A young woman’s destiny. Lorness Carol, coming of age in the kingdom of her warlord father, Lord Rafel, aspires to wield magic. But she’s also unknowingly become the obsession of Kragan, an avenging wielder as old as evil itself. He’s waited centuries to find and kill the female prophesied as the only human empowered to destroy him. However, dispatching the king’s assassin, Blade, to Rafel’s Keep, ends in treason. For Blade arrives not with a weapon but rather a warning for the woman he’s known and loved since he was a child. With a price on his head, Blade flees—as Carol and her family are urged away on their own desperate route of escape.Now, traversing the lawless western borderlands, Carol struggles to understand the uncanny magic she possesses and must learn to master. Though separated, Carol and Blade are still united—not only by the darkness pursuing them both but by a quest toward destiny, revenge, and the revelations of an ancient prophecy that signal the ultimate war between good and evil.

    A mysterious disappearance. Did one man get away with murder—twice?NYPD detective Sheryn Sterling has had her eye on Alex Traynor ever since his friend Cori fell to her death under suspicious circumstances a year ago. Cori’s death was ruled a suicide, but Sheryn thinks Alex—a wartime photojournalist suffering from PTSD—got away with murder.When Alex’s fiancée, Emily, a talented and beloved local doctor, suddenly goes missing, Sheryn suspects that Alex is again at the center of a sticky case. Sheryn dislikes loose ends, and Cori’s death had way too many of them.But as Sheryn starts pulling at the threads in this web, her whole theory unravels. Everyone involved remembers the night Cori died differently—and the truth about her death could be the key to solving Emily’s disappearance.

    The victim is a woman, dressed in the sacred robes of a Catholic priest--a desecration that becomes known as the Abomination.Working her first murder case, Captain Kat Tapo embarks on a trail that proves as elusive and complicated as the city's labyrinthine backstreets. What Kat discovers will test her loyalties and remind her of a simple truth: Unless old crimes are punished, corrupt forces will continue to repeat their mortal sins.The Abomination is book one of Jonathan Holt's Carnivia Trilogy.

    It has mortal wounds and shouldn’t be walking, but it is, and if you hang around for too long, it will be heading towards you. How would you react? You survive the initial throes of civil unrest and the collapse of law and order. The world has become your playground. What kind of person do you become? You have never lived for anyone else except yourself. You are selfish. You like being alive. But you do have a conscience, and a soul. Who do you save first? Warren is not a likeable man. Warren doesn’t even like himself. But he does like existing, and he wants to continue doing it, no matter what hell is emerging around him. Being pragmatic and a bit of a git to boot, he doesn’t find making the hard decisions difficult. What he does find out, is that the hard decisions are not necessarily the right ones. And being a bastard in life does not prepare you for the clashes that will ensue once the edges of society begin to blur and fade out. It isn’t just the infected and the resurrected that Warren needs to be wary of, as he negotiates his way around the post-infection south coast in a haphazard attempt to keep himself and his family survive.

    The road to revenge is ahead. But the pit stop she makes along the way could reroute her life. Amanda Martin refuses to burn for the crimes of her manipulative ex-boyfriend. After all, he was the one who strong-armed her into committing fraud and left her to shoulder the blame. When an enraged investor sets fire to their office building, she scrambles onto the first bus out of the city. With the authorities hunting for her, she hides out to plot her revenge in the last place anyone would look—the tiny Texas town of Phoenix.But when Amanda uncovers a hidden talent for reporting at the local paper and starts a sweet romance with a charming cop, she starts to question whether she’d be better off building a new life than tearing her ex a new one. Just as she starts settling in, her work at the paper unearths a decades old cold case that threatens to turn the town against her and expose her criminal past. With time running out before the townsfolk discover her true identity, Amanda is faced with an impossible choice—turn her back on a fellow victim of crime or stand her ground and lose her precious freedom. Phoenix is the first book in an enthralling women’s fiction series. If you like compelling characters, nail-biting suspense, and a dash of romance, then you’ll love Kimberly Packard’s small-town mystery.

    He is the first to join the powerful rys spellcaster Shan, whose race possesses magical powers and whose Queen Onja rules many human kingdoms as their Goddess. The wickedness and tyranny of Onja disgust Shan and he desires to seize the rys throne from her. The third renegade is Miranda. After escaping from her abusive slave master, she becomes a crucial player in Shan's bid for power. To weaken Onja, Shan raises rebellion among her human subjects and gathers allies to his cause. Shan demonstrates his magic in battle and convinces his followers that the fearsome rys Queen can be overthrown. For over two thousand years Onja has ruled, but now, not even fear of her ability to enslave souls will stop her ambitious enemies.

    He wakes without a scratch. The building is in ruins. His team is gone. Outside, Chicago is dark. Cars lie abandoned. No planes cross the sky. He’s relieved to spot other people — until he sees they’re carrying machetes.Welcome to the afterlife.Claire McCoy stands over the body of Will Brody. As head of an FBI task force, she hasn’t had a decent night’s sleep in weeks. A terrorist has claimed eighteen lives and thrown the nation into panic. Against this horror, something reckless and beautiful happened. She fell in love… with Will Brody. But the line between life and death is narrower than any of us suspect — and all that matters to Will and Claire is getting back to each other.From the author of the million-copy bestselling Brilliance Trilogy comes a mind-bending thriller that explores our most haunting and fundamental question: What if death is just the beginning?

    He doesn’t know how to win the heart of the girl at the coffee shop. And he shares his home with a clan of mischievous tiny people.Yet these all turn out to be the least of his troubles.A secret race of Giants dwelling in the neighboring mountains wants Gulliver to exterminate all the Little People… or else. When folks in his hometown begin brutally dying, Gulliver must make a hard choice. But choices have consequences.And consequences, he’ll learn, come in all terrible sizes.DEAD SIZE is a comical psychological fantasy mystery thriller for fans of Christopher Moore, David Wong, and Terry Gilliam.(Advisory: this book is intended for mature audiences.)

    People Esme has known her whole life suddenly become suspects, each new one hitting closer to home than the last.Unable to cope, Esme escapes the nightmare that is her new reality when she receives an invitation to join an elite ballet academy in San Francisco. Desperate to leave behind her chaotic, broken family and the mystery surrounding Lily’s disappearance, Esme accepts.Eight years later, Esme is up for her big break: her first principal role in Paris. But a call from her older sister shatters the protective world she has built for herself, forcing her to revisit the tragedy she’s run from for so long. Will her family finally have the answers they’ve been waiting for? And can Esme confront the pain that shaped her childhood, or will the darkness follow her into the spotlight?

    For thousands of years, humans have sought to lift it. Imagine the secrets waiting for discovery, insights into the unknown, and powers beyond the possible.Nate wondered.After the death of his father, the loss of his brother, and mysterious messages, he finds himself enmeshed in a centuries-old conspiracy to hide the truth about what lies beyond that veil. He must juggle prophecies and mystic knowledge, trace a quest across countless lifetimes, and grasp a complex destiny, before he can unravel the ancient puzzle. Scores have died to protect the secrets. The "trusted"few whispered clues, guarded locations, and hid keys to what humanity was not yet ready for.Until Nate found a way.Those protecting the “veil” know he did. And so do the ones who have been searching since before he was born. At the same time, a clandestine group, wielding overwhelming power, wants him silenced.Nate is running.

    After being thrust into law enforcement on the footsteps of his father, Detective Boise finds himself on the trail of a murder suspect he could never have imagined, the mysterious businessman, Trevor Malloy. Trevor is an irresistible hitman with everything going for him, while Detective Boise is a cutthroat detective going against the grain. These two men, both breadwinners and keystones of their families, play a deadly game of cat-and-mouse. They are a contrast of each other and as their game progresses, their worlds contort and the line between black and white blurs.

    Perfect for fans of Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and Grady Hendrix. A one-way bus ticket to Florida offers Rodney the chance at a fresh start from his dead-end life in South Carolina. Unfortunately, somewhere along the ten-hour trek to Miami, the passengers are drugged, awakening to find themselves duct-taped to their seats and stranded in the middle of nowhere.Their captor reveals himself, informing them they’re participants in a game of survival. “The rules are simple,” he tells them. “Follow the flares to reach the safe zone. Make it there, and you live. Stay, and they will come tear you apart.”Chaos ensues, and one-by-one the passengers are picked off in their seats. Dying within their restraints. It’s a race against time, and those lucky enough to escape are forced to play the game, uncovering an impossible secret that has brought them together to face an ancient evil unlike anything they have ever known.

    7 billion.Others ... unknown.When 14-year-old Charlie Blake wakes up sweating and gasping for air in the middle of the night, he knows it is happening again. This time he witnesses a brutal murder. He's afraid to tell anyone. No one would believe him ... because it was a dream. Just like the one he had four years ago - the day before his dad died.Charlie doesn't know why this is happening. He would give anything to have an ordinary life. The problem: he doesn't belong in the world he knows as home.He belongs with the others.

    Racial unrest is rampant, and outbreaks of violence reach epidemic proportions. When a church bus makes a wrong turn in the Alabama countryside, a dozen teenage girls become victims of a heinous crime. The resulting outcry is explosive, as a new civil war erupts, but this time it will be whites who are cast into bondage. And Slave Playing becomes a cruel game of tyranny and survival.The story winds and unwinds as it coils around the reader like a great serpent. At times it will be a love story, with warmth, humor and human kindness. But mostly it will slap hard at the Wall-Builders, and those who would be king at the expense of others, who would be prey. And a man will arrive on this tiny speck of land in the heart of Alabama. He will bring with him a whip, and a lesson of what tyranny and oppression can do to the human spirit.

    When Josie Messina's wunderkind 12-year-old son earns a full scholarship to one of New Jersey's toniest private schools, this hardworking, cash-strapped single mom is intimidated. Will she ever fit in with the wealthy and fashionable mothers of Little Fawn Country Day? But when Josie runs into Country Day's most famous parent, rock legend Billy Stand - known to her as the boy she used to babysit - their embrace in the school parking lot, viewed by three of the school's most influential social butterflies, rockets her to "A list" status. What happens next will bring truth to the warning, "Be careful what you wish for." This timely, irreverent send-up of contemporary academia -- and the wicked ways of the one percent -- will delight any parent who has ever been dragged to a PTA fundraiser, has sweated out their children's grades and college prospects, or who has wondered what, exactly, their kids are learning at school all day.Editorial Review"A smart, poignant fiction debut...What makes this work stand out is Matthews' handling of social issues such as class boundaries and the state of education in the country...The cause-and-effect relationship intertwined in each plot element creates moments of laughter and societal insight, making the novel an entertaining, shrewd read."- Kirkus Reviews