You should not have touched this flyer with your bare hands. NO, don't put it down. It's too late. They're watching you. My name is David Wong. My best friend is John. Those names are fake. You might want to change yours. You may not want to know about the things you'll read on these pages, about the sauce, about Korrok, about the invasion, and the future. But it's too late. You touched the book. You're in the game. You're under the eye. The only defense is knowledge. You need to read this book, to the end. Even the part with the bratwurst. Why? You just have to trust me.The important thing is this: The drug is called Soy Sauce and it gives users a window into another dimension. John and I never had the chance to say no. You still do. I'm sorry to have involved you in this, I really am. But as you read about these terrible events and the very dark epoch the world is about to enter as a result, it is crucial you keep one thing in mind: None of this was my fault.

    Foul play by the Soviets is suspected, and the world draws close to nuclear war. But the answer has nothing to do with human deeds.

    . .There's one sound a woman doesn't want to hear when she's lost and alone in the Arctic wilderness: a howl. When a strange wolf's teeth slash Cheyenne's ankle to the bone, her old life ends, and she becomes the very monster that has haunted her nightmares for years. Worse, the only one who can understand what Chey has become is the man–or wolf–who's doomed her to this fate. He also wants to chop her head off with an axe. Yet as the line between human and beast blurs, so too does the distinction between hunter and hunted . . . for Chey is more than just the victim she appears to be. But once she's within killing range, she may find that–even for a werewolf–it's not always easy to go for the jugular.From the Trade Paperback edition.

    That is, his specialty is opening safes. Every job is a little mystery, and he has yet to encounter a lock he can't break or a box he can't crack. But the day Holloway gets called in to open a rare, antique safe in a famous author's library, his skills open a door that should have remained closed.In this haunting and singular story, previously published anonymously, Michael Connelly proves once again that he is "superb at building suspense.... the reader can never be sure what sudden turns the plot may take" (Wall Street Journal).

    So when the group's mechanical genius Emily is abducted, he'll plunge into England's darkest places to rescue her….But his old flame Wildcat is turning London town upside down to find her missing sister, and Jasper finds the attraction between himself and the fierce beauty as tempting and dangerous as ever. Their trail leads deep into the city's most unusual circus. Soon, Jasper will find his loyalties—and future—tested more than he could ever imagine….And don't miss Jasper's continuing exploits in The Girl with the Iron Touch by Kady Cross, available now from Harlequin TEEN.

    The collection contains some of Ellison's best stories from earlier collections and is judged by some to be his most consistently high quality collection of short fiction. The theme of the collection can be loosely defined as God, or Gods. Sometimes they're dead or dying, some of them are as brand-new as today's technology. Unlike some of Ellison's collections, the introductory notes to each story can be as short as a phrase and rarely run more than a sentence or two. One story took a Locus Poll Award, the two final ones both garnered Hugo Awards and Locus Poll awards, and the final one also received a Jupiter Award from the Instructors of Science Fiction in Higher Education (discontinued in 1979). When the collection was published in Britain, it won the 1979 British Science Fiction Award for Short Fiction.His stories will rivet you to the floor and change your heartbeat...as unforgettable a chamber of horror, fantasy and reality as you'll ever experience.-Gallery "Brutally and flamboyantly shocking, frequently brilliant, and always irresistibly mesmerizing."-Richmond Times-Dispatch

    LovecraftNew Tales of Terror!What would happen if Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's peerless detective, Sherlock Holmes, and his allies were to find themselves faced with Lovecraftian mysteries whose solutions lay not only beyond the grasp of logic, but beyond sanity itself. In this collection of original tales, twenty of today's cutting-edge writers provide answers to that burning question.Contributors include Neil Gaiman, Brian Stableford, Poppy Z. Bright, Barbara Hambly, Steve Perry, and Caitlin R. Kierman. These and other masters of horror, mystery, fantasy and science fiction spin dark tales within a terrifyingly surreal universe.Includes the Hugo Award-winning story A Study in Emerald by Neil Gaiman.Cover design: David StevensonCover Illustration: John Jude Palencar

     Suspenseful, surprising, sometimes dark, sometimes humorous-these all-new stories will ensure that readers never think of vampires (or birthdays) in quite the same way again. In New York Times bestselling author Charlaine Harris's "Dracula Night," Sookie Stackhouse is the only human at the annual commemoration of Dracula's birth. But this year, the Prince of Darkness actually shows up-and finds Sookie to be a tasty-looking present. New York Times bestselling author Jim Butcher's crime-solving wizard Harry Dresden, of the Dresden Files novels, heads to a role-playing party to give his vampire brother a birthday present in "It's My Birthday Too," only to discover there are some bloodthirsty party crashers who don't share their brotherly love. In "Twilight," Cassandra DuCharme, who appeared in New York Times bestselling author Kelley Armstrong's Dime Store Magic, knows she has to kill to live as a vampire another year-but finds herself disturbingly disinterested in the hunt. Plus ten more bloody good birthday stories that take the cake.Contents xi • Preface: A Few Words (Many Bloody Returns) • (2007) • essay by Charlaine Harris and Toni L. P. Kelner1 • Dracula Night • [Sookie Stackhouse 4.3] • shortstory by Charlaine Harris21 • The Mournful Cry of Owls • novelette by Christopher Golden50 • I Was a Teenage Vampire • novelette by Bill Crider73 • Twilight • [Women of the Otherworld Short Fiction 7.2] • novelette by Kelley Armstrong100 • It's My Birthday, Too • [The Dresden Files 9.2] • novella by Jim Butcher146 • Grave-Robbed • [Vampire Files] • novelette by P. N. Elrod176 • The First Day of the Rest of Your Life • [The Morganville Vampires: Extras 2.5] • novelette by Rachel Caine201 • The Witch and the Wicked • novelette by Jeanne C. Stein230 • Blood Wrapped • [Henry Fitzroy] • novelette by Tanya Huff254 • The Wish • shortstory by Carolyn Haines265 • Fire Ice and Linguini for Two • [Garnet Lacey 2.5] • novelette by Lyda Morehouse [as by Tate Hallaway ]290 • Vampire Hours • novelette by Elaine Viets318 • How Stella Got Her Grave Back • novelette by Toni L. P. Kelner

    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?

    1 Ley Line Drifter by Kim Harrison - Pixy Jenks faces murderous dryad locked inside statue 2 Reckoning by Jeaniene Frost - Bones, faces New Orleans ghouls who eat victims alive - horror 3 Dark Matters by Vicki Pettersson - JJ superhero has illicit affair with Shadow agent Solange 4 The Dead, the Damned, and the Forgotten by Jocelynn Drake - Savannah vampire Keeper Mira investigates murder 5 Two Lines by Melissa Marr - Eavan resists sex and murder that morph her into a glaistig until Daniel Brennan, sex slaver, tempts her into both.

    He's bitterly depressed and ready to commit suicide; anything to put an end to his miserable existence.AN OFFER TOO GOOD TO REFUSE...When a mysterious billionaire surgeon offers Michael two million dollars for his right arm, he thinks his luck might be about to change. Little does he know that the surgeon has other plans for him. His arm is only the beginning. Bit by bit other pieces of Michael's body are surgically removed; his natural body stripped away and then reassembled using other harvested parts from thirteen different 'donors'.A MODERN DAY FRANKENSTEIN...Now Fox isn't sure if he's a man or a monster, or whether or not he'd be better off dead. One thing he is sure of though, he's not checking out of this world until he finds a way to make the people responsible pay for turning him into the experimental nightmare known as... The Jigsaw Man.

    A moment later, everything is burning. When the smoke clears and the bodies are removed, there is no trace of any bomb, or device, or even a matchstick. There's just the corpse of one man, a statue in ash, with an obscene grin still upon his charred skull.Nothing human could have done this.Fortunately, Nathaniel Cade isn't human, either. Turned into a blood-drinking abomination 145 years ago, he is bound by a special blood oath to serve and protect the United States from supernatural threats. Together with his White House handler, Zach Barrows, Cade races to find out who was behind the murders of a dozen innocent people. They have no suspects, no leads, and no explanations.All they have is Cade's vampiric talents and a ticking countdown to the next explosion. Because Cade is certain of one thing: this is only where the fire starts...

     A QUESTIONABLE CLIENT – In this ‘intro’ to the Kate Daniels world, we meet the extremely ‘shifty’ Saiman for the very first time, when Kate takes on the task of serving as his bodyguard to protect him from some very determined—and dangerous—Russian wizards. RETRIBUTION CLAUSE – Saiman’s cousin, Adam—a frost giant and also an insurance adjuster—and his enigmatic partner, Siroun, set out on an impossible mission to enforce a client’s Retribution Clause; that is, to kill the person who killed her. But is their target even guilty? Magic and mayhem and a little personal chemistry will reveal the truth! OF SWINE AND ROSES – A young adult story about a girl, a pig, some magic, and the worst date ever. Chad Thurman is a thug, who carries brass knuckles in both pockets and lays magic traps for intruders into "his" neighborhood. The last thing Alena Kornov wants to do is to go on the date with him. But when her family pressures her, she can't say no. Now the ice-cream is absent, the pig is running for its life, and we won't even mention the dead guy... GRACE OF SMALL MAGICS – Grace has always known she wasn’t like everyone else and that her family has magic abilities. After flying to meet the head of Clan Dreoch in order to fulfill her families’ “duties” as servants, Grace finds herself in the middle of a mage clan war… MAGIC TESTS – A short story in the Kate Daniels universe. Kate recruits her teenage ward, Julie, to search out a missing student whose location spell has her hidden somewhere on campus…