Dark Ages Fiction

Seven years ago, Jade and Raven witnessed their father's brutal murder. The killer has returned, and he will stop at nothing to find the power that the Gray family has hidden. Crushed between a nest of vampires and their ancient enemy, the sisters sometimes struggle just to take their next breath. As Elementals just beginning to understand their potential, the sisters are hunted. Hiding a dark secret and on the run, the sisters are often at odds with each other. They must learn to work together or risk everything.

Donner Lake is famous for its dazzling waters, dramatic mountains, and the travelers trapped there long ago who did unspeakable things to survive. But for lonely Nora Sharpe, Donner was where a girl named Grace glided into her life one night and exploded her world.

In a post-apocalyptic future where survivors scavenge in the harsh Australian Outback for spoils from a buried civilization, a girl races across the desert, holding her treasures close, pursued by the Reckoner. Riding her sand ship, living rough in the blasted landscape whose taint she carries in her blood, she scouts the broken infrastructure and trades her scraps at the only known settlement, a ramshackle fortress of greed, corruption, and disease known as the System.

It’s the end of summer 2003. George W. Bush has recently declared the mission in Iraq accomplished, the unemployment rate is at its highest in years, and Martha Stewart has just been indicted for insider trading. Meanwhile, somewhere in the Midwest, Troy Augustus Loudermilk (fair-haired, statuesque, charismatic) and his companion Harry Rego (definitely none of those things) arrive at America’s most prestigious creative-writing program, to which Loudermilk has recently been accepted for his excellence in poetry. Loudermilk, however, has never written a poem in his life.

Joanne Haynes has a secret: that is not her real name. And there’s more. Her flat’s not hers. Her cats aren't hers. Even her hair isn’t really hers. Nor is she any of the other women she pretends to be. Not the best-selling romance novelist who gets her morning snack from the doughnut van on the seafront. Nor the pregnant woman in the dental surgery. Nor the chemo patient in the supermarket for whom the cashier feels ever so sorry. They're all just alibis. In fact, the only thing that’s real about Joanne is that nobody can know who she really is.

After the death of her father and her own serious issues, Kara Maven decides to move back to her hometown to complete her senior year at Belman University. She settles into life on campus when her world is shaken by a handsome bad boy with a knack for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Dominic Benenati is a half-demon Damamah, or whisperer, whose role on earth is to ensure Hell’s population thrives by pushing humans to act upon their sinful thoughts. To complicate matters, enter Cayden Adams who is an angel determined to save Kara from Dominic’s influence. But does Kara really want to be saved?

After the performance of a lifetime at the sold-out Stade de France, comic Édouard Bresson decides to vanish. Très drôle. His estranged son Arthur isn’t laughing. Édouard has sent him a letter and instructions to a puzzle - a treasure hunt for the son he ignored and misses and loves. If Arthur is willing to find out everything there is to know about his father and to understand the choices he made, all he has to do is put the pieces together. As the trail of clues winds its way through the past, what unfolds is a surprising journey of forgiveness, family, and self-discovery.

Twenty-eight-year-old Lana Green has never been good at making friends. She’s perfectly happy to be left alone with her books. Or at least that’s what she tells herself. Nancy Ellis Hall was once a celebrated writer. Now 80, she lives alone in her North London house and thinks she’s doing just fine. But dementia is loosening Nancy’s grip on the world. When Lana and Nancy become unconventional housemates, their lives will change in ways they never expected. But can an unusual friendship rescue two women who don’t realise they need to be saved?

Logan Ragsdale and his younger sister, Ariana, have been marked, chosen to be unwilling participants in a war between angels and demons. Logan can sense something's not quite right. Like an unexpected chill on a summer's day, he can feel the unseen closing in. He's had these feelings before, and each time, someone close to him died. He's afraid this time it might just be Ariana. Logan's fears are soon confirmed when he discovers their new friends aren't human, but rather representatives from Heaven and Hell sent to Earth to ensure he and Ariana accept their roles.

Nina does not have a drinking problem. She likes a drink, sure. But what 17-year-old doesn't? Nina's mum isn't so sure. But she's busy with her new husband and five-year-old Katie. Nina's almost an adult, after all. And if Nina sometimes wakes up with little memory of what happened the night before, then her friends are all too happy to fill in the blanks. Nina's drunken exploits are the stuff of college legend. But then one dark Sunday morning, even her friends can't help piece together Saturday night.

Meet Sonny Anderson, funny failed LA Galaxy hopeful, recovering misophonic meth-head and Shaun of the Dead-obsessed survivor. On his 21st birthday, gifted the opportunity of inheriting a life-changing sum of money, Sonny needs answers to a few important questions. For instance, where is his mother? He last saw her age five when his dad kidnapped him and took him to live on a commune in Brazil. His dad claimed to be a spiritual guru, but what kind of man was he really? To find his answers Sonny must leave his home in California and return to the UK, his country of birth.

Nina is a struggling writer, a college dropout, a liar, and a cheater. More than anything she wants love. She deserves it. From the burned-out suburbs of Florida to the anonymous squalor of New York City, she eats through an incestuous cast of characters in search of it: her mother, a narcissistic lesbian living in a nudist polycule; Odessa, a single mom with even worse taste in men than Nina; Seth, an artist whose latest show is comprised of three Tupperware containers full of trash; Brian, whose roller-coaster affair with Nina is the most stable "relationship" in his life; and more.

A clever but obnoxious teen (think Youth in Revolt's Nick Twisp) is stuck in his parents' basement during a uniquely literary yet crowd-pleasing apocalypse. It involves not zombies but a breakdown in general logic and order. Lloyd's mother, a William Blake scholar, goes mad in a flurry of Blakean invective. Lloyd's neighbor clips toenails on her lawn. An acting group believes a tribute to Dennis Hopper might save the world.

Life is short. Jimmy's life may prove shorter. His gang mates have grown up and shipped out, and the nine to five is grinding Jimmy into a person he no longer recognizes. There has to be more to existence than waking up every Saturday with a half-eaten kebab and empty wallet. The wide blue skies of America sing a siren's song, and Jimmy decides he's ready to give life a do-over - even if it means leaving his childhood sweetheart Kelly behind.

Spokane, Washington, is nearly perfect for most people, but Jack Fitzpatrick is not one of them. Hours after graduation and armed with his final paycheck from his nemesis, Jack heads for Southern California. Dreams are a dime a dozen in the City of Angels. Broke, barely scraping by, and hating his life as a temp, L.A. is definitely not what Jack expected. But after reading "Best Paying Jobs of 1987" in Time magazine, he decides to go after the only one he thinks he has a shot at: institutional bond broker.

An assassin with a secret. An angel with a strange power. A war that threatens to destroy them both. Cora is an assassin who never misses her mark. But she has a deadly secret: Her blood can create the most powerful magical elixirs in the world. And she's been hunted for it her whole life. When a powerful demon blackmails her, threatening to expose her secret, she has to do one last job to buy her freedom: Kill a Nephilim named Vince. Cora figures this will be an easy target. Until Vince time travels, appearing in two places at once.

A young girl discovers that deep within herself, an ancient power dwells in her soul. Esther Green is known as a "Clockwork", powerful individuals who are sworn to protect the Earth. Along with the Clockworks, there are Exols and Creators who live conspicuously among the humans. But somewhere lies a novel of infinite truth, a living vessel titled Brilliance that writes itself and all that partakes in history and the universe.

All families have secrets. Some families have secrets worth dying for. The Vasile family owns a funeral home in Frederickton, Virginia. For the most part, life in this small town is ideal. However, there is one secret they try to hide - a secret that could destroy their lives as they know it. They are vampires.

"I am the unhinged...and the world is my asylum". Thirteen-year old Harper is in therapy for the death of her mother. And that's saying nothing of the trafficking victim she rescued from her next door neighbor's cellar. As her father becomes embroiled in a criminal case that threatens to destroy their lives, the despondent teenager is left to confide in her detached and aloof therapist Charlotte. If the woman who she began seeing to cope with Nancy's suicide can't help her through these harrowing events, Harper's shattered family stands to be permanently damaged.

Tallia is approaching her coming-of-age day and will finally be allowed down the ladders from the remote village high up on the plateau in the mid-lands of Zantalth. She has been haunted the last few months by disturbing dreams of monsters trying to get to the village. As she gets closer to her coming-of-age days, strange things begin to happen to her that she cannot explain.