Also included - a special preview of Raising Hell, a new novella from John G. Hartness and White Lightnin', a Beauregard the Monster Hunter Short Story! Included in this volume - UnHoly Night Love Hurts Dead Man's Hand She's Got Legs Howl Double Trouble Elf off the Shelf Casket Case Stone Cold Crazy Rest High on that Mountain Bad Moon Rising

    Jack has a secret, and this hidden part of his past sends him on a journey through spells and gateways to other worlds, each one stranger than the last, filled with such figures as professional Dream Hunters, gangster magicians, an invisible spirit fox named Ray, an elegant Jinni named Archie, and the Queen of Eyes--holder of all oracular power in the world. From the high stakes poker table in the H�tel de R�ve Noire, to the deadly Forest Of Souls, to a cave where he must trap a sixty-five thousand year old demon, Jack flows in and out of this world. Even when his own dream duplicate hires him to kill himself, Jack is mercury in motion--Jack the Nimble, Jack the Quick--until he runs out of tricks and must face his greatest fear.The Fissure King: A Novel In Five Stories collects the four existing Jack Shade novellas, plus a new story that will require Jack's greatest sacrifice and change his very existence.

    Warlock Marcus Shifter followed the plan perfectly.The corpse, however, did not.Now there's a body on the loose, accusations of illegal necromancy are flying, and the answers are waiting in the perilous alleys between the mortal and paranormal worlds. They're no place for someone who gave up magic after a childhood accident. And given his tendency to shoot off his mouth and his Glock, Marcus is having a hell of a time digging up more than just bodies.But when an apocalypse-minded megalomaniac threatens Marcus's family, things get personal. Marcus will have to embrace the magic he's been avoiding for years—and even that might not be enough to save the world from a hellish demise.86,000 words.

    It’s an abandoned abbey, its roof lined with stone gargoyles that could almost be mistaken for living, breathing creatures.And Grayson has gone missing.No one seems to know of his whereabouts but Luc, a devastatingly handsome servant at their new home.Ingrid is sure her twin isn’t dead—she can feel it deep in her soul—but she knows he’s in grave danger. It will be up to her and Gabby to navigate the twisted path to Grayson, a path that will lead Ingrid on a discovery of dark secrets and otherworldly truths. And she’ll learn that once they are uncovered, they can never again be buried.

    Johannes Cabal, a brilliant scientist and notorious snob, is single-mindedly obsessed in heart and soul with raising the dead. Well, perhaps not "soul" . . . He hastily sold his years ago in order to learn the laws of necromancy. But now, tormented by a dark secret, he travels to the fiery pits of Hell to retrieve it. Satan, who is incredibly bored these days, proposes a little wager: Johannes has one year to persuade one hundred people to sign over their souls or he will be damned forever. To make the bet even more interesting, Satan throws in that diabolical engine of deceit, seduction, and corruption known as a "traveling circus" to aid in the evil bidding. What better place exists to rob poor sad saps of their souls than the traveling carnivals historically run by hucksters and legendary con men? With little time to lose, Johannes raises a motley crew from the dead and enlists his brother, Horst, a charismatic vampire (an unfortunate side effect of Johannes's early experiments with necromancy), to be the carnival's barker. On the road through the pastoral English countryside, this team of reprobates wields their black magic with masterful ease, resulting in mayhem at every turn. Johannes may have the moral conscience of anthrax, but are his tricks sinful enough to beat the Devil at his own game? You'll never guess, and that's a promise! Brilliantly written and wickedly funny, "Johannes Cabal the Necromancer" combines the chills and thrills of old-fashioned gothic tales like "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," the mischievous humor of "Wicked," and the sophisticated charms of" Jonathan Strange &Mr. Norrell "and spins the Faustian legend into a fresh, irreverent, and irresistible new adventure.

    My mouth opened, but I couldn’t draw breath. His lips, pearly wet, parted and he blew into my mouth. My lungs expanded beneath his weight. When I exhaled he sucked my breath in and his weight turned from cold marble into warm living flesh. Since accepting a teaching position at remote Fairwick College in upstate New York, Callie McFay has experienced the same disturbingly sensual dream every night: A mist enters her bedroom, then takes the shape of a virile, seductive stranger who proceeds to ravish her in the most toe-curling, wholly satisfying ways possible. Perhaps these dreams are the result of her having written the bestselling book The Sex Lives of Demon Lovers. Callie’s lifelong passion is the intersection of lurid fairy tales and Gothic literature—which is why she’s found herself at Fairwick’s renowned folklore department, living in a once-stately Victorian house that, at first sight, seemed to call her name. But Callie soon realizes that her dreams are alarmingly real. She has a demon lover—an incubus—and he will seduce her, pleasure her, and eventually suck the very life from her. Then Callie makes another startling discovery: Her incubus is not the only mythical creature in Fairwick. As the tenured witches of the college and the resident fairies in the surrounding woods prepare to cast out the demon, Callie must accomplish something infinitely more difficult—banishing this supernatural lover from her heart.

    Without his blessing, Hell itself, along with the ancient power of The Deep, were unleashed upon the world. Two world wars and oceans of blood later, a balance was reached. Demonkind took its place as the ruling aristocracy. Mankind, thanks to its ability to create, fell to the position of working proletariat. Alive, but not living. Lucky Us. Welcome to New Golgotha, the East Coast supercity. In it you will find sins and cyborgs, magic and mystery, vices without virtue and hell without the hope of heaven. In the middle of it all is Salem, smuggler extraordinaire and recluse immortal, who has lived and fought through the last two centuries, but his biggest battle is just beginning. To Beat The Devil: A technomancer Novel is an incredible adventure full of cyborgs and demons, gods, magic, guns, puns and whiskey, humor and heart. Follow Salem as he embarks to discover the meaning of the very nature of what mankind is: our souls. And, who is trying to steal them.

    Well, not normal for everyone. Larissa Miller may have been born after the Great Collision, but as a history teacher who lives in the human-only city, she has never come into contact with any other race or species, nor has she wanted to. Her life is as ordinary as it gets - that is, until one day she walks out of her apartment and is attacked by a mob of Zombies, only to be saved by a Gargoyle. Gargoyles trust no one outside their Clan, but due to a cryptic prophecy, Terak, Leader of the Gargoyles, has been watching over the human woman for months. While he can find no reason why the woman has been singled out, something about her stirs every protective instinct within him. When the attack confirms that the threats against her exist and are real, he convinces Larissa that though their races have never been allies, the best chance of discovering why she has been brought into his world is by working together. In the course of their investigation Terak becomes entranced by his little human. But when he discovers why Necromancers want her and the great reward that awaits him if he betrays her, he must choose between the welfare of his Clan and not only Larissa’s life, but the fate of this New Realm as well.

    Outcast. Accursed. From the meanest of beginnings, greatness will rise. Abandoned at birth by her parents, Auli-Ambar is seen as a child blighted by a callous talon-stroke of fate. A worthless burden. She is blind, severely disfigured, and fit only for the most menial tasks. Then, a simple act of kindness changes her life. Flown to the Halls of the Dragons, the painfully shy girl becomes a cleaner of Dragon roosts, and a helpless wanderer of the Dragon Library. Here, Auli is able to walk amidst the lore she is drawn to so profoundly. Touch it. Imagine worlds within scrolls. She thrills to the hallowed scents of knowledge, but aches for what blindness has forever denied her. In the cruellest of ironies, Auli discovers she possesses a magic that makes people and Dragons forget her very existence. This is disremembrance, the accursed power of loneliness. She can only despair. One will not forget. Deep amidst the forbidden racks of draconic scroll lore, where Auli-Ambar has unwittingly breached the protective wards, the young Dragon scholar, Arkurion the Mercury Blue, will discover her true gift and ignite its flame. Now, in the environs of a magical library overseen by the mighty Dragon Librarian Sazutharr, the extraordinary courage and integrity of a blind girl will finally be given the chance to blossom. Little did they suspect that the fate of all Dragonkind would rest in her hands. Series note Scrolls of Fire is a parallel storyline to my acclaimed Dragonfriend series. Auli-Ambar’s story intermeshes deeply with the fates of Hualiama and Grandion and intersects the most critical events of their lives. Also, if you ever wondered what Dragons get up to in a library, look no further! The Dragon Librarian is tale for lore-lovers, scrollworms and librarians the world over. They are secretly Dragons. I told you first.

    and the answer might just be the death of him. By day, Joseph scrubs toilets and fixes broken light fittings. By night he looks into weird stuff: local hauntings, unexplained disappearances, satanic cabals dancing naked around ancient stone circles.The usual.The Uncanny calls to him like a beacon, and he follows its signal wherever it leads, hoping that one day it will shine a light on who he really is.So far the clues haven't added up to much, but now a mad woman is stalking him, he’s tripping over dead bodies in the street, and he keeps having terrifying apocalyptic visions.Can Joseph put the pieces together and figure out his identity? And if he does, will he be able to live with who he really is?

    She spent her summers at the beach, had the perfect best friend, and had just started dating the cutest guy at school. No one she'd ever known had died. But all that changes when she finds her parents dead in the Redwood Forest, in what appears to be a strange double murder.After the funeral Renée’s wealthy grandfather sends her to Gottfried Academy, a remote and mysterious boarding school in Maine, where she finds herself studying subjects like Philosophy, Latin, and the “Crude Sciences.”It’s there that she meets Dante Berlin, a handsome and elusive boy to whom she feels inexplicably drawn. As they grow closer, unexplainable things begin to happen, but Renée can’t stop herself from falling in love. It’s only when she discovers a dark tragedy in Gottfried’s past that she begins to wonder if the Academy is everything it seems.Little does she know, Dante is the one hiding a dangerous secret, one that has him fearing for her life.Dead Beautiful is both a compelling romance and thought-provoking read, bringing shocking new meaning to life, death, love, and the nature of the soul.

    Meet Mookie Pearl.Criminal underworld? He runs it.Supernatural underworld? He hunts in it.Nothing stops Mookie when he’s on the job.But when his daughter takes up arms and opposes him, something’s gotta give…The Blue Blazes – the first in a new urban fantasy series in which lovable thug Mookie Pearl must contend with the criminal underworld, the supernatural underworld, a new drug that makes the invisible visible, and a rebellious teen daughter who opposes him at every turn.

    However, despite being descended from a long line of Wardens, 16-year-old Errol Magnus believes it to be the absolute worst job on the planet: How could a single occupation simultaneously be the most boring, abominably stupid and extraordinarily dangerous profession imaginable? But when his older brother Tom - the current Warden for their region - goes missing, Errol has no choice but to enter the Badlands, where monsters abide in mind-boggling numbers, to find him. During his search, Errol crosses paths with - and finds himself stalked by - the legendary Wendigo, a monster with preternatural strength and speed, as well as enhanced senses of sight, smell and hearing…and an insatiable hunger for human flesh. Now Errol must do the impossible and not only escape from the monster (something no one has ever done before), but also avoid the unearthly legacy it leaves on all its victims - a terrifying curse known as Wendigo Fever.

    Some live boring. Some even die boring. Fred managed to do all three, and when he woke up as a vampire, he did so as a boring one. Timid, socially awkward, and plagued by self-esteem issues, Fred has never been the adventurous sort.One fateful night – different from the night he died, which was more inconvenient than fateful – Fred reconnects with an old friend at his high school reunion. This rekindled relationship sets off a chain of events thrusting him right into the chaos that is the parahuman world, a world with chipper zombies, truck driver wereponies, maniacal necromancers, ancient dragons, and now one undead accountant trying his best to “survive.” Because even after it’s over, life can still be a downright bloody mess.

    It's like I dropped a heroic dose of acid and turned on the Food Network for eight hours. It's funny and demented and sticks in you like a pinbone. Matt Wallace writes like someone just jammed a needle full of adrenaline in his heart - and then, in yours. From this point forward, I'll read anything this guy writes."-Chuck Wendig, author of BLACKBIRDS and ZER0ES"No one makes me think, 'Dammit, I should have thought of that!' like Matt Wallace. The Sin du Jour series is something I read with equal amounts of envy and delight." - Mur Lafferty, Campbell Award winning author of THE SHAMBLING GUIDE TO NEW YORK CITY