Monster Fiction

London, 1861: Ten-year-old Nell belongs to a crew of mudlarks who work a stretch of the Thames along the Ratcliffe Highway. An orphan since her mother died four years past, leaving Nell with only broken dreams and a pair of satin slippers in her possession, she spends her days dredging up coals, copper and pieces of iron spilled by the river barges – searching for treasure in the mud in order to appease her master, Benjamin Murdstone. But one day, Nell discovers a body on the shore. It’s not the first corpse she’s encountered, but by far the strangest.

Isolde, reine fraîchement couronnée, a enfin trouvé un roi digne d'elle en la personne du vampire Adrian. Mais leur amour mutuel a coûté à Isolde son père et sa patrie. Avec deux déesses opposées qui montent les mortels et les vampires les uns contre les autres, Isolde ne sait pas qui sont ses alliés dans le bastion vampire de Revekka.

Wounds is a confounding, strange, and utterly entrancing collection of six stories, including one new novella from Shirley Jackson Award-winning author Nathan Ballingrud. From the eerie dread descending upon a New Orleans dive bartender after a cell phone is left behind in a rollicking bar fight in The Visible Filth to the search for the map of hell in “The Butcher’s Table”, Ballingrud’s beautifully crafted stories are riveting in their quietly terrifying depictions of the murky line between the known and the unknown.

With Ravenheart defeated and his regal duties done, Josh and his lovely misfits return to their idyllic home nestled in the shadows of the Hangsane. Will they hang up their weapons, end their monster-hunting days, and settle down for a cozy slice of farming life like so many heroes? Absolutely not!

Princess Candra must remain locked inside a tower for seven long years in order to protect her people from their goddess's wrath. Seven years without a friend—or a lover—by her side. And locked inside the tower with her? A fearsome winged Fellian warrior, Nemeth. He's terrifying, cruel, and disturbingly magnetic . . . and the only other living being in the tower. Candra is torn between wanting to kill him for his supplies or having her way with him. After all, seven years is a long time to be alone.

I ended my life to protect Lucian from his enemies. It should have been the hardest decision to make, but it wasn’t. Now I find that Lucian kept even more secrets, deadly ones that threaten to destroy me. I thought I won the game that he and Katarina played, but he’s never stopped shuffling the pieces on the board. Even so, I’ve found peace in his violence and learned to accept my fate within his embrace. As our enemies are revealed, and worlds crashed down into ours, everything is on the line again. Could we survive his latest betrayal, or would it destroy us all?

Thomas Ward is the apprentice for the local Spook, who captures witches and drives away ghosts. As the weather gets colder and the nights draw in, the Spook receives an unexpected visitor. Tom doesn't know who the stranger is or what he wants, but the Spook suddenly decides it's time to travel to his winter house, Anglezarke. Tom has heard it will be a bleak, forbidding place, and that menacing creatures are starting to stir somewhere on the moors nearby.

In the Clandoms, everyone is born with wings, though not all the clans are treated equally. Ellie Meadows longed to become a Goldwing—the knights who protect the people -- but because she came from the humble Sparrow Clan, her dream faced almost insurmountable resistance. Nox Hatcher has it even worse. Nox is a Crow, a shattered clan. They can't own businesses or run organizations, all due to a mistake made hundreds of years ago. Nox has had to steal and scrape just to survive, but a single goal has kept him going, even when it felt like all the Clandoms were against him.

Pie and Pell are like two peas in a pod: meant for each other, madly in love, and living their best lives as Mr. and Mrs. Monster of Saint Mark’s...kind of. Pie is dreading her new job working for the tall, dark, and sleek Modern Minotaur. And the irony that just a few weeks ago she was demanding that Pell allow her to get a job to support the sanctuary, isn’t lost. It’s like the gods are playing with her on purpose. Pell is still his grumpy self but he’s got a new job as well—babysitting a bag of magic rings that seem to have a mind of their own.

One of the many engineers that keep Beta, the city under the sea, running, Mira only wants to make her family proud and to prove herself worthy. She knows the mysterious city better than anyone and it's her dream to help it flourish. Then, on a solo job in an abandoned section of the city, she encounters a monster of legend: an undine, a dangerous merman from an ancient civilization, long forgotten.

When everything is on the line, how far will you go to protect those you love? What if the cost of saving them is your soul? Would you pay it? I thought I was prepared for what was coming; that if I made sacrifices, I could win this game. I’m no longer afraid of the darkness or the monsters that hide in the shadows. I’ve become what I feared most, allowing it in to protect those I loved. Sometimes it takes a monster to win. Sometimes to fight monsters, you have to become one. My only fear is....can I come back from it?

Eleven-year-old Josh and 12-year-old Amanda just moved into the oldest and weirdest house on the block - the two siblings think it might even be haunted! But of course their parents don't believe them. You'll get used to it, they say. Go out and make some new friends. But the creepy kids are not like anyone Josh and Amanda have ever met before. And when they take a shortcut through the cemetery one night, Josh and Amanda learn why.

Trainers Joon and Tradd are ready to claim a Versus victory with a zombie unlike any you've seen before. With a mind for strategy, this monster doesn't need to go hunting for brains—he has plenty of his own. But will the brainy brawler be any match for what lurks in the shadows behind your closet door? Lilly and Amos's closet monster has stepped out of your nightmares and onto the battlefield, and hiding under the covers won't stop him this time.

Eliza Scaggs (not Scraggsies, thank you very much) is tired of all the rumors about her. Sure, she’s looking a bit haggard as of late, but she’s been working herself to the bone on a secret government project to prove that she, the only woman in the wizard’s guild, belongs there. So, maybe she’s got some gray in her hair, but she’s not old, not old-old— and the only thing she’s made a pact with is her purveyor of rot brew tea. Okay, the pet monster thing is true, but Throat Ripper hasn’t caught anyone, not yet.

He's tried to ignore them for too long. But the long-simmering conflict between Montana's holding at Coggeshall and the Night Goblins who also occupy the valley is about to boil over. Usually, goblins aren't anything to write home about: an enemy without much size, intellect, or weaponry. But these goblins? Well, that's just not the case. These are goblins with limitless resources, never-before-seen tactics, and horrifying monsters at their disposal. Worst of all, they don't fear death in the slightest. They just might force a good guy to become what he has always struggled to defeat.

Ben has saved the dragonkin women’s island from the ancient, ghostly maldungs, so it’s time for his next adventure. But when he and his crew of women set sail again, they discover the orcs have another enemy. A dangerous, fire-breathing, ship-destroying enemy. And Ben wonders if he can tame it.

After years spent isolated in a lonely castle with her cruel husband, Raiya will do anything to escape… even make a deal with a demon. When Raiya’s husband imprisons a monster from the hells, she sees an opportunity to free herself and spite her husband at the same time. It’s said that demons are immensely powerful, halfway between mortals and gods. If Raiya can use her knowledge of rune magic to break the demon’s binding, he might agree to protect her from her husband while they escape together. That is, if he doesn’t decide to kill and consume her, instead.

Julien Doran arrived in sleepy Maudit Falls, North Carolina, with a heart full of hurt and a head full of questions. The key to his brother's mysterious last days might be found in this tiny town, and now Julien's amateur investigation is starting to unearth things the locals would rather keep buried. Perhaps most especially the strange, magnetic manager of a deserted retreat that's nearly as odd as its staff.

When my beer kegs turn up missing days before a big event, I hire Monsters, PI to track down my beer. Who's assigned to my case? Tuvid, the gargoyle who wrongfully accused me of gnome-theft. Tuvid's seven feet of gargoyle muscles with a killer smile. So, when our not-one-night-stand results in a marriage proposal—solely to save his gargoyle rep—I know I'm in trouble. My business plans don't include marrying a gargoyle, but Tuvid's impossible to resist.

How did I end up playing fake fiancée to a runaway criminal? Well, I was supposed to get married today—but that’s a whole other story.The part that matters is that I took the car and ran, still in my wedding dress. I promptly crash said car into a bridge, and when I get out to check the damage… I'm disoriented and fall right into the river below. That should’ve been it for little old me. Goodnight. Close the curtains. Roll the credits. Drowned by my own wedding dress—how morbidly appropriate. But then someone saves me.