Urban Contemporary Fiction

Helene Wecker's dazzling debut novel tells the story of two supernatural creatures who appear mysteriously in 1899 New York. Chava is a golem, a creature made of clay, brought to life by a strange man who dabbles in dark Kabbalistic magic. When her master dies at sea on the voyage from Poland, she is unmoored and adrift as the ship arrives in New York Harbor. Ahmad is a jinni, a being of fire, born in the ancient Syrian Desert. Trapped in an old copper flask by a Bedouin wizard centuries ago, he is released accidentally by a tinsmith in a Lower Manhattan shop.

Atticus O’Sullivan, last of the Druids, doesn’t care much for witches. Still, he’s about to make nice with the local coven by signing a mutually beneficial nonaggression treaty - when suddenly the witch population in modern-day Tempe, Arizona, quadruples overnight. And the new girls are not just bad, they’re badasses with a dark history on the German side of World War II.

Ici Séréna, chasseuse de catastrophes. Une nuit ordinaire au bureau s'est transformée en épisode d'une série de l'absurde quand mon boss a été attaqué par un vampire. Oui, tu as bien lu : un vampire. Et comme si ça ne suffisait pas, j'ai été sauvée par Alexander, un autre vampire, qui a décidé que devenir mon garde du corps ténébreux était son nouveau passe-temps favori.

Harry Dresden, Chicago's only practicing professional wizard, should be happy that business is pretty good for a change. But he also knows that whenever things are going good, the only way left for them to go is bad. Way bad. Recent examples: A duel with the lethal champion of the Red Court, who must kill Harry to end the war between vampires and wizards...Hit men using Harry for target practice...The missing Shroud of Turin - and the possible involvement of Chicago's most feared mob boss.

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....

Welcome to Charon's Crossing. The tea is hot, the scones are fresh, and the dead are just passing through. When a reaper comes to collect Wallace from his own funeral, Wallace begins to suspect he might be dead. And when Hugo, the owner of a peculiar tea shop, promises to help him cross over, Wallace decides he’s definitely dead.

In The Book of Swords, acclaimed editor and best-selling author Gardner Dozois presents an all-new anthology of original epic tales by a stellar cast of award-winning modern masters - many of them set in their authors' best-loved worlds. Join today's finest tellers of fantastic tales, including George R. R. Martin, K. J. Parker, Robin Hobb, Scott Lynch, Ken Liu, C. J. Cherryh, Daniel Abraham, Lavie Tidhar, Ellen Kushner, and more on action-packed journeys into the outer realms of dark enchantment and intrepid derring-do.

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.

In Chicago, someone has been killing practitioners of magic, those incapable of becoming full-fledged wizards. Shockingly, all the evidence points to Harry Dresden's half brother, Thomas, as the murderer. Determined to clear his sibling's name, Harry uncovers a conspiracy within the White Council of Wizards that threatens not only him, but his nearest and dearest, too.

Across two parallel narratives, Murakami draws listeners into a mind-bending universe in which Lauren Bacall, Bob Dylan, a split-brained data processor, a deranged scientist, his shockingly undemure granddaughter, and various thugs, librarians, and subterranean monsters collide to dazzling effect. What emerges is a novel that is at once hilariously funny and a deeply serious meditation on the nature and uses of the mind.

Ten years ago this season, Gregory Maguire wrapped up the series he began with Wicked by giving us the fourth and final volume of the Wicked Years, his elegiac Out of Oz. But “out of Oz” isn’t “gone for good.” Maguire’s new series, Another Day, is here, 25 years after Wicked first flew into our lives.

In a small back alley of Tokyo, there is a café that has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than 100 years. Local legend says that this shop offers something else besides coffee - the chance to travel back in time. Over the course of one summer, four customers visit the café in the hopes of making that journey. But time travel isn’t so simple, and there are rules that must be followed. Most important, the trip can last only as long as it takes for the coffee to get cold.

My name is Mercy Thompson Hauptman, and my mate, Adam, is the werewolf who leads the Columbia Basin Pack, the pack charged with keeping the people who live and work in the Tri-Cities of Washington State safe. It’s a hard job, and it doesn’t leave much room for side quests. Which is why when I needed to travel to Montana to help my brother, I intended to go by myself.

People start dropping dead around Charlie, giant ravens perch on his building, and it seems that everywhere he goes, a dark presence whispers to him from under the streets. Strange names start appearing on his nightstand notepad, and before he knows it, those people end up dead, too. Yup, it seems that Charlie Asher has been recruited for a new job, an unpleasant but utterly necessary one: Death.

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.

While civil war looms in Oz, a tetchy oracle named Yackle prepares for death. Before her final hour, a figure known as Brrr - the Cowardly Lion - arrives searching for information about Elphaba Thropp, the Wicked Witch of the West. Abandoned as a cub, his path from infancy is no Yellow Brick Road. In the wake of laws that oppress talking Animals, he avoids a jail sentence by agreeing to serve as a lackey to the warmongering Emperor of Oz.

Archaeologist Annja Creed and her sword have never been outmatched — until now. When a surprise party for her mentor Roux includes some uninvited guests, Annja finds herself fighting desperately for her life. The intruders escape but leave a sinister message behind. A legend has resurfaced about a sword that should be feared. A sword that seeks a master as bloodthirsty as itself. It is wielded by an assassin known as the Dragon who initiates a terrible game of cat and mouse. Eventually, the two swords — light and dark — must meet...and only one shall triumph.

All we have is us. Those were the words that twin sisters, Raven and Lovely Towns, swore by. When Lovely’s love is put to the test after finding out Raven was violated in the worst way imaginable, she makes a call that separates them and leaves her sister to fend for herself. Fortunately, Raven runs into the likes of Silesia and Asteria, two girls who change her life as she knows it, by giving her the means to set her and her sister up to never need anyone again.

Meet Justice, the beautiful bombshell with a slick mouth and the attitude to match it. Running a drug empire is hard enough, but try being a female while doing so. In a profession that’s mostly men, she has no problem stepping up and getting it done in her stiletto heels and a Glock on her hip. Anytime she walks in the room, people notice her, and there’s nothing but respect. When the plug dies, and she has to meet with his son, she finds out that there may be more to life than being the head of an empire.

A mercenary in magic-torn Atlanta who cleans up after magic gone wrong, Kate Daniels has seen it all - and some things she couldn't even have imagined. Normally, waves of paranormal energy ebb and flow like an ocean current. But once every seven years, a paranormal flare comes and brings magic like a tidal wave. Now Kate faces problems on a much bigger scale: a divine one.