Will he make the right decision, or will the floodwaters bound for New Orleans sweep him away?Street kid Sean O’Hara has never had it easy, but New Orleans has driven him to his knees. His girlfriend’s broken up with him for a sugar daddy, a gun-toting pimp has robbed him of everything but the clothes on his back, and he’s down to his last two Oxycontin. Sean’s no seasoned streetwalker, but he’s not above it either, not when he’s already itching for his next fix.A familiar-seeming stranger named Ángel may be his ticket to some quick cash, but only if Sean’s willing to help him indulge a high-class john’s weird fetish for the night. As Ángel tells him, in this city and this business, you have to get a little weird to survive.When night falls on the French Quarter, Sean realizes Ángel and the john want more from him than he was expecting to give. What once seemed merely strange soon crosses the line into supernatural and sinister. And Ángel, the man Sean had viewed as a partner and protector, might also be his otherworldly judge and executioner.(Publisher's note: This title contains dubious consent, drug use, and a non-explicit rape.)

    Self-image, body changes, and social changes chip away at individual’s self-confidence. Withdrawal and hiding can often seem like the easiest escape. You cannot escape from life. An excellent student, our hero is ripped from his friends and everything he knows when his father is moved across the country for his job. Intent on re-establishing the mother’s employment, the parents appear to withdraw from their high school student as he is dropped into a situation where he knows no one. Everyone experiences physical and emotional problems but our protagonist is ashamed of his body and won’t even talk to his parents who seem oblivious. Wearing baggy clothes, coats and hoods, it is easy to hide his body and isolate himself since he knows no one. Others assume he is overweight, shy or has acne problems. The strangely dressed student is a magnet for bullies and everyone else ignores him. Teachers might have gotten involved or pushed him to participate in class, but as an excellent student, grades are not an issue. Life evolves into a strategy to be left alone and survive another day. Because of this, attacks are not reported. An accident at school will expose our protagonist’s secrets to a classmate. How that classmate responds will change our protagonist’s life. There are still bullying and attacks, but with newfound confidence, our hero will deal with things differently. Can this quiet, isolated person evolve into an example and build real friendships while accepting life’s little hurdles? This series of books contain examples of high school life that help the reader to identify and deal with bullying behavior in a high school setting. The books in this series are intended to be safe reading for teens and tweens. Thank you for reading on Daring Diane Disclaimer This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

    Barnes’ Dead Silence, a SF horror novel in which a woman and her crew board a decades-lost luxury cruiser and find the wreckage of a nightmare that hasn't yet ended.A GHOST SHIP.A SALVAGE CREW.UNSPEAKABLE HORRORS.Claire Kovalik is days away from being unemployed—made obsolete—when her beacon repair crew picks up a strange distress signal. With nothing to lose and no desire to return to Earth, Claire and her team decide to investigate.What they find at the other end of the signal is a shock: the Aurora, a famous luxury space-liner that vanished on its maiden tour of the solar system more than twenty years ago. A salvage claim like this could set Claire and her crew up for life. But a quick trip through the Aurora reveals something isn’t right.Whispers in the dark. Flickers of movement. Words scrawled in blood. Claire must fight to hold onto her sanity and find out what really happened on the Aurora, before she and her crew meet the same ghastly fate.

    Morrow's task: get close enough to map the extent of Rook's power, then bring that knowledge back to help Professor Joachim Asbury unlock the secrets of magic itself.Magicians, cursed by their gift to a solitary and painful existence, have never been more than a footnote in history. But Rook, driven by desperation, has a plan to shatter the natural law that prevents hexes from cooperation, and change the face of the world-a plan sealed by an unholy marriage-oath with the goddess Ixchel, mother of all hanged men. To accomplish this, he must raise her bloodthirsty pantheon from its collective grave through sacrifice, destruction, and apotheosis.Caught between a passel of dead gods and monsters, hexes galore, Rook's witchery, and the ruthless calculations of his own masters, Morrow's only real hope of survival lies with the man without whom Rook cannot succeed: Chess Pargeter himself. But Morrow and Chess will have to literally ride through Hell before the truth of Chess's fate comes clear-the doom written for him, and the entire world.

    But they’re long dead now, buried in the catacombs beneath the city of Eth, where their calcified organs radiate an eldritch power that calls out to anyone hardy enough to live in this cut-throat, war-torn land. Some survivors are human, while others are close enough, but all are struggling to carve out their lives in a world both unforgiving and wondrous. Darkly comic and viciously original, Viscera is an unforgettable journey through swords-and-sorcery fantasy where strangeness gleams from every nook and cranny.“Exquisitely imagined, deeply insightful yet scathingly witty, Viscera barrels along at a scorching pace after vividly realized characters whose separate quests—for identity, for revenge, for release—find themselves on a collision course in a world that's simultaneously both grimdark and surreal. Lusciously weird and utterly unique.” —Nicole Kornher-Stace, author of Archivist Wasp“Viscera is a work of gleeful weirdness, set in a world that calls to mind China Miéville's Bas-Lag novels, and full of characters fighting to reshape themselves and their destinies, in search of deep and resonant truth.” —Kat Howard, author of Roses and Rot

    The anthology contains 45 illustrations by Glenn Chadbourne, over 20 stories by the likes of Stephen King, Jack Ketchum, Ramsey Campbell, Gary A. Braunbeck, Mort Castle, Josh Malerman, Scott Edelman, Richard Thomas, Richard Chizmar and Gene O’Neill, and with 20 intertwined poems by the likes of Elizabeth Massie, Marge Simon, Bruce Boston, Erik T. Johnson, Stephanie M. Wytovich, and also includes an introduction by the extraordinary Chuck Palahniuk.

    Other than that things are just peachy.Someone has stolen the Grim Reaper's head and Blunt has been told to find it. In a new city where the rules of the living don't apply Blunt's up to his neck in the brown stuff and he's never been much of a swimmer. With the aid of a woman who keeps turning involuntarily invisible, a journalist who hasn't written an article since she died, and a bureaucrat who can't say no to anyone, Blunt's got to stop whoever is stealing the heads of the city's elite.As he begins his investigations he finds things aren't all they seem. Who are the Gloomwood Youth Order? What do you call the murder of someone already dead? Why are people having their heads chopped off? And what is in the hot dogs? With time slipping away he needs to learn what makes the city tick before there's no city left.

    Welcome to a world where humans live side-by-side with monsters, from vampires both nostalgic and bumbling, to an eight-legged alien who makes tea. Here you'll find mercurial forms that burrow into warm fat, spectral boy toys, a Maori force of nature, a landform that claims lives, and an architect of hell on earth. Through these, and a few monsters that defy categorization, some of today's top young-adult authors explore ambition and sacrifice, loneliness and rage, love requited and avenged, and the boundless potential for connection, even across extreme borders.Moriabe's Children / Paolo Bacigalupi --Old souls / Cassandra Clare --Ten rules for being an intergalactic smuggler (the successful kind) / Holly Black --Quick hill / M.T. Anderson --The diabolist / Nathan Ballingrud --This whole demoning thing / Patrick Ness --Wings in the morning / Sarah Rees Brennan --Left foot, right / Nalo Hopkinson --The Mercurials / G. Carl Purcell --Kitty Capulet and the invention of underwater photography / Dylan Horrocks --Son of abyss / Nik Houser --A small wild magic / Kathleen Jennings --The new boyfriend / Kelly Link --The woods hide in plain sight / Joshua Lewis --Mothers, lock up your daughters because they are terrifying / Alice Sola Kim

    He hasn’t had much of a life aside from working shifts at the ER, where he met the confusing but sexy Dr. Moore. Something about the thrilling way Dr. Moore takes charge of every situation puts Joel at ease but also leaves him off-kilter, and frequently Tasha has to swoop in to save the day. Ian Moore, MD, has always been fickle. Some days he likes Tasha better; other days he likes Joel. But one thing he does know is that he would love to see them both spread out on his bed, waiting for him to have them. Natasha “Tasha” Pfeiffer, PA, doesn’t take any crap, especially from uppity know-it-all docs like Ian Moore. But the way he never backs down, even when she’s at her grumpiest, and the fact that he can make even the most mind-numbing job at the hospital interesting drags her in, however reluctantly. Add to that Joel, the sweetheart nurse who nearly always has a smile on his face, and she’s wishing for more on her lonely Friday nights—both men, to be exact. When Ian corners Joel and asks him out and then begs Tasha to come along for the ride, will the night explode with passion or just plain explode? A MMF Bisexual Ménage Romance.

    In Finding Fire, Dylan’s childhood friend barges back into his life as a man. Soon Dylan finds himself in over his head as he struggles to understand the feelings stirring inside. In Flesh and Blood, Nikolai the werewolf learns a hard lesson when it comes to trust, but also that redemption can come in many forms. Also included is The Loka Legends Sketchbook, featuring never before seen concept art and early sketches created by Andreas Bell, the author’s husband and illustrator of the Loka Legends books.

    

    He's looking forward to learning the craft, renewing last year's friendships, and above all, to seeing Jaime, and finally asking her to be his girlfriend.But before he even gets to see her, one of their own is violently attacked. JB goes on the hunt, and the students learn about his troubled past, which changes their views of him forever. As their project, they create Rabbit in Red's most terrifying and disturbing challenge yet, Hellfire, and use it to recruit a new class of horror students.Then the bodies start piling up, and the mysteries become more and more dangerous. Is this another one of JB's dark games-within-a-game, or will Rabbit in Red--and everyone in it--burn in the end

    Come to find love and tasty treats of all kinds - but stay for the heart-pounding adventure and mystery. In TROPICAL CHRISTMAS STAG, a deaf musician finds his lost song in the heart of a wild woman who has spent most of her life in a cage. A heartbreaking and hilarious story of trust and healing. In TROPICAL LEOPARD’S LONGING, Darla is backed into a marriage of convenience, but it doesn’t end up being convenient at all when she meets her mate at the tropical resort that is hosting her wedding. And Breck is everything her controlling mother will never approve of: poor, common, and openly bisexual. In TROPICAL LION’S LEGACY, Graham the gardener hasn’t always been a gardener… and hasn’t always been Graham. All of his secrets start to unravel as his mate, Alice, arrives at the resort and starts poking into the mysteries of the island. Combining sizzling romance with laugh-out-loud humor and plenty of thrills, the Shifting Sands Resort series is a must-read for fans looking for a unique twist on shifter and love at first sight stories. Now you can save 30% on the next three books with this convenient box set. Relax on the sands with a tropical drink and a taste of adventure. No cliffhangers!

    She has endured heartbreaking tragedy in her childhood and hopes the future would be more kind to her. But, due to a strange turn of events, she ends up in a marriage of convenience with Arjun, an attractive and adventurous entrepreneur. They both agree to be married for just a year. Their carefully laid plans shatter during the one year of marriage. Arjun discovers Neha is not as conventional and plain as he believed. There lurks a strong-minded, intelligent girl beneath the plain exterior which captures his attention. Neha, on the other hand, catches a glimpse of an amazing person in Arjun who just takes her breath away. Do they get the divorce that they had both desperately wanted? Or does life have something else in store for them? This is a lighthearted, happy, romantic book which will make you fall in love all over again.

    Until one day his desperate mother sells him to the mysterious Master of Mordew. The Master derives his magical power from feeding on the corpse of God. But Nathan, despite his fear and lowly station, has his own strength – and it is greater than the Master has ever known. Great enough to destroy everything the Master has built. If only Nathan can discover how to use it. So it is that the Master begins to scheme against him – and Nathan has to fight his way through the betrayals, secrets, and vendettas of the city where God was murdered, and darkness reigns… … WELCOME TO MORDEW – THE FIRST IN A MONUMENTAL NEW TRILOGY FROM THE WELLCOME BOOK PRIZE-SHORTLISTED AUTHOR, ALEX PHEBY