Urban Fantasy Thriller

In this dark and gritty collection - featuring short stories from Jim Butcher, Seanan McGuire, Kevin J. Anderson, and Rob Thurman - nothing is as simple as black and white, light and dark, good and evil.... Unfortunately, that's exactly what makes it so easy to cross the line.

I'm stuck with Reilly and figuring out how to control my power, which is starting to feel more like a curse. I never expected to be working with JHAPI. I'm still not sure I can trust them, particularly Zachary's longtime co-worker who won't stop glaring at me. And I'm not sure Zachary has forgiven me at all. To make matters worse, I can't get rid of the welts on my arms, and I'm starting to see things I shouldn't. Despite my reservations about JHAPI, they seem to have a solid plan to hit the NWR in a way could shut them down for good.

As the festival of Beltane draws near, mysterious fires are springing up around the magical village of Myrtlewood, and Rosemary Thorn can't help but try to solve the case. Rosemary already has too much on her plate with a hoard of foundling children to house and her own teenager to raise. On top of all this, she has run out of excuses. There's nothing standing between Rosemary and her dream of becoming a magical chocolatier. Well, nothing except her own self-sabotage. Meanwhile, Athena Thorn is yearning for the fae realm and harboring a secret that could put the whole town at risk.

Eugenie Markham is a shaman for hire, paid to bind and banish creatures from the Otherworld. But after her last battle, she's also become queen of the Thorn Land. It may sound nice, but her kingdom is in tatters, her love life is in chaos, and Eugenie is eager to avoid a prophecy about her firstborn destroying mankind. Now young girls are disappearing from the Otherworld, and no one - except Eugenie - is willing to find out why.

Master vampire Ian is unrepentant, shameless...and every shade of wicked. He’s made one too many enemies in his two centuries of existence, including Dagon, a demon who now lays claim to his soul. Ian’s only chance to escape Dagon is to join forces with a Law Guardian, but he's never been able to abide by the rules for long.

Paranormal private eye. Grim reaper extraordinaire. Whatever. Charley Davidson is back in Darynda Jones' Third Grave Dead Ahead! And she’s drinking copious amounts of caffeine to stay awake because, every time she closes her eyes, she sees him: Reyes Farrow, the parthuman, part-supermodel son of Satan. Yes, she did imprison him for all eternity, but come on.

Agent Kit Morris. Has a nice ring, doesn't it? It's a big step up from "wanted criminal" or "that weird con-artist guy with weirder psychic powers", both of which recently applied to me. But my promotion to MagiPol agent comes with a few drawbacks. First, supremely talented and effortlessly gorgeous Agent Lienna Shen won't agree to a dinner date with me. Second, my new assignment has pitted me against a guild with very bad taste in pets. Third, those pets are demons, and those demons want to kill me.

With the Winter Solstice on the horizon, the celestial opportunity is presented for releasing the next stage of potent crone magic. The ancient grimoire reveals further puzzles relating to Delia's heritage, and the sudden appearance of an unknown relative on Delia's doorstep presents an entirely new challenge. Time is running out, and the stakes are high. Alliances will be tested, mysteries unraveled, and the battle for the very essence of crone magic will leave no one unchanged.

It has been a rough month for mage private investigator Alice Worth. Alice hasn't had a decent night's sleep in weeks, her relationship with werewolf Sean Maclin is on the rocks, a federal agent hounds her every step, and a powerful vampire whose ulterior motives have ulterior motives watches her every move. It's enough to drive any woman to drink.

Cade Williams is no ordinary man. His ability to cross over to the other side makes him uniquely qualified to command the Church’s special operations division. As a modern-day Knight, Cade can use the curse that has scarred his soul as a weapon against the forces of darkness. But a new kind of unholy war is brewing — and soon Cade may be the last man standing...between the living and the dead.

Deciphering an ancient alchemy book is more difficult than Zoe Faust bargained for. She'd much rather be gardening and exploring her new hometown of Portland, Oregon - but time is running out for living gargoyle Dorian Robert-Houdin. If Zoe isn't able to unlock an unusual alchemy book's secrets soon, the French gargoyle will remain awake but trapped in stone forever.

In the wake of a Kaiju assault that left the nation's capital in ruins, Jon Hudson - director of the Department of Homeland Security's Fusion Center, Paranormal - is preparing his team for an uncertain future. While hiding Lilly, a chimera cat-girl rescued from Island 731, from GOD - the Genetic Offense Directive, a black ops organization within DARPA - Hudson attempts to raise Maigo.

A group of mountain climbers, caught in the dark, fight to survive their descent; in the British countryside, hundreds of magpies ascend into the sky, higher and higher, until they seem to vanish into the heavens; a professor and his student track a zombie horde in order to research zombie behavior; an all-girl riding school has sinister secrets; a town rails in vain against a curse inflicted upon it by its founders; and much more.

Lucy inherits an Oxford knitting shop...and so much more. Like the vampires who live downstairs and pop up to the shop when they run out of wool, or for their late-night knitting club. They've even offered to help Lucy learn how to knit. She discovers she's a witch and has some quirky relatives she never knew about. Her grandmother's supposed to be dead, but keeps showing up. It's enough to send Lucy screaming back to Boston, except there's a mystery to solve and Oxford and her new vampire friends are kind of growing on her....

It is 1890, and in the days before Christmas, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson are visited at Baker Street by a new client. Eve Allerthorpe, eldest daughter of a grand but somewhat eccentric Yorkshire-based dynasty, is greatly distressed, as she believes she is being haunted by a demonic Christmas spirit. Her late mother told her terrifying tales of the sinister Black Thurrick, and Eve is sure that she has seen the creature from her bedroom window. What is more, she has begun to receive mysterious parcels of birch twigs, the Black Thurrick’s calling card.

Peony Bellefleur runs Betwitching Blooms, the charming flower shop in a picture-perfect Cotswold village in England. Her flowers seem to make the sick improve, wedding days happier, and birthdays more special because she infuses her bouquets with a little magic. Peony’s a witch in a village that seems too perfect to be true. Probably because it is. She’s got her hands full between running her flower shop, managing her mother—who’s a medium with a habit of conversing with the dead wherever she happens to be—and helping her protégé to embrace her newfound powers.

When former soldier Anastasia Aaronson stumbles across two hellish creatures, her body reacts by channeling magic to defend itself and unleashes a power the Earth has forgotten. The sudden and unwanted discovery soon attracts a lot of heat: The demons all seem to want her, but the ancient secret driving them to her might also hold the key to her survival.

Aspiring supervillains (and super nerds) Jonathan and Andrew attempt to hold their own in a town full of monsters, while eleven-hundred-year-old vengeance demon Anya is just looking for something to give her life purpose again, spending her days working at an evil juice bar. But soon word gets out that there's a new Big Bad on the scene, one more powerful and more destructive than anyone who has come before. She, of course, is Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And she's hell-bent on rooting out all of this reality's evil by any means necessary.

The game's afoot once more as the long-suffering Dr. John Watson and a partially decomposed Warlock Holmes (though he's getting better) face off against Moriarty's gang, the Pinkertons, flesh-eating horses, a parliament of imps, boredom, Surrey, a succubus, an overly Canadian aristocrat, a tricycle fight to the death, and the dreaded Pumpcrow. Oh, and a hellhound, one assumes.

Immortal Enforcer Valerian just wants to relax. His last assignment had been more grueling than he’d care to admit, and golf has always helped him unwind. If golf course owner Natalie thinks it’s a little odd for him to tee off at sunset every evening, she’s keeping it to herself. The single mom is sexy as hell, and her little daughter Mia only adds to his delight. He knows Natalie is wary of a relationship of any kind…what will she think when she discovers he’s an Immortal? His best course of action is to woo her the old-fashioned way.