Not after all the work she's put into cultivating the right look, and friends, and reputation. But then, Sophie sees something so frightening she lets out a blood-curdling scream--and finds herself stuck in a bizarre parallel world where nothing is safe and deadly creatures lurk just out of sight, waiting for her to close her eyes and sleep...forever.Could this world be real? Or does insanity run in the family...?

    Unfortunately, it explains a lot. Like why she's able to see in the dark and walk through solid objects. What she doesn't understand is why the other vampires expect her to have all the answers. It's their fault she turned into one of them...right? Jalmari's hatred for his old-man intensifies when he's ordered to bring that troublesome girl to their castle. He has a clan to run; there's no time for babysitting newborn vampires no matter how they were converted to their culture. But when a two-thousand-year-old premonition threatens to take the crown and his life, Jalmari sees no other choice than to take out the catalyst, Ema Marx. Fortunately for Ema, she could also be the clan's only savior. The race to figure out her vampiric origins is on. And maybe she'll get the hang of the blood-drinking gig along the way.

    She's dead. Or not quite. After discovering she's been turned into a vampire, she tries to settle into a quiet suburb of Chicago and return to a normal life. If only she could stop wanting to bite her boyfriend. Not to mention she is dying to find out who turned her, and why. She doesn't have to wait long before they come to her.

    Parker, Tessa Gratton, Heidi Heilig, Julie Murphy, Mark Oshiro, Rebecca Roanhorse, Laura Ruby, Victoria “V. E.” Schwab, and Kayla Whaley.

    What could possibly go wrong?Spinoza is a private investigator who specializes in finding the missing. He’s good at what he does. Damn good. But he’s also got a secret past that haunts him. In the short story, THE VAMPIRE ON THE TRAIN, Spinoza takes on a different kind of investigation when he’s hired to ride a train with a vampire whose dreams predict the future. Spinoza is in the vampire’s dreams. And so is the train…“The Vampire on the Train” is a mystery thriller and a paranormal adventure for an intrepid private detective who finds out he is the key to one vampire living...or dying. Now Spinoza must make the decision of a lifetime before the train reaches its final destination...**Acclaim for J.R. Rain and Samantha Moon** “J.R. Rain’s Samantha Moon, private investigator, is a vampire heroine to cheer for. The VAMPIRE FOR HIRE urban fantasy series has sparkling dialogue, quirky mystery, paranormal thrills and chills, fun romance and humor, and a great ensemble cast of characters. Get hooked with MOON DANCE and be swept away into the mystique of an unforgettable vampire saga.” —Eve Paludan, bestselling author of the WITCH DETECTIVES series “I enjoyed Moon Dance immensely. The protagonist, Samantha Moon, is a female vampire with a husband and children. Those predate her condition; six years ago, she was attacked by a vampire and rendered into one. Now she’s trying to carry on with family and private eye business, and she’s a feisty, skilled person, so is doing mostly okay. It is not a horror story; she buys animal blood to eat and doesn’t generally prey on humans. But her husband has an increasing problem with her coldness—not of spirit, but of body. ‘You sicken me and scare the hell out of me,’ he tells her. ‘And when I touch you it’s all I can do to not gag.’ She replies, ‘Words every wife wants to hear.’ I love this! What makes it special are her character and nature.” —Piers Anthony, bestselling author of the XANTH series “J.R. Rain delivers a blend of action and wit that always entertains. Quick with the one-liners, but his characters are fully fleshed out (even the undead ones) and you’ll come back again and again.” —Scott Nicholson, bestselling author of the AFTER series “Is it possible to redefine two genres in one book? I don’t know, but J.R. Rain has left a lasting impression for the vampire and mystery genres.” —P.J. Day, bestselling author of the JACK KING vampire thrillers “Impossible to put down. J.R. Rain’s Moon Dance is a fabulous urban fantasy replete with multifarious and unusual characters, a perfectly synchronized plot, vibrant dialogue and sterling witticism, all wrapped in a voice that is as beautiful as it is rich and vividly intense as it is relaxed.” —April Vine, bestselling author of UNBOUND

    A few days after the first time youwalk in your sleep, you kill someone.That's how the end begins.Emma Montgomery has been having gruesome nightmares. Even worse, when she wakes up, she isn't where she was when she fell asleep. And she's not the only one. One by one the students of Saint Opportuna High start having nightmares, and sleepwalking. And the next morning one of their classmates turns up dead. Something is making them kill in their sleep. Emma and her friends need to band together, to keep themselves awake until they can figure out what's behind the murders-before anyone else dies.

    She goes to public high school. She argues with her father. She’s human.And then every day in between . . . she’s something else entirely.Though she still looks like herself, every twenty-four hours predatory instincts take over and Kali becomes a feared demon-hunter with the undeniable urge to hunt, trap, and kill zombies, hellhounds, and other supernatural creatures. Kali has no idea why she is the way she is, but she gives in to instinct anyway. Even though the government considers it environmental terrorism.When Kali notices a mark on the lower back of a popular girl at school, she knows instantly that the girl is marked for death by one of these creatures. Kali has twenty-four hours to save her, and unfortunately she’ll have to do it as a human. With the help of a few new friends, Kali takes a risk that her human body might not survive . . . and learns the secrets of her mysterious condition in the process.

    1 The Bastard Stepchild - George R.R. Martin 2 Death by Dahlia - Charlaine Harris 3 The Bleeding Shadow - Joe R. Lansdale 4 Hungry Heart - Simon R. Green 5 Styx and Stones - Steven Saylor 6 Pain and Suffering - S.M. Stirling 7 It's Still the Same Old Story - Carrie Vaughn8 The Lady is a Screamer - Conn Iggulden 9 Hellbender - Laurie R. King 10 Shadow Thieves - Glen Cook 11 No Mystery, No Miracle - Melinda M. Snodgrass 12 The Difference Between a Puzzle and a Mystery - M.L.N. Hanover13 The Curious Affair of the Deodand - Lisa Tuttle 14 Lord John and the Plague of Zombies - Diana Gabaldon15 Beware the Snake - John Maddox Roberts 16 In Red, with Pearls - Patricia Briggs 17 The Adakian Eagle - Bradley Denton

    And no one ever dies.Except...There’s a price to pay for paradise. Every fourth year, the strange power that fuels the town exacts its payment by infecting teens with deadly urges. In a normal year in Gardnerville, teens might stop talking to their best friends. In a fourth year, they’d kill them.Four years ago, Skylar’s sister, Piper, was locked away after leading sixteen of her classmates to a watery grave. Since then, Skylar has lived in a numb haze, struggling to forget her past and dull the pain of losing her sister. But the secrets and memories Piper left behind keep taunting Skylar—whispering that the only way to get her sister back is to stop Gardnerville’s murderous cycle once and for all.

    None. Not over her shiny blue Mustang. Her Jimmy Choos. Or her dead body.She’s supposed to enjoy her sophomore year, not learn about some freaky future Destiny says she has no choice but to fulfill.It doesn’t take long for Quincy to realize the only way out of the game is to play along especially since Death can find her anyway, anywhere, anytime. And does.Like when she’s reassuring her friends she wants nothing to do with former best friend Ben Moorland, who’s returned from god-knows-where, and fails. Miserably.Instead of maintaining her coveted popularity status, Quincy’s goes down like the Titanic.Maybe ... just maybe ... that’s okay.It seems, perhaps, becoming a grim reaper isn’t just about the dead but more about a much needed shift in Quincy’s priorities—from who she thinks she wants to be to who she really is.

    In Jim Butcher’s ”Curses”, Harry Dresden investigates how to lift a curse laid by the Fair Folk on the Chicago Cubs. In Patricia Briggs’ “Fairy Gifts,”, a vampire is called home by magic to save the Fae who freed him from a dark curse. In Melissa Marr’s “Guns for the Dead”, the newly dead Frankie Lee seeks a job in the afterlife on the wrong side of the law. In Holly Black’s “Noble Rot”, a dying rock star discovers that the young woman who brings him food every day has some strange appetites of her own.Featuring original stories from 20 authors, this dark, captivating, fabulous, and fantastical collection is not to be missed!Contents:Curses / by Jim Butcher --How the pooka came to New York City / by Delia Sherman --On the slide / by Richard Bowes --The Duke of Riverside / by Ellen Kushner --Oblivion by Calvin Klein / by Christopher Fowler --Fairy gifts / by Patricia Briggs --Picking up the pieces / by Pat Cadigan --Underbridge / by Peter S. Beagle --Priced to sell / by Naomi Novik --The bricks of Gelecek / by Matthew Kressel --Weston walks / by Kit Reed --The projected girl/ by Lavie Tidhar --The way station / by Nathan Ballingrud --Guns for the dead / by Melissa Marr --And go like this / by John Crowley --Noble rot / by Holly Black --Daddy longlegs of the evening / by Jeffrey Ford --The skinny girl / by Lucius Shepard --The Colliers' Venus (1893) / by Caitlín R. Kiernan --King pole, gallows pole, bottle tree / by Elizabeth Bear.

    The last test before her initiation. But she hadn't expected this. Not killing a little kid. Billi is destined to follow her father into The Order and protect the masses from the Unholy. From the thousands of evil, tortured souls that prey on humanity.

    . . a serial killer who defies death . . . a house with a violent mind of its own and another that holds a grotesque secret within its peeling walls. Here are witches who feast on faces, changeling rites of passage, a venerable vampire contemplating his end, and a fanged brat who drains the patience of a bumbling teenage boy. Here too are a flamboyant young novelist in search of a subject more compelling than his own eerie existence and the daughter of a sorcerer fighting to free her lover — and her will — from sinister bonds. Enter the world of GOTHIC!, a celebration of the literary form made famous by such writers as Mary Shelley and Edgar Allan Poe. With chilling stories by: Joan Aiken M. T. Anderson Neil Gaiman Caitlín R. Kiernan Gregory Maguire Garth Nix Celia Rees Janni Lee Simner Vivian Vande Velde Barry Yourgrau

     Within these walls, you’ll find witches, vampires, shifters, fae, wizards, warlocks, and more magically incarcerated creatures, some struggling to escape, and all fighting to just to survive.

    They live in caves beneath the acropolis, without economic resources and according to rules imposed on them by the Olympians. They are forbidden from turning humans into vampires, which happens when all of the blood is drained; however, they are allowed to drink from a willing mortal. Some mortals are willing because a vampire bite will infect the body for six hours, and, during that time, the mortal has the powers of flight, invisibility, strength, speed, x-ray vision, and mind control. Such great power can become irresistible, though dangerous and addicting to mortals.As seventeen-year-old Gertie, studying abroad from New York, uncovers the unfathomable secrets of this ancient city, she unwittingly becomes a catalyst in an uprising led by Dionysus, the god of wine and lord of the vampires.