Dark Fantasy Mystery Thriller

Drug dealers, hustlers, brothels, dirty politics, corrupt cops...and sorcery. Welcome to Low Town. In the forgotten back alleys and flophouses that lie in the shadows of Rigus, the finest city of the Thirteen Lands, you will find Low Town. It is an ugly place, and its cham­pion is an ugly man. Disgraced intelligence agent. Forgotten war hero. Independent drug dealer. After a fall from grace five years ago, a man known as the Warden leads a life of crime, addicted to cheap violence and expensive drugs.

Sabrina Spellman has just made the hardest decision of her life: She's leaving behind her beloved friends at Baxter High. Now it's time to follow the path of night and find her way among the witches and warlocks at the Academy of Unseen Arts. Sabrina has always been good at the school thing, but now she has a whole new world to navigate. Her power is growing daily, but it comes with a high price. She must always remember her new allegiances and the cost they have on her friends...and on herself.

The series takes place in a world similar to our own but one where vampires, witches, werewolves and shape-shifters live among humans without their knowledge. These supernatural races make up a secret society known as the Night World, which enforces two fundamental laws to prevent discovery: 1) Never allow humans to gain knowledge of the Night World's existence and, 2) Never fall in love with one of them.

Everything Cora thought she knew about Harrow Faire was a lie. All of it. Now, as the lines in the sand are drawn, as a war for the Heart of the Faire builds, she must discover how much she is willing to sacrifice to save the people she has come to think of as family...and how much of herself she’s willing to give up for the man she has come to love.

In the near future, an elderly English widow is stirred from her mundane existence by surreal omens and visitations. Centuries later, the space freighter Nova Swing takes on an illegal alien artifact as cargo, with consequences beyond reckoning. While on a distant planet, a nameless policewoman tries to bring order to an event zone where ordinary physics do not apply, only to find herself caught up in something even stranger and more sublime....

Between life and death, there's magic. Our secrets have been exposed and now we have to deal with the consequences: Friends of the Midwest Pack are missing. Alliances are forming between enemies whose sole intent is to destroy the pack. And a mysterious group is trying to make a power grab using any means possible. With my pack and our allies in danger, I don't think things can possibly get any worse. I'm wrong.

Veranix Calbert leads a double life. By day, he’s a struggling magic student at the University of Maradaine. At night, he spoils the drug trade of Willem Fenmere, crime boss of Dentonhill and murderer of Veranix’s father. He’s determined to shut Fenmere down. With that goal in mind, Veranix disrupts the delivery of two magical artifacts meant for Fenmere's clients, the mages of the Blue Hand Circle. Using these power-filled objects in his fight, he quickly becomes a real thorn in Fenmere's side.

David Valentine resigns as a Wolf militia, and accepts an offer to become a Cat, one of the stealthy warriors trained to spy on, and go toe-to-toe with the Reapers. Under the command of his mentor, Smoke, Val's first mission is to enter the Kurian zone and investigate "The Twisted Cross", a strike force of alien-human hybrids, possessing the skills of combat veterans and the hunger of the Reapers....Along the way he befriends a powerful alien, a Grog named Anh-Ka, who declares David his blood brother after Valentine nurses him back from death.

Welcome to another kind of terror as Peter Straub leads us into the outer reaches of the psyche. Here the master of the macabre is at his absolute best in seven exquisite tales of living, dying, and the terror that lies in between.

A rash of brutal murders set God and the devil at odds, and it’s up to Frank to prove hell’s innocence. With his angelic cousin watching his every move, he quickly learns there’s more to the mission than he was told when he comes face to face with the legend of Jack the Ripper. With time running out, Frank and Scarlett must stop the killings and restore the balance of peace before it spirals out of control. In a battle of wits to determine the fate of heaven and hell, it’s a good thing Frank brought a gun.

In a lonely village in the Peak District, during the onset of a once-in-a-lifetime snow storm, Constable Ellie Cheetham finds a body. The man, a local ne'er-do-well, appears to have died in a tragic accident: he drank too much and froze to death. But the facts don't add up: the dead man is clutching a knife in one hand, and there's evidence he was hiding from someone. Stranger still, an odd mark has been drawn onto a stone beside his body.

If the Knights Magica want a war, I'm willing to give them one. I damned my soul long ago. What I do from this point forward is about redemption. If I burn in Hell because of fighting for others, for shouldering their sins, so be it. The Knights are powerful, and they have taken control of the Universal Church. All across the world, the Knights find themselves in conflict with other paranormals and supernaturals. Human governments scramble to cope with the new reality of magic.

For more than 30 years, Ellen Datlow has been at the center of horror. Bringing you the most frightening and terrifying stories, Datlow always has her finger on the pulse of what horror fans crave. Now, with the 11th volume of the series, Daltow's back again to bring you the stories that will keep you up at night. With each passing year, science, technology, and the march of time shine light into the craggy corners of the universe, making the fears of an earlier generation seem quaint. This light creates its own shadows. The Best Horror of the Year chronicles these shifting shadows.

Ray Lilly is living on borrowed time. He's the driver for Annalise Powliss, a high-ranking member of the Twenty Palace Society, a group of sorcerers devoted to hunting down and executing rogue magicians. But because Ray betrayed her once, Annalise is looking for an excuse to kill him - or let someone else do the job. Unfortunately for both of them, Annalise's next mission goes wrong, leaving her critically injured. With the little magic he controls, Ray must complete her assignment alone.

It should have been a case like any other: a missing princess, a king willing to pay in gold for her return. But before he realizes it, private investigator Eddie LaCrosse, a slightly shopworn sword jockey with a talent for discretion and detection, is swept up in a web of mystery and deceit involving a brutally murdered royal heir, a queen accused of an unspeakable crime, and the tragic past he thought he'd left behind.

The phone rang, and like a fool I answered. Mistake number one. Then I agreed to do a job for the Hidden Council. Definitely mistake number two. Now I've lost count of my bad choices, same as I have the bodies, as they're piling up faster than a troll after free chalk. As I get to grips with this new magic I've been gifted, the city remains under a spell of violence, and it's down to yours truly to deal with it. But I'm a noob at this job, ill-prepared and with my own personal demons to fight.

The rebellious son of a long line of pureblood cartographers and diviners, Valen has spent most of his life trying to escape what society - and his family - have ordained for him. His own mother has predicted that he will meet his doom in water, blood, and ice. Her divination seems fulfilled when a comrade abandons Valen in a rainy wilderness half-dead, addicted to an enchantment that converts pain to pleasure, and possessing only a stolen book of maps.

Ishmael Jones and his partner Penny are attending the re-opening of Tyrone’s Castle, an ancient Cornish inn originally built by smugglers. Over dinner that night, the guests entertain one another with ghost stories inspired by local legends and superstitions. But it would appear that the curse of Tyrone’s Castle has struck for real when one of their number disappears into thin air. And then another....

Lady Helen has retreated to a country estate outside Bath to prepare for her wedding to the Duke of Selburn, yet she knows she has unfinished business to complete. She and the dangerously charismatic Lord Carlston have learned they are a dyad, bonded in blood, and only they are strong enough to defeat the Grand Deceiver, who threatens to throw mankind into chaos. But the heinous death-soaked Ligatus Helen has absorbed is tearing a rift in her mind. Its power, if unleashed, will annihilate both Helen and Carlston unless they can find a way to harness its ghastly force.

Finally accepting that there would be no leaving Harrow Faire, Cora sets out to try to find her new way of life as part of the family. With that comes her slow acceptance of her attraction toward and, even worse, her feelings for the Puppeteer. But just as things seemed to be falling into a pattern, they turn upside down - seemingly literally - as Harrow Faire enters “the Inversion”.