Urban Contemporary Fiction

The ratings and views are off the chart. The fans just can't get enough. The dungeon gets more dangerous each day. But in a grinder designed to chew up and spit out crawlers by the millions, Carl and Princess Donut need to work harder than ever just to survive. They call it the Over City. A sprawling, once-thriving metropolis devastated by a mysterious calamity. But these streets are far from abandoned. An undead circus trawls the ruins. Murdered prostitutes rain from the sky. An ancient spell is finally ready to reveal its dark purpose.

Since the moment I was ripped from my mother's womb, I've been an outcast among my own kind. The Sidhe might possess magical Gifts, unbelievable wealth, and unfathomable power, but I don't want a thing to do with them. I ran away from their lands in the Highlands of Scotland when I was 11 years old, and I've never looked back. I don't need a clan. I've got my own family of highly skilled thieves who mean more to me than any Sidhe ever could.

Elemental witch Abigail Drake, third daughter in a magical bloodline, was born with a special affinity for water and the power to communicate with dolphins. Off the coast of Sea Haven, California, she has spent her entire life swimming among the sleek aquatic mammals, studying their fascinating ways. But then her idyll is shattered when she witnesses a gruesome murder along the shore.

In a Tokyo suburb, a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife’s missing cat—and then for his wife as well—in a netherworld beneath the city’s placid surface. As these searches intersect, he encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists. Gripping, prophetic, and suffused with comedy and menace, this is one of Haruki Murakami’s most acclaimed and beloved novels.

World-famous (and now retired) photographer Jenvieve Adams has a debt to repay - and a soft spot for modern witches who have lost their way. Or so she thinks, until they actually show up.

When children go missing, and the Humans have no leads, I'm the one they call. I am their last hope in bringing home the lost ones. I salvage what they cannot. The FBI wants me on their team. Bad enough that they are dangling bait they know I can't resist. The catch? It’s on the other side of the ocean. And if I want what they’re offering, I have to help them with a salvage gone terribly, terribly wrong. But this time, I have no back up. I have no Plan B. And I have no O’Shea.

A call from a distraught wife, and another from Lt. Murphy of the Chicago PD Special Investigation Unit makes Harry believe things are looking up, but they are about to get worse, much worse. Someone is harnessing immense supernatural forces to commit a series of grisly murders. Someone has violated the first law of magic: Thou Shalt Not Kill. Tracking that someone takes Harry into the dangerous underbelly of Chicago, from mobsters to vampires....

The winner of multiple Hugo Awards, Charles Stross is one of the most highly regarded science fiction writers of his time. In The Apocalypse Codex, occasionally hapless British agent Bob Howard tackles a case involving an American televangelist and a supernatural threat of global proportions.

The Carls just appeared. Coming home from work at three a.m., 23-year-old April May stumbles across a giant sculpture. Delighted by its appearance and craftsmanship - like a 10-foot-tall Transformer wearing a suit of samurai armor - April and her friend Andy make a video with it, which Andy uploads Online. The next day April wakes up to a viral video and a new life. News quickly spreads that there are Carls in dozens of cities around the world - everywhere from Beijing to Buenos Aires - and April, as their first documentarian, finds herself at the center of an intense media spotlight.

Charley is a cleaner by day and a professional gambler by night. She might be haunted by her tragic past but she's never thought of herself as anything or anyone special. Until, that is, things start to go terribly wrong all across the city of Manchester. Between plagues of rats, firestorms, and the gleaming blue eyes of a sexy Scottish werewolf, she might just have landed herself in the middle of a magical apocalypse. She might also be the only person who has the ability to bring order to an utterly chaotic new world.

Integrity Taylor should have been a Clan princess. Instead she's lived a life on the very periphery of society. However, now that she's learned more about her heritage and the magic that she's capable of wielding, she's not going to hide in the shadows any longer. The once-in-a-generation Sidhe Games are going to provide the perfect opportunity for her to win back her birthright, and the fact that she'll be going head-to-head, toe-to-toe, and mouth-to-mouth with golden-haired Byron Moncrieffe might just be the icing on the cake.

Thor, the Norse god of thunder, is worse than a blowhard and a bully - he’s ruined countless lives and killed scores of innocents. After centuries, Viking vampire Leif Helgarson is ready to get his vengeance, and he’s asked his friend Atticus O’Sullivan, the last of the Druids, to help take down this Norse nightmare.

Kandri Hinjuman was never meant to be a soldier. His brother Mektu was never meant for this world. Rivals since childhood, they are drafted into a horrific war led by a madwoman-Prophet, and survive each day only by hiding their disbelief. Kandri is good at blending in, but Mektu is hopeless: impulsive, erratic - and certain that a demon is stalking him. Is this madness or a second sense? Either way, Kandri knows that Mektu's antics will land them both in early graves. But all bets are off when the brothers' simmering feud explodes into violence, and holy blood is spilled.

Michael finds himself in the realm of the Forever Kingdom, with no memory of how he got there and who he is. Even so, he must participate in the Grand Game and forge a new destiny for himself. Dropped into a dungeon of monsters and strange magics, would you survive in a game where to lose means death? Alone, and with little more than his wits to aid him, Michael must advance as a player, slay his foes, and gain experience. All while navigating the intrigues around him and discovering his purpose.

Abby has been through hell and has survived one of the most brutal childhoods imaginable. To the outside world, she is just a loner with an attitude. When her grandmother dies in a tragic explosion, Abby is left with questions - and nothing else. Homeless, sleeping in a junkyard, and on the run from a system that has failed her over and over again, she meets Jake, a tattooed, blue-eyed biker with secrets that rival her own. Two broken souls that can't be healed. They can't be saved.

Together for the first time, 14 action-packed tales of demons, monsters, vampires, and cosmic horrors too terrible to name - and the men and women who take them all down. Oh, and toss in an interdimensional insurance salesman for good measure.

Richard Mayhew is a young man with a good heart and an ordinary life, which is changed forever when he stops to help a girl he finds bleeding on a London sidewalk. His small act of kindness propels him into a world he never dreamed existed. There are people who fall through the cracks, and Richard has become one of them. And he must learn to survive in this city of shadows and darkness, monsters and saints, murderers and angels, if he is ever to return to the London that he knew.

Contains the complete Fold series: Thou Shall Not Run, Thou Shall Not Hide, and Thou Shall Not Fear.

Bowen Knight has come back from the dead. But there's a ticking time bomb in his head: a chip implanted to block telepathic interference that could fail at any moment - taking his brain along with it. With no time to waste, he should be back on land helping the Human Alliance. Instead, he's at the bottom of the ocean, consumed with an enigmatic changeling... Kaia Luna may have traded in science for being a chef, but she won't hide the facts of Bo's condition from him or herself. She's suffered too much loss in her life to fall prey to the charm of a human who is a dead man walking.

Waking up in a tacky coffin and wearing off-brand shoes, Betsy Taylor can't believe the horrible turn her life has taken; then she discovers she's a vampire. Soon, Betsy becomes a participant in a power struggle between the forces of darkness. With only her friend Jessica and the hunky vampire Sinclair to help her, this new "Queen of Vampires" will have a tough time getting her afterlife straight.