Magic Horror

Cas Lowood has inherited an unusual vocation: He kills the dead. So did his father before him, until he was gruesomely murdered by a ghost he sought to kill. Now armed with his father's mysterious and deadly atheme, Cas travels the country with his kitchen-witch mother and their spirit-sniffing cat. They follow legends and local lore, destroy the murderous dead, and keep pesky things like the future and friends at bay. Searching for a ghost the locals call Anna Dressed in Blood, Cas expects the usual: track, hunt, kill. What he finds instead is a girl entangled in curses and rage.

Sophie Cavanaugh is not going to let her freak of a cousin's strange psychiatric condition ruin high school for them both. Not after all the work she's put into cultivating the right look and friends and reputation. But then Sophie sees something so frightening she lets out a blood-curdling scream - and finds herself stuck in a bizarre parallel world where nothing is safe and deadly creatures lurk just out of sight, waiting for her to close her eyes and sleep...forever. Could this world be real?

I used to hunt witches. Now I live with one. To further complicate things, my past as a supernatural bounty hunter doesn’t exactly make me popular in these new circles I’m running in. Shocker, I know. Someone wants me dead. He wants me to stay in Nathalie’s apartment and be safe while he handles the threat, all while holding Bree’s future over my head. Not gonna happen. To say I’m f--ked is an understatement. But I’ve been in worse spots before. Lucifer may be gone, but the corruption of magic isn’t.

More than three decades have passed since the events described in John Updike's The Witches of Eastwick. The three divorcées - Alexandra, Jane, and Sukie - have left town, remarried, and become widows. They cope with their grief and solitude as widows do: they travel the world, to such foreign lands as Canada, Egypt, and China, and renew old acquaintance. Why not, Sukie and Jane ask Alexandra, go back to Eastwick for the summer?

My life had always been blissfully, wonderfully normal. But it only took one moment to change everything. Suddenly, my sister, Georgia, and I were orphans. We put our lives into storage and moved to Paris to live with my grandparents. And I knew my shattered heart, my shattered life, would never feel normal again. Then I met Vincent. Mysterious, sexy, and unnervingly charming, Vincent Delacroix appeared out of nowhere and swept me off my feet. Just like that, I was in danger of losing my heart all over again. But I was ready to let it happen.

Allison Beckstrom is committed to her work tracing illegal spells. Now, there's an apocalyptic storm bearing down on Portland, and when it hits, all the magic in the area will turn unstable and destructive. To stop it from taking out the entire city, Allie and her lover, the mysterious Zayvion Jones, must work with the Authority - the enigmatic arbiters of all things magic - and take a stand against a magical wildstorm that will obliterate all in its path.

There aren't many girls who can say they've gone into the realm of death and lived to tell the tale. But to restore her lover Zayvion's soul, Allison Beckstrom had to pay a bitter price - and things are about to get worse. It turns out that the leader of the Authority, the council that decides what can - and can't - be done with magic, is being held hostage.

Tom Ward is now spook of the county, and with his apprentice, Jenny, he continues the fight against boggarts, witches, and terrifying new creatures of the dark. Together with the witch assassin Grimalkin, Tom and Jenny lead an army into battle against a dangerous enemy - but it all goes catastrophically wrong. The situation seems hopeless until Alice - Tom's lost love and a powerful witch - appears. But Alice had turned to the dark: Can Tom trust her now?

Something is terrorizing the villages of the county. People are dying - covered in blood, their faces frozen in fear. But with not a wound on their bodies. Battling creatures of the dark is the job of the local spook, but 17-year-old Thomas Ward never finished his apprenticeship. It will be no easy task to earn the trust of the villagers and to defeat a monster that no one has ever seen. Yet Jenny - a seventh daughter of a seventh daughter - knows an awful lot about this new evil. And she's willing to share what she's learned with Tom…if he takes her on as his apprentice.

Amy is pretty happy living the quiet life at home. She can mine ore, read up on oceanography, hang out with her pet cat. What’s not to love? Her brother, on the other hand . . . Marc is always leaving their village to look for excitement. But when a couple of weeks go by without any word from him, Amy can’t help but worry. Digging around, she discovers Marc has gone off alone in search of someplace called Glory’s Haven, a house deep in the forests where (supposedly) the greatest adventurer their town has ever seen stashed a ton of loot.

Livvy and Jayden are the stars of their school's robotics team. Livvy is especially enthusiastic because her own mother works in a robotics lab and experiments with artificial intelligence. To impress her mom, Livvy and Jayden build a robot. Livvy wants to name their robot "Francine", but Jayden thinks that's too silly for their creation. Desperate to win, Livvy and Jayden "borrow" an artificial intelligence module. They soon realize they've made a terrible mistake. Francine has too much brain power. She's alive! And using this newly gained brain power to dream up a deadly contest!

Drifting in the dark waters of a mysterious river, the only thing Amelia knows for sure is that she's dead. With no recollection of her past life - or her actual death - she's trapped alone in a nightmarish existence. All of this changes when she tries to rescue a boy, Joshua, from drowning in her river. As a ghost, she can do nothing but will him to live. Yet in an unforgettable moment of connection, she helps him survive.

With her boss preoccupied researching the Founder Houses in Morganville, student Claire Danvers is left to her own devices when she learns that three vampires have vanished without a trace. She soon discovers that the last person seen with one of the missing vampires is someone new to town - a mysterious individual named Magnus. After an uneasy encounter with Morganville's latest resident, Claire is certain Magnus isn't merely human. But is he a vampire - or something else entirely?

Something drastic has happened in Morganville while Claire and her friends were away. The town looks cleaner and happier than they've ever seen it before, but when their incoming group is arrested and separated - vampires from humans - they realize that the changes definitely aren't for the better. It seems that an organization called the Daylight Foundation has offered the population of Morganville something they've never had: Hope of a vampire-free future.

Lili St. Crow staked her place among writers of dark fantasy with the release of Strange Angels, the first book featuring night hunter Dru Anderson. Here teen Dru returns, a little wiser but still beset by supernatural terrors that would have most girls her age running for cover. What else would you expect for someone with nonhuman blood coursing through her veins?

Thanks to its unique combination of human and vampire residents, Morganville, Texas, is a small college town with big-time problems. When student Claire Danvers gets the chance to experience life on the outside, she takes it. But Morganville isn't the only town with vampire trouble. Claire never thought she'd leave Morganville, but when she gets accepted into the graduate program at MIT, she can't pass up the opportunity. Saying good-bye to her friends is bittersweet, especially since things are still raw and unsettled between Claire and her boyfriend, Shane.

Devin and his sister Violet are visiting their Uncle Jack in an old house by the seashore. Jack was a sailor and he has collected strange and fascinating items from the sea. Exploring a back room, Devin and Violet discover a locked trunk. A pirate's chest. They manage to get it open - and see that it's filled with antique jack-in-the-boxes. Huh? Up pops a very ugly, mean-looking puppet, an old pirate with a dirty red bandana over his long greasy hair. "Thanks for letting Sailor Jack out!" he rasps. Will Jack return them to their uncle? Just how much is a pirate's promise worth?

In this second volume of the Chance Powers adventure series, Chance experiences a personal disaster that launches a cross-country chase to catch a pyromaniac who burns down historic structures everywhere he goes. Murder attempts, harrowing escapes, and a threat to nature itself must be faced and overcome by the wits and courage of the magician.

At 16, Dru has seen more supernatural phenomena than almost anyone on the planet. So her teen years are far from a walk in the park, especially after Sergej kidnaps her best friend Graves. Willing to do anything to save him, Dru embarks on a desperate quest that might just be her last.

Lili St. Crow’s darkly exhilarating Strange Angels novels have won a devoted readership. In the third book of the series, Crow’s unusual heroine, Dru Anderson, has been through the ringer, what with a missing mother, her father turning all undead on her, and forces of evil that just won’t seem to let her be. On the run from a predator with a taste for her blood, Dru can count on help from Graves and Christophe—but they just might do more harm than good as they battle for her affections.