Urban City

As the future pack leader of the Silver Wolves, my life was carefully planned: stay hidden and learn to fight. In an instant, everything changes. My pack was slaughtered by an unknown enemy. Alone and unsure who to trust, I search for safety. Now, there's a pack leader who offers me something that no one else can—protection. He’s sexy, an absolute jerk, and my fated mate. The more I try to fight our bond, the more fate pushes us together. But the price may be too much for both of us. I’m being hunted, and the choices I'm forced to make could destroy me.

Savannah has fallen to the vampires, and it’s up to Grier to take out their leader, Gaspard Lacroix, and restore peace. Lacroix might be more powerful and immune to her magic, but she’s got a plan. Too bad it’s got holes big enough for a new threat to waltz through while the city is on her knees. Now Grier must risk her very soul if she hopes to slay her enemies and prevent her world from going up in flames. But salvation comes at a steep price, and she’s not the only one who will pay. The cost just might break her, and the man who owns her heart.

In Four Lost Cities, acclaimed science journalist Annalee Newitz takes listeners on an entertaining and mind-bending adventure into the deep history of urban life. Investigating across the centuries and around the world, Newitz explores the rise and fall of four ancient cities, each the center of a sophisticated civilization: the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Central Turkey, the Roman vacation town of Pompeii in Italy, the medieval megacity of Angkor in Cambodia, and the indigenous metropolis Cahokia, which stood beside the Mississippi River where East St. Louis is today.

Joe Sunday has been a Los Angeles low-life for years, but his life gets a whole lot lower when he is killed by the rival of his crime boss-only to return as a zombie. His only hope is to find and steal a talisman that he learns can grant immortality. But, unfortunately for Joe, every other undead thug and crime boss in Los Angeles is looking for the same thing.

No metropolis has been more loved or more hated. To its official boosters, "Los Angeles brings it all together". To detractors, LA is a sunlit mortuary where "you can rot without feeling it". To Mike Davis, the author of this fiercely elegant and wide-ranging work of social history, Los Angeles is both utopia and dystopia, a place where the last Joshua trees are being plowed under to make room for model communities in the desert, where the rich have hired their own police to fend off street gangs, as well as armed Beirut militias.

Sancia Grado is a thief, and a damn good one. And her latest target, a heavily guarded warehouse on Tevanne’s docks, is nothing her unique abilities can’t handle. But unbeknownst to her, Sancia’s been sent to steal an artifact of unimaginable power, an object that could revolutionize the magical technology known as scriving. The Merchant Houses who control this magic - the art of using coded commands to imbue everyday objects with sentience - have already used it to transform Tevanne into a vast, remorseless capitalist machine.

Jeff Speck has dedicated his career to determining what makes cities thrive. And he has boiled it down to one key factor: walkability. The very idea of a modern metropolis evokes visions of bustling sidewalks, vital mass transit, and a vibrant, pedestrian-friendly urban core. But in the typical American city, the car is still king, and downtown is a place that’s easy to drive to but often not worth arriving at. Making walkability happen is relatively easy and cheap; seeing exactly what needs to be done is the trick.

Why is the city a battleground of hostile principalities and powers? What is the mission of the church in the city? How can the church be supported in accomplishing that mission? These are the questions that Robert Linthicum treats in his comprehensive and probing biblical theology of the city. In the Bible the city is depicted both as a dwelling place of God and his people and as a center of power for Satan and his minions. The city is one primary stage on which the drama of salvation is played out.

Surrounded by secrecy, it is home to the wildest dreams and darkest nightmares. Incredible amounts of money have been lavished on it. The best minds of two generations have labored to build it. And somehow, bit by bit, it is claiming the Earth's most valuable resource - its children.

Two necromancers, a dwarf kingdom, and a sky city - it sounds like a prelude to mayhem, and given Timmy’s luck, that’s exactly what’s going to happen. To keep his castle and earn his pardon, Timmy has his work cut out for him. Whether it’s rescuing princesses, crushing hordes of goblins, or dealing with eldritch abominations, Timmy and the gang are there to save the day - and rob the occasional crime lord. But saving the day isn’t always easy.

Along the streets of Manhattan, a young Nigerian doctor doing his residency wanders aimlessly. The walks meet a need for Julius: They are a release from the tightly regulated mental environment of work, and they give him the opportunity to process his relationships, his recent breakup with his girlfriend, his present, his past. Though he is navigating the busy parts of town, the impression of countless faces does nothing to assuage his feelings of isolation.

Why is it so much easier for the Democratic Party to win the national popular vote than to build and maintain a majority in Congress? Why can Democrats sweep statewide offices in places like Pennsylvania and Michigan yet fail to take control of the same states' legislatures? Many place exclusive blame on partisan gerrymandering and voter suppression. But as political scientist Jonathan A. Rodden demonstrates in Why Cities Lose, the left's electoral challenges have deeper roots in economic and political geography.

It's tough being a faery in New Orleans, a city fraught with vampires.... From New York Times best-selling author Deanna Chase comes the complete set of the Crescent City Fae saga (Books 1-3). Includes Influential Magic, Irresistible Magic, and Intoxicating Magic.

Chess Putnam has a lot on her plate. Mangled human corpses have started to show up on the streets of Downside, and Chess’ bosses at the Church of Real Truth have ordered her to team up with the ultra-powerful Black Squad agency to crack the grisly case.

James Stark, aka Sandman Slim, has managed to get out of Hell, renounce his title as the new Lucifer, and settle back into life in L.A. But he also lost the Qomrama Om Ya, an all-powerful weapon from the banished older gods. Older gods who are returning and searching for their lost power. The hunt leads Stark to an abandoned shopping mall - a global shopping paradise infested with Lurkers and wretched bottom-feeding Sub Rosa families, squatters who have formed tight tribes to guard their tiny patches of retail wasteland.

Cities can make us sick. They always have - diseases spread more easily when more people are close to one another. And disease is hardly the only ill that accompanies urban density. Cities have been demonized as breeding grounds for vice and crime from Sodom and Gomorrah on. But cities have flourished nonetheless because they are humanity’s greatest invention, indispensable engines for creativity, innovation, wealth, and connection, the loom on which the fabric of civilization is woven. But cities now stand at a crossroads.

It's been almost a year since the magical apocalypse closed off the city of Manchester from the rest of the world. The vampires, werewolves and humans within the city all now live together in relative harmony...but trouble is brewing on the horizon. Supplies are starting to run out and, despite their best efforts to grow crops and create a sustainable future, everyone knows that it will be an uphill battle. Still, the magic swirling in the city air is an incredible bonus. Charley, the most magical of them all, is determined to do whatever she can to help out her new community.

In recent years the young, educated, and affluent have surged back into cities, reversing decades of suburban flight and urban decline. And yet all is not well, Richard Florida argues in The New Urban Crisis. Florida demonstrates how the same forces that power the growth of the world's superstar cities also generate their vexing challenges: gentrification, unaffordability, segregation, and inequality.

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.

The Wasp Empire’s armies are on the move – and the city of Tark will be first to feel their might. Salma and Totho prepare for battle, alongside their Ant-kinden brethren. And within Tark’s walls, they’ll face a force greater than any Lowlander has ever seen. Stenwold Maker predicted this threat, and the Empire's secret service now deems him too dangerous to live. So he’s to be eliminated, and his beloved city of Collegium destroyed. For if this centre of learning is lost, it will crush Lowland resistance.