Classic Literature Dark

Deep in the primeval rainforest of Washington state's Olympic Peninsula, the skeletal remains of a murdered man are discovered. And a strange, unsettling tale begins to unfold, for forensic anthropologist Gideon Oliver determines that the murder weapon was a primitive bone spear of a type not seen for the last 10,000 years. And whoever - or whatever - hurled it did so with seemingly superhuman force. Bigfoot "sightings" immediately crop up, but Gideon is not buying them.

As a cassandra sangue, or blood prophet, Meg Corbyn can see the future when her skin is cut - a gift that feels more like a curse. Meg's Controller keeps her enslaved so he can have full access to her visions. But when she escapes, the only safe place Meg can hide is at the Lakeside Courtyard - a business district operated by the Others. Shape-shifter Simon Wolfgard is reluctant to hire the stranger who inquires about the Human Liaison job.

Bailey Monzac has just graduated college and is heading to her parents' ranch for the summer when dragons invade. Like something out of her worst nightmare, the fire-breathing beasts rain down chaos and devastation on unsuspecting human populations. One minute Bailey's planning her future; the next she's merely trying to survive. But it isn't long before she discovers she's different from the people around her - the dragons' destructive flames don't affect her.

Valerius isn't a popular Dark-Hunter - he's a Roman, which means that the largely Greek Hunters have a major grudge against him and his civilization for superceding them. So it serves him right when he runs into Tabitha Devereaux. She's sassy, sexy, and completely unwilling to take him seriously. (Not to mention that she's the twin sister of the wife of former Dark-Hunter Kyrian - Val's mortal enemy.) What Tabitha does take seriously is hunting and killing vampires....

A talent for magic runs like fire through the blood of Dalamar Argent. Yet he is only a servant in the house of an elvish lord, not worthy of the High Art of Sorcery and denied all but the most grudging teaching.

As war simmers on the borders of Silvanesti, Dalamar will find a way to learn his art. His quest will take him along dark paths toward an awesome destiny.

Everyone loves Mathias. Naturally, when he discovers it’s his destiny to save the world, he dives in headfirst, pulling his best friend, Aaslo, along for the ride. However, saving the world isn’t as easy, or exciting, as it sounds in the stories. The going gets rough, and folks start to believe their best chance for survival is to surrender to the forces of evil, which isn’t how the prophecy goes. At all. As the list of allies grows thin and the friends find themselves staring death in the face, they must decide how to become the heroes they were destined to be.

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

Low-life writer and unrepentant alcoholic Henry Chinaski was born to survive. After decades of slacking off at low-paying dead-end jobs, blowing his cash on booze and women, and scrimping by in flea-bitten apartments, Chinaski sees his poetic star rising at last. Now, at 50, he is reveling in his sudden rock-star life, running three hundred hangovers a year, and maintaining a sex life that would cripple Casanova.

There are ghost towns in the world - places where the humans were annihilated in retaliation for the slaughter of the shape-shifting Others. One of those places is Bennett, a town at the Northern end of the Elder Hills - a town surrounded by the wild country. Now, efforts are being made to resettle Bennett as a community where humans and Others live and work together. But as they reopen the stores and the professional offices and start to make lives for themselves, the town of Bennett attracts the attention of other humans looking for profit.

Once a simple student, Karigan G'ladheon finds herself in a world of deadly danger and complex magic, compelled by forces she cannot understand, when she becomes a Green Rider-one of the magical messengers of the king. Forced to accept a fate she never would have chosen, she attempts to return to her life as the daughter of a wealthy merchant, but the magic in her blood is too strong. Pursued by the ghost of the legendary First Rider, she rejoins the Green Riders to confront an ancient evil.

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

My name is Nate Temple, and I’m secretly a wizard. I ride a foul-mouthed unicorn, I drink with Achilles, and I’m pals with the Four Horsemen. I’ve even cow-tipped the Minotaur. I understand the theory of following the rules...I’m just not very good at the application. Because rules were meant to be broken, and St. Louis has a bit of a supernatural infestation these days. Someone should probably be keeping an eye on these things -and probably an eye on me, too. Before I blow up another building...or three.

Sasha Samokhina meets the mysterious Farit Kozhennikov under the most peculiar circumstances. The teenage girl is powerless to refuse when this strange and unusual man with an air of the sinister directs her to perform a task with potentially scandalous consequences. He rewards her effort with a strange golden coin. As the days progress, Sasha carries out other acts for which she receives more coins from Kozhennikov. As summer ends, her domineering mentor directs her to move to a remote village and use her gold to enter the Institute of Special Technologies.

From his penthouse lair high above Manhattan, Dageus looks out over a glittering city that calls to the darkness within him. A 16th-century Scot trapped between worlds, he is fighting a losing battle with the 13 Druids who possess his soul, dooming him to an eternity of sexual pursuit. When Chloe Zanders, student of antiquities, is drawn into his world, she finds the insatiable alpha male an irresistible lure.

Published in rapid succession in the middle 1930s, these two books shocked European literature and world consciousness. Nominally fiction but more rightly called "creative confessions," they told of the author's childhood in excoriating Paris slums, of service in the mud wastes of World War I and African jungles. Mixing unmitigated despair with Gargantuan comedy, they also created a new style, in which invective and obscenity were laced with phrases of unforgettable poetry. Celine's influence revolutionized the contemporary approach to fiction.

With a ragged peace in place, demons burn farmlands, violent Reivers roam the wilds and plague has spread beyond the Black Meadows. The country is on its knees. In a society that fears and shuns him, Aranok is the first magically-skilled draoidh to be named King's Envoy. Now, charged with restoring an exiled foreign queen to her throne, he leads a group of strangers across the ravaged country. But at every step, a new mystery complicates their mission.

Magic is the key...but will it save them, or consume them? For Natalia, there is no choice. Trained as a battle mage, she has the potential to be the most powerful spellcaster the family has ever produced. Yet their price is too high. Meanwhile, Athgar's life is about to change forever. On the day his village is burned to the ground, his magical potential is released by the very fire that nearly consumed him. He is driven by revenge until he learns he may not be the only survivor.

The Knights of the Gabala were legendary protectors of the Nine Duchies - until they disappeared through a demon-haunted gateway between worlds. Manannan, the Coward Knight, held back. Now he lives in torment. Yet war is coming to the Duchies - and with it Manannan's chance for redemption. But to regain his honour and save his land, he will have to confront his deepest fear. He must ride through the gateway and seek out his lost companions in the unknown world beyond. And the secret he will learn there will tear his soul apart.

Elorion has just finished a VR gaming session to find a monster waiting for him. With 19 other students who have also been kidnapped, he is now subject to the whims of a thousand year old succubus, and he must survive deep under the Earth in the lost realm of the Underworld. Gifted with the ability to use magic and advance in power, he is given an ultimatum: Level up or die!

Moon, Jade, and other favorites from the Indigo Cloud Court return with two new novellas from Martha Wells, who continues to enthusiastically ignore genre conventions in her exploration of the fascinating world of the Raksura. Her novellas and short stories contain all the elements fans have come to love from the Raksura books: courtly intrigue and politics, unfolding mysteries that reveal an increasingly strange wider world, and threats both mundane and magical.