Science Horror

In the world of crime fighting, Raven has learned that formal affairs are a necessary evil. So when Keystone receives an invitation to a winter ball, she tries to make the best of it. The most powerful elites in Cognito are attending—a perfect opportunity to network and have a few drinks. But when a guest hijacks the party in a violent display of dark power, chaos ensues. It's a race against time as Raven searches for a way to thwart his diabolical plan. Will Keystone find the fortitude to prevent the downfall of civilization? Or will they bow to a new king to save their souls?

The vampires have been vanquished! Harry Keogh and the armies of the dead have destroyed the evil that once plagued the world. Nathan and Nestor, secret twin sons of the Necroscope and a proud gypsy woman, were children when their father, his humanity poisoned by his fearsome struggles, sacrificed himself to save mankind. Yet there are vampires still, vampires crueler and stranger than any the Necroscope had faced. When these new, merciless killers swoop out of the sky, Nathan and Nestor are men - but they have few of Harry Keogh's miraculous powers.

When he was 19, James Stark was considered to be one of the greatest natural magicians, a reputation that got him demon-snatched and sent downtown - to Hell - where he survived as a gladiator, a sideshow freak entertaining Satan's fallen angels. That was 11 years ago. Now, the hitman who goes only by Stark has escaped and is back in L.A. Armed with a fortune-telling coin, a black bone knife, and an infernal key, Stark is determined to destroy the magic circle.

In the ongoing saga of the Zombie Rules series, Zach, his family and friends are lured from their home in Tennessee and relocate to a post-apocalyptic bunker known as Mount Weather, nestled in rural Virginia. They have been promised a better life by none other than the President himself. Zach's apparent immunity to the zombie virus may hold the key to creating a vaccine and securing a future for the human race.

Alone in a strange world and torn by grief, a vampire accepts the hospitality of the local lord. But can the vampire trust him once he discovers the land’s dark connection to his own quest for revenge?

Alexia Maccon, the Lady Woolsey, awakens in the wee hours of the midafternoon to find her husband, who should be decently asleep like any normal werewolf, yelling at the top of his lungs. Then he disappears, leaving her to deal with a regiment of supernatural soldiers encamped on her doorstep, a plethora of exorcised ghosts, and an angry Queen Victoria.

Sally Jansen was NASA's leading astronaut, until a mission to Mars ended in disaster. Haunted by her failure, she lives in quiet anonymity, convinced her days in space are over. She's wrong. A large alien object has entered the solar system on a straight course toward Earth. It has made no attempt to communicate and is ignoring all incoming transmissions. Out of time and out of options, NASA turns to Jansen. For all the dangers of the mission, it's the shot at redemption she always longed for.

Darkness, both literal and psychological, holds its own unique fascination. Despite our fears, or perhaps because of them, listeners have always been drawn to tales of death, terror, madness, and the supernatural, and no more so than today when a wildly imaginative new generation of dark dreamers is carrying on in the tradition of Poe and Lovecraft and King, crafting exquisitely disturbing literary nightmares that gaze without flinching into the abyss - and linger in the mind long after.

Marty Strauss, a gambling addict recently released from prison, is hired to be the personal bodyguard of Joseph Whitehead, one of the wealthiest men in the world. The job proves more complicated and dangerous than he thought, however, as Marty soon gets caught up in a series of supernatural events involving Whitehead, his daughter (who is a heroin addict), and a devilish man named Mamoulian, with whom Whitehead made a Faustian bargain many years earlier, during World War II.

With the smoking ruins of Portland behind them, our survivors find that they have a new enemy to contend with...other survivors. With the dead hounding them at every step, and humanity struggling to hold onto its civility, the survivors face their greatest challenge yet. At the end of this battle, there will be No More Heroes.

A man falls from the sky. He has no memory. He has no sense of self. What lies ahead are a series of tests, each more brutal than the last, and if he gets through them all, he might just reach a town called Discovery.

"Perfect deadpan marks the opening of Ali Simpson’s The Monster'" writes Susan Merrell of The Southampton Review in her introduction to this issue of Recommended Reading.

A weary Adrian Ring continues his dangerous push to find the missing members of the mythical second Trinity—saviors of mankind from the judgment of the undead. He’s fought those monsters for years now, facing off against unthinkable threats and challenges to his own safety and sanity, and thus far, he’s prevailed. Others around him haven’t been so lucky, but that seems to be his curse. Now, as he and his precious friends foray north into the heart of England to find Hal Parker’s dad and search for survivors, they will encounter threats they’ve never dealt with before.

Miracles are happening. Pray to God they stop. In the dead of winter, on a highway in Quebec, a man crashes his car and survives. In New York, a homeless person is run over by a bus and lives. In Tokyo, a teenager jumps off a high rise building and fails in taking her own life. All over the world, miracles like these transpire, and people breathe a sigh of relief. But for the next week, some people will begin to suspect a terrible truth. A handful will even search for it. One man will find it. And in seven days, all hell will break loose.

Rafael, king of the wererats, must fight to the death to defend his crown. He wants Anita Blake, one of his closest allies, with him as he faces an opponent unlike any he’s faced before. He will ask Anita to risk everything to be at his side....

He was born an outsider, like the rest of his family. Poor yet resilient, he lives in the shadows with his aunt Libby and uncle Darren, folk who stubbornly make their way in a society that does not understand or want them. They are mongrels, mixed blood, neither this nor that. The boy at the center of Mongrels must decide if he belongs on the road with his aunt and uncle or if he fits with the people on the other side of the tracks.

Only Thomas Ward is left. He's the last hope; the last apprentice. Can Thomas succeed? Will he learn the difference between a benign witch and a malevolent one? Does the Spook's warning against girls with pointy shoes include Alice? And what will happen if Thomas accidentally frees Mother Malkin, the most evil witch in the county?

Okiku wants vengeance...and she gets it. Whenever there's a monster hurting a child - the same way she was hurt 300 years ago in Japan - her spirit is there to deliver punishment. But one American boy draws her like no other. The two are pulled into a world of eerie doll rituals and dark Shinto exorcisms that will take them from the American Midwest to the remote valleys and shrines of Aomori, Japan. The boy is not a monster, but something evil writhes beneath his skin, trapped by a series of intricate tattoos.

Ten years after the collapse, Huxley has built a good life again. He has a loving wife, a farm with fields of golden barley, and a daughter with a strange and wonderful gift. Then the slavers come. Working out in the fields during the attack, Huxley returns too late. His daughter has been taken, and his wife is bleeding out, her last whispered words about a man with a scorpion tattoo on his neck. Where do the slavers go? Huxley has no idea. He knows only that they head east, and so will he, setting out on foot across the desert of the Wastelands.

At the novel's center: the vampire Lestat de Lioncourt, hero, leader, inspirer, irresistible force, irrepressible spirit, battling (and ultimately reconciling with) a strange otherworldly form that has somehow taken possession of Lestat's undead body and soul. This ancient and mysterious power and unearthly spirit of vampire lore has all the force, history, and insidious reach of the unknowable universe.