Classic Literature Dark

I am not the sort of person about whom stories are told.And so begins Elise Dalriss's story. When she hears her great-granddaughter recount a minstrel's tale about a beautiful princess asleep in a tower, it pushes open a door to the past, a door Elise has long kept locked. For Elise was the companion to the real princess who slumbered-and she is the only one left who knows what actually happened so many years ago. Her story unveils a labyrinth where secrets connect to an inconceivable evil. As only Elise understands all too well, the truth is no fairy tale...

Lannick deVeers used to be somebody. A hero, even. Then, he ran afoul of the kingdom's most powerful general and the cost he paid was nearly too much to bear. In the years that followed, his grief turned him into a shadow of his former self, and he spent his days drowning his regrets in tankards of ale. But now an unexpected encounter casts Lannick upon an unlikely path to revenge. If he can just find the strength to overcome the many mistakes of his past, he can seize the chance to become a hero once more.

After grueling two years of slavery under the dread Gorgon Euryale, Shannon has led her friends on a magical escape from Gray Downs, the haunt of the Devourer. Suffering losses during the escape, they hope for better times. However, the Ten Tears find the future bleak, as the portal Dark Prayer drops the young mages into the middle of the Dancing Bay. There begins a leg in their journey to find the Eye of Hel.

Rathen, a former Captain in King Delvant's army, is approached by the emissaries of a powerful lord to lead a team of fighters, healers, and mages to dispel brigands from his lands. Rathen quickly recruits his best friend Bulo, an ex-gladiator and landlord of the local tavern, to assist him. The two join other members of the group and begin to hear stories of magical creatures and numerous dead in the land they are supposed to cleanse. Despite this, they head for Ghrakus Castle.

I haven’t been feeling like myself lately, whoever that is. I haven’t felt like Parker for a long while. There are these moments where I'm terrified of the dark thoughts that plague me, the haunting memories of bright white light followed by excruciating pain. Sometimes when I close my eyes, I can almost imagine I’d lived a different life. In another realm filled with magic and prophecies. It can't be real. My delusions are what put me in the mental institution in the first place. Still, I can't shake the thought that there's something I'm missing.

The gods are dead. Their age-old reign destroyed by sorcery and war. A young queen must steer her people through the wreckage left behind. Queen Ariane trusts her dreams, so listens when a sorceress calls out to her from the void. Ysaren warns the queen must find her missing cousin, Lord Tamersane who vanished after the war. Feared lost in the hostile City of the Clouds. He alone has the strength to wield the legendary bow of Kerasheva against the power-crazed emperor of Ptarni.

Big, blue, and ugly. Who says a troll can’t be the hero? Chad’s 30-day sentence may be over, but his trolling has just begun. Forsaking his old ways, he fully embraces a future as Chod, the hero of the forest trolls. But life in Isle of Mythos isn’t easy for the barbarian summoner. Chod has angered more than one felon on his quest to save his people from extinction, and they’ve sworn vengeance. With a target on his back, Chod is about to find out how difficult the world can be for a hero that looks like a monster.

Monsters are real, and Hank Jensen has met some of the worst the multiverse has to offer. As a result, he bears the curse of a hateful, malignant god - a horrid disease that has disabled him. Hank fought demons, dragons, and mythical beings to rescue his wife and son, but the battle left the family trapped in the realm of the Isir. As his dark curse continues to ravage his body, Hank, his family, and his Isir friends must travel to an ancient, faraway place - the Rooms of Ruin - to reopen the pathways that connect the two worlds.

Ernestine “Ernie” Terwilliger never intended to live among the Immortal Dealers, much less to be party to an ongoing battle where the fate of humanity is in the draw of a card. And the stakes have gotten only higher now that a shady new Forger has been crowned. Virginia may be in charge of creating the chaos that makes the universe tick, but her assignments have been noble - each one in the aid of strangers. But when Ernie discovers Virginia’s true purpose, she realizes it’s going to take an entirely new kind of play to stop her.

The world needs a hero, but all it got is Breed. Leaving the Empire to face the wrath of an angry demon and its infernal hordes, Breed takes a ship and flees to Shen. With pockets full of gold, the Hammer of the North, a crate of whiskey and a conscience unburdened by guilt, life doesn't get any better, does it? Well, yes, it does - but it gets a lot worse first. No matter how fast Breed runs, trouble is never far behind. Charged by an ancient power to find a way to stop Shallunsard the demon, Breed is thrust from one world into another.

Three long years have passed since Anna, First of Tomas, survived the purge in Malijad after being forced to use her scribe sigils to create an army of immortals. Safely ensconced in the shelter of the Nest, a sanctuary woven by one of her young allies, Anna spends her days tutoring the gifted yet traumatized scribe, Ramyi, and coming to terms with her growing attachment to an expatriate soldier in her company. Away from her refuge, war drums continue to beat. Thwarted in her efforts to locate the elusive tracker and bring him to justice, Anna turns to the state of Nahora for help.

Trapped between the real world and the lands of dream, John Cassidy is a WWI fighter pilot with no memory of his past. He may not even be a real person. Rescued from a dream by a mysterious airship captain, Cassidy is thrown into a chaos he can't begin to fathom. Forced to flee Armada agents, bounty hunters, and the demons of his past, he searches for a meaning to life and the man who dreamed him in the first place.

The Red Swords came with the sunrise and took everything Shawna Llewan held dear. Her family massacred, her home destroyed, she escapes with nothing but her mother’s heirloom and the desire for vengeance. When she’s found by Dormael, a Warlock of the Conclave, she learns that her mother’s keepsake - the very reason her family was killed - holds the power to unleash boundless destruction.

In modern America, two soldiers will fight their way through the magical legacies of Poe and Hawthorne to destroy an undying evil - if they don't kill each other first. US Army Captain Dale Morton is a magician soldier - a "craftsman." After a black-ops mission gone wrong, Dale is cursed by a Persian sorcerer and haunted by his good and evil ancestors. Major Michael Endicott, a Puritan craftsman, finds gruesome evidence that the evil Mortons, formerly led by the twins Roderick and Madeline, have returned, and that Dale might be one of them.

If Asher Hearst had a superpower, it would have to be his ability to take a punch, laugh it off, and keep on swinging. So yeah, immortality comes with a few perks. As a college student slash small-time fixer, he's about to take a job that's best left to the pros. A proposition by a dryad to save witches from the Inquisition is a first, but he isn't one to balk when the odds are stacked against him. Especially not while he's drinking on someone else's dime.

When a visit from the elusive Everest Sinclair brings more treachery than they could have predicted, Blue knows she must protect both her Vemreaux family and her Wayward family, no matter the cost.

As half-angel Willow battles her parasitic otherworldly kin, romance and tension heat up to a climactic series finale. In the devastated remains of the world, millions now live in Edens provided by the angels that have all but enslaved the human race. As mastermind Raziel's stranglehold on humanity tightens, Willow, Alex, and the rest of the team race to recruit new Angel Killers and form a line of defense. But then a shattering revelation sends Alex on a doomed journey, leaving Willow and Seb hanging in the balance.

Fifty-One Tales is a collection of fantasy short stories by Irish writer Lord Dunsany, a major influence on J. R. R. Tolkien, H. P. Lovecraft, Ursula K. Le Guin and others. Each story is a short vignette, a single moment of strangeness or horror in the face of death.

Rowen Locke has won the battle. But from the shadows comes an ancient enemy - a calculating and merciless foe who has been waiting centuries for the chance to strike. Despite all he has already suffered and sacrificed, Rowen finds himself mired in a war bigger and more terrible than anything he could have imagined. The world's only hope lies in Knightswrath, whose hard-won powers he has only begun to understand, let alone control.

The lifestyles, careers, romances, and peccadillos of various British intellectuals, scientists, and artists are dealt with - often with hilarity and sometimes with dark comedy and sophisticated banter. All of this is set off by the ingenious idea of self-inflating pants!