Dark Ages Literature

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.

Hank Fitzpatrick's life is what you might expect from a manchild stumbling his way from his teens to his thirties in small town Indiana: hypersexual, drunk, stoned, prone to fits of spontaneous masturbation, occasionally Catholic, and accidentally well-intentioned. Caught in the crossfire of raging hormones, bad decisions and family tragedy, Hank is just a boy not yet ready to be a man.

The story of a father and son - and is it true, as Wordsworth claimed, that "the child is father of the man" or can one's character actually change as one grows older?

Aurora returns from boot camp to a new assignment, an unwelcome roommate, and the increasingly amorous attentions of a certain vampire hunter. College is starting, and so is Aurora's undercover work at a network of swanky parties known as "Tastings" for high rolling vampires who like their blood laced with fine wine. But Aurora's not the only one on the prowl.

Dirk Lloyd has a dark secret. He is the earthly incarnation of a Dark Lord, supreme ruler of the Darklands and leader of armies of orcs and warriors intent on destruction. Following a final battle between the forces of good and evil, the Dark Lord was defeated and hurled into the Pit of Uttermost Despair. At the bottom of the Pit is a supermarket car park in the town of Whiteshields, in modern day England. When he is found, and tries to explain that he is the Dark Lord, people think he means Dirk Lloyd.

It's been three months since the events that changed Nadine’s life, and she’s finally starting to put the pieces back in some semblance of order. But she knows this new normal cannot last. Until Victor and Micah find the scepters that will restore them to their true forms, their human bodies will require her healing touch. It’s only a matter of time before the men return to wreak havoc on her world again. As if to prove her right, Victor shows up, a swarm of demons on his trail.

Lia Weaver went against everything she’d ever known when she risked her life to help a Farther fugitive named Gabe escape from the Aeralian soldiers, and her life changed forever. And the Frost changed, too—the Farthers have taken over her village, a new group of vigilantes calling themselves the Blackcoats are making plans to overthrow the Farther occupiers, and the Thorns are seeking for her to join them.

Kealin and Tulasiro journey North with haste and the half-elf of Urlas knows he may not return. His challenger has haunted his mind and struck down his loved ones; Vankou, the god of death, will not take another. Kealin will have vengeance for the fallen. Armed with the god-sword gifted to him by a fallen deity and the blood of the Dwemhar surging in his veins, Kealin prepares for the final battle. But the seas he once sailed upon have changed much in the last few years. The world quakes as all the energies of magic swirl towards a gathering in the heavens above the dark parts of the north.

For decades, Hudich, the leader of an evil army, had been held prisoner in a world called Pekel. Before releasing him last summer to save Max's friend Cindy, Max's grandfather neutralized Hudich's magical powers with the aid of an advanced high-tech collar. Unfortunately, Hudich's escape allowed him to relay a centuries-old secret to his followers that helps them find a powerful weapon. With the aid of this new weapon, an ancient magical gateway, the enemy kidnaps Max's mother.

When a demonic parasite turns her classmates into an army of sleepwalkers, 16-year-old Jo must confront her celestial identity and reveal the mystery of existence. With the help of her best friends and a Galactic Compass, Jo unleashes the cosmic powers of creation to prevent the Lord of Darkness from enslaving all of humanity into obscurity. Will she be able to decode the artificial system in time to save her friends and the sacred Light?

"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.

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.

Valrin and his companions narrowly escaped their deaths and flee east. By chance, they have learned of a gaseous poison in the hands of the dwarves capable of slaughtering thousands. How will the Stormborn, with the power of the ancients at his command, find a way to stop them? Now, he must trust his shadow elf friend in seeking out the mysterious daughter of the Ice Mage. With her power of elemental magic and sorcery unlike any before her, she could prove a powerful ally. But will her own dark secret hinder his own task as Stormborn?

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.

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.

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.

The strongest of them all. Eyes blacker than the darkness they all fantasize about, but have never seen. An abomination. Hemera Harkibel has spent her life concealing abilities she doesn’t fully understand. She is hated and feared because of her black eyes and inhuman strength. When her people’s underground cave system is attacked, Hemera is thrust above ground into a dangerous world where the sun’s rays can kill in seconds and enemies are tracking her every move.... Hemera comes to learn that her very existence is a threat in the war brewing between humans and Halves.

We live in trying times. Anti-demon sentiment is at an all time high. Gone are the days when devils could get together on a Sunday night to sacrifice some virgins and crack open a few cold ones. While we have been shunned and despised since our first ancestors arrived here from Hell, today it’s impossible to walk even a single city block without running into a self-proclaimed “hunter.” Living under this threat of constant danger, it has never been more pertinent to hold on to our sense of identity. And more importantly, to pass that along to our spawn.

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.

Orchid & the Wasp brings to life the charged, compulsive voice of Gael Foess - daughter of a self-interested investment banker and a once-formidable orchestral conductor, and sister to a vulnerable younger brother - as she strives to build a life raft in the midst of economic and familial collapse. Moving by wits alone, Gael cuts a swathe through the leather-lined, coke-dusted social clubs of London, the New York gallery scene and birth-throes of the Occupy movement.