The Spot and Smudge series explores the love of a unique family, the loyalty of their very special dogs, and the perils of underestimating them. These smart, imaginative stories weave together elements of horror, thriller, mystery, espionage, crime, medical drama, and genetic engineering. Note: This series contains some colorful language and mature themes. "Shove over brother, let me show you the proper bloody way to strangle someone." The Hogans weren’t looking to start a war. They just wanted to leave their troubles behind, move closer to grandma, and let their kids adopt some damn puppies. But their quaint new town is harboring some gruesome secrets… …and their strange new pups are not what they appear to be. There’s a dark connection between these mysterious orphaned canines and the town’s twisted criminals…and that connection is dragging the Hogans into a ruthless fight they aren’t prepared to win. But the grit of a devoted family, like the loyalty of a faithful pair of dogs, shouldn't be underestimated… …Especially when those cunning dogs are the most significant leap forward in the forty million years of canine evolution.

    But in this galaxy, there are a million ways to lose…Seb Zodo has never backed down from a fist fight. After all, he’s been gifted with powers that make losing impossible. But lately, Seb’s gift seems more like a curse…Seb’s fearlessness leads to stupid decisions, short-lived jobs, and unwanted attention in dangerous places. In a desperate bid at a fresh start, Seb swears off fighting. But it may be too late…When a run-in with an electrifying thief and the head of a shadowy organization sends his life spiraling out of control, Seb has no choice left but to go down swinging…

    No one cared. But a stranger, bent on revenge, is out to change all that. Kit Griffin has finally overcome a painful childhood at the hands of her mother, former actress Alana Stevens. No longer living in the grasp of the cold, tyrannical woman, Kit has found a new life tucked away in little San Madrid, California, running a business she loves, surrounded by friends she considers family. For the first time her life is on track. That is, until Alana is found brutally murdered on Mother’s Day, pulling Kit back in to the dark horrors of her past. To make matters worse, the police consider her the prime suspect.Jake Boston, an old family friend and the man Kit has loved since she was a teen, is fighting his own demons as a suspect in his wife’s murder two years earlier. Despite his past, he’s determined to win Kit over once and for all. But before that can happen they need to convince the police there’s a killer working his way down a list with cold-hearted vengeance in mind. Forced to delve into Alana’s dark past, it becomes clear someone is out to settle a score. When Jake and Kit uncover a forty year old double murder that leads them straight to the door of a legal dynasty, they soon find out just how far the heirs will go to keep the past buried and eliminate all the loose ends to protect their empire. Will Jake and Kit become the next victims or will they find an unexpected guardian angel?

    They mourn, and Cormac sends a beautifully written eulogy back to Earth. The word from ground control is unequivocal: no matter what happens, the mission must continue.But as the body count begins to rise, Cormac finds himself alone and spiralling towards his own inevitable death … unless he can do something to stop it.

    It’s the one-year anniversary of his parents’ deaths, he’s stuck on page one thousand of his Rasputin zombie novel, and he makes his living writing obituaries.But things turn from bleak to terrifying when Dimitri gets a last-minute assignment to cover a séance at the reputedly haunted Aspinwall Mansion.There, Dimitri meets Lisa, a punk-rock drummer he falls hard for. But just as he’s about to ask her out, he unwittingly unleashes malevolent forces, throwing him into a deadly mystery. When Dimitri wakes up, he is in the morgue—icy cold and haunted by a cryptic warning given by a tantalizing female spirit.As town residents begin to turn up gruesomely murdered, Dimitri must play detective in his own story and unravel the connections among his family, the Aspinwall Mansion, the female spirit, and the secrets held in a pair of crumbling antiquarian books. If he doesn’t, it’s quite possible Lisa will be the next victim.

    She's eighteen, works for a tabloid newspaper in Chicago and has a brother, Danny who is a lazy mooch. They live a pretty normal dull life with hippie parents and a normal existence. Then the moon dissapears and people start to go missing only to reappear later, but different. Sherry has an abusive ex-boyfriend who shows up and claims to be one of these beings that have been showing up around the world. He's no longer the same person in that body. He tells her he has come to protect her and her brother and takes her underground, against her will to save her, where they meet others like them. She begins to unravel the truth about Merrick, about what he's really doing here, about the way he looks at her, about the crazy dangerous world they live in. Can he convince her that he's here to help? Will she like what she finds when she opens up to the truth? Will he be the one to love her when everyone else has failed her? Will he be able to protect her?

    Dick AwardSamuil Petrovitch is a survivor.He survived the nuclear fallout in St. Petersburg and hid in the London Metrozone – the last city in England. He’s lived this long because he’s a man of rules and logic.For example, getting involved = a bad idea.But when he stumbles into a kidnapping in progress, he acts without even thinking. Before he can stop himself, he’s saved the daughter of the most dangerous man in London.And clearly saving the girl = getting involved.Now, the equation of Petrovitch’s life is looking increasingly complex.Russian mobsters + Yakuza + something called the New Machine Jihad = one dead Petrovitch.But Petrovitch has a plan – he always has a plan – he’s just not sure it’s a good one.

    "This is not possible, this isn't supposed to happen," he spoke out loud, well aware that the others couldn't hear him. He and his six passengers were going to die and there was no one in the universe that could save them.Splashdown tells a different story of first contact with extraterrestrials. L'atel is the pilot of an alien cargo ship who is illegally hauling passengers through our solar system when an accident forces them to crash-land on Earth.As L'atel and his passengers know, Earth is a primitive planet that has been placed off limits by the Ebens, the self appointed guardians of the galaxy. No outsider is allowed to land or even approach within one light year of Earth to protect its fragile culture. Or at least that is what the Ebens want the rest of the galaxy to believe.Soon L'atel and his passengers discover that all is not as it appears. The Ebens have secrets, and will go to any length to protect them, even if it means war, with the Earth as the battleground.Splashdown weaves a story to include many of the better known UFO and alien myths, as well as other conspiracy theories that are so popular in today's media. For example, Splashdown includes references to the 1947 Roswell New Mexico crash, the rumored 1954 meeting between aliens and President Eisenhower at Holloman Air Force Base, Project Serpo, the MJ12 documents as well as other lesser known events, such as, the Nuremberg Germany event of 1561. The novel also incorporates several historical events such as, the Kennedy assassination, the Cuban missile crisis, and the Watergate scandal resulting in a new and unique twist on the old aliens on Earth story.

    Soulmates. But while the odds of this happening are about as likely as being struck by lightning, when these people do meet and fall in love…thunderstorms, lightning strikes and lashings of rain are only the beginning of their problems.Enter Poppy, the 17-year-old cynic with a serious addiction to banana milk, and Noah, the heart-throb guitarist; residents of mediocre Middletown, sometime students, and…soulmates. After a chance meeting at a local band night, Poppy and Noah find themselves swept up in a whirlwind romance unlike anything they’ve ever experienced before. But with a secret international agency preparing to separate them, a trail of destruction rumbling in their wake, (and a looming psychology coursework deadline), they are left with an impossible choice between the end of the world, or a life without love…

    Seeking to atone, she joins the House of Reclamation, an organisation dedicated to rescuing ships in distress.But, stripped of her weaponry and emptied of her officers, she struggles in the new role she’s chosen for herself. When a ship goes missing in a disputed system, Trouble Dog and her new crew of misfits and loners, captained by Sal Konstanz, an ex-captain of a medical frigate who once fought against Trouble Dog, are assigned to investigate and save whoever they can.Meanwhile, light years away, intelligence officer Ashton Childe is tasked with locating and saving the poet, Ona Sudak, who was aboard the missing ship, whatever the cost. In order to do this, he must reach out to the only person he considers a friend, even if he’s not sure she can be trusted. What Childe doesn’t know is that Sudak is not the person she appears to be.Quickly, what appears to be a straightforward rescue mission turns into something far more dangerous, as Trouble Dog, Konstanz and Childe, find themselves at the centre of a potential new conflict that could engulf not just mankind but the entire galaxy.If she is to survive and save her crew, Trouble Dog is going to have to remember how to fight.

    As part of the 1845 Franklin Expedition, the first steam-powered vessels ever to search for the legendary Northwest Passage, they are as scientifically supported an enterprise as has ever set forth. As they enter a second summer in the Arctic Circle without a thaw, though, they are stranded in a nightmarish landscape of encroaching ice and darkness. Endlessly cold, with diminishing rations, 126 men fight to survive with poisonous food, a dwindling supply of coal, and ships buckling in the grip of crushing ice. But their real enemy is far more terrifying. There is something out there in the frigid darkness: an unseen predator stalking their ship, a monstrous terror constantly clawing to get in.When the expedition's leader, Sir John Franklin, meets a terrible death, Captain Francis Crozier takes command and leads his surviving crewmen on a last, desperate attempt to flee south across the ice. With them travels an Inuit woman who cannot speak and who may be the key to survival, or the harbinger of their deaths. But as another winter approaches, as scurvy and starvation grow more terrible, and as the terror on the ice stalks them southward, Crozier and his men begin to fear that there is no escape.

    Follow three half-human sisters through fantastic adventures, enchanting romances and an epic battle to save their race...not the human one.BECOMINGAncient gods, avenging angels and other beings of myth and legend all have one thing in common: they exist. They’re called Estilorians. Amber Hopkins is one of them…well, half of one, anyway. If only she knew it.CENTRALLife on the Estilorian plane proves stimulating to scholar Olivia Murdoch. But then, she isn’t aware of the dark plans brewing with her at their center…FORETOLDCenturies after The Great Foretelling, Skye Tomaganuk dreams of a fairytale romance. But the evil Mercesti have their own plans, and the foretold battle to come stands in the way of her happily ever after.

    Feast your eyes on this pure-blooded beauty!" Sixteen-year-old Serenity has spent her entire life in hiding to protect her from this exact moment. In a world where beauty is bought and sold on the streets like a corporate commodity, Serenity's natural assets are more like liabilities. Despite her parents' best efforts, she's been taken—ripped from her home and the only life she's ever known—to find herself on sale to the highest bidder. And that bidder? Enigmatic and dangerous, Luc is the director of The Aviary—an elite museum where girls are displayed as living art by day…and cater to the lascivious whims of the highest bidder by night. In this elaborate and competitive world, girls go by names like Raven and Nightingale, and will stop at nothing to become top Bird.Luc comes to idolize Serenity's purity and aims to turn her into his grandest exhibit of all time—The Swan. In no time, she becomes one of the most coveted exhibits in Aviary history. When she discovers Luc holds the key to finding her parents, she must learn to play The Swan to perfection…to win his heart and earn his trust. But she doesn't anticipate falling for him in the process. Now she faces an impossible choice: escape The Aviary and lose her only chance at finding her parents—or become Luc's Swan for good and lose her identity forever. The Jewel by Amy Ewing meets Tricks by Ellen Hopkins in this gritty Young Adult Dystopian that tells of a fear-inducing future where the world of sex trafficking has become a social norm and where woman aren't treated as humans and are no safer than they were than they were in The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood.

    When a client confides in him that senior partner Jack Pierce sexually assaulted her, Robert breaks two of his mentor’s cardinal rules: Never let yourself get emotional about clients. And never make an enemy of Jack Pierce.Robert crosses Pierce and is fired on the spot, losing not only his job but also his reputation. Advised to go quietly, Robert vows revenge against the ruthless man who betrayed him. But his investigation uncovers a twisted shadow world of sex, infidelity, and deception, where nothing is as it seems and no one can be trusted. Only one thing is clear: Pierce will go the limit to keep his secrets.This straight shooter will need to use every angle if he hopes to win. But could victory come at too high a price?

    Identity. Crisis. Ever. First came the heart transplant. Then I activated the list. And now a secret organisation wants me dead. It all started with the dreams. The crazy new skills and behaviours. The crush on the one person I CAN'T be crushing on. Turns out my donor had a talent for killing. And I inherited far more than his heart. Now I'm on the run. Only a dead assassin's instincts for company. Will I survive? Will you? All I know is there’ll be blood, bullets and stuff you’re not gonna believe. But if you’re happy to white-knuckle it and don’t mind a few bits of sick in your hair, we might just make it out alive. (Might.) Will life ever get back to normal for 16 year-old Lorna Walker? Will she survive long enough to make it to the next page? Find out, in the action-filled, humour-packed series that will absolutely, positively kick your behind. Recommended for age 16+ Contains violence. Not for the faint-hearted. (2nd Edition)