Search Worlds Without End

This novelette originally appeared in Lightspeed, February 2017.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Find the dead a King, save himself, win the love of his life, live happily ever after. No wonder Marius dos Helles is bored. But now something has stopped the dead from, well, dying.

It's up to Marius, Gerd, and Gerd's not-dead-enough Granny to journey across the continent and put the dead back in the afterlife where they belong.

Girls team up to overthrow the kingdom in this unique and powerful retelling of Cinderella from a stunning new voice that's perfect for fans of Dhonielle Clayton and Melissa Albert..

It's 200 years after Cinderella found her prince, but the fairy tale is over. Teen girls are now required to appear at the Annual Ball, where the men of the kingdom select wives based on a girl's display of finery. If a suitable match is not found, the girls not chosen are never heard from again.

Sixteen-year-old Sophia would much rather marry Erin, her childhood best friend, than parade in front of suitors. At the ball, Sophia makes the desperate decision to flee, and finds herself hiding in Cinderella's mausoleum. There, she meets Constance, the last known descendant of Cinderella and her step sisters. Together they vow to bring down the king once and for all--and in the process, they learn that there's more to Cinderella's story than they ever knew...

This fresh take on a classic story will make readers question the tales they've been told, and root for girls to break down the constructs of the world around them.

This short story originally appeared in Omni, January 1995. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirteenth Annual Collection (1996), edited by Gardner Dozois. The story is included in the collection In the Upper Room: And Other Likely Stories (2000).

Hugo-, Nebula- and Sturgeon Award-nominated short story. It originally appeared in Lightspeed, February 2015. The story can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2016, edited by Rich Horton.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Once again, we return to the Old West with a new posse of top authors spinning tales of horror, fantasy, and science fiction. We take no prisoners as they explore what really was and mix in what might have been.

Table of Contents:

• Foreword by David Boop
• Cookie by Shane Lacy Hensley
• A Talk with My Mother Charlaine Harris
• The Greatest Horse Thief in History by D.J. Butler
• The Doctor and the Spectre by Mike Resnick
• Doth Make Thee Mad by Jane Lindskold
• Sunlight and Silver by Jeffrey J. Mariotte
• Pinkerton's Prey by Frog and Esther Jones
• The Relay Station at Wrigley's Pass by Derrick Ferguson
• Not Fade Away by Cliff Winnig
• The Spinners by Jennifer Campbell-Hicks
• The Stoker and the Plaguew Doctor by Alex Acks
• Bigger Than Life by Steve Rasnic Tem
• Dreamcatcher by Marsheila Rockwell
• El Jefe De La Comancheria by Mario Acevedo
• The Pertified Man by Betsy Dornbusch
• Stands Twice and The Magpie Man by Stephen Graham Jones
• Blood Lust and Gold Dust by Travis Heermann

For the first time in Killington High School history, the Jackrabbits football team is one win away from the district championship where it will face its most vicious rival, the Elmwood Heights Badgers. On the way to the game, the Jackrabbits's bus plunges into a river, killing every player except for bad-boy quarterback Cole Logan who is certain the crash was no accident--given that Cole himself was severely injured in a brutal attack by three ski-masked men earlier that day. Bent on payback, Cole turns to a mysterious fan skilled in black magic to resurrect his teammates. But unless the undead Jackrabbits defeat their murderous rival on the field, the team is destined for hell. In a desperate race against time, with only his coach's clever daughter, Savannah Hickman, to assist him, Cole must lead his zombie team to victory.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction: Loci - (1973) - essay
• The Hanged Man - (1972) - shortstory
• Shark - (1973) - shortstory
• No. 2 Plain Tank Auxiliary Fill Structural Limit 17,605 lbs. Fuel-PWA Spec. 522 Revised - (1972) - shortstory
• Adrift on the Freeway - (1970) - shortstory
• Jody After the War - (1972) - shortstory
• Teleidoscope - (1973) - shortstory
• The Poet in the Hologram in the Middle of Prime Time - (1972) - shortstory
• The Human Side of the Village Monster - (1971) - shortstory
• Among the Dead - (1971) - shortstory
• File on the Plague - (1971) - shortstory
• The Soft Blue Bunny Rabbit Story - (1971) - shortstory
• Tactics - (1973) - shortstory
• Sending the Very Best - (1970) - shortstory
• Their Thousandth Season - (1972) - shortstory
• Love Song of Herself - (1971) - shortstory
• Pinup - (1973) - shortstory
• Dune's Edge - (1972) - shortstory

This short story originally appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, May 1985 and was reprinted in Lightspeed, December 2011. It can also be found in the anthology The Norton Book of Science Fiction: North American Science Fiction, 1960-1990 (1993), edtide by Ursula K. Le Guin and Brian Attebery.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Twenty years after a game of Ouija ends in a ten-year-old's disappearance, Rose Tierney discovers that she has developed psychic powers that enable her to see into the future and travel without her body, but that make her vulnerable to an evil force.

Published in the UK as: The Parasite

A sexual plague leaves its survivors terrified of human contact. The government so fears sensuality that even the Joy of Cooking is banned. Sex is a capital crime. Only the "carnals" - the sexual dissidents of the future - dare speak of love. In this postmodern Eden we meet a feminist physician who speaks only of the past, and her daughter, Emma, who dreams of real butter and rebuilt Subarus and is sick of hearing about life before the plague. Set in a New York besieged by scarcities of every kind, a place of burnt-out buildings, abandoned streets and junk yards, In the Garden of Dead Cars takes Emma on a journey both dangerously criminal and filled with self-discovery.

The year is A.D. 922. A refined Arab courtier, representative of the powerful Caliph of Baghdad, encounters a party of Viking warriors who are journeying to the barbaric North. He is appalled by their Viking customs--the wanton sexuality of their pale, angular women, their disregard for cleanliness... their cold-blooded human sacrifices. But it is not until they reach the depths of the Northland that the courtier learns the horrifying and inescapable truth: he has been enlisted by these savage, inscrutable warriors to help combat a terror that plagues them--a monstrosity that emerges under cover of night to slaughter the Vikings and devour their flesh...

All the Snake Handlers I Know Are Dead, by Dennis Danvers, is dark, magical realism tale about a lone woman building a cabin in the mountains of Appalachia and the strange man she encounters there.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed, May 2013.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Just beyond the waking edges of Lucerìa, an 18th-century town in the kingdom of Naples, lies the Night: an enigmatic fiefdom governed by seven immortals and fueled by Moira, the power to reshape one's destiny.

On this porous border separating Day from Night, Oriana spends her time fantasizing about becoming a smith in her father's forge and eavesdropping on whispered tales of beasts and men who roam the nocturnal realm. But in the Night, these stories come alive, as Oriana saw for herself after she inadvertently trespassed into the Secret Market of the Dead, where vendors hawk Moira to those desperate enough to accept its immeasurably steep price.

Years later, when her father chooses her twin brother to succeed him, Oriana challenges her sibling to a series of trials to determine the forge's true heir. But as the twins' fierce competition escalates, with the town and her own family set firmly against her, Oriana realizes that to break free from the stifling confines of Day, she must once again embrace the Night - and, as always, everything comes with a cost.

This short story originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, November 2008. It can also be found in the anthology Clarkesworld: Year Three (2013), edited by Neil Clarke and Sean Wallace.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

A collection of short stories originally published under the author's previous name Alan DeNiro.

A wide-ranging and assured, surprising, and funny debut collection. Alan DeNiro's gently surreal stories use a toolbox of genres (including science fiction and fantasy) to grapple with issues of identity, family, gender, and politics.

• The Fourth - short story
• Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead - short story
• If I Leap I Shall Fall Into My Hands - short story
• Our Byzantium - short story
• The Centaur - short story
• Cuttlefish - short story
• The Caliber - short story
• The Excavation - short story
• A Keeper - short story
• Fuming Woman - short story
• The Friendly Giants - short story
• Quiver - novelette
• Child Assassin - short story
• Salting the Map - short story
• The Exchanges - novelette

Hugo and Nebula Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, June 1988. The story can also be found in the collections The Calvin Coolidge Home for Dead Comedians (1994) and One Day Closer to Death: Eight Stabs at Immortality (1998).

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by August Derleth
• A View from a Hill - (1925) - shortstory by M. R. James
• Glory Hand - (1937) - shortstory by August Derleth
• The Lady's Maid's Bell - (1902) - novelette by Edith Wharton
• The Shadows - (1927) - novelette by Henry S. Whitehead
• Out of the Eons - (1935) - novelette by Hazel Heald and H. P. Lovecraft
• The Jar - (1944) - shortstory by Ray Bradbury
• The Bully of Chapelizod - shortstory by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
• Over the River - (1941) - shortstory by P. Schuyler Miller
• Carnaby's Fish - (1945) - shortstory by Carl Jacobi
• The Painted Mirror - (1937) - shortstory by Donald Wandrei
• The Double Shadow - (1933) - shortstory by Clark Ashton Smith
• The Ocean Leech - (1925) - shortstory by Frank Belknap Long
• Amina - (1907) - shortstory by Edward Lucas White
• Farewell Performance - (1940) - shortstory by H. Russell Wakefield
• One Way to Mars - (1945) - shortstory by Robert Bloch
• Out of the Picture - (1936) - novelette by Arthur Machen
• The Canal - (1927) - shortstory by Everil Worrell
• The Postman of Otford - (1917) - shortstory by Lord Dunsany
• Deaf, Dumb and Blind - (1925) - shortstory by C. M. Eddy, Jr. and H. P. Lovecraft
• Spider-Bite - (1926) - novelette by Robert S. Carr
• Brenner's Boy - (1932) - shortstory by John Metcalfe
• Mr. Lupescu - (1945) - shortstory by Anthony Boucher
• Masquerade - (1942) - shortstory by Henry Kuttner
• Seventh Sister - (1943) - shortstory by Mary Elizabeth Counselman
• In Amundsen's Tent - (1928) - novelette by John Martin Leahy
• Man in a Hurry - (1944) - shortstory by Alan Nelson
• The Last Pin - (1940) - shortstory by Howard Wandrei
• The Doll - (1946) - novelette by Algernon Blackwood
• The Tool - (1928) - shortstory by William Fryer Harvey
• The Dreams in the Witch-House - (1933) - novelette by H. P. Lovecraft
• Bibliography - essay by uncredited

Keisha Lewis mourned the loss of her wife, Alice, who disappeared two years ago. There was a search, there was grief beyond what she thought was possible. There was a funeral.

But then Keisha began to see her wife, again and again, in the background of news reports from all over America.

Alice isn't dead. And she is showing up at the scene of every tragedy in the country.

Keisha shrugs off her old life and hits the road as a trucker - hoping on some level that travelling the length of the country will lead her to the person she loves.

What she finds are buried crimes and monsters (both human and unimaginable), government conspiracies, haunted service stations and a darkness far older than the highway system it lies beneath.

Inspired by the eponymous podcast, Alice Isn't Dead is a story about loving, about searching - and about the courage you need when what you find is terrifyingly unexpected.

The spirits of the dead exist, and they want to communicate.

First appearing in the late 1800s, spiritualism became a religious movement that swept the nation. Under the assumption that the dead live on in the afterlife, spiritualists believed that contact with the dearly departed was not only possible, but something those who crossed over longed for. Contact was usually made through a medium, a person who claimed to have the ability to speak with the dead.

There Is No Death, There Are No Dead is a horror anthology that tackles all aspects of the spiritualist movement: from the true believers to the nay-sayers, the hoaxes to hauntings, the real mediums to the scam artists. From ghosts to possessions, from profound loss to insurmountable grief, these short stories explore limitless genres (historical fiction, Gaslamp mystery, modern horror, and everything in between) with a diverse cast of characters challenged at every corner.

There Is No Death, There Are No Dead includes new work from some of the most talented and respected authors in the horror and dark fantasy genres, featuring stories from Gemma Files, Helen Marshall, Kathe Koja, Lee Murray, David Demchuk, Lisa Morton, Gwendolyn Kiste, S.P. Miskowski, Seanan McGuire, Catherine Lord, Chesya Burke, Nadia Bulkin, Michelle Belanger, and Laird Barron, and edited by Bram Stoker Award winner Jess Landry and Aaron J. French.

The dead are speaking. Will you hear?

Contents:

• There Is No Death, There Are No Dead - interior artwork by Sofia Ajram
• 1 - Haunt Me - short fiction by Gemma Files
• 33 - The Happy Medium - short fiction by Helen Marshall
• 55 - The Marble Lily - (2020) - short story by Kathe Koja
• 65 - The Bone Eater - short fiction by Lee Murray
• 85 - A Feather for Mrs. Edmond - short fiction by David Demchuk
• 105 - Meeting Katie King - short fiction by Lisa Morton
• 125 - The Mad Monk of the Motor City - short fiction by Gwendolyn Kiste
• 145 - The One Word I Can't Say - short fiction by S. P. Miskowski
• 167 - Knock Three Times - short fiction by Seanan McGuire
• 189 - The Curious Story of Susan Styles: A Psychical Romance - (1893) - short fiction by Catherine Lord
• 201 - Talitha Cumi - short fiction by Chesya Burke
• 221 - True Love Waits - short fiction by Nadia Bulkin
• 241 - The Shape of Her Soul - short fiction by Michelle Belanger
• 279 - American Remake of a Japanese Ghost Story - short story by Laird Barron

Victoria and her dad have shared a love of the undead since the first vampire revealed his existence on live TV. Public fear soon drove the vampires back into hiding, yet Victoria and her father still dream about finding a vampire together. But when her dad is diagnosed with terminal cancer, it's clear that's not going to happen. Instead, Victoria vows to find a vampire herself--so that she can become one and then save her father.

Armed with research, speculations, and desperation--and helped by her estranged best friend, Henry--Victoria travels to New Orleans in search of a miracle. There she meets Nicholas, a mysterious young man who might give her what she desires. But first, he needs Victoria to prove she loves life enough to live forever.

She agrees to complete a series of challenges, from scarfing sugar-drenched beignets to singing with a jazz band, all to show she has what it takes to be immortal. But truly living while her father is dying feels like a betrayal. Victoria must figure out how to experience joy and grief at once, trusting all the while that Nicholas will hold up his end of the bargain... because the alternative is too impossible to imagine.

An all-original anthology of short fiction exploring what may be the most fascinating and certainly bloodiest of all American wars--the Civil War--by the bestselling authors of dark fantasy, horror, and science fiction.

• Preface - essay by Michael Bishop
• Introduction - essay by Richard Gilliam
• Death Fiend Guerillas - short story by William S. Burroughs
• Zulei, Grace, Nimshi, and the Damnyankees - novelette by Anne McCaffrey
• Hell Creek - short story by Karl Edward Wagner
• The Sunday-Go-To-Meeting Jaw short story by Nancy A. Collins
• Darker Angels - novelette by S. P. Somtow
• Roll Call - novelette by Jerry Ahern and Sharon Ahern
• The Crater - novelette by Doug Murray
• Sons - short story by Charles L. Grant
• Butternut and Blood - short story by Kathryn Ptacek
• Strawman - short story by Nancy Holder
• A Dress For Tea) - short story by Wendy Webb
• Foragers - short story by Richard Lee Byers
• Spoils of War - short story by Owl Goingback
• Red Clay, Crimson Clay - short story by Brad Linaweaver
• Beneath A Waning Moon - short story by Brad Strickland
• The Master's Time - short story by Anya Martin and Stephen L. Antczak
• Terrible Swift Saw - short story by Gregory Nicoll
• Two Yellow Pine Coffins - novelette by Robert Sampson
• The Third Nation - novelette by Lee Hoffman
• Beast - novelette by George Alec Effinger
• The Face - short story by Ed Gorman
• Colour - novelette by Michael Moorcock
• Caroline and Caleb - novella by Richard Gilliam
• Grabow and Collicker and I - short story by Algis Budrys
• The Unknown Soldier - short story by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

In "At Sarah's House," a man watches his friend wasting away before his eyes under the spell of a beautiful but deadly woman. In "Burning Ground," a man decides to build a home on a site where every previous dwelling has burned to the ground, defying local superstition with strange and disastrous consequences. The title story, "Orchard of the Dead," tells of the otherworldly happenings at a children's graveyard full of trees laden with luscious fruit. And in the highlight of the collection, "Szatera's Engrams," a train stationmaster becomes obsessed with lingering echoes of a deadly tragedy and grows convinced that he knows a terrible means of bringing his beloved back from the other side.

Containing thirteen tales that feature Grabinski's favorite themes of passion and death.

Contents:

• Introduction by Brian Evenson
• A Night's Lodging
• At Sarah's House
• Burning Ground
• Parable of the Tunnel Mole
• Before a Long Journey
• Blind Man's Buff
• Orchard of the Dead
• Ksenia
• On the Trail
• Mud Hut in a Clear Field
• Red Magda
• The Loft
• Szatera's Engrams

Table of Contents:

• From Death's Other Side - (1991) - essay by Frank D. McSherry, Jr.
• Lazarus - (1921) - shortstory by Leonid Andreyev (1906)
• The Rose-Crystal Bell - (1954) - shortstory by Robert Arthur
• Glámr - (1863) - shortstory by Sabine Baring-Gould
• Beyond the Wall - (1907) - shortstory by Ambrose Bierce
• Mother of Serpents - (1936) - shortstory by Robert Bloch
• Lost Boys - (1989) - shortstory by Orson Scott Card
• The Man with Pin-Point Eyes - (1931) - novelette by Erle Stanley Gardner
• Grave Error - (1991) - shortstory by Cathie Griffith
• The Tortoise - (1910) - shortstory by William Fryer Harvey
• The Adventure of the German Student - (1824) - shortstory by Washington Irving
• Count Magnus - (1904) - shortstory by M. R. James
• A Thousand Deaths - (1889) - shortstory by Jack London
• The Outsider - (1926) - shortstory by H. P. Lovecraft
• Ligeia - (1838) - shortstory by Edgar Allan Poe
• Mop-Up - (1953) - shortstory by Arthur Porges
• Charlie - (1980) - shortstory by Talmage Powell
• If the Red Slayer - (1959) - shortstory by Robert Sheckley
• The Charnel God - (1934) - novelette by Clark Ashton Smith
• It - (1940) - novelette by Theodore Sturgeon
• Where the Woodbine Twineth - (1976) - shortstory by Manly Wade Wellman
• Afterward - (1910) - novelette by Edith Wharton

Luke Thacker is a drifting hobo in Depression-era America, riding the rails of the nation and surviving by crumbs and hope. Along the way he learns the iconography of transients--the Hobo Code--better than anyone else and deciphers a secret that thrusts him into Athanasia, the middle ground of memories.

He learns that Athanasia exists around us, a realm in which the deceased persevere by how they are remembered, and the memories Luke meets will do anything to not ever be forgotten, whether by trickery, violence, or daring.

Luke learns, too, that what's remembered yesterday is not always the same as what will be remembered tomorrow, and he sets off to keep alive the memories of those he loves in the way a 'bo does best: telling tales of old legends, and making up new ones alike.

Fifty years later, the tall crossbucks of Luke Thacker are repeated by homeless King Shaw, who's struggling to keep Luke's own legend alive and with it, perhaps, his own.

'Cause it don't matter if you rob banks with a dead John Dillinger, are hunted over the years by vengeful Earp brothers, or go against the monstrous railroad guard, Smith McCain: When a story is told, all who are part of it become a little stronger.

Seventeen-year-old Ellie Spencer is just like any other teenager at her boarding school. She hangs out with her best friend Kevin, she obsesses over Mark, a cute and mysterious bad boy, and her biggest worry is her paper deadline.

But then everything changes. The news headlines are all abuzz about a local string of serial killings that all share the same morbid trademark: the victims were discovered with their eyes missing. Then a beautiful yet eerie woman enters Ellie's circle of friends and develops an unhealthy fascination with Kevin, and a crazed old man grabs Ellie in a public square and shoves a tattered Bible into her hands, exclaiming, "You need it. It will save your soul." Soon, Ellie finds herself plunged into a haunting world of vengeful fairies, Maori mythology, romance, betrayal, and an epic battle for immortality.

A mesmerizing ghost story and gripping detective tale that takes readers on a hair-raising journey into the darkest recesses of one man's soul.

With only a few months to go before his retirement, Detective Sgt Frank O'Hara faces the most impossible challenge of his career: to find and stop a killer who was sent to the electric chair years before.

California's climate was once perfect but now the people look like skeletons, walking across the barren, gray land with haunted eyes and hopeless faces ruled by monstrous masters in a reign of hideous cruelty and nightmare terror.

This short story originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, July 2010. It can als be found in the anthology Clarkesworld: Year Four (2013), edited by Sean Wallace and Neil Clarke.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

Einar, an enslaved barbarian, plots his escape from a war galley transporting troops and a mysterious weapon to far enemy shores. But when an apocalyptic storm at sea leaves Einar and his fellow captives shipwrecked on a strange, uncharted island, friend and foe alike must band together against a steadily growing horde of the undead... and even worse dangers.

Not even death is an escape from the Island of the Dead!

A mysterious man appears aboard the Titanic on its doomed voyage, his mission to save the ship. The result of his efforts is a world where the United States never entered World War I, thus launching the secret history of the 20th Century. April 2012. Joseph Kennedy, relation of John F. Kennedy, lives in an America occupied on the East Coast by the Germans and on the West Coast by the Japanese. He is one of six people who can restore history to its rightful order—even though it will mean his own death.

This short story originally appeared in Interzone, #203 April 2006. It can also be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume One (2007), edited by Jonathan Strahan, and The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 18 (2007), edited by Stephen Jones. The story is included in the collection The Sky That Wraps (2010).

BFA and Stoker Award winning and WFA nominated novelette. It originally appeared in the anthology Book of the Dead (1989), edited by John Skipp and Craig Spector. A chapbook edition appeared in 1991 and the story was reprinted in Weird Tales, February-March 2007. The story has also been adepted to a four part graphic novel miniseries.

On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert with Dead Folks can be found in the anthologies The Mammoth Book of Zombies (1993), edited by Stephen Jones, The Urban Fantasy Anthology (2011), edited by Peter S. Beagle and Joe R. Lansdale, and Extreme Zombies (2012), edited by Paula Guran. It is included in the collections By Bizarre Hands (1989), The Long Ones (2001) and The Best of Joe R. Lansdale (2010).

They did it -- they launched the damned nukes and the world went pretty much straight to hell. Not many survived, but some of those who did emerged twenty years later, to a world where mutant whales heaved themselves across the blackened, dry seabed of the Pacific, and the roses... oh God, the roses.

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Nukes (1986) edited by John Maclay and was reprinted in Lightspeed, October 2010. The story can also be found in anthologies The Year's Best Horror Stories: XV (1987), edited by Karl Edward Wagner, Lightspeed: Year One (2011), edited by John Joseph Adams, and Wastelands 2: More Stories of the Apocalypse (2015), also edited by Adams. It is included in the collection By Bizarre Hands (1989) and High Cotton: Selected Stories of Joe R. Lansdale (2000). Standalone editions of the story also exist.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

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.

Once Tal-Lith was a luxuriant world of millions. Now it was a chill, arid wasteland, with its remaining inhabitants clustered on a great ice mountain. And in a few, short solar cycles its sun would blaze into a deadly super-nova.

WFA nominated novelette. It originally appeared in Interzone, #149 November 1999. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Thirteenth Annual Collection (2000), edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, and The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 11 (2000), edited by Stephen Jones.

It starts in a laboratory. A man-made strain of flesh-eating virus. Created by a power-hungry cartel. Capable of turning victims into brain-dead carnivores. Smuggled aboard a cruise ship that's about to set sail...One by one, the passengers are exposed. A U.S. senator. A young couple. An undercover agent. A beautiful assassin. Some will be infected. Others will survive. But no one will be spared if the outbreak isn't contained - and the dead outnumber the living...

Enter Delta Force operative Juan Perez. He's fought the deadliest killers in the darkest hellholes on earth. But he's never seen anything like this - an apocalyptic cargo of pure zombie mayhem heading for the coast. If Perez and his SEAL team can't stop it, America, and quickly the entire population of the world, are finished. The plague years will begin...

Something is wrong with Colonel Habgood's young son Denis. Some mysterious force seems to be sapping his physical health, and his behaviour has become oddly evasive and deceptive. Habgood suspects the pernicious influence of Raoul, a sinister handyman with whom Denis has become infatuated, believing that the man may be corrupting and defiling his son. But even after Raoul's departure, the troubles continue, and Denis's strength continues to wane. In an old book of medieval legends, his father finds a possible, if implausible, answer in stories of a nameless horror from beyond the grave that feasts on the young in order to return to life. Or could what's happening to Denis have any connection to an unexplained death in the attic turret nearly eighty years ago? And isn't there something strange about the scarecrow out in the fields, which seems, barely perceptibly, to have moved...?

WFA nominated short story. It orignally appeared in the anthology 999: New Tales of Horror and Suspense (1999), edited by Al Sarrantonio. The story can also be found in anthologies The Mammoth Book of New Terror (2004), and The Dead That Walk: Flesh-Eating Stories (2009), both edited by Stephen Jones. It is included in the collections Unforgivable Stories (2000), Dead Travel Fast (2005) and Anno Dracula 1899 and Other Stories (2017).

Sherlock Holmes... Interdimensional demons... Aliens... Killers and child predators... Time travelers... Vampires... Even the end of the world, in more ways than one, all are contained within these pages. From the darkest corners of imagination to the precipice of human achievement, William F. Nolan delivers the goods in this assortment of recent works: his first all-new collection in his long and storied career.

Working with editor Jason V Brock (Milton's Children), Nolan brings to shocking life not only debauched murderers and depraved loners, but also fascinating portraits of personal reflection; the heroes of yore in poetry; pages from Nolan's notebook; and an exclusive, intimate interview with his beloved friend, the late Richard Matheson (I Am Legend).

"For ardent readers of Nolan's work, this collection is a must-have." - Hellnotes

Table of Contents:

• 9 - Introduction: The Inner World of William F. Nolan - (2013) - essay by Jason V. Brock (variant of The Inner World of William F. Nolan)
• 19 - The Blood Countess - (2013) - novelette
• 55 - Dread Voyage - (2011) - short story
• 61 - Flight to Legend - (2013) - short story
• 69 - Getting Along Just Fine - (2009) - short story
• 77 - Exchange - (2013) - short story by Jason V. Brock and William F. Nolan
• 89 - My Girl Name Is Elly - (2013) - short story
• 95 - The Recluse - (2013) - short story
• 107 - Dysfunctional - (2013) - poem
• 111 - Descent - (2010) - short story
• 119 - Ashland - (2013) - short story
• 131 - Millikin's Machine - (2013) - short story
• 141 - The End: A Final Dialogue - (2013) - short story
• 147 - The Beach - (2013) - short story by Jason V. Brock and William F. Nolan
• 159 - A Lot Like the Joker - (2012) - short story
• 165 - A New Man - (2014) - short story
• 177 - Like a Dead Man Walking - (2013) - short story
• 197 - Goodbye, Old Pal - (2012) - essay
• 199 - Rich - (2013) - essay
• 201 - What Legends May Come: A Discussion with Richard Matheson and William F. Nolan - (2010) - interview of Richard Matheson and William F. Nolan - interview by Jason V. Brock (variant of What Dreams May Come: A Discussion with Richard Matheson and William F. Nolan 2013)
• 232 - Excerpts from the Notebooks of William F. Nolan - (2013) - short fiction

On a moon-lit night, Diké , heir to the Kingdom and leader of the terrifying warrior cult, the Ogwumii, falls asleep inside his bedroom. He wakes up to find himself trapped within the secret shrine of the village deity, a dark cave forbidden to all save the powerful witchdoctors. Overnight, the mighty warrior-prince becomes an Osu— an untouchable and outcast. In disgraced exile in the forbidden shrine, his sole companion is the raging ghost of a murdered slave girl, wrongly sacrificed to the gods on the false prophecy of a lecherous witchdoctor. To break the Osu curse, Diké must find the traitors who orchestrated his downfall and embark on a terrifying journey to the ancestors' realm, a deadly quest that could end his life or return him to full citizenship and glory.

Being the new girl at school is rough. But when the popular girls choose Kerry as the newest member of their ultra-exclusive clique, she thinks her troubles are finally finished. When her three new friends are killed in a horrifying crash, her life seems over as well. But then the texts begin...

Richard Peck returns to his contemporary teen-and-ghost-story roots iun this suspenseful page-turner with a subtle commentary on peer pressure that fans of television dramas such as Pretty Little Liars and Vampire Diaries will devour.

David Prill is best known for his homegrown mix of odd humor and horror as displayed in The Unnatural and Serial Killer Days.

Here, in his first collection, you will find the dating rituals and concerns of the recently deceased explained, a circus of vengeful sideshow freaks, and a brand-new novella, "The Last Horror Show"--a coming of age semi-autobiographical tale set in a small Midwestern town in the 1960s, the last summer "The Chasm of Spasms," a Midnight Spook Show, appeared at the local movie theater.

At Ease with the Dead, the fourth anthology of original supernatural and macabre fiction to be published by Ash-Tree Press, is a worthy successor to the previous volumes, Midnight Never Comes, Shadows and Silence, and the World Fantasy and International Horror Guild Award winner Acquainted With The Night. It also offers the largest gathering of new fiction--some thirty stories from the pens of some of the finest writers practicing in the genre today.

CONTENTS:

• The Church on the Island by Simon Kurt Unsworth
• The Brook by John Llewellyn Probert
• Mr Poo-Poo by Reggie Oliver
• Dhost by Melanie Tem
• Special Perceptions by Richard Harland
• My Grandfather's Ghosts by Gary McMahon
• We, The Remedials by John Travis
• The Light of the World by Peter Bell
• When Sorrows Come by Simon Strantzas
• The White Sea Company by Mark Valentine
• The Music Box by Mark Patrick Lynch
• Visiting Hours by Kealan Patrick Burke
• Lie Still, Sleep Becalmed by Steve Duffy
• Threads by James Doig
• The Heights by Matthew Holness
• Sighted by Iain Rowan
• The Calvary at Banská Bystrica by Helen Grant
• Death Knock by Steve Lockley & Paul Lewis
• Blue Train by Joel Lane
• A Pillar of the Church by John Whitbourn
• The Admiral's House by Marc Lecard
• Recession by Robert Morrish
• 'And So Will I Remember You...' by Chet Williamson
• Dr Upex and the Great God Ing by Antony Oldknow
• The Tank by Paul Finch
• The Charlie Club by J. J. Beazley
• The Swing by Don Tumasonis
• A Small Cold Hand by Simon Bestwick
• Hell Hath No Fury by Keris McDonald
• The Palace by Barbara Roden
• Biographical / Story Notes

Stoker Award winning and World Fantasy Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in the anthology Masques II (1987), edited by J. N. Williamson. It can also be found in the anthologies New Masterpieces of Horror (1996), edited by John Gregory Betancourt, and The Horror Hall of Fame: The Stoker Winners (2012), edited by Joe R. Lansdale. The story is included in the collection New Life for the Dead (1991).

"You have a very lovely little girl," breathed a voice on the phone. And just like that, Susan Young is drawn into a living nighmare.

A stranger has kidnapped Sue's daughter, Veda. But he doesn't want her money, only her suffering - and he will kill Veda if Sue doesn't follow his every command. With detailed instructions, the faceless abductor leads Sue into a blinding snowstorm on the longest night of the year, to a place she has not travled to since childhood. The voice on the other end of the line somehow knows Sue's deepest, most chilling secret - an ominous incident from her past, buried long ago...

Across the loneliest back roads of Massachusetts, in the black expanse of a New England winter, Sue is forced to confront her most awful fears as she is met at each step by ever increasing horrors created by a monster who is surely something less than human. In the hope of saving her daughter from a kidnapper whose origin seems darker that anything she could ever have imagined, Sue will discover just how much trauma and fright the human body is capable of absorbing.

Set over the course of a single night, Chasing the Dead is a fast-paced, ferociously tense supernatural thriller. With the skill of master like Dean Koontz and David Morrell, Joe Schreiber has created a tableau of shock and horror, death and destruction, that will draw you in and never let you go.

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.

Daedalus of Crete is many things: The greatest architect in the world. The constructor of the Labyrinth that imprisoned the Minotaur. And the grieving father of Icarus, who plunged into the sea as father and son flew from the grasp of the tyrannical King Minos.

Now, Daedalus seeks to reunite with Icarus in the Underworld, even as he revisits his own memories of Crete, hoping to understand what went so terribly wrong at the end of his son's life. Daedalus will confront any terror to see Icarus again - whether it's the cruel punishments of Tartarus, the cunning Queen Persephone, or the insatiable ghost of the Minotaur.

But the truth, stalking Daedalus in the labyrinth of his own heart, might be too monstrous for him to bear.

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed Magazine, July 2017.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

When Selwyn, a farmer, is accused of murdering his rival, Farold, he is sealed in the village burial cave with Farold's moldering corpse to await starvation--or worse. Worse comes along quickly in the form of a witch who raises Farold from the dead.

Selwyn thought he disliked Farold when he was alive, but that was nothing compared to working by the dead man's side as they search for the real killer.

After their mother’s miscarriage, Lester and Gordon MacAuley were sent to Battle View Farm to stay with their grandmother for the summer. But the house on Battle View Farm has a haunting secret. As Grandma Vivian slowly slipped into madness, the brothers’ lives became entangled in mortal danger. That summer of terror left them scarred and plagued by the family’s dark secret.

Now, years later, the MacAuley brothers have returned with dreams of breathing new life into Battle View Farm. But living in the house on Battle View Farm, they are forced to face their past and solve the mystery that began generations ago. And to face the ghosts that still haunt their family’s legacy.

A legacy written in dead flies.

The new vampires in town are sinking their teeth into solving a murder...

Married odd couple Arthur and Sal are totally normal. They wear sunscreen, not because the sun can kill them, but because even the undead need a skincare regimen. They eat garlic whenever they want, though it gives Sal indigestion. They can talk to creatures of the night, but only the raccoons that rifle through their garbage. Really, they don't bite... except into delicious baked goods.

Ready to settle down and stay out of trouble, the two have opened a bed & breakfast in the idyllic, if not-so-paranormal-friendly, town of Trident Falls, Oregon. But trouble finds them when the mayor is discovered dead in their begonias with two puncture wounds in his neck. With the help of a werewolf barista, the elven town coroner, and a very human city manager, Arthur and Sal will need to prove they aren't literally out for blood by catching a killer...

Two murders have occurred on One One One, an artificial ecosystem created by the universe's dominant AIs to house several engineered species, including a violent, sentient race of sloth-like creatures. Under order from the Diplomatic Corps, Counselor Andrea Cort has come to this cylinder world where an indentured human community hangs suspended high above a poisoned, acid atmosphere. Her assignment is to choose a suitable homicide suspect from among those who have sold their futures to escape existences even worse than this one. And no matter where the trail leads her she must do nothing to implicate the hosts, who hold the power to obliterate humankind in an instant.

But Andrea Cort is not about to hold back in her hunt for a killer. For she has nothing to lose and harbors no love for her masters or fellow indentures. And she herself has felt the terrible exhilaration of taking life....

Toby Greene, a Clown Service agent, is running for his life. Pursued around the globe by the relentless Rain-Soaked Bride, to stop is to die. But section Chief August Shining has problems of his own. Under investigation by MI6 and at the mercy of a mysterious entity, he's on his own.

Things are going all too well in the city of Quaint. So well, in fact, that something has to be done. The zeal for goodness can be catastrophic, and no-one knows this better than Bauchelain and Korbal Broach, two stalwart champions of all things bad. For the innumerable citizens of Quaint, driven to neurotic distraction and overwhelmed with good living, desperation breeds nefarious bed-mates, and before long the two homicidal necromancers — and their beleaguered and substance-addled manservant, Emancipor Reese — find themselves ensnared in a scheme to bring goodness into disrepute, if not utter ruination. To Reese's bemusement, laudable motivations are, in a bizarre twist, uncharacteristically relevant to Master Bauchelain, although, of course, the payment of a chest filled with gold helps. Even so, sometimes, it turns out, one must bring down civilization... in the name of civilization.

Paranormal private eye. Grim reaper extraordinaire. Whatever. Charley Davidson is back! And she's drinking copious amounts of caffeine to stay awake because every time she closes her eyes she sees him: Reyes Farrow, the part-human, part-supermodel son of Satan. Yes, she did imprison him for all eternity, but come on. How is she supposed to solve a missing-persons case, deal with an ego-driven doctor, calm her curmudgeonly dad, and take on a motorcycle gang hell-bent on murder when the devil's son just won't give up on his plan of seduction... and revenge?

Humankind has escaped a dying Earth and set out to find a new home among the stars aboard an immense generation spaceship, affectionately named the Ark. Bryan Benson is the Ark's greatest living sports hero, enjoying retirement working as a detective in Avalon, his home module. The hours are good, the work is easy, and the perks can't be beat.

But when a crew member goes missing, Benson is thrust into the center of an ever-expanding web of deception, secrets, and violence that overturns everything he knows about living on the Ark and threatens everyone aboard. As the last remnants of humanity hurtle towards their salvation, Benson finds himself in a desperate race to unravel the conspiracy before a madman turns mankind's home into its tomb.

Against all odds, the Ark and her thirty-thousand survivors have reached Tau Ceti G to begin the long, arduous task of rebuilding human civilization. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Tau Ceti G's natives, the G'tel, are coming to grips with the sudden appearance of what many believe are their long-lost Gods.

But first contact between humans and G'tel goes catastrophically wrong, visiting death on both sides. Rumors swirl that the massacre was no accident. The Ark's greatest hero, Bryan Benson, takes on the mystery.

Partnered with native 'truth-digger' Kexx, and against both of their better judgment, Benson is thrust into the heart of an alien culture with no idea how to tell who wants to worship him from who wants him dead.

Together, Benson and Kexx will have to find enough common ground and trust to uncover a plot that threatens to plunge both of their peoples into an apocalyptic war that neither side can afford to fight.

A new generation comes of age eighteen years after humanity arrived on the colony planet Gaia. Now threats from both within and outside their Trident threaten everything they've built.

The discovery of an alien installation inside Gaia's moon, terrorist attacks, and the kidnap of a man's daughter stretch the community to its breaking point, but only two men stand a chance of solving all three mysteries before the makeshift planetary government shuts everything down.

Rudolf Sebestyen is missing, and Marianne Smalls is involved in an illicit affair with the shady Jonas Schmitt. Both cases converge when Dora Urban, Rudolf's beautiful and mysterious half-sister, and Lamont Smalls, Marianne's suspicious husband, hire Jack Mitchell, a hard-drinking, chain-smoking private investigator. Dora wants Jack to uncover what happened to her brother, while Lamont seeks proof of his wife's infidelity.

But Dora is a vampire, in a city teeming with creatures of the night.

As Jack dives deeper, he discovers that both cases are linked to vepratoga - a dangerous new drug spreading through Los Angeles. Twice as Dead is brimming with vampires, wizards, zombies and zombie dealers, the Central Avenue jazz scene, an exclusive after-hours club, adultery, a New England ghost who prefers Southern California's warmer clime, corrupt cops and politicians, spying rats, and a smart-mouthed talking cat.

When Jack's home is burned to the ground, the strands of his investigations culminate in a showdown at a tire factory, where even the reliefs on the walls are not what they seem. In this unique noirish urban fantasy set in postwar Los Angeles, Jack finds more adventure, danger, and romance than he ever imagined - and learns that success may come at too high a price.

For a century since the Convergence of Faerie and modern reality, the Ways between this world and the next have been closed. But now signs point to the chance that the veil may lift again.

Connor Grey has enough problems with a vengeful Queen of Faerie and the return of his old Guild partner. Add an occult string of murders, and it?s another case that just may kill him.

Daniel Faust's last heist ended with a betrayal, a bullet in his heart, and a plunge from a lonely back-country bridge. Now he's on life support, and the occult relic keeping him tethered to this world is counting down the last seconds to midnight.

That's the good news. The bad news is, he just woke up in hell.

Marooned, lost, and hunted in an endless city of the damned, Daniel is racing against time. If he can't make it back to his body before the clock runs out, he'll be trapped in the netherworld forever. A host of enemies stand in his way. Some are desperate to silence him. Others, ghosts etched in blood and gun-smoke, are hungry for payback. Hell is the one place where you can never outrun your past.

And in the land of the living, Daniel's family and crew gather to mount a desperate defense around his hospital bed as assassins close in from all sides. Survival will take a miracle, but this magician might have one last trick up his sleeve.

Egypt, 1912. In an alternate Cairo infused with the otherworldly, the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities investigate disturbances between the mortal and the (possibly) divine. What starts off as an odd suicide case for Special Investigator Fatma el-Sha'arawi leads her through the city's underbelly as she encounters rampaging ghouls, saucy assassins, clockwork angels, and plot that could unravel time itself.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

This extraordinary trilogy depicts a future gender war that crosses the boundaries of software, wetware, time, and reality itself in its imaginative leaps and bounds. Only love holds the future together in this tale of star-crossed teens whose transformations defy description or imagination.

To read this trilogy is to behold a strange new world, one unlike any other.

Two hellish years. That's how long it's been since the hurricanes flooded the Gulf Coast, and the dead rose up from the ruins. The cities were quarantined; the infected, contained. Any unlucky survivors were left to fend for themselves. One boatload of refugees manages to make it out alive - but one passenger carries the virus. Within weeks, the zombie epidemic spreads across the globe. Now, retired U.S. Marshal Ed Moore must lead a group of strangers to safety, searching for sanctuary from the dead. In the North Dakota Grasslands, bands of survivors converge upon a single outpost. Run by a self-appointed preacher of fierce conviction - and frightening beliefs - it may be humanity's only hope. But Ed Moore and the others refuse to enter a suicide pact. They'd rather stand and fight in the final battle against the zombies.

Laos, 1979: Dr Siri Paiboun, the twice retired ex-National Coroner of Laos, receives an unmarked package in the mail. Inside is a handwoven pha sin, a colorful traditional skirt worn in northern Laos. A lovely present, but who sent it to him, and why? And, more importantly, why is there a severed human finger stitched into the sin's lining?

Siri is convinced someone is trying to send him a message and won't let the matter rest until he's figured it out. He finagles a trip up north to the province where the sin was made, not realising he is embarking on a deadly scavenger hunt. Meanwhile, the northern Lao border is about to erupt into violence -- and Dr Siri and his entourage are walking right into the heart of the conflict.

The authoritative sequel to Bram Stoker's original horror classic.

A quarter of a century after Count Dracula "crumbled into dust," Quincey Harker-the son of Jonathan and Mina Harker-leaves law school to pursue a career on stage, only to stumble upon the troubled production of Dracula, directed and produced by Bram Stoker himself.

As the play plunges Quincey into the world of his parents' terrible secrets, death begins to stalk the original band of heroes that defeated Dracula a quarter-century ago. Could it be that the count survived and is now seeking revenge? Or is there another, far more sinister force at work whose relentless purpose is to destroy anything and anyone associated with Dracula, the most notorious vampire of all time?

WHEN GHOSTS TALK

SHE WILL LISTEN

Ropa dropped out of school to become a ghostalker - and they sure do love to talk. Now she speaks to Edinburgh's dead, carrying messages to those they left behind. A girl's gotta earn a living, and it seems harmless enough. Until, that is, the dead whisper that someone's bewitching children - leaving them husks, empty of joy and strength. It's on Ropa's patch, so she feels honor-bound to investigate. But what she learns will rock her world.

Ropa will dice with death as she calls on Zimbabwean magic and Scottish pragmatism to hunt down clues. And although underground Edinburgh hides a wealth of dark secrets, she also discovers an occult library, a magical mentor and some unexpected allies.

Yet as shadows lengthen, will the hunter become the hunted?

In the aftermath of his terrible war, Ender Wiggin disappeared, and a powerful voice arose: The Speaker for the Dead, who told the true story of the Bugger War.

Now, long years later, a second alien race has been discovered, but again the aliens' ways are strange and frightening... again, humans die. And it is only the Speaker for the Dead, who is also Ender Wiggin the Xenocide, who has the courage to confront the mystery... and the truth.

In a fort on the edge of civilization, an ancient evil has awoken

Ten years after the Demon War, the wounds of the Forest Kingdom are finally beginning to heal. Deep in the Darkwood, on the border between two long-feuding territories, a fort has been erected to keep the peace. But a month ago, the soldiers inside stopped speaking to the outside world. Have they come under attack, or is something more sinister at work?

Led by the adventure-hungry warrior Duncan MacNeil, a party of Rangers is sent to investigate. With a witch, a swordsman, and a powerful eight-fingered woman at his side, MacNeil steps into the deserted fort—and discovers a massacre. The gory scene suggests that the soldiers turned on one other, but the witch has an alternate theory. Beneath this newly built fort, she senses an ancient evil, a power older than the Kingdom itself, about to trap them in the dark.

THE OLD WORLD WILL DIE IN FLAMES...

Ireland, 1011 AD. The mortal kingdoms rise up against High King Brian Boru as they seek to wrest his crown from him. Yet the real struggle is between the two magical races of Ireland, the Fomorians and the Descendants, eternal enemies who both now seek dominion over the mortal world.

Gormflaith, queen of King Brian, remains unmasked as the powerful Fomorian she is. Gormflaith plans to establish control over Ireland and destroy the Descendants in one fell swoop... but she cannot do it alone.

The Descendants are divided, for not all their kind wish to dominate the mortals. Fódla, a Descendant who was once part of King Brian's inner circle, must use this division to thwart treacherous plots that have been long in the making -- even if it means sacrificing herself. But with other lives on the line, can Fódla reveal the evil in time?

As secret schemes come to deadly fruition, the only possible outcome is war. Ireland has bled red and often, but the coming clash will change the course of history for ever.

Keira, hired as Blighty Graveyard's new groundskeeper, lives surrounded by the dead. They watch her through the fog. They wordlessly cry out. They've been desperately waiting for help moving on?and only Keira can hear them. But not every restless spirit wants to be saved.

Sometimes the dead hate the living too much to find peace.

As Keira struggles to uncover the tangled histories of some of the graveyard's oldest denizens, danger seeps from the darkest edges of the forest. A vicious serial killer was interred among the trees decades before, his spirit twisted by his violent nature. He's furious. Ravenous. And when Keira unwittingly answers his call, she may just seal her fate as his final intended victim.

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

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

In a surprise attack that killed many of her dearest subjects, Hail Bristol, empress of Indrana, has been captured by the Shen -- the most ruthless and fearsome aliens humanity has ever encountered. As she plots her escape, the centuries-long war between her captors and the Farians, their mortal enemies and Indrana's oldest allies, finally comes to a head.

When her captors reveal a shocking vision of the future, Hail must make the unexpectedly difficult decision she's been avoiding: whether to back the Shen or the Farians.

Staying neutral is no longer an option. Will Hail fight? Or will she fall?

It's Hiccup's birthday, but that's not going to keep him from getting into trouble. To save his dragon, Toothless, from being banished, Hiccup must sneak into the Meathead Public Library and steal the Viking's most sacred book. But the Vikings see books as a dangerous influence, and keep them locked up and under heavy guard. To save his friend, Hiccup must brave the Hairy Scary Librarian and his dreadful army of Meathead Warriors and face off against the formidable Driller-Dragons. Will he make it out and live to see his next birthday?

Irritating Horseye!

Many worlds of the Humanx Commonwealth boasted of "natural wonders" but Horseye was truly unique -- the planet had the most spectacular river valley anywhere in the known universe and was home to three alien cultures.

The fascinating planet just cried out for proper study, and after months of impatient quarantine Etienne and Lyra Redolw had finally received permission to begin a voyage of exploration to the source fo the River Skar, a mere 12,000 kilometers Upriver.

Old hands at cracking new planets, the Redowls studied the aliens languages, took local guides, and provided for emergencies. But nothing could prepare them for the awesome treachery of the natives or the unbelievable natural obstacles. And not even the natives understood the planet's deepest secret...

It's a small change in our history: imagine that the Japanese made contact with the Aztec Empire. Instead of small-pox and Christianity, they brought an Imperial alliance, samurai ethics, and technology. By the time of these books, the Emperor in Mexico City rules not just the entire planet Earth, but a growing interplanetary Empire. But the Galaxy is not a hospitable place, and there are other powers, both new and very very old, who would stop the spread of the power in Anuhuac.

A weapon of the Old Ones, from the time of the First Sun, has been found in a region of space. It must be investigated, then tamed or destroyed to keep it from the hands of opposing powers. Gretchen Anderssen, freelance archeologist and specialist in First Sun artifacts, has been hired by her old mentor Green Hummingbird, agent of the Mirror Service, to join him in the study. They will be joined by old friends, and some old enemies as well.

A woman posing as a medium who can channel the spirit world comes face to face with the truth...

The Fogg River Seminary, a girls' school in a small Illinois town, is supposed to be just another stop on Maryse and Vasyl's endless travels. They've made lucrative use of Maryse's "foreign" looks in their melodramatic séance act--and an act is all it is. Then, during their performance, a blizzard sweeps in and cuts them off from town completely. In the freezing halls, there's a voice speaking the secrets of the dead, and Maryse has no choice but to listen... because this time, the voice is real.

After a career spying for Queen Victoria, James Asher enjoyed a quiet retirement until he met the vampire Don Simon, an immortal Spaniard who taught him about the secret society of bloodsucking undead.

Now, one of the vampires, the Earl of Ernchester, has turned his back on Britain. When Asher spots him boarding a train for Paris in the company of an Austrian spy, he springs into action. If the immortals can forge an alliance with England's enemies, then the Empire is doomed. Asher tails the Earl to Paris and across the continent, plunging into the heart of a terrifying conspiracy of the undead - with the fate of the British Empire at stake.

Those stories you hear? The ones about things that only come out at night? Things that feed on blood, feed on us? Got news for you: they're true. Only it's not like the movies or old man Stoker's storybook. It's worse. Especially if you happen to be one of them. Just ask Joe Pitt.

There's a shambler on the loose. Some fool who got himself infected with a flesh-eating bacteria is lurching around, trying to munch on folks' brains. Joe hates shamblers, but he's still the one who has to deal with them. That's just the kind of life he has. Except afterlife might be better word.

From the Battery to the Bronx, and from river to river, Manhattan is crawling with Vampyres. Joe is one of them, and he's not happy about it. Yeah, he gets to be stronger and faster than you, and he's tough as nails and hard to kill. But spending his nights trying to score a pint of blood to feed the Vyrus that's eating at him isn't his idea of a good time. And Joe doesn't make it any easier on himself. Going his own way, refusing to ally with the Clans that run the undead underside of Manhattan-it ain't easy. It's worse once he gets mixed up with the Coalition-the city's most powerful Clan-and finds himself searching for a poor little rich girl who's gone missing in Alphabet City.

Now the Coalition and the girl's high-society parents are breathing down his neck, anarchist Vampyres are pushing him around, and a crazy Vampyre cult is stalking him. No time to complain, though. Got to find that girl and kill that shambler before the whip comes down... and before the sun comes up.

Sell the cemetery?

Over their dead bodies...

Not many people can see the dead (not many would want to). Twelve-year-old Johnny Maxwell can. And he's got bad news for them: the council want to sell the cemetery as a building site. But the dead aren't going to take it lying down... especially since it's Halloween tomorrow.

Besides, they're beginning to find that life is a lot more fun than it was when they were... well... alive. Particularly if they break a few rules...

Two hundred years after Adron's Disaster, in which Dragaera City was accidentally reduced to an ocean of chaos by an experiment in wizardry gone wrong, the Empire isn't what it used to be. Deprived at a single blow of their Emperor, of the Orb that is the focus of the Empire's power, of their capital city with its Impe-rial bureaucracy, and of a great many of their late fellow citizens, the surviving Dragaerans have been limping through a long Interregnum, bereft even of the simple magic and sorcery they were accustomed to use in everyday life.

Now the descendants and successors of the great ad-venturers Khaavren, Pel, Aerich, and Tazendra are growing up in this seemingly diminished world, convinced, like their elders, that the age of adventures is over and nothing interesting will ever happen to them. They are, of course, wrong.

For even deprived of magic, Dragaerans fight, plot, and conspire as they breathe, and so do their still-powerful gods. The enemies of the Empire prowl at its edges, in-scrutable doings are up at Dzur Mountain... and, unexpectedly, a surviving Phoenix Heir, young Zerika, is discovered -- setting off a chain of swashbuckling events that will remake the world yet again.

Apache teen Lozen and her family are looking for a place of refuge from the despotic Ones who once held them captive and forced Lozen to hunt genetically engineered monsters. Lozen and her allies travel in search of a valley where she and her family once found refuge. But life is never easy in this post-apocalyptic world. When they finally reach the valley, they discover an unpleasant surprise awaiting them--and a merciless hunter following close behind.

Hally, their enigmatic Bigfoot friend, points them to another destination--a possible refuge. But can Lozen trust Hally? Relying on her wits and the growing powers that warn her when enemies are near, Lozen fights internal sickness to lead her band of refugees to freedom and safety. Alongside family, new friends, and Hussein, the handsome young man whose life she saved, Lozen forges a path through a barren land where new recombinant monsters lurk and the secrets of this new world will reveal themselves to her... whether she wants them to or not.

Kitty Norville, the country's only celebrity werewolf, thinks she's finally got her life sorted. Her radio show is as popular as ever, and she and her cute lawyer boyfriend are the alpha pair of Denver's werewolf pack. Now she and Ben plan to tie the knot human-style - by eloping to Vegas. And just to make things more fun, she's going to do her midnight radio show live and on television from Vegas. In between getting wed and going live on TV, she's also planning on sipping fru-fru drinks by the pool while she works on her tan. So what can possibly go wrong?
Well, their hotel is the venue for a werewolf-hating bounty hunter convention. Elsewhere on the Strip, an old-school magician might just be wielding the real thing. The vampire community is harbouring a dark secret . . . and the irresistibly sexy star of a deeply suspicious animal act is determined to seduce Kitty.
Sin City has never been so wild, and Kitty has never had to fight harder - to save not only her wedding, but her very life.

Marie Jenner is going home.

When Marie's slightly-more-than-boss, James Lavall, decides it is vital that he speak to her mother, face to face, about Marie and all her secrets, she follows him to Fort McMurray to make certain that he doesn't learn everything about her life before Edmonton.

What Marie doesn't realize is that her stalkery ex-boyfriend, Arnie Stillwell, has gone home, too. And he's managed to get himself killed, just about the time James rolled into town, making James "a person of interest" in the Stillwell murder investigation.

Marie's going to have to figure out who really killed Arnie to get James off. She's also going to have to figure out a safe way to move Arnie's spirit on to the next plane of existence, because the last thing she needs is for him to go all stalkery on her now that he's dead.

Murder can really put a kink in a Jenner family reunion.

The envelope was tied with three delicate silk ribbons: "One of the new recruits is not to be trusted..."

It's 1959 and a new killer haunts the streets of London, having baffled Scotland Yard. The newspapers call him The Florist because of the rose he brands on his victims. The police have turned yet again to the Inquirers at Miss Brickett's for assistance, and second-year Marion Lane is assigned the case.

But she's already dealing with a mystery of her own, having received an unsigned letter warning her that one of the three new recruits should not be trusted. She dismisses the letter at first, focusing on The Florist case, but her informer seems to be one step ahead, predicting what will happen before it does. But when a fellow second-year Inquirer is murdered, Marion takes matters into her own hands and must come face-to-face with her informer--who predicted the murder--to find out everything they know. Until then, no one at Miss Brickett's is safe and everyone is a suspect.

With brilliant twists and endless suspense, all set within the dazzling walls and hidden passageways of Miss Brickett's, Marion Lane and the Deadly Rose is a deliciously fun new historical mystery you won't be able to put down.

Songs of a Dreamer was Thomas Ligotti's first collection of supernatural horror stories. When originally published in 1985 by Harry Morris's Silver Scarab Press, the book was hardly noticed. In 1989, an expanded version appeared that garnered accolades from several quarters. Writing in the Washington Post, the celebrated science fiction and fantasy author Michael Swanwick extolled: "Put this volume on the shelf right between H. P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe. Where it belongs."

Contents:

• ix - Introduction (Songs of a Dead Dreamer) - (1985) - essay by Ramsey Campbell
• 3 - The Frolic - (1982) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 19 - Les Fleurs - (1981) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 28 - Alice's Last Adventure - (1985) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 49 - Dream of a Mannikin - (1982) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 66 - The Chymist - [The Nyctalops Trilogy - 1] - (1981) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 79 - Drink to Me Only with Labyrinthine Eyes - [The Nyctalops Trilogy - 2] - (1982) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 90 - Eye of the Lynx - [The Nyctalops Trilogy - 3] - (1983) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 100 - Notes on the Writing of Horror: A Story - (1985) - novelette by Thomas Ligotti
• 125 - The Christmas Eves of Aunt Elise: A Tale of Possession in Old Grosse Pointe - (1983) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 135 - The Lost Art of Twilight - (1986) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 155 - The Troubles of Dr. Thoss - (1985) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 168 - Masquerade of a Dead Sword: A Tragedie - (1986) - novelette by Thomas Ligotti (variant of Masquerade of a Dead Sword)
• 191 - Dr. Voke and Mr. Veech - (1983) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 202 - Professor Nobody's Little Lectures on Supernatural Horror - (1985) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 213 - Dr. Locrian's Asylum - (1987) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 224 - The Sect of the Idiot - [Azathoth] - (1988) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 236 - The Greater Festival of Masks - (1985) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 244 - The Music of the Moon - (1987) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 253 - The Journal of J. P. Drapeau - (1987) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 260 - Vastarien - (1987) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti

MAKING THE BEST OF A BAD SITUATION!

In an academy for summoners, students combine impressive stores of magical energy with artful incantations to usher legends, great and small, onto the battlefield. Feil Fonaf, an eighteen-year-old son to a poor farmer, may have had a rougher upbringing than his more affluent peers, but he's here to prove he deserves his spot at the academy! As luck would have it, his counterpart summon winds up being the legendary god-slaying beast, Pandora! There's just one problem...

Outside the classroom walls the Rising was spreading, but inside was a carefully protected sanctuary against the growing threat.

Or so the teachers and students thought.

Manhattan's night life just got weirder...

It starts as a simple job -- but simple jobs, when you're dealing with the magical world, often end up anything but.

As a Retriever, Wren Valere specializes in finding things gone missing -- and then bringing them back, no questions asked. Normally her job is stimulating, challenging and only a little bit dangerous. But every once in a while...

Case in point: A cornerstone containing a spell is stolen and there's a magical complication. (Isn't there always?) Wren's unique abilities aren't enough to lay this particular case to rest, so she turns to some friends: a demon (minor), a mage who has lost his mind, and a few others, including Sergei, her business partner (and maybe a bit more?).

Sometimes what a woman has to do to get the job done is enough to give even Wren nightmares....

In the tradition of The Night Circus and A Discovery of Witches, The Hawley Book of the Dead is the kind of novel that makes you believe that magic really exists.

An old house surrounded by acres of forest.

A place of secrets, mysteries and magic.

This is where Reve Dyer hopes to keep herself and her children safe.

But a mysterious figure has haunted Reve for over a decade. And now Reve knows that this person is on her trail again.

In Hawley, where the magic of her ancestors reigns, Reve must unlock the secrets of the Hawley Book of the Dead before it's too late...

As a null, Scarlett Bernard possesses a rare ability to counteract the supernatural by instantly neutralizing spells and magical forces. For years she has used her gift to scrub crime scenes of any magical traces, helping the powerful paranormal communities of Los Angeles stay hidden. But after LAPD detective Jesse Cruz discovered Scarlett's secret, he made a bargain with her: solve a particularly grisly murder case, and he would stay silent about the city's unearthly underworld.

Now two dead witches are found a few days before Christmas, and Scarlett is once again strong-armed into assisting the investigation. She soon finds a connection between the murders and her own former mentor, Olivia, a null who mysteriously turned into a vampire and who harbors her own sinister agenda. Now Scarlett must revisit her painful past to find Olivia--unless the blood-drenched present claims her life first.

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.

A series of grisly murders rocks London. At each location, only a jumble of bones remains of the deceased, along with a bizarre sphere covered in strange symbols. The son of the latest victim seeks the help of Sherlock Holmes and his former partner, Dr. John Watson. They discover the common thread tying together the murders. Bizarre geometries, based on ancient schematics, enable otherworldly creatures to enter our dimension, seeking to wreak havoc and destruction. The persons responsible are gaining so much power that even Holmes's greatest enemy fears them - to the point that he seeks an unholy alliance.

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

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

Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde have returned to their lives in London after their adventures in the American West. Bram is managing a theatre and Oscar is rising to fame and planning his upcoming wedding when they are once again called upon to battle supernatural evil.

Grief-crazed scientist Victor Mueller needs Bram's unusual blood for his mad quest to bring his dead wife back to life, and he'll resort to kidnapping to get it. Meanwhile, a young medium named Lorna Bow runs fake séances in London under the thumb of an abusive uncle. When her mother Endora returns, Lorna learns the truth: they come from a long line of witches, and soon Endora has awakened Lorna's dormant powers.

When the scientist and the witches combine forces, all Hell breaks loose. Long-dead souls find themselves back in the land of the living, and some of them have scores to settle with our heroes. But as Mueller's ambition and her mother's desire for vengeance against the men who imprisoned her become clear, Lorna soon finds herself questioning the morality of their work.

Bram and Oscar must team up with American secret agent Cora Chase to protect all they hold dear. Only a mission into the Land of the Dead can stop Mueller and Endora from bringing back more souls.

Bram's wife Florence must call on the monster-fighting skills she honed in America, and even Oscar's bride Constance has to face new challenges as she learns how the supernatural has shaped her own history.

In an adventure that spans continents -- and even other worlds -- they confront old enemies and unknown dangers. Teaming up with old friends Teddy Roosevelt and Richard Burton and new allies like Arthur Conan Doyle and Nicola Tesla, they too must harness both science and magic to protect our world from intruders from the Land of the Dead.

In the frigid wasteland of the north, Raif Sevrance, Watcher of the Dead, has endured many trials to lay claim to the renowned sword known as Loss. But the price of wielding the legendary weapon is high, and Raif is unsure if he is willing to pay it. Ash Marsh, Daughter of the Sull, still struggles to come to terms with her heritage, and the knowledge that the Watcher, armed with Loss, could be the one who will save the Sull, or end them. Raina Blackhail, widow of a murdered ruler and wife of his brutal successor, has seen her clan disgraced and has, herself, taken up the mantle of chief. But there are enemies both beyond her gates and within. And in the murky swamps of the Stillwater, two children will learn the secrets of the Marsh clan. Secrets so old they threaten everything.

A gripping and atmospheric retelling of Edgar Allan Poe's classic "The Fall of the House of Usher."

When Alex Easton, a retired soldier, receives word that their childhood friend Madeline Usher is dying, they race to the ancestral home of the Ushers in the remote countryside of Ruritania.

What they find there is a nightmare of fungal growths and possessed wildlife, surrounding a dark, pulsing lake. Madeline sleepwalks and speaks in strange voices at night, and her brother Roderick is consumed with a mysterious malady of the nerves.

Aided by a redoubtable British mycologist and a baffled American doctor, Alex must unravel the secret of the House of Usher before it consumes them all.

There's no formal training for battlefield salvage. You just have to pick things up as you go along. Swords, armour, arrows - and the bodies, of course.

Over the years, Saevus Corax has picked up a lot of things. Some of them have made him decent money, others have brought nothing but trouble. But it's a living, and somebody has to deal with the dead.

Something else that Saevus has buried is his past. Unfortunately, he didn't quite succeed.

A god has died, and it's up to Tara, first-year associate in the international necromantic firm of Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao, to bring Him back to life before His city falls apart.

Her client is Kos, recently deceased fire god of the city of Alt Coulumb. Without Him, the metropolis's steam generators will shut down, its trains will cease running, and its four million citizens will riot.

Tara's job: resurrect Kos before chaos sets in. Her only help: Abelard, a chain-smoking priest of the dead god, who's having an understandable crisis of faith.

When Tara and Abelard discover that Kos was murdered, they have to make a case in Alt Coulumb's courts -- and their quest for the truth endangers their partnership, their lives, and Alt Coulumb's slim hope of survival.

When the story begins without its hero

Kimihiko Kimizuka has always been a magnet for trouble and intrigue. For as long as he can remember, he's been stumbling across murder scenes or receiving mysterious attache cases to transport. When he met Siesta, a brilliant detective fighting a secret war against an organization of pseudohumans, he couldn't resist the call to become her assistant and join her on an epic journey across the world... Until a year ago, that is. Now he's returned to a life that is normal and tepid by comparison, knowing the adventure must be over. After all, the detective is already dead.

WHO WERE YOU TO HER? WHO WAS SHE TO YOU?

While on an outing one day, Kimihiko Kimizuka and his three friends are kidnapped by... Siesta herself?! But they soon learn there's more to the story as she reveals the long-forgotten truth about Siesta's death. Will this be the clue that finally unlocks the secrets of Kimihiko's past?

What's wrong with this story?

After being kidnapped, Kimizuka, Natsunagi, Saikawa, and Charlie have learned the truth about Siesta's death... or have they? A girl who looks just like the deceased appears and informs them that the footage they've been investigating contains an error. As they hunt for an answer to a mystery that even Siesta couldn't uncover, the group will learn what it truly means to inherit the legacy of an ace detective. Though the detective may already be dead and the truth of her passing revealed, it's still too early for the epilogue...

Once the assistant to a great detective, Kimihiko Kimizuka took on a challenge Siesta bequeathed to him after her death and arrived at a conclusion that surpassed his wildest expectations. To bring back the great detective--the stuff of miracles--Kimihiko and Natsunagi fly to London yet again to obtain evidence that can bring down Seed. On the flight there, however, he hears the same words as he did four years ago: "Is there a detective on the plane?"

We won't let you die again!

Reunited with Siesta, Kimihiko is pulled back into action as assistant to the Ace Detective. Together, the two face off against Seed again and, with a little extra help, defeat him. Although that particular crisis may be over, the journey to awaken Natsunagi continues. In search of clues for how to save her, Siesta and Kimihiko travel to New York City. However, instead of answers, they find trouble brewing with the Phantom Thief-and worst of all, Siesta disappears!

Siesta and Kimihiko's first meeting did not take place during that fateful plane hijacking but rather four years earlier, when the Federation Government tasked Siesta with locating a spy in Japan. During her undercover investigation, she happened upon her future assistant, who had a connection with the spy she was looking for. With Kimihiko as her only lead, she enlisted his help in the search. But Siesta hid her identity with constant disguises, so unbeknownst to Kimihiko, he had already met the Ace Detective. Finally, the story of their true encounter--and the reason behind Siesta's invitation to Kimihiko on that day in the sky--is revealed in this prequel!

The second act is about to begin. The adventure of the detective and her assistant began ten thousand meters above the earth. They helped clients, solved cases, fought powerful enemies, and traveled all over the world--and then the detective died. The story should have ended there. But a year later, one girl's passion set it in motion again. After many battles and sacrifices, a miracle was granted. Now that it's all over, Kimihiko Kimizuka is basking in the ordinary life that comes afterward. (Am I okay with that, you ask? Sure. It's not like I'm causing trouble for anybody. I mean, it's true, isn't it? The detective is already--)

"Let's go on a journey to unlock the world's secrets."

Kimihiko Kimizuka was once the assistant to two Ace Detectives, and after achieving a miracle, the sequel to the story was ordinary life. The Ritual of Sacred Return was supposed to be the moment world peace was achieved--but instead, it was discovered that something was wrong with the memories of the world. As the search for the truth begins, it seems Kimihiko's memories of his brief but extraordinary adventure with another Tuner, Rill, may hold the key...

"Let me tell you the story of a man who lived and fought through each and every day."

With the world in peril once again, Kimihiko Kimizuka returns to his role as the Ace Detective's assistant and sets out on a journey to recover the lost memories of humanity. Using the Sacred Relic discovered by the Oracle, he investigates a past global crisis with the Vampire, Scarlet, at the very heart of it. But as Kimihiko delves deeper, harrowing truths once beyond his reach begin to bubble to the surface...

The proxy detective is living her dream.

All Nagisa Natsunagi wanted was to be a regular high schooler, and right now, that's all she is. The most special thing about her is that she was too sick to come to school for a long time--but that's all in the past now thanks to a successful heart transplant. At long last, she's finally living the life she always wished for! Still, she can't help wondering about her donor, and there's a boy in town who can solve any case. Maybe he can help?

It's a tough life for witch Rachel Morgan, sexy, independent bounty hunter, prowling the darkest shadows of downtown Cincinnati for criminal creatures of the night. She can handle the leather-clad vamps and even tangle with a cunning demon or two. But a serial killer who feeds on the experts in the most dangerous kind of black magic is definitely pressing the limits. Confronting an ancient, implacable evil is more than just child's play -- and this time, Rachel will be lucky to escape with her very soul.

There's no witch in Cincinnati tougher, sexier, or more screwed up than bounty hunter Rachel Morgan, who's already put her love life and her soul in dire jeopardy through her determined efforts to bring criminal night creatures to justice.

Between "runs," she has her hands full fending off the attentions of her blood-drinking partner, keeping a deadly secret from her backup, and resisting a hot new vamp suitor.

Rachel must also take a stand in the war that's raging in the city's underworld, since she helped put away its former vampire kingpin -- and made a deal with a powerful demon to do so that could cost her an eternity of pain, torment, and degradation.

And now her dark "master" is coming to collect his due.

The galaxy is burning. The Emperor's loyal primarchs prepare to do battle with Warmaster Horus and his turncoat Legions on the black sand of Isstvan. Such dark times herald new and yet more terrible things still to come, and when Astropath Kai Zulane unwittingly learns a secret that threatens to tip the balance of the war, he is forced to flee for his life. Alongside a mysterious band of renegades, he plunges into the deadly underworld of Terra itself, hunted like a criminal by those he once trusted. In the face of betrayal, Kai must decide where his own loyalties lie and whether some truths should be buried forever.

Labrys Town, home to a million humans cut off from the rest of the universe, has been invaded. Those who protected it have been deposed.

The Relic Guild are scattered across the worlds of the Aelfir. Many of them are dead or dying. The Genii control everything. The war is almost over.

Clara, a young woman barely able to control her werewolf side, has seen her friends and mentors killed in front of her. She is the last hope for Labrys Town.

But someone else is watching...

The dramatic conclusion to the award-nominated fantasy trilogy which began with THE RELIC GUILD.

In this sequel to Pinto's debut fantasy, The Chosen, Carnelian, the son of He-who-goes-before, and Osidian, the new God Emperor elect, leave the safety of Osrakum only to fall into the hands of plainsmen raiders. When Carnelian helps the plainsmen evade capture, he wins sanctuary for both himself and the by-now-catatonic Osidian. They journey to the tribe's home in the Earthsky, where Carnelian soon finds himself enjoying life. Osidian, however, burns with desire to return to Osrakum and wreak vengeance on his enemies.

Dominic Sheldrake has never forgotten his childhood in fifties Liverpool or the talk an old boy of his grammar school gave about the First World War. When his history teacher took the class on a field trip to France it promised to be an adventure, not the first of a series of glimpses of what lay in wait for the world. Soon Dominic would learn that a neighbour was involved in practices far older and darker than spiritualism, and stumble on a secret journal that hinted at the occult nature of the universe. How could he and his friends Roberta and Jim stop what was growing under a church in the midst of the results of the blitz? Dominic used to write tales of their exploits, but what they face now could reduce any adult to less than a child...

The end times have come, but it's not too late for a hero to strike back, in the grimdark fantasy sequel to The Last Sacrifice and Fallen Gods.

Brogan McTyre started a war with the gods, and he's going to end it. Raging gods have laid waste to the Five Kingdoms. Only Torema remains, swollen with millions of refugees. Their last hope lies in fleeing by sea, but as storms tear at the coast, even King Opar can't muster enough ships for them all. Brogan and his warriors must fight the He-Kisshi to reach the Gateway, the sole portal for gods to enter the mortal world - and the only place where they can be killed. But the forces of creation have been unleashed, and they'll destroy the world to reshape it.

For once, Joanne Walker's not out to save the world. She's come to terms with the host of shamanic powers she's been given, her job as a police detective has been relatively calm, and she's got a love life for the first time in memory. Not bad for a woman who started out the year mostly dead.

But it's Halloween, and the undead have just crashed Joanne's party.

Now, with her mentor Coyote still missing, she has to figure out how to break the spell that has let the ghosts, zombies and even the Wild Hunt come back. Unfortunately, there's no shamanic handbook explaining how to deal with the walking dead. And if they have anything to say about it which they do no one's getting out of there alive.

When the city sleeps, the dead start to walk...

Something has sealed off Cardiff, and living corpses are stalking the streets, leaving a trail of half-eaten bodies. Animals are butchered. A young couple in their car never reach their home. A stolen yacht is brought back to shore, carrying only human remains. And a couple of girls heading back from the pub watch the mysterious drivers of a big black SUV take over a crime scene.

Torchwood have to deal with the intangible barrier surrounding Cardiff, and some unidentified space debris that seems to be regenerating itself. Plus, of course, the all-night zombie horror show.

Not that they really believe in zombies.

In this pulse-pounding sequel to Dying Is My Business, Trent, a man who can't stay dead or retain his memories, tries to uncover his connection to a deadly doomsday cult bent on destroying NYC.

A brutal murder in Greenwich Village puts Trent and the Five-Pointed Star on the trail of Erickson Arkwright, the last surviving member of a doomsday cult. Back in the day, the Aeternis Tenebris cult thought the world would end on New Year's Eve of 2000. When it didn't, they decided to end it themselves by summoning Nahash-Dred, a powerful, terrifying demon known as the Destroyer of Worlds. But something went wrong. The demon massacred the cult, leaving Arkwright the sole survivor.

Now, hiding somewhere in New York City with a new identity, Arkwright plans to summon the demon again and finish the job he started over a decade ago. As Trent rushes to locate a long-lost magical artifact that may be the only way to stop him, the clues begin to mount... Trent's past and Arkwright's might be linked somehow. And if they are, it means the truth of who Trent really is may lie buried in the twisted mind of a madman.

When a floating city becomes the target of a rash of vampire attacks, only one man can restore the oasis. "The City," a tiny metropolis of a few hundred sheltered citizens floating serenely on a seemingly random course a few feet above the ground, has long been thought safe from the predation of marauding monsters. It seemed like a paradise. A paradise shattered when an invasion of apparent vampires threatens the small haven. While the Vampire Hunter known only as "D" struggles to exterminate the scourge, a former denizen of the city, the attractive Raleigh Knight, and the brash John M. Brassalli Pluto VIII seize control of the city lurching it onto a new and deadly course. D's travails are just beginning.

Anthology of fantasy stories set in Games Workshop's Warhammer universe

Even in Failure...

The Heart of Osiris has been stolen, all but one of his Eset-a cultists have been murdered , and his prey has escaped. Nicholas Sforza - an undying mummy resurrected by the power of Osiris - has failed in his righteous dury to Ma'at.

All but one of her fellow hunters are dead, her relationship with her best friend is a shambles, and the monster who's responsible has disappeared. Thea Ghandour - a hunter imbued by a mysterious force represented by beings known only as "the Messengers" - is watching her life fall apart all around her.

...One May Still Find Redemption

Yet the one responsible for all this turmoil is not satisfied, Maxwell Carpenter, a rotting horror that will not die has left a trail of terror and destruction in his wake as he heads inexorably toward the Lands of Faith with the ancient prize that he has stolen. Driven to once again taste the life that was stolen from him, he leads a chase to Egypt, where he hopes to unlock the secrets of Osiris' power. The race to this ancient land will tie the fates of these three souls together as the epic year of the Scarab trilogy draws to its stunning conclusion.