Urban City

Welcome to Bezim, where sword-slinging bravi race through the night and rich and idle alchemists make magic out of mixing and measuring the four planes of reality. Siyon Velo, Dockside brat turned petty alchemist, scrapes a living hopping between the planes to harvest ingredients for the city’s alchemists. But when Siyon accidentally commits an act of impossible magic, he’s catapulted into the limelight—which is a bad place to be when the planes start lurching out of alignment, threatening to send Bezim into the sea.

After a long and lonely silence from Cody Coleman, Bailey Flanigan begins to spend more and more time with her Hollywood co-star Brandon Paul. Nights on the town in New York City and long talks on the balcony of Brandon's Malibu Beach home make Bailey dizzy with new feelings and cause her to wonder if her days with Cody are over forever. Meanwhile, Cody's work coaching a small-town football team has brought him and his players national attention. In the midst of the celebration and success, Cody finds himself much closer to a woman who seems to better understand him and his new life.

In this thrilling collection of original stories, some of today’s hottest paranormal authors delight, thrill and captivate readers with otherworldly tales of magic and mischief.

Fortunetellers. Demotivational speakers. Disillusioned shapeshifters. You never know quite who—or what—you'll run into in Psychic City, but that's what makes life interesting for a PsyOps agent.

Claire is only seven years old when her college-age sister, Alison, disappears on the last night of their family vacation at a resort on the Caribbean island of Saint X. Several days later, Alison’s body is found in a remote spot on a nearby cay, and two local men - employees at the resort - are arrested. But the evidence is slim, the timeline against it, and the men are soon released. The story turns into national tabloid news, a lurid mystery that will go unsolved. For Claire and her parents, there is only the return home to broken lives.

Casa del Chocolate is one of Salem's most charming boutique candy shops, making it a perfect profile story. Although preoccupied with her own personal sweet news—Lee and her detective husband Pete Mondello are expecting a bundle of joy—she cheerfully agrees to interview the chocolatier. Since becoming pregnant, the radiant and exhilarated mother-to-be has discovered that she is finally free of the unwanted haunting "visions" she has endured since childhood.

The arbitrary lines of zoning maps across the country have come to dictate where Americans may live and work, forcing cities into a pattern of growth that is segregated and sprawling. The good news is that reform is in the air, with states across the country critically reevaluating zoning. In cities as diverse as Minneapolis, Fayetteville, and Hartford, the key pillars of zoning are under fire, with apartment bans being scrapped, minimum lot sizes dropping, and off-street parking requirements disappearing altogether.

Hasidic Williamsburg is famous as one of the most separatist, intensely religious, and politically savvy communities. Less known is how the community survived in one of New York City's toughest neighborhoods during an era of steep decline, only to later oppose and also participate in the unprecedented gentrification of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Nathaniel Deutsch and Michael Casper unravel the fascinating history of how a community of determined Holocaust survivors encountered, shaped, and sometimes fiercely resisted the urban processes that transformed their gritty neighborhood.

If you've never read a Repairman Jack novel, this is the place to begin. It's 1990. A twenty-one-year-old named Jack has dropped out of college, leaving his old life behind to build a new one in New York City. Manhattan's rough edges are jagged enough to shred any unwary newcomer, but perhaps not one who is determined to stay off the grid, at any cost, in the busiest metropolis on earth. And to do so, he'll have to take jobs of a less than legal nature.

Oklahoma City was born from chaos. It was founded in a bizarre but momentous "Land Run" in 1889, when thousands of people lined up along the borders of Oklahoma Territory and rushed in at noon to stake their claims. Since then, it has been a city torn between the wild energy that drives its outsize ambitions and the forces of order that seek sustainable progress.

In the heart of Venice, a woman is sacrificed to a forgotten god, sparking a mystery lost for thousands of years. Dr. Penelope Bryne is ridiculed by the academic community for her quest to find the remnants of Atlantis, but when an ancient and mysterious script is found at a murder site, she flies to Venice determined to help the police before the killer strikes again. Penelope has spent her entire life trying to ignore the unexplainable and magical history of Atlantis, but when she meets the enigmatic Alexis Donato, everything she believes will be challenged.

Xander Spade fled to Wonderland to escape the devil who took his soul, and fell prey to the Queen of Hearts instead. Now he has a chance to go home - but first he must find a missing girl before all Hell breaks loose.

There's a body beneath the skip bins. Fae on the forklift. A vampire in the manager's office. And there's definitely something skeevy going on in the locker rooms. Hi. I'm Pet. Well, not exactly Pet. I am a pet. I was meant to stay out of it, but somebody's gotta do something when humans are being killed by Behindkind creatures.

In an increasingly urbanized world, urban terrain has become a greater factor in military operations. Simultaneously, advances in military technology have given military forces sharply increased capabilities. The conflict comes from how urban terrain can negate or degrade many of those increased capabilities. What happens when advanced weapons are used in a close-range urban fight with an abundance of cover? Storming the City analyzes the performance of the US Army and US Marine Corps in urban combat in four major urban battles of the mid-20th century.

I'm not supposed to push through the boundaries of reality without supervision. I'm definitely not meant to drag a cop Between with me. But stuff happens, you know? Hi. I'm Pet. Well, not Pet, exactly. I am a pet. Nothing too hard; I just cook and clean for the Behindkind who took over my house. Easy. But now one of my owners has gone missing. He's fae, so it shouldn't worry me, but if there's something out there that can kidnap fae, I don't wanna meet it. Good thing I've got another two owners and a spare cop up my sleeve....

How did the preaching of a peasant carpenter from Galilee spark a movement that would grow to include over two billion followers? Who listened to this "good news," and who ignored it? Where did Christianity spread, and how? Based on quantitative data and the latest scholarship, preeminent scholar and journalist Rodney Stark presents new and startling information about the rise of the early church, overturning many prevailing views of how Christianity grew through time to become the largest religion in the world.

Alix Hiboux, better known as Owl, international antiquities thief for hire, is settling in to her new contract job for Vegas mogul Mr. Kurosawa, a red dragon with a penchant for ancient, supernatural artifacts. And now he has his sights set on some treasures of the mysterious Syrian City of the Dead that are sitting in a recluse's private collection. There's just one wrinkle.

Nya Yorke isn't strong enough to take them down alone, but she can't let the men who raided her nightclub away with murder. It turns out that the man who rescues her from the same fate is capable of committing horrors, and Nya recognizes that he is the key to completing a mission of her own. Archer wants Tag, her oldest friend, and if she can broker a deal to get him what he wants then she might be able to punish the men who attacked her colleague. Nya needs an ally, but quickly learns that wearing Archer's mark means more than deferring to him, it could change the course of her life.

New York, 1925: Arthur Kenzie is on a mission: to destroy the powerful supernatural relic that threatens Manhattan - and all the nonmagical minds in the world. So far his search has been fruitless. All it has done is keep him from the man he loves. But he'll do anything to keep Rory safe and free, even if that means leaving him behind. Psychometric Rory Brodigan knows his uncontrolled magic is a liability, but he's determined to gain power over it. He can take care of himself - and maybe even Arthur, too, if Arthur will let him.

In a world of fae, vampires and shifters, where magic is real and wishes can be bought and bargained for, Elle is on society's bottommost rung: She's human. To make matters worse, she's also a slave, bound to her stepmother by magic. Her only hope at freedom is to wish for it. But the Godmother rules the illegal wish trade, and the price she demands is steep. Elle has never been desperate enough to summon her. Until now.