English Gothic

Sixteen-year-old Sage is a lonely child. Her adoptive parents watch her obsessively, as if studying her for warning signs of...something. And maybe they're right to - even she can't make sense of the strange things she sees and hears. She possesses knowledge that other teenagers don't, that her parents and teachers - no adult - could possibly have. So when Sage finally makes a friend who understands her alarming gift, he becomes her confidant, a precarious link to the truth about who she really is.

Medusa's Ankles celebrates the very best of A. S. Byatt's short fiction, carefully selected from a lifetime of writing. Peopled by artists, poets, and fabulous creatures, the stories blaze with creativity and color. From ancient myth to a British candy factory, from a Chinese restaurant to a Mediterranean swimming pool, from a Turkish bazaar to a fairy-tale palace, Byatt transports her listeners beyond the veneer of the ordinary - even beyond the gloss of the fantastical - to places rich and strange and wholly unforgettable.

Lexi, a human woman on the hunt for a lost friend, never expected to end up in a dragon war. But when her search leads her to a sexy, scorchingly hot Scottish dragon king, Lexi's priorities shift. She's ready to help her newfound, enigmatic lover fight the Dark Fae. But fighting the passion that flares between them will be much harder.... Thorn, the mysterious dragon king with a bad-boy streak, is more than ready to go to war with his enemies.

For 150 years, high above rocky Scottish cliffs, Caldonbrae Hall has sat untouched, a beacon of excellence in an old ancestral castle. A boarding school for girls, it promises that the young women lucky enough to be admitted will emerge “resilient and ready to serve society.” Into its illustrious midst steps Rose Christie: a 26-year-old Classics teacher, Caldonbrae’s new head of the department, and the first hire for the school in over a decade.

Robbed of her memories, Emma feels like a ghost trapped in her own body. She doesn't remember much, but she knows one thing: something happened to her in Arnsmouth. Whatever had happened to her had been terrible. Desperate to learn the truth, she finds herself drawn to a nightclub known as The Flesh & Bone–a place that she knows might well lead to her certain death.

As a boy, William Bellman commits one small, cruel act: killing a bird with his slingshot. Little does he know the unforeseen and terrible consequences of the deed, which is soon forgotten amidst the riot of boyhood games. By the time he is grown, with a wife and children of his own, William seems to be a man blessed by fortune - until tragedy strikes and the stranger in black comes. Desperate to save the one precious thing he has left, William enters into a rather strange bargain, with an even stranger partner, to found a decidedly macabre business.

A neuroscientist walks out of her life and isolates herself in the woods, intending to blow the whistle on a pharmaceutical company and its creativity drug gone wrong. A recently orphaned graduate school dropout is hired as a "literary detective" to decode the work of a mysterious Internet poet who writes about disappearances and murders with an inexplicably precise knowledge of private details. And a virologist discovers her identity has been stolen by a conceptual artist in whose stories someone always goes missing.

Esmeralda is just one semester away from graduating college and on her way to opening the restaurant of her dreams. Dante is a ruthless mafia monster that walks in the daylight. Neither of them would've ever crossed paths - until Esmeralda's mother makes a dire mistake that leaves them both at the mercy of the cartel and the whims of its captivating leader.

After the Great War, American heiress Ruby Vaughn made a life for herself running a rare bookstore alongside her octogenarian employer and house mate in Exeter. She’s always avoided dwelling on the past, even before the war, but it always has a way of finding her. When Ruby is forced to deliver a box of books to a folk healer living deep in the Cornish countryside, she is brought back to the one place she swore she’d never return. A more sensible soul would have delivered the package and left without rehashing old wounds. But no one has ever accused Ruby of being sensible.

With her signature spirit, Faith Merridew has left everything she's ever known for the man she thought was the love of her life. Instead he leaves her name - and dreams - in the dust. That is, until she crosses paths with Nicholas Blacklock, a Waterloo veteran, who offers to save her reputation with a marriage of convenience. A hardened soldier, Nick hides a deadly secret - and tries to keep Faith at arm's length. But even though Nick can command legions of men with a word, his orders go sweetly ignored by his convenient bride.

Since the dawn of human civilization, two warring factions of near-immortals - the descendants of the gods of old - have been secretly shaping its destiny. Amanda's small clan champions progress and peace, while their powerful enemy, the Doomers, propagates ignorance and war. Descending from a single goddess - the only one to survive the ancient cataclysm that wiped out her kind - Amanda's clan members are forbidden to each other.

My father enslaved me. Ruined me. Sold me. Left me to suffer. Until he rescued me. Alpha Sven Mickelson of Norse Sector claims to be my savior, to want me to live, and vows to protect me. But I know Alphas can’t be trusted. All he wants is my mating bond. To own me. To make me his.

After years of self-exile, Jacinda “Jac” Brodie is back in Brook Haven, South Carolina. But the small cliffside town no longer feels like home. Jac hasn’t been there since the beloved chief of police fell to his death—and all the whispers said she was to blame. That chief was Jac’s father. Racked with guilt, Jac left town with no plans to return. But when her granddad lands in the hospital, she rushes back to her family, bracing herself to confront the past.

A dead body. A missing daughter. A silver blade. All the clues point to one person: Me. My name is Evangeline, and I’m a retired assassin who wants nothing to do with the underworld. But an edict from a Demonic Lord forces me to return to the man and the life I left behind. I have seven days to prove my innocence. Whoever set me up is going to die.

Townsfolk called him devil. For dark and enigmatic Julian, Earl of Ravenwood, was a man with a legendary temper and a first wife whose mysterious death would not be forgotten. Some said the beautiful Lady Ravenwood had drowned herself in the black, murky waters of Ravenwood Pond. Others whispered of foul play and the devil's wrath. Now country-bred Sophy Dorring is about to become Ravenwood's new bride. Drawn to his masculine strength and the glitter of desire that burned in his emerald eyes, the tawny-haired lass had her own reasons for agreeing to a marriage of convenience.

When Alice's husband disappears while investigating a series of strange and terrible incidents in the bustling seaport of Salem, she is forced to bring her young daughter, Abigail, along from Boston while she takes up the search. But she soon learns of a terrible curse that has the entire town bracing for nightfall: One hundred years after the infamous witch trials, the vengeful spirit of a woman hanged for witchcraft will rise from hell to claim the souls of Salem's children.

The narrator - the old nurse of the title - is an old family retainer who has worked in the service of the same family for three generations. She tells the young children about a dark incident that she experienced in the company of the children’s mother, when she was a young woman and visiting her mother’s ancestral home.

Yewon dreams of a hotel. In the hotel, there are infinite keys to infinite rooms—and a quiet terror she is desperate to escape. When Yewon wakes, she sees her life: a young woman, trapped in the tiny South Korean village of her birth, watching her mother wash the bones of their ancestors in their decrepit bathtub. Every house has them, these rotting and fragmented bones, reminders of what they have all lost to a war that never seems to end.

From the outside, criminal psychiatrist Dr. Madeline Pine’s life appears picture-perfect—she has a beautiful family, a successful mental health practice and a growing reputation as an expert in female violence. But when she's called to help investigate a mysterious death at a boarding school for troubled girls, Madeline hesitates. She’s been through tragic cases before, and the one she was entangled in last year nearly destroyed her… Yet she can’t turn away when she hears about Charley Ridley.

Andrew and Nathalie's love flourishes, but the secrets they keep from each other taint their relationship with doubts and suspicions. In the meantime, Sebastian and his men are getting bolder, and the storm that's brewing will shift the balance of power in the millennia-old conflict between Annani's clan and its enemies.