Urban Contemporary Fiction

Your neighbor is just as likely to be a vampire as they are to be a troll, human, elf, or a werewolf. Amber's parents never forgave her after her brother died. They were young and careless, but Amber left all that guilt in Texas when she fled to the pacific northwest to be a nurse. But when she decides to play hero, her life as a nurse is cut short. Newly turned wolves aren't easily trusted.

In her 10th adventure, nothing can save vampire hunter Anita Blake from a twist of fate that draws her ever closer to the brink of humanity.

A cozy home in a small town, a lake for fishing, and a few friendly neighbors — that's all Sean needs. And that’s exactly what he’s hoping to find in the quiet town of Waycross. But when he discovers a mysterious book in the attic of his new home, strange things start to happen. Strange and magical things.

From best-selling author Anne Rice, writing as A.N. Roquleaure, in the traditional folktale of "Sleeping Beauty", the spell cast upon the lovely young princess and everyone in her castle can only be broken by the kiss of a prince. It is an ancient story, one that originally emerged from and still deeply disturbs the mind's unconscious. Now Anne Rice's retelling of the Beauty story probes the unspoken implications of this lush, suggestive tale by exploring its undeniable connection to sexual desire. Here the prince reawakens Beauty, not with a kiss, but with sexual initiation.

The one thing you never talk about while you’re in the Scholomance is what you’ll do when you get out. Not even the richest enclaver would tempt fate that way. But it’s all we dream about: the hideously slim chance we’ll survive to make it out the gates and improbably find ourselves with a life ahead of us, a life outside the Scholomance halls. And now the impossible dream has come true. I’m out, we’re all out. We saved everyone. So much for my great-grandmother’s prophecy of doom and destruction. Ha, only joking! Actually, it’s gone all wrong.

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 the days leading up to Christmas, struggling actress Esther Diamond is working as a singing-and-dancing elf at Fenster & Co, a major Manhattan department store. As if dealing with hordes of holiday shoppers isn't bad enough, Esther's ex-almost-boyfriend, Detective Connor Lopez, is on the scene investigating a series of mob-related truck hijackings of Fenster's merchandise. Semi-retired hitman Lucky Battistuzzi is also nosing around, since the mob resents being implicated in thefts they didn't commit.

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.

Lucky St. James, orphaned daughter of a bad-ass Métis good-times girl, is barely hanging on to her nowhere life when she finds out that she and her grandmother, Stella, are about to be evicted from their apartment. Bad to worse in a heartbeat. Then one night, doing laundry in the building's dank basement, Lucky finds a tarnished silver spoon depicting a story-book hag over letters that spell out S-A-L-E-M. Which alerts Salem-born Meena Good, finder of a matching spoon and one of the most powerful witches in North America, to Lucky's existence.

In the final installment, Ricky must deal with the mind-blowing news his grandmother has just revealed to him. Feeling like he's all alone in being betrayed by people who were expected to be loyal to him, Ricky soon realizes that the person who can understand his situation completely has been right by his side all along. Draylah, too, has her own troubles to face - the main one dealing with someone she thought she'd lost but has been able to reunite with. However, there is a big block in her road to bliss, and Draylah is beyond ready to take it out.

Carl Weber brings together two popular Urban Audiobooks divas to give listeners what they've been asking for: passionate, empowering stories about the lives and loves of big, beautiful women. Newly divorced 40-year-old Desa Rae finds herself alone now that her son has gone away to college. She's taken to her bed, watching life pass her by - until Roc, a 24-year-old with a jaw-dropping body comes along. Avery Belmont is a diva in her own right. Smart, sassy, and successful, she has always had it going on.

In a strange little home built into the branches of a grove of trees, live three robots—fatherly inventor android Giovanni Lawson, a pleasantly sadistic nurse machine, and a small vacuum desperate for love and attention. Victor Lawson, a human, lives there too. They’re a family, hidden and safe. The day Vic salvages and repairs an unfamiliar android labelled “HAP,” he learns of a shared dark past between Hap and Gio–a past spent hunting humans. When Hap unwittingly alerts robots from Gio’s former life to their whereabouts, the family is no longer hidden and safe.

Years ago, after their blood brother ritual, Gage, Fox, and Caleb emerged from the woods, each with a piece of bloodstone. Now, it will become their weapon in the final fight against the demon they awakened. Winner take all...Shared nightmares, visions of blood and fire, and random violence begin to plague the longtime friends and Quinn, Layla, and Cybil, the women bound to them by fate. None of them can ignore the fact that, this year, the demon has grown stronger.

Fitz, le bâtard royal, a survécu à sa première mission meurtrière, mais son contact avec la mort lui a laissé d'inaltérables séquelles. Revenu à Castelcerf, il retrouve celle qu'il a aimée, mais ne peut lui déclarer sa flamme sous peine de la condamner irrémédiablement. Car autour de lui, la Cour fourmille d'intrigue, les menaces se resserrent, la mort rôde. Il a pourtant quelques alliés dans la place : un prince qui lui fait découvrir les mystères d'une magie toute puissante, un maître assassin qui lui veut malgré tout du bien, et un loup, avec qui il partage lien étrange et périlleux.

Doctor Talbot Harrison, a professor in archaeology, receives a phone call one day which will destroy everything he perceives as reality. His brother has been mysteriously killed and within moments, the United States military appear at his door, literally dragging him from his home. Thrown into a helicopter under intense armed guard, it doesn't take long until they are attacked by something which cannot possibly exist, something drawn to destroy the one man who can stop the beasts from a land beyond Hades.

Jack Shade has a secret, and this hidden part of his past sends him on a journey through time and space and a great number of metaphysical doorways. From the cozy poker table in the 11th-floor apartment of the Hôtel de Rêve Noire to the ethereal Forest of Souls to the faded houses along the Gold River, Jack flows in and out of this world. Even when his own duplicate hires him to kill himself, Jack is mercury in motion. The Fissure King collects the four existing Jack Shades novellas and shows us Jack's final trick - one last story that finally reveals Jack's true nature.

It was a dark and stormy knight, and nine dark defenders embarked upon a most perilous quest. They're the ultimate defenders of humanity, modern day knights who do dark deeds for all the right reasons. In this all-star collection, nine of today's hottest paranormal authors bring us thrilling, all-new stories of supernatural knights that are brimming with magic mystery and mayhem.

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.

Zephyr, Alabama, is an idyllic hometown for eleven-year-old Cory Mackenson - a place where monsters swim the river deep and friends are forever. Then, one cold spring morning, Cory and his father witness a car plunge into a lake - and a desperate rescue attempt brings his father face-to-face with a terrible, haunting vision of death. As Cory struggles to understand his father's pain, his eyes are slowly opened to the forces of good and evil that surround him.

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.