Mercedes Lackey

In the latest installment of the SERRAted Edge series, elf-driver Maclyn, his road crew mechanic/mother Dierdre, and the spirit of an ancient Celtic witch come to the rescue of one frail blonde girl, who just might be the strongest psi power on either side of Faerie--and who just might destroy both worlds if her pain isn't healed. Others in the series are Born to Run and Wheels of Fire.

Shadow's Son

Shadow Series: Book 1

Jon Sprunk

In the holy city of Othir, treachery and corruption lurk at the end of every street, just the place for a freelance assassin with no loyalties and few scruples.

Caim makes his living on the edge of a blade, but when a routine job goes south, he is thrust into the middle of an insidious plot. Pitted against crooked lawmen, rival killers, and sorcery from the Other Side, his only allies are Josephine, the socialite daughter of his last victim, and Kit, a guardian spirit no one else can see. But in this fight for his life, Caim only trusts his knives and his instincts, but they won't be enough when his quest for justice leads him from Othir's hazardous back alleys to its shining corridors of power. To unmask a conspiracy at the heart of the empire, he must claim his birthright as the Shadow's Son . . .

Silk

Silk: Book 1

Caitlín R. Kiernan

To the residents of her small southern city, second-hand store owner Spyder Baxter is crazy. But her friends and followers know better. Something lives within Spder's brain. Something powerful. Something wonderful. Something dangerous. Pray it never escapes.

Murder of Angels

Silk: Book 2

Caitlín R. Kiernan

Ten years ago, Niki Ky and Daria Parker saw something unspeakable in an old house in Birmingham, Alabama. Daria has denied it, escaping into a frantic music career and various addictions. But Niki has not had so many distractions. Diagnosed schizophrenic, she's lost years in a haze of therapy and anti-psychotics.

But now, Niki's dead lover, Spyder Baxter, is calling to her from another world-an alien, impossible place where Niki is known as a Hierophant, a feared prophesied sorceress who can open a portal between worlds. And Daria will finally have to face what really happened ten years ago, if she's to help Niki save a world... or destroy it.

Pride's Spell

Sin du Jour: Book 3

Matt Wallace

The team at Sin du Jour--New York's exclusive caterers-to-the-damned--find themselves up against their toughest challenge, yet when they're lured out west to prepare a feast in the most forbidding place in America: Hollywood, where false gods rule supreme.

Meanwhile, back at home, Ritter is attacked at home by the strangest hit-squad the world has ever seen, and the team must pull out all the stops if they're to prevent themselves from being offered up as the main course in a feast they normally provide

Starring: The Prince of Lies, Lena Tarr, Darren Vargas. With Byron Luck. Introducing: the Easter Bunny.

Pride's Spell is the third installment in Matt Wallace's Sin du Jour series.

Sunglasses After Dark

Sonja Blue: Book 1

Nancy A. Collins

A debut horror novel featuring a vampire, Sonja Blue, who escapes from a mental hospital leaving a trail of corpses in her wake. As we learn about her early life, we are taken on a nightmarish tour of a world inhabited by other types of non-humans - ogres, zombies and, of course, vampires.

Disorders of Magnitude: A Survey of Dark Fantasy

Studies in Supernatural Literature: Book 7

Jason V. Brock

Over the past century or more, the genres of fantasy, horror, and supernatural fiction have increasingly expanded beyond literature and into an array of media--film, television, comic books, and art. Many of the leading figures in the field engage in multimedia enterprises that allow their work to reach a much wider public than the mere readers of books.

In Disorders of Magnitude: A Survey of Dark Fantasy, Jason V Brock analyzes the intersection of literature, media, and genre fiction in essays, reviews, and pioneering interviews. Beginning with the pulp magazines of the 1920s, Brock studies such dynamic figures as H. P. Lovecraft, Forrest J Ackerman, Harlan Ellison, and the Southern California writers known collectively as "The Group"--Ray Bradbury, Charles Beaumont, Richard Matheson, Rod Serling, and William F. Nolan. This collection also includes filmmakers Roger Corman, George Romero, and Dan O'Bannon, and such fantasy artists as H. R. Giger.

Graced with dozens of photographs from the author's personal collection, this wide-ranging study offers a kaleidoscopic look at the multifarious ways in which fantasy, horror, and the supernatural have permeated our culture. Brock--himself a fiction writer, critic, and filmmaker--concludes the book with touching eulogies to the recently deceased Ray Bradbury and Ray Harryhausen. Highlighting so many figures essential to the understanding of fantasy and horror, Disorders of Magnitude will appeal to fans of these fiction genres around the world.

Table of Contents:

  • xi - Preface: Disorders of Magnitude - essay by Jason V Brock
  • 1 - Part One: The Darkest Part - essay by Jason V Brock
  • 5 - The Smoldering Past: The Creation of the Modern from Frankenstein and Dracula to the Great War and Beyond - (2014) - essay by Jason V Brock
  • 9 - "Cosmic Introspection": Lovecraft's Attainment of Personal Value by Way of Infinite Insignificance - (2011) - essay by Jason V Brock
  • 17 - Forrest J Ackerman: Fan Zero - (2013) - essay by Jason V Brock
  • 31 - Gathering Darkness: In Appreciation of Weird Tales - (2010) - essay by Jason V Brock
  • 34 - Frank M. Robinson: First Fandom and Beyond - (2010) - essay by Jason V Brock
  • 37 - Part Two: Things Become - essay by Jason V Brock
  • 39 - The Burden of Now: Welles's "Panic Broadcast," World War II, and Creeping Anomie - essay by Jason V Brock
  • 41 - Ray Bradbury: The Boy Who Never Grew Up - (2009) - interview of Ray Bradbury - interview by Jason V Brock
  • 50 - Cinematic Dream Logic: How Movies Permanently Altered the Fabric of Reality - essay by Jason V Brock
  • 55 - Individual Sexual Liberation Becomes Social Emancipation: Playboy Changes the World - essay by Jason V Brock
  • 58 - Harlan Ellison: L'enfant terrible (sort of) - interview of Harlan Ellison - interview by Jason V Brock
  • 65 - Part Three: The Rise of the Speculative Mind - essay by Jason V Brock
  • 67 - Rod Serling: Articulating the American Nightmare - (2010) - essay by Jason V Brock
  • 69 - A Howling at Owl Creek Bridge: Observations on Two Important Twilight Zone Episodes - (2009) - essay by Jason V Brock
  • 72 - George Clayton Johnson: A Touch of Strange - (2009) - interview of George Clayton Johnson - interview by Jason V Brock
  • 80 - L'Age d'Or to Gotterdammerung: How Bradbury, Serling, Beaumont, and "The Group" Shaped a Pop Future - (2009) - essay by Jason V Brock (variant of From L'Age d'Or to Gotterdammerung: How Bradbury, Serling, Beaumont and 'The Group' Shaped a Pop Future)
  • 95 - Roger Corman: Socially Conscious Auteur - interview of Roger Corman - interview by Jason V Brock
  • 101 - Finding Sanctuary: Running from the Zone to Logan - (2014) - essay by Jason V Brock
  • 110 - The Long Nuclear Shadow: Atomic Horror, Godzilla, and the Cold War - essay by Jason V Brock
  • 113 - The Horror of It All! EC and the Beginnings of Modern Media HOOHAH! - (2010) - essay by Jason V Brock
  • 123 - MADly Yours, Al Feldstein - (2010) - interview of Al Feldstein - interview by Jason V Brock
  • 128 - An End, a Middle, a Beginning: Richard Matheson and His Impact - (2013) - essay by Jason V Brock
  • 131 - What Dreams May Come: A Discussion with Richard Matheson and William F. Nolan - (2013) - interview of Richard Matheson and William F. Nolan - interview by Jason V Brock
  • 151 - Part Four: Slashers, Blockbusters, and Best Sellers - essay by Jason V Brock
  • 153 - Riding the Dark Wave: The Role of Dystopian Science Fiction in Popular Culture - (2010) - essay by Jason V Brock (variant of Riding the Dark Wave: The Role of Dark Sci-Fi in Popular Culture)
  • 158 - Celluloid Asylum: O'Bannon, Romero, Carpenter, and the Liberals Lose (and Find) Their Collective Minds - essay by Jason V Brock
  • 161 - Terrible Beauty: Slasher Film Connections to Conservatism, Pornography, and Misogyny - (2011) - essay by Jason V Brock
  • 165 - King of the Dead: Filmmaker George A. Romero on Politics, Film, and the Future - (2012) - interview of George A. Romero - interview by Jason V Brock
  • 177 - Dan O'Bannon: Not Gone, Not Forgotten - (2009) - essay by Jason V Brock
  • 183 - H. R. Giger: A Darkness Faster Than Light - (2009) - essay by Jason V Brock
  • 188 - The Emperor's New Book: How Stephen King Saved Horror, Create Clive Barker (and Sam Raimi) ... and Killed Publishing - essay by Jason V Brock
  • 190 - The Doctor Is In: A Discussion with F. Paul Wilson - (2011) - interview of F. Paul Wilson - interview by Jason V Brock and James R. Beach [as by Jason V Brock and James Beach]
  • 198 - Sounds Horrific: Art Rock, Soundtracks, and the Zeitgeist - essay by Jason V Brock
  • 201 - Part Five: A Century of Speculation - essay by Jason V Brock
  • 203 - Review: Carnivora: The Dark Art of Automobiles by Les Barany - (2011) - review by Jason V Brock
  • 205 - David J. Skal: Monster Kid Ambassador of Horror - interview of David J. Skal - interview by Jason V Brock
  • 213 - Review: Blood Will Have Its Season by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr. - (2010) - review by Jason V Brock
  • 215 - Kris Kuksi: Dark Horizons in the Realm of the Senses - (2009) - interview of Kris Kuksi - interview by Jason V Brock
  • 220 - Bluewater Comics' Darren G. Davis: On the Run in the Digital Age of Comics - (2010) - interview of Darren G. Davis - interview by Jason V Brock
  • 225 - The H. P Lovecraft Film Festival: Cosmic Chaos on the Silver Screen - (2009) - essay by Jason V Brock
  • 228 - S. T. Joshi: Champion of the Weird Tale - (2009) - interview of S. T. Joshi - interview by Jason V Brock
  • 231 - Marc Scott Zicree: As Timeless as Infinity - interview of Marc Scott Zicree - interview by Jason V Brock
  • 239 - Part Six: From (and Into) the Beyond - essay by Jason V Brock
  • 241 - Fangoria's Chris Alexander: Cinephilia, Music, and All the Rest of It - (2011) - interview of Chris Alexander - interview by Jason V Brock
  • 247 - Bruce Campbell: From The Evil Dead to Burn Notice and Beyond - (2011) - interview of Bruce Campbell - interview by Jason V Brock
  • 252 - The Inner World of William F. Nolan - (2013) - essay by Jason V Brock
  • 260 - Review: The Mammoth Book of Body Horror by Paul Kane and Marie O'Regan - (2012) - review by Jason V Brock
  • 262 - Two of a Kind: Lee-Anne Raymond and Demetrios Vakras - (2012) - interview of Lee-Anne Raymond and Demetrios Vakras - interview by Jason V Brock
  • 273 - "Cthulhu, a Vampire, and a Zombie Walk into a Bar ...": Why These Themes, Why Now, and What's the Matter with Hollyweird? - essay by Jason V Brock
  • 276 - John Shirley: The Tao of Identity - (2010) - interview of John Shirley - interview by Jason V Brock
  • 284 - Ray Harryhausen: A Note on the Passage of Giants - (2013) - essay by Jason V Brock
  • 288 - Kneeling at the Dandelion Shrine: An Appreciation - (2013) - essay by Jason V Brock (variant of Kneeling at the Dandelion Shrine 2012)
  • 290 - William F. Nolan and Ray Bradbury: Reflections - (2013) - interview of Ray Bradbury and William F. Nolan - interview by Jason V Brock
  • 294 - Introduction: The Pope of Speculative Fiction (Nolan on Bradbury) - (2013) - essay by Jason V Brock (variant of Introduction (Nolan on Bradbury))
  • 295 - Future Shock? (De)Parting Thoughts - essay by Jason V Brock

The Scar-Crow Men

Swords of Albion: Book 2

Mark Chadbourn

The year is 1593. The London of Elizabeth I is in the terrible grip of the Black Death. As thousands die from the plague and the queen hides behind the walls of her palace, English spies are being murdered across the city. The killer's next target: Will Swyfte.

For Swyfte--adventurer, rake, scholar, and spy--this is the darkest time he has known. His mentor, the grand old spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham, is dead. The new head of the secret service is more concerned about his own advancement than defending the nation, and a rival faction at the court has established its own network of spies. Plots are everywhere, and no one can be trusted. Meanwhile, England's greatest enemy, the haunted Unseelie Court, prepares to make its move.

A dark, bloody scheme, years in the making, is about to be realized. The endgame begins on the night of the first performance of Dr. Faustus, the new play by Swyfte's close friend and fellow spy Christopher Marlowe. A devil is conjured in the middle of the crowded theater, taking the form of Will Swyfte's long-lost love, Jenny--and it has a horrifying message for him alone.

That night Marlowe is murdered, and Swyfte embarks on a personal and brutal crusade for vengeance. Friendless, with enemies on every side and a devil at his back, the spy may find that even his vaunted skills are no match for the supernatural powers arrayed against him.

This title has not yet been released but is available for pre-order.

Night's Master

Tales from the Flat Earth: Book 1

Tanith Lee

NIGHT'S MASTER is the first book of the stunning arabesque high fantasy series Tales from the Flat Earth, which, in the manner of The One Thousand and One Nights, portrays an ancient world in mythic grandeur via connected tales.

Long time ago when the Earth was Flat, beautiful indifferent Gods lived in the airy Upperearth realm above, curious passionate demons lived in the exotic Underearth realm below, and mortals were relegated to exist in the middle.

Azhrarn, Lord of the Demons and the Darkness, was the one who ruled the Night, and many mortal lives were changed because of his cruel whimsy. And yet, Azhrarn held inside his demon heart a profound mystery which would change the very fabric of the Flat Earth forever...

Come within this ancient world of brilliant darkness and beauty, of glittering palaces and wondrous elegant beings, of cruel passions and undying love.

Discover the exotic wonder that is the Flat Earth.

Death's Master

Tales from the Flat Earth: Book 2

Tanith Lee

Death's Master, winner of the August Derleth Award for Fantasy, is the second book of the stunning arabesque high fantasy series Tales from the Flat Earth, which, in the manner of the One Thousand and One Nights, portrays an ancient world in mythic grandeur via connected tales.

Long time ago when the Earth was Flat, beautiful indifferent Gods lived in the airy Upperearth realm above, curious passionate demons lived in the exotic Underearth realm below, and mortals were relegated to exist in the middle.

Uhlume, Lord of Death, second of the Lords of Darkness, King of Shadow and Pallor, makes an unusual bargain which sets in motion an intricate sequence of events that entangle men and gods, queens and kings, sorcerers and witches, and lowly wanderers. When the secret to immortality falls into human hands, dark magic and wickedness are unleashed, testing the bounds of mortal love and sanity, and questioning the nature and purpose of life itself.

Come within this ancient world of brilliant darkness and beauty, of glittering palaces and wondrous elegant beings, of cruel passions and undying love.

Rediscover the exotic wonder that is the Flat Earth.

Poison

Tales from the Kingdoms: Book 1

Sarah Pinborough

An enticing contemporary retelling of the classic story of Snow White. While the the handsome prince, the jealous queen, the beautiful girl and of course the poison all appear, Sarah Pinborough's charming and provocative spin on the story will captivate fans of the fairy tale all over again.

Charm

Tales from the Kingdoms: Book 2

Sarah Pinborough

The classic "Cinderella" story is given a sexy contemporary makeover in this wicked fairy tale featuring all the heroes and villains that we know and love: the handsome prince, the fairy godmother, the wretched sisters, and the beautiful girl.

Beauty

Tales from the Kingdoms: Book 3

Sarah Pinborough

An enticing contemporary retelling of the classic story of Sleeping Beauty. While the the handsome prince, the evil fairy, the beautiful girl and of course the spindle all appear, Sarah Pinborough's charming and provocative spin on the story will captivate fans of the fairy tale all over again.

White as Snow

Terri Windling's Fairy Tales: Book 6

Tanith Lee

In a novel-length tale of dark fantasy based on the fairy tale "Snow White," Arpazia and her unwanted daughter, Coira, conceived in violence during the sacking of her Arpazia's father's castle, are lured into the woods by the elder gods, who are seeking to restore their worship in a magical land in which a new religion threatens to transform life for everyone.

Tome of the Undergates

The Aeon's Gate: Book 1

Sam Sykes

The debut novel from an extraordinarily talented twenty-five-year-old author. Fantasy's next global star has arrived.

Lenk can barely keep control of his mismatched adventurer band at the best of times (Gariath the dragon man sees humans as little more than prey, Kataria the Shict despises most humans, and the humans in the band are little better). When they're not insulting each other's religions they're arguing about pay and conditions. So when the ship they are travelling on is attacked by pirates things don't go very well. They go a whole lot worse when an invincible demon joins the fray. The demon steals the Tome of the Undergates - a manuscript that contains all you need to open the undergates. And whichever god you believe in you don't want the undergates open. On the other side are countless more invincible demons, the manifestation of all the evil of the gods, and they want out.

Full of razor-sharp wit, characters who leap off the page (and into trouble) and plunging the reader into a vivid world of adventure this is a fantasy that kicks off a series that could dominate the second decade of the century.

Mistress of Lies

The Age of Blood: Book 1

K. M. Enright

Fate is a cruel mistress.

The daughter of a powerful but disgraced Blood Worker, Shan LeClaire has spent her entire life perfecting her blood magic, building her network of spies, and gathering every scrap of power she could. Now, to protect her brother, she assassinates their father and takes her place at the head of the family. And that is only the start of her revenge.

Samuel Hutchinson is a bastard with a terrible gift. When he stumbles upon the first victim of a magical serial killer, he's drawn into the world of magic and intrigue he's worked so hard to avoid - and is pulled deeply into the ravenous and bloodthirsty court of the vampire king.

Tasked by the Eternal King to discover the identity of the killer cutting a bloody swath through the city, Samuel, Shan and mysterious Royal Blood Worker Isaac find themselves growing ever closer to each other. But Shan's plans are treacherous, and as she lures Samuel into her complicated web of desire, treason and vengeance, he must decide if the good of their nation is worth the cost of his soul.

Of Gods and Men

The Age of Darkness (Aryan)

Stephen Aryan

Before the events of Battlemage, the gruff and mysterious warrior known as Vargus has meant many things to many people over the course of his long life. But when he hears of mauled livestock and strange disappearances in the village of Morgan's Creek, he must once again take up the mantle of the Gath - the people's protector - before any more children go missing.

Battlemage

The Age of Darkness (Aryan): Book 1

Stephen Aryan

'I can command storms, summon fire and unmake stone,' Balfruss growled. 'It's dangerous to meddle with things you don't understand.'

BALFRUSS is a battlemage, sworn to fight and die for a country that fears his kind.
VARGUS is a common soldier - while mages shoot lightning from the walls of his city, he is down on the front line getting blood on his blade.
TALANDRA is a princess and spymaster, but the war will force her to risk everything, and make the greatest sacrifice of all.

Bloodmage

The Age of Darkness (Aryan): Book 2

Stephen Aryan

The people of Perizzi have survived the battlemage war, but their future is looking darker than ever.

BYRNE is a Guardian of the Peace, investigating a series of murders in which the corpses were drained entirely of life.

FRAY's expertise with magic is needed to catch the killer, but working with the Guardians destroyed his father, years before.

CHOSS, renowned as a fighter, must work for peace, to diffuse a war in the underworld that threatens to turn the streets red with rivers of blood.

KATJA must use her skills as a spy to try to prevent a massacre that will topple two dynasties and destroy the fragile peace in the city for ever.

Guardians and spies, assassins and criminals will clash on the streets in this magic-fuelled adventure from the author of Battlemage.

Chaosmage

The Age of Darkness (Aryan): Book 3

Stephen Aryan

Voechenkais a city under siege. Decimated by the Battlemage War, its dead now walk the city at night, attacking survivors, calling their names and begging the living to join them beyond the grave.

Tammy is a watchman sent to the city to investigate, so the ruling powers can decide whether to help Voechenka or leave it to its grisly fate.

Zannah is a pariah in Voechenka - making up for her people's war crimes by protecting refugees who fear her far more than they fear their unearthly attackers.

Balfruss is a scholar, a traveler... and the infamous mage who single-handedly ended the war.

No one else may enter or leave the city - so if this ragtag group of survivors can't figure out what is going on, they'll live out their last few, short days within its walls.

And night is coming on fast...

The Trouble with Peace

The Age of Madness: Book 2

Joe Abercrombie

A fragile peace gives way to conspiracy, betrayal, and rebellion...

Peace is just another kind of battlefield...

Savine dan Glokta, once Adua's most powerful investor, finds her judgement, fortune and reputation in tatters. But she still has all her ambitions, and no scruple will be permitted to stand in her way.

For heroes like Leo dan Brock and Stour Nightfall, only happy with swords drawn, peace is an ordeal to end as soon as possible. But grievances must be nursed, power seized, and allies gathered first, while Rikke must master the power of the Long Eye... before it kills her.

Unrest worms into every layer of society. The Breakers still lurk in the shadows, plotting to free the common man from his shackles, while noblemen bicker for their own advantage. Orso struggles to find a safe path through the maze of knives that is politics, only for his enemies, and his debts, to multiply.

The old ways are swept aside, and the old leaders with them, but those who would seize the reins of power will find no alliance, no friendship, and no peace lasts forever.

World's End

The Age of Misrule: Book 1

Mark Chadbourn

When Jack Churchill and Ruth Gallagher encounter a terrifying, misshapen giant beneath a London bridge they are plunged into a mystery which portends the end of the world as we know it. All over the country, the ancient gods of Celtic myth are returning to the land from which they were banished millennia ago. Following in their footsteps are creatures of folklore: fabulous bests, wonders and dark terrors As technology starts to fail, Jack and Ruth are forced to embark on a desperate quest for four magical items – the last chance for humanity in the face of powers barely comprehended.

Reborn

The Anderson Project: Book 1

Ken Liu

One of three stories inspired by the same painting by Richard Anderson. Anthologized in The Anderson Project.

Ken Liu is among the most prominent new award-winning SF writers of the last decade, and this vision of a really uncanny alien invasion set in Boston, MA, is a stunner, with echoing reverberations, of love, identity, resistance and revolution.

This story can also be found in the anthology Worlds Seen in Passing: Ten Years of Tor.com Short Fiction (2018), edited by Irene Gallo, and Not One of Us: Stories of Aliens on Earth (2018), edited by Neil Clarke.


Read this story online for free at Tor.com.

Bones of the Moon

The Answered Prayers Sextet: Book 1

Jonathan Carroll

Cullen James is a young woman whose life dictates her dreams-and whose dreams control her life.

In her first dream, she found the perfect man-and the same thing promptly happened in life. Now, she has begun to dream dreams set in Rondua, a fantasy world of high adventure, full of tests of her courage and strength. Slowly and quietly, her dream world is spilling over into her New York City reality and beginning to threaten everything she loves in life. Her friends are gathered to help her-but even her newfound courage may not be enough.

Sleeping In Flame

The Answered Prayers Sextet: Book 2

Jonathan Carroll

Walker Easterling is a retired actor turned successful screenwriter living in the Vienna of strong coffee, fascinating friends, and mysterious cafes. When he falls in love with Maris York, a beautiful artist who creates cities, his life becomes alive in fantastic and unsettling ways. As Walker's love for Maris grows, his life gets more and more bizarre-he discovers he can see things happening just before they happen, and at the same time feels an incredibly strong tug from his past-so a friend steers him to Venasque, an odd little man reputed to be a powerful shaman. Venasque helps Walker discover and unravel his many interconnected past lives, and it is soon clear that an unresolved conflict from these past lives has resurfaced, and now threatens to undo Walker and Maris's love.

A Child Across the Sky

The Answered Prayers Sextet: Book 3

Jonathan Carroll

Weber Gregston and Philip Strayhorn are best friends. They were at college together; they struggle as nobodies in Hollywood together. Weber soon becomes the most acclaimed director of his generation. Phil is unrecognised for years, and then makes a series of notorious horror films. He has everything; love, fame, money.

Then he takes a gun and blows his head off. Why? Weber hopes the answer is on the video tapes that Phil has left him. But when he plays them, he finds messages from beyond the grave. Step by step, Weber learns that the evil Phil portrayed in his last film is not just slasher gore. He has created something which threatens his friends' lives. And if Weber doesn't put it right, and fast, that evil will extend far beyond a handful of people in Hollywood.

Exploring love and cruelty, creation and ambition, A Child Across the Sky is a brilliant tale of wonder and fear. It is also one of the most important novels of fantastic fiction in recent years.

Outside the Dog Museum

The Answered Prayers Sextet: Book 4

Jonathan Carroll

Harry Radcliffe is a brilliant prize-winning architect---witty and remarkable. He's also a self-serving opportunist, ready to take advantage of whatever situations, and women, come his way. But now, newly divorced and having had an inexplicable nervous breakdown, Harry is being wooed by the extremely wealthy Sultan of Saru to design a billion-dollar dog museum. In Saru, he finds himself in a world even madder and more unreal than the one he left behind, and as his obsession grows, the powers of magic weave around him, and the implications of his strange undertaking grow more ominous and astounding....

Nobody's Home

The Anubis Gates

Tim Powers

For the first time in his esteemed career, Tim Powers returns to the setting (and a central character) from his landmark time travel novel, The Anubis Gates.

Tracking the murderer of her fiancee through 19th century London's darkest warrens, Jacky Snapp has disguised herself as a boy -- but the disguise fails when, trying to save a girl from the ghost of her jealous husband, Jacky finds that she has made herself visible to the ghosts that cluster around the Thames -- and one of them is the ghost of her fiancee, who was poisoned and physically transformed by his murderer but unwittingly shot dead by Jacky herself.

Jacky and the girl she rescued, united in the need to banish their pursuing ghosts, learn that their only hope is to flee upriver to the barge known as Nobody's Home -- where the exorcist whose name is Nobody charges an intolerable price.

The Anubis Gates

The Anubis Gates: Book 1

Tim Powers

Brendan Doyle is a twentieth-century English professor who travels back to 1810 London to attend a lecture given by English romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. This is a London filled with deformed clowns, organised beggar societies, insane homunculi and magic. When he is kidnapped by gypsies and consequently misses his return trip to 1983, the mild-mannered Doyle is forced to become a street-smart con man, escape artist, and swordsman in order to survive in the dark and treacherous London underworld. He defies bullets, black magic, murderous beggars, freezing waters, imprisonment in mutant-infested dungeons, poisoning, and even a plunge back to 1684. Coleridge himself and poet Lord Byron make appearances in the novel, which also features a poor tinkerer who creates genetic monsters and a werewolf that inhabits others' bodies when his latest becomes too hairy.

The Judging Eye

The Aspect-Emperor: Book 1

R. Scott Bakker

A cult author now in the mainstream, the thrilling return of R. Scott Bakker and The Prince of Nothing universe.

The Darkness That Comes Before, The Warrior Prophet, and The Thousandfold Thought --collectively the Prince of Nothing Saga-were R. Scott Bakker's magnificent debut into the upper echelon of epic fantasy. In those three books, Bakker created a world that was at once a triumph of the fantastic and an historical epic as real as any that came before.

Widely praised by reviewers and a growing body of fans, Bakker has already established the reputation as one of the smartest writers in the fantasy genre-a writer in the line stretching from Homer to Peake to Tolkein. Now he returns to The Prince of Nothing with the long awaited The Judging Eye, the first book in an all-new series. Set twenty years after the end of The Thousandfold Thought, Bakker reintroduces us to a world that is at once familiar but also very different than the one readers thought they knew. Delving even further into his richly imagined universe of myth, violence, and sorcery, and fully remolding the fantasy genre to broaden the scope of intricacy and meaning, R. Scott Bakker has once again written a fantasy novel that defies all expectations and rewards the reader with an experience unlike any to be had in the canon of today's literature.

The White Luck Warrior

The Aspect-Emperor: Book 2

R. Scott Bakker

Widely praised by reviewers and a growing body of fans, R. Scott Bakker has already established his reputation as one of the few unique new talents in the fantasy genre. Now he returns with the long-awaited The White Luck Warrior--the second book in the Aspect-Emperor series.

As Anasurimbor Kellhus and his Great Ordeal march ever farther into the wastes of the Ancient North, Esmenet finds herself at war with not only the Gods, but her own family as well. Achamian, meanwhile, leads his own ragtag expedition to the legendary ruins of Sauglish, and to a truth he can scarcely survive, let alone comprehend. Into this tumult walks the White- Luck Warrior, assassin and messiah both.

The White Luck Warrior is a story filled with heartstopping action, devious treachery, grand passion, and meticulous detail. It is both a classic quest tale and a high fantasy war story.

RealmShift

The Balance: Book 1

Alan Baxter

Isiah is having a tough time. The Devil is making his job very difficult.

Samuel Harrigan is a murdering lowlife. He used ancient blood magic to escape a deal with the Devil and now he's on the trail of a crystal skull that he believes will complete his efforts to evade Lucifer. But Lucifer wants Samuel's soul for eternity and refuses to wait a second longer for it. Isiah needs Samuel to keep looking for the crystal skull, so he has to protect Sam and keep the Devil at bay. Not for Samuel's sake, but for all of humanity.

MageSign

The Balance: Book 2

Alan Baxter

Three years have passed since Isiah's run in with Samuel Harrigan and the Devil. He has some time on his hands - a perfect opportunity to track down the evil Sorcerer, Harrigan's mentor. It should have been a simple enough task, but the Sorcerer has more followers than Isiah ever imagined, and a plan bigger than anyone could have dreamed.

With the help of some powerful new friends Isiah desperately tries to track down the Sorcerer and his cult of blood before they manage to change the world forever.

The Book of the New Sun, Volume 1: Shadow and Claw

The Book of the New Sun - SF Masterworks: Book 1

Gene Wolfe

Recently voted the greatest fantasy of all time, after The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun is an extraordinary epic, set a million years in the future, on an Earth transformed in mysterious and wondrous ways, in a time when our present culture is no longer even a memory. Severian, the central character, is a torturer, exiled from his guild after falling in love with one of his victims, and journeying to the distant city of Thrax, armed with his ancient executioner's sword, Terminus Est.

This edition contains the first two volumes of this four volume novel, The Shadow of the Torturer and The Claw of the Conciliator.

The Book of the New Sun, Volume 2: Sword and Citadel

The Book of the New Sun - SF Masterworks: Book 2

Gene Wolfe

Recently voted the greatest fantasy of all time, after The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun is an extraordinary epic, set a million years in the future, on an Earth transformed in mysterious and wondrous ways, in a time when our present culture is no longer even a memory.

Severian, the central character, is a torturer, exiled from his guild after falling in love with one of his victims, and journeying to the distant city of Thrax, armed with his ancient executioner's sword, Terminus Est.

This edition contains the second two volumes of this four volume novel, The Sword of the Lictor and The Citadel of the Autarch.

The Crooked Letter

The Books of the Cataclysm: Book 1

Sean Williams

When mirror twins Seth and Hadrian Castillo travel to Europe on holidays, they don't expect the end of the world to follow them. Seth's murder, however, puts exactly that into motion.

From opposite sides of death, the Castillo twins grapple with a reality neither of them suspected, although it has been encoded in myths and legends for millennia. The Earth we know is just one of many 'realms', three of which are inhabited by humans during various stages of their lives. And their afterlives.

In the tradition of Philip Pullman and Ursula K. Le Guin and inspired by numerous arcane sources, the "Books of the Cataclysm" begin in the present world but soon propel the reader to a landscape that is simultaneously familiar and fantastic.

The Bride of Demise, Vol. 1

The Bride of Demise: Book 1

Keishi Ayasato

A VOW THAT CANNOT BE BROKEN!

It's been years since the kihei appeared without warning and overran the earth. To combat this threat, humanity established the Twilight Academy to train students as soldiers, though most die before graduation. During a mission, Kou Kaguro's squad is attacked, and he must face his fate as yet another student casualty... or so he thought. A girl in white appears during his final moments and swears to protect him, filling a hole in his heart and setting them both on a path of love and despair.

The Bride of Demise, Vol. 2

The Bride of Demise: Book 2

Keishi Ayasato

A mysterious new threat...

After taking a kihei as his Bride and overcoming the massive invasion known as the Gloaming, Kou Kaguro has finally earned some peace for himself and his friends. But as they take in the festival commemorating this hard-won victory, the unthinkable happens--Kou is murdered. It happens over and over, no matter how many times he turns back the clock. As if that weren't enough, Pandemonium faces a whole new threat in the form of the strongest class in Combat, the Puppets. Who really wants Kou dead, and why...?

The Bride of Demise, Vol. 3

The Bride of Demise: Book 3

Keishi Ayasato

After narrowly avoiding a terrible fate at the school festival, Kou renews his friendship with his old classmates from Research, Asagiri and Isumi. As they pass the time in peace, Asagiri decides to confess her love for Kou. However, the very next day, Isumi informs Kou that Asagiri has disappeared in the kihei-infested ruins! As he searches for her, a new threat arises, which may shed light on the true nature of the kihei. For the sake of his beloved Brides, Kou must make a choice.

Prince of Thorns

The Broken Empire: Book 1

Mark Lawrence

When he was nine, he watched his mother and brother killed before him. By the time he was thirteen, he was the leader of a band of bloodthirsty thugs. By fifteen, he intends to be king...

It's time for Prince Honorous Jorg Ancrath to return to the castle he turned his back on, to take what's rightfully his. Since the day he was hung on the thorns of a briar patch and forced to watch Count Renar's men slaughter his mother and young brother, Jorg has been driven to vent his rage. Life and death are no more than a game to him-and he has nothing left to lose.

But treachery awaits him in his father's castle. Treachery and dark magic. No matter how fierce, can the will of one young man conquer enemies with power beyond his imagining?

King of Thorns

The Broken Empire: Book 2

Mark Lawrence

The boy who would be king has gained the throne...

At age nine, Prince Honorous Jorg Ancrath vowed to avenge his slaughtered mother and brother—and to punish his father for not doing so. At fifteen, he began to fulfill that vow. Now, at eighteen, he must fight for what he has taken by torture and treachery.

Haunted by the pain of his past, and plagued by nightmares of the atrocities he has committed, King Jorg is filled with rage. And even as his need for revenge continues to consume him, an overwhelming enemy force marches on his castle.

Jorg knows that he cannot win a fair fight. But he has found a long-hidden cache of ancient artifacts. Some might call them magic. Jorg is not certain—all he knows is that their secrets can be put to terrible use in the coming battle...

Emperor of Thorns

The Broken Empire: Book 3

Mark Lawrence

The boy who would rule all may have finally met his match...

King Jorg Ancrath is twenty now—and king of seven nations. His goal—revenge against his father—has not yet been realized, and the demons that haunt him have only grown stronger. Yet no matter how tortured his path, he intends to take the next step in his upward climb.

Jorg would be emperor. It is a position not to be gained by the sword but rather by vote. And never in living memory has anyone secured a majority of the vote, leaving the Broken Empire long without a leader. Jorg plans to change that. He’s uncovered the lost technology of the land, and he won’t hesitate to use it.

But he soon finds an adversary standing in his way, a necromancer unlike any he has ever faced—a figure hated and feared even more than himself: the Dead King.

The Fires of Vengeance

The Burning: Book 2

Evan Winter

In order to reclaim her throne and save her people, an ousted queen must join forces with a young warrior in the second book of this"relentlessly gripping, brilliant" epic fantasy series from a breakout author (James Islington).

Tau and his Queen, desperate to delay the impending attack on the capital by the indigenous people of Xidda, craft a dangerous plan. If Tau succeeds, the Queen will have the time she needs to assemble her forces and launch an all out assault on her own capital city, where her sister is being propped up as the 'true' Queen of the Omehi.

If the city can be taken, if Tsiora can reclaim her throne, and if she can reunite her people then the Omehi have a chance to survive the onslaught.

The Scribbly Man

The Children of D'Hara: Book 1

Terry Goodkind

"We have all caught fleeting glimpses of them: the monster under the bed, the dark shadow just out of sight, the knot of unexpected terror in the pit of your stomach."
-- Kahlan Amnell

The world has been forged anew. Tyranny vanquished, the breach between the living and the dead healed, the stars themselves realigned. It is the triumph Richard Rahl and his wife Kahlan Amnell fought so hard, over so many years, for. Ruling a vast realm encompassing lands and peoples unknown, they have vowed to bring a golden age of peace to a world shattered by terror and war.

What Richard does not expect is a demand for his immediate, unconditional surrender.

Not of D'Hara, but of the entire world...

Hateful Things

The Children of D'Hara: Book 2

Terry Goodkind

"This is not the way I wanted it to be. Any time but now. Even if by a miracle these children are born, their birth will be their death sentence."
-- Kahlan Amnell.

Only magic protects D'Hara from the Golden Goddess and her kind, the magic of Richard Rahl and Kahlan Amnell, the magic that the Mother Confessor carries within her womb.

To take this world, the Goddess must ensure Richard and Kahlan's children are never born.

In the dark shadows of the People's Palace the predators are gathering, watching, learning, feeding...

Wasteland

The Children of D'Hara: Book 3

Terry Goodkind

Richard's gaze traced all of the passageways, the rooms, the circular halls, the dead ends, the entrapments, the lateral routes, the complex of twinned and tripled passageways, checking, hoping he was wrong. He wasn't.
"We're in trouble," he said.

Richard Rahl and Kahlan Amnell are fighting on all fronts. The Golden Goddess, Collector of Worlds, has infiltrated the People's Palace, able to insinuate herself into the minds of those without the gift of magic.

Richard can trust no-one but the gifted. So, when Vika, one of his sworn Mord-Sith bodyguards is abducted, he has to get her back. His determination will lead him and Kahlan deep into the labyrinthine heart of the People's Palace -- the Wasteland -- and into more danger than they have ever faced before.

Witch's Oath

The Children of D'Hara: Book 4

Terry Goodkind

Richard knew that there would be no help coming. It was all up to him to stop the threat or Kahlan would die.

They all would die.

Nine companions -- Richard, Kahlan, the witch woman Shale and six Mord-Sith, Rikka, Vale, Cassia, Nyda, Berdine and Vika -- are hunting a warlock in the waterlogged depths of the People's Palace. It will take all their skills to close on their quarry, but do any of them understand the true power of a Witch's Oath?

Into Darkness

The Children of D'Hara: Book 5

Terry Goodkind

'Tell her I am called Fuer Grissa Ost Drauka -- The Bringer of Death -- and I am coming for her'

The insatiable hunger of Golden Goddess...

The irresistible power of a Witch's Oath...

A fracture in the world of life...

An opening in the world of death...

To confront an apocalyptic nightmare, Richard Rahl must step...

INTO DARKNESS.

The Conan Chronicles, Volume 1: The People of the Black Circle

The Conan Chronicles: Book 1

Robert E. Howard

Conan the Cimmerian: he rose from boy-thief and mercenary to become kingof Aquilonia. Neither supernatural fiends nor demonic sorcery could oppose the barbarian warrior as he wielded his mighty sword and dispatched his enemies to a bloody doom on the battlefields of the legendary Hyborian Age.

Collected together for the first time anywhere in the world, in chronological order, are all Robert E. Howard's definitive stories of Conan, exactly as he wrote them, as fresh, atmospheric and vibrant today as when they were first published in the pulp magazines more than sixty years ago.

Table of Contents:

  • The Hyborian Age - (1936)
  • The Tower of the Elephant - (1933)
  • The Hall of the Dead (Synopsis) - (1976)
  • The God in the Bowl - (1952)
  • Rogues in the House - (1934)
  • The Hand of Nergal - (1976)
  • The Frost-Giant's Daughter - (1976)
  • Queen of the Black Coast - (1934)
  • The Vale of Lost Women - (1967)
  • The Snout in the Dark (Draft) - (1979)
  • Black Colossus - (1933)
  • Shadows in the Moonlight - (1934)
  • A Witch Shall Be Born - (1934)
  • Shadows in Zamboula - (1935)
  • The Devil in Iron - (1934)
  • The People of the Black Circle - (1934)
  • The Slithering Shadow - (1933)
  • Drums of Tombalku (Draft) - (1986)
  • The Pool of the Black One - (1933)
  • Afterword: Robert E. Howard and Conan: The Early Years - essay by Stephen Jones

The Conan Chronicles, Volume 2: The Hour of the Dragon

The Conan Chronicles: Book 2

Robert E. Howard

The second volume, completing the definitive collection of Conan stories, featuring the most distinctive and well known fantasy hero of all time.

Conan the Cimmerian: he rose from boy-thief and mercenary to become kingof Aquilonia. Neither supernatural fiends nor demonic sorcery could oppose the barbarian warrior as he wielded his mighty sword and dispatched his enemies to a bloody doom on the battlefields of the legendary Hyborian Age.

Collected together for the first time anywhere in the world, in chronological order, are all Robert E. Howard's definitive stories of Conan, exactly as he wrote them, as fresh, atmospheric and vibrant today as when they were first published in the pulp magazines more than sixty years ago.

Table of Contents:

  • Notes on Various People of the Hyborian Age - (1977) - essay by Julian May
  • Red Nails - (1936)
  • Jewels of Gwahlur - (1935)
  • Beyond the Black River - (1935)
  • The Black Stranger - (1987)
  • Wolves Beyond the Border (Draft) - (2000)
  • The Phoenix on the Sword - (1932)
  • The Scarlet Citadel - (1933)
  • The Hour of the Dragon - (1977) - novel
  • The Hour of the Dragon - (1969) - poem
  • Cimmeria - (1965) - poem
  • Afterword: Robert E. Howard and Conan: The Final Years - essay by Stephen Jones

The Councillor

The Councillor: Book 1

E. J. Beaton

This fantasy novel follows a scholar's quest to choose the next ruler of her nation amidst lies, conspiracy, and assassination...

When the death of Iron Queen Sarelin Brey fractures the realm of Elira, Lysande Prior, the palace scholar and the queen's closest friend, is appointed Councillor. Publically, Lysande must choose the next monarch from amongst the city-rulers vying for the throne. Privately, she seeks to discover which ruler murdered the queen, suspecting the use of magic.

Resourceful, analytical, and quiet, Lysande appears to embody the motto she was raised with: everything in its place. Yet while she hides her drug addiction from her new associates, she cannot hide her growing interest in power. She becomes locked in a game of strategy with the city-rulers -- especially the erudite prince Luca Fontaine, who seems to shift between ally and rival.

Further from home, an old enemy is stirring: the magic-wielding White Queen is on the move again, and her alliance with a traitor among the royal milieu poses a danger not just to the peace of the realm, but to the survival of everything that Lysande cares about.

In a world where the low-born keep their heads down, Lysande must learn to fight an enemy who wears many guises... even as she wages her own battle between ambition and restraint.

Lady Midnight

The Dark Artifices: Book 1

Cassandra Clare

The Shadowhunters of Los Angeles star in the first novel in Cassandra Clare's newest series, The Dark Artifices, a sequel to the internationally bestselling Mortal Instruments series. Lady Midnight is a Shadowhunters novel.

It's been five years since the events of City of Heavenly Fire that brought the Shadowhunters to the brink of oblivion. Emma Carstairs is no longer a child in mourning, but a young woman bent on discovering what killed her parents and avenging her losses.

Together with her parabatai Julian Blackthorn, Emma must learn to trust her head and her heart as she investigates a demonic plot that stretches across Los Angeles, from the Sunset Strip to the enchanted sea that pounds the beaches of Santa Monica. If only her heart didn't lead her in treacherous directions...

Making things even more complicated, Julian's brother Mark--who was captured by the faeries five years ago--has been returned as a bargaining chip. The faeries are desperate to find out who is murdering their kind--and they need the Shadowhunters' help to do it. But time works differently in faerie, so Mark has barely aged and doesn't recognize his family. Can he ever truly return to them? Will the faeries really allow it?

Glitz, glamours, and Shadowhunters abound in this heartrending opening to Cassandra Clare's Dark Artifices series.

Gilded Cage

The Dark Gifts Trilogy: Book 1

Vic James

A modern Britain
An age-old cruelty

Britain's magically skilled aristocracy compels all commoners to serve them for ten years - and now it's the Hadleys' turn. Abi Hadley is assigned to England's most ruthless noble family. The secrets she uncovers could win her freedom - or break her heart. Her brother Luke is enslaved in a brutal factory town, where new friends' ideals might cost him everything.

Then while the elite vie for power, a young aristocrat plots to remake the world with his dark gifts. As Britain moves from anger to defiance, all three must take sides. And the consequences of their choices will change everything, forever.

The Gunslinger

The Dark Tower: Book 1

Stephen King

In The Gunslinger (originally published in 1982), King introduces his most enigmatic hero, Roland Deschain of Gilead, the Last Gunslinger. He is a haunting, solitary figure at first, on a mysterious quest through a desolate world that eerily mirrors our own. Pursuing the man in black, an evil being who can bring the dead back to life, Roland is a good man who seems to leave nothing but death in his wake.

King released a revised edition of The Gunslinger in 2003. In the introduction of the new edition, King states that he felt that the original version was 'dry' and difficult for new readers to access. He also made the storytelling more linear as well as making the plot of the book more consistent with the series' ending. Other changes were made in order to resolve continuity errors introduced by later volumes. The added material is about 35 pages in length.

The Drawing of the Three

The Dark Tower: Book 2

Stephen King

The Man in Black is dead, and Roland is about to be hurled into 20th-century America, occupying the mind of a man running cocaine on the New York/Bermuda shuttle. A brilliant work of dark fantasy inspired by Browning's romantic poem, "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came."

The Waste Lands

The Dark Tower: Book 3

Stephen King

The Third Volume in the Epic Dark Tower Series, The Waste Lands. Roland, the last gunslinger, moves ever closer to the Dark Tower of his dreams and nightmares as he travels through city and country in Mid-World -- a macabre world that is a twisted image of our own. With him are those he has drawn to this world: street-smart Eddie and courageous, wheelchair-bound Susannah. Ahead of him are mind-bending revelations about who and what is driving him. Against him is arrayed a swelling legion of foes," both more and less than human....

Wizard and Glass

The Dark Tower: Book 4

Stephen King

The Dark Tower beckons Roland, the Last Gunslinger, and the four companions he has gathered along the road. And, having narrowly escaped one world, they set out on a terrifying journey across the scarred urban wasteland to brave a new world where hidden dangers lie at every junction: a malevolent computer-run monorail hurtling towards self-destruction, Roland's relentlessly cunning old enemy, and the temptation of the wizard's diabolical glass ball, a powerful force in Roland's first love affair. This is a tale of long-ago love and adventure involving a beautiful and quixotic woman named Susan Delgado. And the Tower is closer...

Wolves of the Calla

The Dark Tower: Book 5

Stephen King

Roland Deschain and his ka-tet are bearing southeast through the forests of Mid-World, the almost timeless landscape that seems to stretch from the wreckage of civility that defined Roland's youth to the crimson chaos that seems the future's only promise. Readers of Stephen King's epic series know Roland well, or as well as this enigmatic hero can be known. They also know the companions who have been drawn to his quest for the Dark Tower: Eddie Dean and his wife, Susannah Jake Chambers, the boy who has come twice through the doorway of death into Roland's world and Oy, the Billy-Bumbler.

In this long-awaited fifth novel in the saga, their path takes them to the outskirts of Calla Bryn Sturgis, a tranquil valley community of farmers and ranchers on Mid-World's borderlands. Beyond the town, the rocky ground rises toward the hulking darkness of Thunderclap, the source of a terrible affliction that is slowly stealing the community's soul. One of the town's residents is Pere Callahan, a ruined priest who, like Susannah, Eddie, and Jake, passed through one of the portals that lead both into and out of Roland's world.

As Father Callahan tells the ka-tet the astonishing story of what happened following his shamed departure from Maine in 1977, his connection to the Dark Tower becomes clear, as does the danger facing a single red rose in a vacant lot off Second Avenue in midtown Manhattan. For Calla Bryn Sturgis, danger gathers in the east like a storm cloud. The Wolves of Thunderclap and their unspeakable depredation are coming. To resist them is to risk all, but these are odds the gunslingers are used to, and they can give the Calla-folken both courage and cunning. Their guns, however, will not be enough.

Song of Susannah

The Dark Tower: Book 6

Stephen King

Susannah Dean is possessed, her body a living vessel for the demon-mother Mia. Something is growing inside Susannah's belly, something terrible, and soon she will give birth to Mia's "chap." But three unlikely allies are following them from New York City to the border of End World, hoping to prevent the unthinkable. Meanwhile, Eddie and Roland have tumbled into the state of Maine -- where the author of a novel called 'Salem's Lot is about to meet his destiny....

The Dark Tower

The Dark Tower: Book 7

Stephen King

Set in a world of extraordinary circumstances, filled with stunning visual imagery and unforgettable characters, The Dark Tower series is unlike anything you have ever read. The final book opens like a door to the uttermost reaches of Stephen King's imagination. You've come this far. Come a little farther. Come all the way. The sound you hear may be the slamming of the door behind you. Welcome to The Dark Tower.

The Warded Man

The Demon Cycle: Book 1

Peter V. Brett

As darkness falls after sunset, the corelings rise-demons who possess supernatural powers and burn with a consuming hatred of humanity. For hundreds of years the demons have terrorized the night, slowly culling the human herd that shelters behind magical wards-symbols of power whose origins are lost in myth and whose protection is terrifyingly fragile.

It was not always this way. Once, men and women battled the corelings on equal terms, but those days are gone. Night by night the demons grow stronger, while human numbers dwindle under their relentless assault. Now, with hope for the future fading, three young survivors of vicious demon attacks will dare the impossible, stepping beyond the crumbling safety of the wards to risk everything in a desperate quest to regain the secrets of the past. Together, they will stand against the night.

Published in the UK as The Painted Man.

The Desert Spear

The Demon Cycle: Book 2

Peter V. Brett

The sun is setting on humanity. The night now belongs to voracious demons that prey upon a dwindling population forced to cower behind half-forgotten symbols of power. Legends tell of a Deliverer: a general who once bound all mankind into a single force that defeated the demons. But is the return of the Deliverer just another myth? Perhaps not.

Out of the desert rides Ahmann Jardir, who has forged the desert tribes into a demon-killing army. He has proclaimed himself Shar’Dama Ka, the Deliverer, and he carries ancient weapons—a spear and a crown—that give credence to his claim. But the Northerners claim their own Deliverer: the Warded Man, a dark, forbidding figure. Once, the Shar’Dama Ka and the Warded Man were friends. Now they are fierce adversaries. Yet as old allegiances are tested and fresh alliances forged, all are unaware of the appearance of a new breed of demon, more intelligent—and deadly—than any that have come before.

Creatures of Will and Temper

The Diabolist's Library: Book 1

Molly Tanzer

Victorian London is a place of fluid social roles, vibrant arts culture, fin-de-siècle wonders... and dangerous underground diabolic cults. Fencer Evadne Gray cares for none of the former and knows nothing of the latter when she's sent to London to chaperone her younger sister, aspiring art critic Dorina.

At loose ends after Dorina becomes enamored with their uncle's friend, Lady Henrietta "Henry" Wotton, a local aristocrat and aesthete, Evadne enrolls in a fencing school. There, she meets George Cantrell, an experienced fencing master like she's always dreamed of studying under. But soon, George shows her something more than fancy footwork--he reveals to Evadne a secret, hidden world of devilish demons and their obedient servants. George has dedicated himself to eradicating demons and diabolists alike, and now he needs Evadne's help. But as she learns more, Evadne begins to believe that Lady Henry might actually be a diabolist... and even worse, she suspects Dorina might have become one too.

Combining swordplay, the supernatural, and Victorian high society, Creatures of Will and Temper reveals a familiar but strange London in a riff on Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray that readers won't soon forget.

Bitterwood

The Dragon Age: Book 1

James Maxey

Bitterwood has spent the past twenty years hunting down dragons, one at a time. But he is getting old and the hate that he has carried in his heart since a group of dragon-soldiers killed his family is beginning to fade. When he kills the royal prince dragon, the king decides the only retribution is genocide of the human race. Bitterwood is forced to enter the Free City, the grand trap designed to eradicate mankind, with thousands of others. Can he lead from within, or can a select few dragons unite to stop the king's madness from becoming reality. Full of rich characters and drama, this is an amazingly astute vision of our own culture by way of a feudal kingdom where dragons rule, and humans are used as workers or pets.

Dragonforge

The Dragon Age: Book 2

James Maxey

After the death of King Albekizan, Shandrazel and his allies struggle to keep the kingdom intact as the radical human prophet, Ragnar gathers forces to launch a full scale rebellion against the dragons. When all out war erupts, legendary dragon hunter, Bitterwood, must face his own personal daemons and choose where his loyalty really lies.

Dragonseed

The Dragon Age: Book 3

James Maxey

The dragon kingdom continues to slide into anarchy following the death of Albekizan and the capture of Dragon Forge by human rebels. But a cunning sky-dragon slavecatcher named Vulpine has organized a blockade to break the rebellion, assisted by the brutish earth-dragon war-boss Sawface. Inside the town, tensions rise between the fanatical prophet Ragnar, leader of the rebels, and his uneasy ally Burke the Machinist. Meanwhile, Jandra sets out on a desperate quest to reclaim her lost magic, joining forces once more with legendary dragon-slayer Bant Bitterwood as they hunt for Hex, the sun-dragon who stole her powers. Yet the plans of both dragons and men are about to be upended as a new power rises in the land, a mysterious healer who attracts both men and dragons to the Free City with a message of peace that may conceal more sinister motives. The Bitterwood Trilogy reaches to its climax as former friends face off as enemies to determine the future of mankind and the secret of Atlantis is finally revealed.

The Emperor's Railroad

The Dreaming Cities: Book 1

Guy Haley

Global war devastated the environment, a zombie-like plague wiped out much of humanity, and civilization as we once understood it came to a standstill. But that was a thousand years ago, and the world is now a very different place.

Conflict between city states is constant, superstition is rife, and machine relics, mutant creatures and resurrected prehistoric beasts trouble the land. Watching over all are the silent Dreaming Cities. Homes of the angels, bastion outposts of heaven on Earth. Or so the church claims. Very few go in, and nobody ever comes out.

Until now...

Storm Front

The Dresden Files: Book 1

Jim Butcher

Harry Dresden is the best at what he does. Well, technically, he's the only at what he does. So when the Chicago P.D. has a case that transcends mortal creativity or capability, they come to him for answers. For the "everyday" world is actually full of strange and magical things -- and most of them don't play well with humans. That's where Harry comes in. Takes a wizard to catch a -- well, whatever.

There's just one problem. Business, to put it mildly, stinks. So when the police bring him in to consult on a grisly double murder committed with black magic, Harry's seeing dollar signs. But where there's black magic, there's a black mage behind it. And now that mage knows Harry's name. And that's when things start to get... interesting.

Magic. It can get a guy killed.

Fool Moon

The Dresden Files: Book 2

Jim Butcher

Business has been slow. Okay, business has been dead. And not even of the undead variety. You would think Chicago would have a little more action for the only professional wizard in the phone book. But lately, Harry Dresden hasn't been able to dredge up any kind of work — magical or mundane.

But just when it looks like he can't afford his next meal, a murder comes along that requires his particular brand of supernatural expertise.

A brutally mutilated corpse. Strange-looking paw prints. A full moon. Take three guesses — and the first two don't count…

Grave Peril

The Dresden Files: Book 3

Jim Butcher

Harry Dresden's faced some pretty terrifying foes during his career. Giant scorpions. Oversexed vampires. Psychotic werewolves. It comes with the territory when you're the only professional wizard in the Chicago area phone book.

But in all Harry's years of supernatural sleuthing, he's never faced anything like this: the spirit world's gone postal. All over Chicago, ghosts are causing trouble — and not just of the door-slamming, boo-shouting variety. These ghosts are tormented, violent, and deadly. Someone — or something — is purposely stirring them up to wreak unearthly havoc.

But why? And why do so many of the victims have ties to Harry? If Harry doesn't figure it out soon, he could wind up a ghost himself....

Summer Knight

The Dresden Files: Book 4

Jim Butcher

Ever since his girlfriend left town to deal with her newly acquired taste for blood, Harry Dresden has been down and out in Chicago. He can't pay his rent. He's alienating his friends. He can't even recall the last time he took a shower.

The only professional wizard in the phone book has become a desperate man.

And just when it seems things can't get any worse, in saunters the Winter Queen of Faerie. She has an offer Harry can't refuse if he wants to free himself of the supernatural hold his faerie godmother has over him — and hopefully end his run of bad luck. All he has to do is find out who murdered the Summer Queen's right-hand man, the Summer Knight, and clear the Winter Queen's name.

It seems simple enough, but Harry knows better than to get caught in the middle of faerie politics. Until he finds out that the fate of the entire world rests on his solving this case.

No pressure or anything...

Death Masks

The Dresden Files: Book 5

Jim Butcher

Harry Dresden, Chicago's only practicing professional wizard, should be happy that business is pretty good for a change. But now he's getting more than he bargained for.

A duel with the Red Court of Vampires' champion, who must kill Harry to end the war between vampires and wizards...

Professional hit men using Harry for target practice...

The missing Shroud of Turin...

A handless and headless corpse the Chicago police need identified...

Not to mention the return of Harry's ex-girlfriend Susan, who's still struggling with her semivampiric nature. And who seems to have a new man in her life.

Some days, it just doesn't pay to get out of bed. No matter how much you're charging.

Blood Rites

The Dresden Files: Book 6

Jim Butcher

For Harry Dresden, Chicago's only professional wizard, there have been worse assignments than going undercover on the set of an adult film. Dodging flaming monkey poo, for instance. Or going toe-to-leaf with a walking plant monster. Still, there-s something more troubling than usual about his newest case.

The film-s producer believes he's the target of a sinister entropy curse - but it's the woman around him who are dying, in increasingly spectacular ways.

Harry's doubly frustrated because he got involved with this bizarre mystery only as a favour to Thomas, his flirtatious, self-absorbed vampire acquaintance of dubious integrity. Thomas has a personal stake in the case Harry can't quite figure out, until his investigation leads him straight to Thomas's oversexed vampire family.Harry's about to discover that Thomas's family tree has been hiding a shocking secret: a revelation that will change Harry's life forever.

Dead Beat

The Dresden Files: Book 7

Jim Butcher

Harry Dresden must save Chicago from black magic and necromancy -- but first, he must locate the Word of Kemmler. Just as soon as he figures out what that is. It's all in a day's work for the city's only professional wizard ... assuming he can live to see the end of the day.

Proven Guilty

The Dresden Files: Book 8

Jim Butcher

Harry Dresden has spent years being watched and suspected by the White Council's Wardens. But now he is a Warden, and it sucks more than he thought...

So when movie monsters start coming to life on his watch, it's officially up to him to put them back where they came from. Only this time, his client is the White Council, and his investigation cannot fail -- no matter who falls under suspicion, no matter the cost.

White Night

The Dresden Files: Book 9

Jim Butcher

Someone is targeting the city's magic practitioners, the members of the supernatural underclass who don't possess enough power to become full-fledged wizards. Many have vanished. Others appear to be victims of suicide. But the murderer has left a calling card at one of the crime scenes--a message for Harry Dresden, referencing the book of Exodus and the killing of witches.

Harry sets out to find the killer before he can strike again, but his investigation turns up evidence pointing to the one suspect he cannot possibly believe guilty: his half brother, Thomas. Determined to bring the real murderer to justice and clear his brother's name, Harry attracts the attention of the White Court of vampires, becoming embroiled in a power struggle that renders him outnumbered, outclassed, and dangerously susceptible to temptation.

Harry knows that if he screws this one up, a lot of people will die--and one of them will be his brother.

Small Favor

The Dresden Files: Book 10

Jim Butcher

No one's tried to kill Harry Dresden for almost an entire year, and his life finally seems to be calming down. For once, the future looks fairly bright. But the past casts one hell of a long shadow.

An old bargain has placed Harry in debt to Mab, monarch of the Winter Court of the Sidhe, the Queen of Air and Darkness-and she's calling in her marker. It's a small favor he can't refuse...one that will trap Harry Dresden between a nightmarish foe and an equally deadly ally, and one that will strain his skills-and loyalties-to their very limits.

It figures. Everything was going too well to last...

Turn Coat

The Dresden Files: Book 11

Jim Butcher

The Warden Morgan has been accused of treason against the Wizards of the White Council--and there's only one, final punishment for that crime. He's on the run, wants his name cleared, and needs someone with a knack for backing the underdog. Someone like Harry Dresden.

Now, Harry must uncover a traitor within the Council, keep a less-than-agreeable Morgan under wraps, and avoid coming under scrutiny himself. And a single mistake may cost someone his head--someone like Harry.

Ghost Story

The Dresden Files: Book 13

Jim Butcher

The eagerly awaited new novel in the #1 New York Times bestselling Dresden Files series.

When we last left the mighty wizard detective Harry Dresden, he wasn't doing well. In fact, he had been murdered by an unknown assassin.

But being dead doesn't stop him when his friends are in danger. Except now he has nobody, and no magic to help him. And there are also several dark spirits roaming the Chicago shadows who owe Harry some payback of their own.

To save his friends-and his own soul-Harry will have to pull off the ultimate trick without any magic...

Peace Talks

The Dresden Files: Book 16

Jim Butcher

When the Supernatural nations of the world meet up to negotiate an end to ongoing hostilities, Harry Dresden, Chicago's only professional wizard, joins the White Council's security team to make sure the talks stay civil. But can he succeed, when dark political manipulations threaten the very existence of Chicago--and all he holds dear?

The Bone Shard Daughter

The Drowning Empire: Book 1

Andrea Stewart

A tale of magic, mystery, and revolution in which the former heir to the emperor will fight to reclaim her power and her place on the throne...

The emperor's reign has lasted for decades, his mastery of bone shard magic powering the animal-like constructs that maintain law and order. But now his rule is failing, and revolution is sweeping across the Empire's many islands.

Lin is the emperor's daughter and spends her days trapped in a palace of locked doors and dark secrets. When her father refuses to recognise her as heir to the throne, she vows to prove her worth by mastering the forbidden art of bone shard magic.

Yet such power carries a great cost, and when the revolution reaches the gates of the palace, Lin must decide how far she is willing to go to claim her birthright - and save her people.

The Weird of the White Wolf

The Elric Saga: Book 4

Michael Moorcock

"We must be bound to one another then. Bound by hell-forged chains and fate-haunted circumstance. Well, then - let it be thus so - and men will have cause to tremble and flee when they hear the names of Elric of Melnibone and Stormbringer, his sword. We are two of a kind - produced by an age which has deserted us. Let us give this age cause to hate us."

Imrryr, the dreaming city; Yyrkoon, the hated usurper; Cymoril, the beloved... all had fallen to the fury and unearthly power of the albino prince and his terrible sword. An Elric faced at last the fate that was to be his in this haunted era - that he must go forth, sword and man as one, and havoc and horror would be forever at his forefront until he found his Purpose that was yet obscured to him.

Stormbringer

The Elric Saga: Book 9

Michael Moorcock

There came a time when there was a great movement upon the Earth and above it, when the destiny of Men and Gods was hammered out upon the forge of Fate, when monstrous wars were brewed and mighty deeds were designed. And there rose up in this time, which was called the Age of the Young Kingdoms, heroes. Greatest of these heroes was a doom-driven adventurer who bore a crooning rune blade that he loathed.

His name was Elric of Melnibone, king of ruins, lord of a scattered race that had once ruled the ancient world. Elric, sorcerer and swordsman, slayer of kin, despoiler of his homeland, white-faced albino, last of his line.

The Eminence in Shadow, Vol. 1

The Eminence in Shadow: Book 1

Daisuke Aizawa

ONE BIG FAT LIE AND A FEW TWISTED TRUTHS

Even in his past life, Cid's dream wasn't to become a protagonist or a final boss. He'd rather lie low as a minor character until it's prime time to reveal he's a mastermind... or at least, do the next best thing-pretend to be one! And now that he's been reborn into another world, he's ready to set the perfect conditions to live out his dreams to the fullest. Armed with his overactive imagination, Cid jokingly recruits members to his organization and makes up a whole backstory about an evil cult that they need to take down. Well, as luck would have it, these imaginary adversaries turn out to be the real deal-and everyone knows the truth but him!

The Eminence in Shadow, Vol. 2

The Eminence in Shadow: Book 2

Daisuke Aizawa

NOTHING COULD BE FURTHER FROM THE TRUTH

Cid pays a visit to the Sacred Land, where he finds himself getting roped into the Goddess's Trial. It's a ritual event that summons warriors from the past to engage with only the most worthy from the present. When Cid squares off against the witch who brought devastation to the world, the door to the Sanctuary creaks open, granting the Shadow Garden valuable insight into the possessed and the Cult of Diablos. That is until Cid, blissfully ignorant of the conspiracies playing out behind the scenes, runs amok!

The Eminence in Shadow, Vol. 3

The Eminence in Shadow: Book 3

Daisuke Aizawa

THE RED MOON HANGS LOW IN THE NIGHT--AN OMEN OF WHAT'S TO COME

Deep within the Lawless City lies the Blood Queen, a Progenitor Vampire, slumbering in her coffin for many moons. An expert at landing himself in trouble, Cid should know better than to go after her... but he's dying to get a piece of the action. It's time he shed his daytime persona to take on the role of Shadow! It seems, however, that he's not the only one with this idea. Soon enough, he finds the three rulers of the Lawless City--Juggernaut the Tyrant, Yukime the Spirit Fox, and Crimson the vampire--are all on his tail. To complicate things even further, the Shadow Garden descends on the scene as the hour of the Blood Queen's awakening looms closer and closer...

The Eminence in Shadow, Vol. 4

The Eminence in Shadow: Book 4

Daisuke Aizawa

THE DOOR OF DARKNESS IS CAST OPEN--THE WORLD ADVANCES TO A NEW FIELD

The specter of war hangs thick in the air of the Oriana Kingdom, where Princess Rose is expected to wed Duke Perv. This supposed marriage cannot and will not stand, though, as it would throw a major wrench in a certain shadowbroker's plans. Not one to miss an opportunity for sleuthing, Cid makes his way to the royal capital to put a stop to the ceremony, but are there even bigger schemes at work behind this unholy matrimony?

The Eminence in Shadow, Vol. 5

The Eminence in Shadow: Book 5

Daisuke Aizawa

BEFORE MUCH LONGER... THE WHITE FOG WILL ENGULF THE WORLD IN SILENCE

All is well at the Midgar Academy for Dark Knights, but then something wicked suddenly draws near: The students are vanishing one by one--even Cid's older sister, Claire! Zeta of the Seven Shadows sets off to investigate, while Cid and Alexia embark for Claire's room where they find... an ancient script, cool magic circles, and incantations that seem important and yet don't actually do anything whatsoever. What does it all mean, and why has Claire been talking to herself so much lately...?

Fourth Wing

The Empyrean: Book 1

Rebecca Yarros

Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general--also known as her tough-as-talons mother--has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders.

But when you're smaller than everyone else and your body is brittle, death is only a heartbeat away...because dragons don't bond to "fragile" humans. They incinerate them.

With fewer dragons willing to bond than cadets, most would kill Violet to better their own chances of success. The rest would kill her just for being her mother's daughter--like Xaden Riorson, the most powerful and ruthless wingleader in the Riders Quadrant.

She'll need every edge her wits can give her just to see the next sunrise.

Yet, with every day that passes, the war outside grows more deadly, the kingdom's protective wards are failing, and the death toll continues to rise. Even worse, Violet begins to suspect leadership is hiding a terrible secret.

Friends, enemies, lovers. Everyone at Basgiath War College has an agenda--because once you enter, there are only two ways out: graduate or die.

Assassin's Apprentice

The Farseer Trilogy: Book 1

Robin Hobb

Young Fitz is the bastard son of the noble Prince Chivalry, raised in the shadow of the royal court by his father's gruff stableman. He is treated like an outcast by all the royalty except the devious King Shrewd, who h