Urban Mystery

With the famous rhubarb festival right around the corner, small-town tensions, tempers, and godly tantrums are at an all-time high. The last thing Delaney needs is her ex-boyfriend reappearing just when she's finally caught the attention of Ryder Bailey, the one man she should never love. No, scratch that. The actual last thing she needs is a dead body washing ashore, especially since the dead body is a god.

The Beechwood Inn for paranormal beings is opening its doors once again, and the first event following the hiatus is a fairy godmother conference. When the godmothers arrive, I expect them to bust out their knitting projects and sip tea, while they swap recipes and sweet stories of their cherubic charges. So, when the sitting room turns into a defensive magic combat zone and a boot camp style obstacle course is erected in the manor's backyard, I'm more than a little thrown off. Then the curse gets unleashed.

Vampire hunter and zombie animator Anita Blake is an expert at sniffing out the bad from the good. But in The Lunatic Cafe - now in trade paperback for the first time - she's about to learn that nothing is ever as it seems, especially in matters of the not-so-human heart. Dating a werewolf with self-esteem issues is stressing Anita out. Especially when something - or someone - starts taking out the city's shapeshifters.

Moving into a rundown Victorian house with a vampire living in the basement isn’t as bad as I thought, but things go from weird to weirder when a badly injured gnome collapses in my back yard. The surprising part? It’s my friend Nin’s long-lost grandfather. Since he’s unconscious, we can’t figure out who’s chasing him or where he’s been all these years, but if we can’t help him, he’ll die. To make matters worse, there’s a new dragon in town. A female dragon.

The killer's methods are terrifying. He stalks the basements and underground passageways of New York City. He tattoos his victims' flesh with cryptic messages, using a tattoo gun loaded with poison, resulting in an agonizing, painful death. When a connection is made to the Bone Collector - the serial killer who terrorized New York more than a decade ago - Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs are immediately drawn into the case.

As he struggles to control his drug empire and keep his cutthroat girlfriend in check, Kiley Jacoby Abrams has the next several months cut out for him. If that's not enough, he's got more setbacks than one man can handle: an arrogant and troublesome brother, a sneaky playa-hating friend, another friend who turns to him for everything, and a woman who only claims to have his back. Kiley's life is full of secrets from the past. Moving from Los Angeles to St. Louis doesn't allow him the change his heart desires....

Vincent Banecroft, the irascible editor of The Stranger Times, has never believed his wife died despite emphatic evidence to the contrary. Now, against all odds, it seems he may actually be proved right; but what lengths will he go to in an attempt to rescue her?

Luke Taylor has been searching for his missing twin for months, but has begun to believe that his brother might be dead. With his hope in tatters, a tip off leads him to a remote tidal island in the North Sea. It’s further out than the famous Holy Island, and far stranger.

Syn was raised as a tech-thief until his livelihood uncovered a truth that could end his life. He tried to destroy the evidence, and has been on the run ever since. Now trained as an assassin, he allows no one to threaten him. Ever. He is the darkness that swallows his enemies whole. Shahara Dagan is the best bounty hunter in the universe. When Syn comes back on the radar, she's the only one who can bring him to justice. There's only one problem: Syn is a close family friend who's helped out the Dagans countless times. But if she saves him, both of their lives will be on the line.

Zara Riddle would do anything for her daughter. Zoey Riddle is studious and kind. She's a dream teenager who plays the harp like an angel. Everything changes when a new boy arrives at Zoey's high school and catches her eye. Soon, Zoey is behaving in a very un-Zoey-like fashion. What's a mother to do when her perfect teen daughter falls for the baddest boy around? Besides gather the coven, cast a bunch of half-baked spells, and make everything much, much worse?

In the second book in the Dead Jack series, the zombie detective hits rock bottom, bingeing on fairy dust and formaldehyde 24/7. Reluctantly, he sets out with a fellow zombie, the narcissistic Garry, to find his long-lost soul. But a new threat emerges: a neo-Nazi group that hunts down the depressed corpse, believing his sidekick Oswald has the power to capture all the souls in Pandemonium. Again, the wicked world needs saving, but this time can Jack also save himself?

Wedding fever has come to Bon Temps, Louisiana! Unfortunately, buxom, blonde, beautiful, and telepathic cocktail waitress Sookie is not the bride-to-be, so she takes the opportunity to travel to New Orleans on family business. As heir to the estate of her newly dead cousin Hadley, Sookie unearths a big secret. Soon it becomes clear that more than a few people will do anything to stop Sookie from looking into Hadley's past.

Rhianne Alkenn is thrust into the heart of a murder investigation as a consultant. But when her gargoyle employee becomes the prime suspect, the investigation becomes personal. She’s not very good with relationships or accepting help but a growing set of quirky friends won’t take no for an answer: her cheeky incubus best friend, her wise familiar Toto, a sassy half-gargoyle lawyer and a pathologist who can tell you what she is but would then have to kill you.

I’m Val Thorvald, and I’m an assassin. When magical bad guys hurt people, I take care of them. Permanently. This doesn’t make me popular with the rest of the magical community — as you can tell from the numerous break-ins and assassination attempts I’ve endured over the years. But thanks to my half-elven blood, a powerful sword named Chopper, and a telepathic tiger with an attitude, I’ve always been able to handle my problems with aplomb. Maybe some cursing and swearing, too, but definitely aplomb.

Vampire hunter Anita Blake is called on to raise the dead - while trying to suppress her ever-growing feelings for a certain wereleopard.

The witch who doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Amber is under orders to spend a relaxing Christmas with her house and family in Denver. No chance. A fleeing Athanate House with rebel Adepts and a dying human kin throw themselves at Amber's mercy and her decisions unleash a terrifying journey into the world of the most secretive of paranormal races - the Adepts. Amber has to unmask her enemies, persuade uncertain allies to support her, and risk her own soul in a battle to protect the power of the dragon and the outcome of emergence.

When 17-year-old Laurel Harper decides to go live with her estranged father and step-family, she's unaware of the fact that her fate was already sealed the day she was born. She is now exactly where some higher power wants her to be. But it's not until she meets the proud and mysterious Sam Laurens that she feels something strange is going on. And when she learns the dark truth about her own future, a sinister secret that will change everything as soon as she turns 19, she wants to run and hide, but soon realizes that there is no hiding from fate.

With 12 hellhounds after her, pregnant Charley Davidson takes refuge at the only place she thinks they can't get to her: the grounds of an abandoned convent. But after months of being cooped up there, Charley is ready to pop. Both metaphorically and literally, since she is now roughly the size of a beached whale. Fortunately a new case has captured her attention, one that involves a murder on the very grounds the team has taken shelter upon.

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.

For his entire life, Charley Sutherland has concealed a magical ability he can't quite control: He can bring characters from books into the real world. His older brother, Rob - a young lawyer with a normal house, a normal fiancee, and an utterly normal life - hopes that this strange family secret will disappear with disuse, and he will be discharged from his life's duty of protecting Charley and the real world from each other. But then, literary characters start causing trouble in their city, making threats about destroying the world...and for once, it isn't Charley's doing.