Urban Contemporary Fiction

Cutting a deal with a trickster god rarely goes well for any human brave or foolish enough to try it, but Atticus doesn’t feel like he has a choice. With members of the Norse pantheon out for his blood, he can’t train his apprentice in peace, so he asks Coyote to help him fake his own death. The cost, however, might wind up being every bit as high as if he’d made no deal at all.

Five days after Owen Zastava Pitt pushed his insufferable boss out of a 14th story window, he woke up in the hospital with a scarred face, an unbelievable memory, and a job offer. It turns out that monsters are real. All the things from myth, legend, and B-movies are out there, waiting in the shadows. Some of them are evil, and some are just hungry. Monster Hunter International is the premier eradication company in the business. And now Owen is their newest recruit.

When a killer vampire threatens to destroy head of Special Investigations Karrin Murphy's reputation, unless Harry delivers the powerful Word of Kemmler to her, he has no choice. Now Harry is in a race against time to find the Word before Chicago experiences a Halloween night to wake the dead.

Everyone knows the story-how Arthur pulled the sword from the stone, how Camelot came to be, and about the power struggles that ultimately destroyed Arthur's dreams. But what of the time before Arthur and the forces that created him?

Fifteen years after losing most of his family to a devastating, pudding-related tragedy, Simon Debovar has settled into a life of self-imposed exile from the stinking, selfish morass of humanity. Content that his daily highlights will include hazelnut coffee, a long bath, and the occasional jar of olives, his life is completely upturned by the discovery that his ornate living room carpet is the deciding factor in a bet between God and Satan.

Against all odds, Grimshaw Griswald Grimsby has become an Auditor, enforcing laws about magic for Boston’s Department of Unorthodox Affairs. But Grimsby soon realizes the daily grind of his job is far removed from the glamour he imagined. Overlooked for every exciting case, Grimsby tires of being told to handle mundane magical troubles, and appropriates a case file intended for a friend. Alongside Leslie Mayflower, the temporarily unretired Huntsman, Grimsby aims to crack the case and discover the origin of a strange, unfinished ritual.

Winter lasts most of the year at the edge of the Russian wilderness, and in the long nights, Vasilisa and her siblings love to gather by the fire to listen to their nurse’s fairy tales. Above all, Vasya loves the story of Frost, the blue-eyed winter demon. Wise Russians fear him, for he claims unwary souls, and they honor the spirits that protect their homes from evil. Then Vasya’s widowed father brings home a new wife from Moscow. Fiercely devout, Vasya’s stepmother forbids her family from honoring their household spirits, but Vasya fears what this may bring.

The Winter Queen of Faerie has manipulated Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden into accepting a case to solve a murder and stop a war between the courts of Summer and Winter that could have literally earth shattering consequences. His own soul is up for grabs. Dresden must dig deep to discover that at time a willingness to accept a little help from your friends, be they a cub pack of werewolves, old loves in sheep's clothing, or a battalion of pizza loving dewdrop fairies, is a very good thing.

At 15, Chance Fortunato has seen more evil than most people ever will. Indentured by his father to the demon count Dulka, he's been taught dark magic and forced to do his infernal master's dirty work for eight years. But now Chance has figured out a way to defeat his master and free himself. His new life with his mother and sister is far from easy, and freedom has its own perils. Normal life is hard enough, but even in a mundane-looking high school, there are paranormal threats from both sides of the mystical fence.

Now that the werewolves have revealed themselves to humans, they can't afford any bad publicity. Infractions that could have been overlooked in the past must now be punished, and the strain of doing his father's dirty work is taking a toll on Charles. Nevertheless, Charles and Anna are sent to Boston when the FBI requests the pack's help on a local serial killer case. They quickly realize that not only the last two victims were werewolves - all of them were.

When the beautiful and precocious sisters Sally and Gillian Owens are orphaned at a young age, they are taken to a small Massachusetts town to be raised by their eccentric aunts, who happen to dwell in the darkest, eeriest house in town. As they become more aware of their aunts' mysterious and sometimes frightening powers - and as their own powers begin to surface - the sisters grow determined to escape their strange upbringing by blending into "normal" society.

All the world's a stage...even when you're teleported to a new world. Struggling actress Cara O'Sullivan was walking down the street of Galway one moment, and the next, she was in an ancient tomb in a faraway world. Alone in the dark with her cell phone as her last tenuous connection to home, Cara sings her favorite song. To her astonishment, her song casts a spell of light into the world...and from the depths, something hears her. Challenged by a ghostly knight, a tragic necromancer, and hordes of undead, can a young woman who does not believe in heroes become one herself?

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.

Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden has had a rough couple of weeks. As the only openly practicing professional wizard in the Chicago area, he has squared off against a multitude of supernatural bad guys. Harry has won the day against demons, poltergeists, sorcerers, trolls, vampires, werewolves, and even an evil faerie godmother. You might think nothing could spook him. You would be wrong.

Remy Morgan, a young girl born and raised in the heart of the ghetto, gets caught up in the life when she meets a drug lord who offers her the world. Young and naive, she is trapped in a game of lies, deception, and greed and learns the hard way that everything that glitters ain't gold. After her love is slain, Remy is forced back into the life that she desperately tried to forget. Remy has kept a diary of her life for the past two years. What she writes inside is a tale of love, passion, money, and secrecy - and ultimately a witness to her tragic end.

B.A.D. agent Sydney Westbrook must find the perfect sniper for a risky counterterrorism mission. The assignment is simple: find and kill a hired assassin before he kills a high-profile world leader during a peace conference on American soil. J. D. Steele, a trained military sniper whose attitude problem landed him in prison, seems like a good candidate for the job since he doesn't have many other options. But it turns out Steele doesn't take orders easily - not even when they come from an intriguing agent who has his number down pat.

It was supposed to be a simple scouting mission. In and out. No fighting. No new quests. Just me, my hippocorn, Alice, and a few hired mercenaries. We were going to tiptoe into the Spiral, get the info we needed, and leave. You know, the Spiral? That tower-defense run that protects the hobgoblin capital from invaders? Easy, right? Nobody would even know we were there. Yeah, so about that....

Claire Hansen was a Keeper, gifted - or cursed - with the job of being one of Earth's Guardians, "summoned" to areas where anomalies existed, where rifts had opened - or had been opened. Such places were the world's danger spots where, if they weren't sealed in time, all the minions of hell might break through. After she'd closed the portal into hell at the Elysian Fields Guest House, Claire and her talking cat, Austin, found they'd acquired a new companion - Dean.

For freewheeling ghost hunter Chess Putnam, finding herself near-fatally poisoned by a con psychic and then stopping a murderous ghost is just another day on the job. An agent for the Church of Real Truth, she investigates claims of harassment by the undead. But Chess has been extra busy these days, coping with a new “celebrity” assignment while trying on her own time to help some desperate prostitutes.

The downside to faking your own death is that people tend to get upset when they find out they’ve been had. In Atticus O’Sullivan’s case, they’re upset enough to come after him to make sure he dies for real this time. Yet he can’t remain in hiding anymore: He has to bind his apprentice, Granuaile, to the earth so that she can become the first new Druid in centuries.