Suspicious Minds


Gwenda Bond - 2019
    A sinister scientist. A secret history. If you think you know the truth behind Eleven’s mother, prepare to have your mind turned Upside Down in this thrilling prequel to the hit show Stranger Things.It’s the summer of 1969, and the shock of conflict reverberates through the youth of America, both at home and abroad. As a student at a quiet college campus in the heartland of Indiana, Terry Ives couldn’t be further from the front lines of Vietnam or the incendiary protests in Washington.But the world is changing, and Terry isn’t content to watch from the sidelines. When word gets around about an important government experiment in the small town of Hawkins, she signs on as a test subject for the project, codenamed MKUltra. Unmarked vans, a remote lab deep in the woods, mind-altering substances administered by tightlipped researchers . . . and a mystery the young and restless Terry is determined to uncover.But behind the walls of Hawkins National Laboratory—and the piercing gaze of its director, Dr. Martin Brenner—lurks a conspiracy greater than she could have ever imagined. To face it, she’ll need the help of her fellow test subjects, including one so mysterious the world doesn’t know she exists—a young girl with unexplainable, superhuman powers and a number instead of a name: 008.Amid the rising tensions of the new decade, Terry Ives and Martin Brenner have begun a different kind of war—one where the human mind is the battlefield.

Divine Misfortune


A. Lee Martinez - 2010
    It's not their fault that they decide to settle on Lucky, a raccoon god of good fortune. At first, everything seems to be working fine. But they will soon learn that the world of divine powers is not to be entered into casually.

The Descent Series: Vol.1


S.M. Reine - 2012
    (Approx. 200,000 words total.)Books included:1. Death's Hand2. The Darkest Gate3. Dark UnionDEATH'S HANDElise Kavanagh doesn't want to hunt demons anymore. It's been five years since she killed her last enemy, and life has been quiet since then. She went to college. Got a job, and then lost it. Made a friend or two. Lived a normal life. Now her former partner, a powerful witch named James Faulkner, wants Elise to fight one more time. The daughter of a coven member has been possessed, and Elise is the only exorcist nearby.Becoming a hero again would mean risking discovery by old enemies. But digging into the case reveals that it might already be too late--bodies are disappearing, demons slither through the night, and the cogs of apocalypse are beginning to turn. Some enemies aren't willing to let the secrets of the past stay dead...THE DARKEST GATEWhen Elise Kavanagh retired from demon hunting, she swore it would be permanent. But an attack from a powerful necromancer forced her back into the business, and now she's trying to balance her normal boyfriend and normal job with everything supernatural.Mr. Black is a demon hunter gone rogue. He's enslaving angels and stealing ethereal artifacts in pursuit of forbidden immortality, and an old grudge drives him to make his final stand in Elise's territory. Destroying her life and killing her friends isn't the goal, but it's a definite perk.A demonic overlord offers to join against Mr. Black and protect Elise's loved ones. All she needs to do is ally with the demons she's sworn to kill, at the cost of her morals--and maybe her immortal soul. But once she crosses that line, there's no turning back.Nothing is sacred when Heaven and Hell collide on Earth...DARK UNIONEvery fifty years, the most powerful ethereal and infernal beings convene on Earth to resolve conflicts with mediation by kopides--humans born to police relations between Heaven and Hell. They're meeting in Elise Kavanagh's territory this year, and she used to be the greatest kopis in the world. But she's not invited.An old friend, Lucas McIntyre, asks her to attend the summit in his place. But when she arrives, she discovers that a human faction called The Union has taken charge of the summit, and they're not playing nice. Worse yet, someone has killed a prominent Union member... and now they're demanding blood.

Tales of the Hidden World: Stories


Simon R. Green - 2014
    Green including a brand-new adventure of the Droods take us deep into the Darkside, embroil us in the Secret Histories, and lead us into the shadowy places where monsters and demons roam.Welcome to the worlds of Simon R. Green. In this wide-ranging collection, the New York Times' bestselling urban fantasist opens doors into hidden places: strange realms bordering our own mundane existence and prowled by creatures of fancy and nightmare.Here are the strange, frequently deadly and sometimes even dead things that lurk in garbage-strewn city alleyways and grimy subway stations after midnight, visible only to the most perceptive human or inhuman eye. In these tales, Green revisits the ingenious worlds within worlds that he created for his wildly popular novels. Take a stroll on the Darkside with a jaded street wizard, an underpaid government functionary responsible for keeping demons, vamps, and aliens in line. Enter the hidden recesses of Drood Hall, where the aging family member who creates powerful weapons that protect humankind recalls his long and bloody career. Join a squad of no-longer-human soldiers dispatched to combat the all-consuming jungle on a distant planet. Visit a house at the intersection of two realities that serves as a sanctuary from the evil of "all" worlds. Confront the unstoppable zombie army of General Kurtz in a brilliant homage to"Apocalypse Now".And whatever you do, never forget that there "are" monsters out there. Really. Each story includes a new afterword by the author.

Abandon


Blake Crouch - 2009
    Recently, a similar party had also attempted to explore the town and was never heard from again. Now the area is believed to be haunted. This crew is about to discover, twenty miles from civilization with a blizzard bearing down, that they are not alone, and the past is very much alive.Revised edition: This edition of Abandon includes editorial revisions.

My Life as a White Trash Zombie


Diana Rowland - 2011
    Now on probation for a felony, it seems that Angel will never pull herself out of the downward spiral her life has taken.That is, until the day she wakes up in the ER after overdosing on painkillers. Angel remembers being in a horrible car crash, but she doesn't have a mark on her. To add to the weirdness, she receives an anonymous letter telling her there's a job waiting for her at the parish morgue—and that it's an offer she doesn't dare refuse.Before she knows it she's dealing with a huge crush on a certain hunky deputy and a brand new addiction: an overpowering craving for brains. Plus, her morgue is filling up with the victims of a serial killer who decapitates his prey—just when she's hungriest!Angel's going to have to grow up fast if she wants to keep this job and stay in one piece. Because if she doesn't, she's dead meat.Literally.

Z-WORLD


B.V. Larson - 2010
    Bizarre monsters of blended flesh shamble in the streets. The world has shifted. Guns don't always work anymore, and the dead don't always die. Corpses lie everywhere--and many of them are still dangerous...Gannon is one of the last living humans in Redmoor. Most of the other residents have shifted into something else. "They are coming, Gannon. The flying ones."Do you want to have nightmares? Z-WORLD is a novel of Fantasy and Horror by bestselling author B. V. Larson.

The Darkening Dream


Andy Gavin - 2011
    God, demon, monster, and sorcerer alike plot to regain what was theirs.1913, Salem, Massachusetts – Sarah Engelmann’s life is full of friends, books, and avoiding the pressure to choose a husband, until an ominous vision and the haunting call of an otherworldly trumpet shake her. When she stumbles across a gruesome corpse, she fears that her vision was more of a premonition. And when she sees the murdered boy moving through the crowd at an amusement park, Sarah is thrust into a dark battle she does not understand. With the help of Alex, an attractive Greek immigrant who knows a startling amount about the undead, Sarah sets out to uncover the truth. Their quest takes them to the factory mills of Salem, on a midnight boat ride to spy on an eerie coastal lair, and back, unexpectedly, to their own homes. What can Alex’s elderly, vampire-hunting grandfather and Sarah’s own rabbi father tell them? And what do Sarah’s continuing visions reveal?No less than Gabriel’s Trumpet, the tool that will announce the End of Days, is at stake, and the forces that have banded to recover it include a 900 year-old vampire, a trio of disgruntled Egyptian gods, and a demon-loving Puritan minister. At the center of this swirling cast is Sarah, who must fight a millennia-old battle against unspeakable forces, knowing the ultimate prize might be herself.

The Sorcerer's House


Gene Wolfe - 2010
    He writes letters to his brother and to others, including a friend still in jail, to whom he progressively reveals the intriguing pieces of a strange and fantastic narrative. When he meets a real estate agent who tells him he is, to his utter surprise, the heir to a huge old house in town, long empty, he moves in. He is immediately confronted by an array of supernatural creatures and events, by love and danger. His life is utterly transformed and we read on, because we must know more. We revise our opinions of him, and of others, with each letter, piecing together more of the story as we go. We learn things about magic, and another world, and about the sorcerer Mr. Black, who originally inhabited the house. And then knowing what we now know only in the end, perhaps we read it again.

The Three


Sarah Lotz - 2014
    Three child survivors. A religious fanatic who insists the three are harbingers of the apocalypse. What if he's right?The world is stunned when four commuter planes crash within hours of each other on different continents. Facing global panic, officials are under pressure to find the causes. With terrorist attacks and environmental factors ruled out, there doesn't appear to be a correlation between the crashes, except that in three of the four air disasters a child survivor is found in the wreckage. Dubbed 'The Three' by the international press, the children all exhibit disturbing behavioural problems, presumably caused by the horror they lived through and the unrelenting press attention. This attention becomes more than just intrusive when a rapture cult led by a charismatic evangelical minister insists that the survivors are three of the four harbingers of the apocalypse. The Three are forced to go into hiding, but as the children's behaviour becomes increasingly disturbing, even their guardians begin to question their miraculous survival.

Wake of Vultures


Lila Bowen - 2015
    She's a half-breed who dresses like a boy, raised by folks who don't call her a slave but use her like one. She knows of nothing else. That is, until the day a stranger attacks her. When nothing, not even a sickle to the eye can stop him, Nettie stabs him through the heart with a chunk of wood and he turns to black sand.And just like that, Nettie can see.But her newfound sight is a blessing and a curse. Even if she doesn't understand what's under her own skin, she can sense what everyone else is hiding—at least physically. The world is full of evil, and now she knows the source of all the sand in the desert. Haunted by the spirits, Nettie has no choice but to set out on a quest that might lead her to find her true kin . . . if the monsters along the way don't kill her first.

13 Bullets


David Wellington - 2007
    But the evidence proves otherwise.When a state trooper named Caxton calls the FBI looking for help in the middle of the night, it is Arkeley who gets the assignment - who else? He's been expecting such a call to come eventually. Sure, it has been years since any signs of an attack, but Arkeley knows what most people don't: there is one left. In an abandoned asylum she is rotting, plotting, and biding her time in a way that only the undead can.Caxton is out of her league on this case and more than a little afraid, but the fed made it plain that there is only one way out. But the worst thing is the feeling that the vampires want more than just her blood. They want her for a reason, one she can't guess; a reason her sphinxlike partner knows but won't say; a reason she has to find out - or die trying.Now there are only 13 bullets between Caxton and Arkeley and the vampires. There are only 13 bullets between us, the living, and them, the damned.

Hammers on Bone


Cassandra Khaw - 2016
    He’s been hired by a ten-year-old to kill the kid’s stepdad, McKinsey. The man in question is abusive, abrasive, and abominable. He’s also a monster, which makes Persons the perfect thing to hunt him. Over the course of his ancient, arcane existence, he’s hunted gods and demons, and broken them in his teeth.As Persons investigates the horrible McKinsey, he realizes that he carries something far darker. He’s infected with an alien presence, and he’s spreading that monstrosity far and wide. Luckily Persons is no stranger to the occult, being an ancient and magical intelligence himself. The question is whether the private dick can take down the abusive stepdad without releasing the holds on his own horrifying potential.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Dangerous Women


George R.R. MartinSharon Kay Penman - 2013
    Lansdale - “Neighbors” by Megan Lindholm - “I Know How to Pick ’Em” by Lawrence Block - “Shadows For Silence in the Forests of Hell” by Brandon Sanderson - A Cosmere story - “A Queen in Exile” by Sharon Kay Penman - “The Girl in the Mirror” by Lev Grossman - A Magicians story - “Second Arabesque, Very Slowly” by Nancy Kress - “City Lazarus” by Diana Rowland - “Virgins” by Diana Gabaldon - An Outlander story - “Hell Hath No Fury” by Sherilynn Kenyon - “Pronouncing Doom” by S.M. Stirling - An Emberverse story - “Name the Beast” by Sam Sykes - “Caretakers” by Pat Cadigan - “Lies My Mother Told Me” by Caroline Spector - A Wild Cards story - “The Princess and the Queen” by George R.R. Martin - A Song of Ice and Fire story

Time After Time


Lisa Grunwald - 2019
    Nora Lansing is a Manhattan socialite whose flapper clothing, pearl earrings, and talk of the Roaring Twenties don’t seem to match the bleak mood of Depression-era New York. Captivated by Nora from her first electric touch, Joe despairs when he tries to walk her home and she disappears. Finding her again—and again—will become the focus of his love and his life.Nora, an aspiring artist and fiercely independent, is shocked to find she’s somehow been trapped, her presence in the terminal governed by rules she cannot fathom. It isn’t until she meets Joe that she begins to understand the effect that time is having on her, and the possible connections to the workings of Grand Central and the solar phenomenon known as Manhattanhenge, when the sun rises or sets between the city’s skyscrapers, aligned perfectly with the streets below.As thousands of visitors pass under the famous celestial blue ceiling each day, Joe and Nora create a life unlike any they could have imagined. With infinite love in a finite space, they take full advantage of the “Terminal City” within a city, dining at the Oyster Bar, visiting the Whispering Gallery, and making a home at the Biltmore Hotel. But when the construction of another landmark threatens their future, Nora and Joe are forced to test the limits of freedom and love.Delving into Grand Central Terminal’s rich past, Lisa Grunwald crafts a masterful historical novel about a love affair that defies age, class, place, and even time.