Dark Paranormal Mystery

Owls Hoot in the Daytime & Other Omens is the 5th and final volume of Night Shade Books' five volume "Selected Stories of Manly Wade Wellman." This volume contains all of the John the Balladeer stories (sometimes better known as Silver John), Manly's most famous character.

I watched in horror as dark magic sprang from my hand faster than an imp after your socks. I didn't know my name, let alone that I had such power. The man was dead. I panicked. I ran. How was I to know I was a dark magic enforcer, tasked with keeping magic hidden from the world? Yeah, total noob move, I know. But my memory is returning, and the Hidden have given me 24 hours to make amends. Cover it up. Finish the job I was given, or else. Failure isn't an option.

When Knight Commander Cade Williams discovers that his wife, Gabrielle, is not truly dead, but held in some kind of arcane stasis between the lands of the living and the lands of the dead, he vows that nothing will stop him from freeing her soul from the prison surrounding her. But his vow is tested right from the start when an old friend calls on him to help protect the city of Boston from the ancient scourge that threatens to destroy it, leaving Cade with a heart-breaking choice.

Layla Shaw is trying to pick up the pieces of her shattered life - no easy task for a 17-year-old who's pretty sure things can't get worse. Her impossibly gorgeous best friend, Zayne, is forever off-limits thanks to the mysterious powers of her soul-stealing kiss. The Warden clan that has always protected her is suddenly keeping dangerous secrets. And she can barely think about Roth, the wickedly hot demon prince who understood her in ways no one else could.

For centuries, the Eight Courts of Folk have lived among us, concealed by magic and bound by law to do no harm to humans. This arrangement has long kept peace in the Courts - until a series of gruesome and ritualistic murders rocks the city of Toronto and threatens to expose faeries to the human world. Four queer teens, each who hold a key piece of the truth behind these murders, must form a tenuous alliance in their effort to track down the mysterious killer behind these crimes. If they fail, they risk the destruction of the faerie and human worlds alike.

Harry Keogh is the man who can talk to the dead, the man for whom every grave willingly gives up its secrets, the one man who knows how to travel effortlessly through time and space to destroy the vampires that threaten all of humanity.

Cormac Bennett, ex-con and former bounty hunter, is a paranormal investigator with an edge: His partner is the disembodied spirit of a Victorian wizard, Amelia Parker. Together, they solve problems no one else can. They're asked to investigate a mysterious death in the Sierra Nevadas: a man died of hunger -in a cabin that was fully stocked with provisions. The kicker? The cabin is located near Donner Pass, the site of the gruesomely ill-fated Donner Party, where 40 men, women, and children died of exposure and starvation.

With the world clinging to a fragile peace forced on the Fae by humanity after the Faerie Wars, metalsmith Alex Blackwood is plunged into the world of the half-fae who traffic in illegal magical artifacts. Her best friend's murder and his cryptic last message place her in the crosshairs of a scheme to reignite the decade-old war between humans and fae. Worse, violent attacks against her and the arrival of a fae knight on a mission force Alex to face a devastating revelation of who and what she is.

Charlie Hall has never found a lock she couldn’t pick, a book she couldn’t steal, or a bad decision she wouldn’t make. She's spent half her life working for gloamists, magicians who manipulate shadows to peer into locked rooms, strangle people in their beds, or worse. Gloamists guard their secrets greedily, creating an underground economy of grimoires. And to rob their fellow magicians, they need Charlie Hall.

Piper's always been aware of Levi. He's the kind of man who it's impossible to ignore. With his broad, muscular frame and gunmetal grey gaze he makes a statement without saying a word. But it's not until her psyche brushes his in an unguarded moment that they both realise: they are anchors.

As a child, Henry Cadmus lived on Catalina Island, a scenic vacationland off the Southern California coast. But Henry's experiences were far from idyllic. Today, even though Henry has seen firsthand the horrors of war, the ghastly images that haunt his dreams are ones he associates with his childhood... and the island: a snarling pig-man holding a cleaver; a jackal-headed woman on a high balcony, dripping blood; strange occult rituals... and worse. If it was up to Henry, he would avoid the island entirely.

Eugenie Markham is a shaman for hire, paid to bind and banish creatures from the Otherworld. But after her last battle, she's also become queen of the Thorn Land. It may sound nice, but her kingdom is in tatters, her love life is in chaos, and Eugenie is eager to avoid a prophecy about her firstborn destroying mankind. Now young girls are disappearing from the Otherworld, and no one - except Eugenie - is willing to find out why.

In the beginning was the Oak, its hungry roots reaching deep into the earth, its gnarled limbs searching the distant heavens. Two hundred years ago, Obediah Magrute worshipped the Oak and died violently beneath it, feeding it with his blood and bone, shouting his chilling curse to the skies. Now, Laura and Mark Avery have come to the bustling little Vermont village.

Allegria appears to all to be nothing more than a simple priestess devoted to worship of the sun goddess. Hallow is a masterless apprentice. Deo was meant to save the world and bring the Fireborn and Starborn together peace. But then invaders beseigned the land of the Starborn, breaking the prophecy. Now Allegria has fled the priesthood and wields the power of the sun. Hallow accepts the mantle of leadership he so long avoided. And Deo is tormented and tortured by the power of the invaders.

Three years ago, an archaeological expedition led by Vatican scholar Juan Vargas discovered something unusual on the shores of the Dead Sea. Early the next morning, Father Vargas, and the artifact he uncovered, disappeared without a trace. Until now. An injured and badly dehydrated Father Vargas wanders out of the New Mexican desert, telling a wild story about a secret research installation and bloodthirsty demons hunting men through its halls.

Anita Blake is a vampire hunter. But when someone else sets his sights on her prey, she must save them both from the inferno.

This tiny town, where 17-year-old Grey spends her summers, is the self-proclaimed Psychic Capital of the World - and the place where Elora Pellerin, Grey's best friend, disappeared six months earlier. Grey can't believe that Elora vanished into thin air any more than she can believe that nobody in a town full of psychics knows what happened. But as she digs into the night that Elora went missing, she begins to realize that everybody in town is hiding something.

Into Anita Blake's world - a world already overflowing with power - come creatures so feared that centuries-old vampires refuse to mention their names.

A rogue master vampire hits town, and Anita gets caught in the middle of an undead turf war. Jean-Claude, the Master Vamp of the city, wants her for his own - but his enemies have other plans. And to make matters worse, Anita takes a hit to the heart when she meets a stunningly handsome junior high science teacher named Richard Zeeman. They're two humans caught in the crossfire - or so Anita thinks.

I was burned at the stake at 14.... I was drowned in a lake when I was 24.... At 27, I was stoned in a public square.... I have died a hundred times in a hundred different ways, usually at the hands of the humans I've tried to save. But when a pregnant young woman finds her way into my tattoo shop with a demon on her tail, things go from bad to worse. Being a centuries-old witch isn't going to help me - nothing will.