Three child survivors. A religious fanatic who insists the three are harbingers of the apocalypse. What if he's right?The world is stunned when four commuter planes crash within hours of each other on different continents. Facing global panic, officials are under pressure to find the causes. With terrorist attacks and environmental factors ruled out, there doesn't appear to be a correlation between the crashes, except that in three of the four air disasters a child survivor is found in the wreckage. Dubbed 'The Three' by the international press, the children all exhibit disturbing behavioural problems, presumably caused by the horror they lived through and the unrelenting press attention. This attention becomes more than just intrusive when a rapture cult led by a charismatic evangelical minister insists that the survivors are three of the four harbingers of the apocalypse. The Three are forced to go into hiding, but as the children's behaviour becomes increasingly disturbing, even their guardians begin to question their miraculous survival.

    They know nothing about life as a soul. Do souls think and feel? How do they fly up in the clouds? Do they take any part of their old life into the new one?Only Connor has the answers.

    At its decaying core is the Goddess Kali: the dark mother of pain, four-armed and eternal, her song the sound of death and destruction. Robert Luczak has been hired by Harper's to find a noted Indian poet who has reappeared, under strange circumstances, years after he was thought dead. But nothing is simple in Calcutta and Lucsak's routine assignment turns into a nightmare when he learns that the poet is rumoured to have been brought back to life in a bloody and grisly ceremony of human sacrifice.

    As the 16-year-old kingpin of the Spider, his smut-peddling schoolyard syndicate, he's making a name for himself as an up-and-coming entrepreneur. Profits are on the rise, the other gangs are staying out of his business, and he's going out with Esme, the girl of his dreams.But when Esme gets kidnapped, and all the clues point towards strange forces at work, things start to get seriously weird. The only man drunk enough to help is a bearded, booze-soaked, supernatural bounty hunter that goes by the name of Jackson 'Jackie' Ronin.Plunged into the increasingly bizarre landscape of Cape Town's supernatural underworld, Baxter and Ronin team up to save Esme. On a journey that takes them through the realms of impossibility, they must face every conceivable nightmare to get her back, including the odd brush with the Apocalypse.

    While his colleagues are out saving the world, Bob's under a desk restoring lost data. His world was dull and safe - but then he went and got Noticed. Now, Bob is up to his neck in spycraft, parallel universes, dimension-hopping terrorists, monstrous elder gods and the end of the world. Only one thing is certain: it will take more than a full system reboot to sort this mess out ...This is the first novel in the Laundry Files.

    Tilly's seance --Mrs. Amworth --In the tube --Roderick's story --Reconciliation --Face --Spinach --Bagnell terrace --A tale of an empty house --Naboth's vineyard --Expiation --Home sweet home --"And no bird sings" --Corner house --Corstophine --Temple --Step --Bed by the window --James Lamp --Dance --Hanging of Alfred Wadham --Pirates --Wishing-well --Bath-chair --Monkeys --Christopher comes back --Sanctuary --Thursday evenings --Psychical mallards --Clonmel witch burning.

     Featuring eleven brand new, never before seen urban fantasy stories from bestselling, award-winning authors, Urban Magic will take you on a series of exciting adventures in worlds full of magic. All proceeds from sales of this anthology will go to the American Library Association Disaster Relief Fund, which helps libraries recover after natural disasters.

    London is in ruins. A bombed-out shell. A picked-over carcass where the only rule of law is might makes right. What remains of the city is being fought over by two ruthless gangs of warlords. In an effort to create peace, however, a truce between the two families is suggested by Val, patriarch of the Volson clan. His collateral? The hand of his fourteen-year-old daughter, Signy, in marriage to his blood rival, Conor. A rebellious, headstrong teenager who has dreamed all her life of joining her father's forces as a soldier in the war against Conor, Signy is stunned by the announcement. To agree to such a plan is unthinkable! Conor is her mortal enemy. To live as his wife is no better than to live as a slave...for the rest of her life.But what of the alternative? Does she dare defy her father? And what of the consequences of her rebellion? Her decision will set in motion a series of events--events both horrifying and tragic--that will change her life forever.Melvin Burgess has fashioned a powerfully dystopian vision of a young woman's coming of age against the backdrop of war that is shocking, harrowing, and compelling.

    When you’re the son of Frankenstein’s monster and the Bride, it’s tough to go out in public, unless you want to draw the attention of a torch-wielding mob. And since Boy and his family live in a secret enclave of monsters hidden under Times Square, it’s important they maintain a low profile.Boy’s only interactions with the world are through the Internet, where he’s a hacker extraordinaire who can hide his hulking body and stitched-together face behind a layer of code. When conflict erupts at home, Boy runs away and embarks on a cross-country road trip with the granddaughters of Jekyll and Hyde, who introduce him to malls and diners, love and heartbreak. But no matter how far Boy runs, he can’t escape his demons—both literal and figurative—until he faces his family once more.This hilarious, romantic, and wildly imaginative tale redefines what it means to be a monster—and a man.

    But almost nothing of his silent movies has survived, and now Thackeray is little more than a grace note in film history.Disgraced film critic Simon is determined to restore Tubby's reputation and his own. A commercially successful biography of Tubby will convince Simon's girlfriend -- and her parents -- that Simon is worthy of her. Uncovering the truth about Tubby isn't easy. Newspapers of the time contain mysterious, truncated accounts of disturbing events at Tubby's performances and at screenings of his films. The few seconds of film Simon finds of Tubby in action are profoundly disquieting; Tubby seems more demon than comedian. Tubby's leering, laughing clown's face haunts Simon. Everywhere he turns, he sees the clown's sardonic grin; his faintly glowing white costume; or his long, oddly jointed limbs.Tubby Thackeray is dead. But the evil that was Tubby Thackeray lives, and Simon's investigations have roused its hunger.

     But when Wilson takes an intense interest in Oliver's writing and his genre stories of dragons, aliens, and spies, things get weird. Oliver’s stories don’t just need to be finished: they insist on it. With the help of Minerva, Wilson’s girlfriend, Oliver has to find the connection between reality, fiction, the mythical Cydonian Kingdom, and the non-mythical nightclub called M Pallas. That is, if he can survive the alien invasion, the ghosts, and the fact that he thinks he might be in love with Minerva. Unfiction is a wild ride through the collision of science fiction, fantasy, thriller, horror and romance. It's what happens when one writer's fiction interferes with everyone's reality. Unfiction is the latest novel from Gene Doucette, the bestselling author of The Spaceship Next Door.

    For Sylvia, everything is a cause for fear and panic. Isolated and friendless, she has no interest in the outside world at all. And then, one day, her mother unveils her latest purchase. A mermaid. A real, live mermaid, captured and placed in a water tank. For Sylvia, the mermaid is both terrifying and fascinating. Repulsive and beautiful. Soon, however, Sylvia discovers that the mermaid hasn't just been brought to London so it can be put on display. And as the mermaid makes plans to escape its terrible fate, Sylvia is thrown into a horrific battle for survival. The Mermaid's Revenge is the story of a scared little girl who comes face to face with the true horrors of the natural world.

    In Vox’s permanent night, light bulbs are precious, the rich live in radiance and three Hearts beat light into the city. Aquila. Corvus. Cancer.Hearts that bring power to the light-deprived citizens of the city of Vox whilst ghosts haunt the streets, clawing at headlights. Prometheus, liquid light, is the drug of choice. The body of young Vivian North, her blood shining brightly with unnatural light, has no place on the streets.When Cancer is stolen, the weaponisation of its raw power threatens to throw Vox into chaos. Vox needs a hero, and it falls to cop Virgil Yorke to investigate.But Virgil has had a long cycle and he doesn’t feel like a hero. With the ghosts of his last case still haunting his thoughts, he craves justice for the young woman found dead with veins full of glowing. Aided by his partner Dante, Virgil begins to shed light on the dark city’s even darker secrets.Haunted by the ghosts of his past and chased by his addictions, which will crack first, Virgil or the case?

    The stories traverse the magical and the mundane, where supernatural beings are indistinguishable from their mortal counterparts in their complexity and complicity.

    Both sides of Bradbury's vaunted childhood nostalgia are also on display, in the celebratory "Uncle Einar," and haunting "The Lake," the latter a fine elegy to childhood loss. This edition features a new introduction by Bradbury, an invaluable essay on writing, wherein the author tells of his "Theater of Morning Voices," and, by inference, encourages you to listen to the same murmurings in yourself. And has any writer anywhere ever made such good use of exclamation marks!? (Illustrated by Joe Mugnaini.)Contents:· The Dwarf · ss Fantastic Jan/Feb ’54 · The Next in Line · nv Dark Carnival, Arkham House: Sauk City, WI, 1947 · The Watchful Poker Chip of H. Matisse · ss Beyond Fantasy Fiction Mar ’54 · Skeleton · ss Weird Tales Sep ’45 · The Jar · ss Weird Tales Nov ’44 · The Lake · ss Weird Tales May ’44 · The Emissary · ss Dark Carnival, Arkham House: Sauk City, WI, 1947 · Touched with Fire [“Shopping for Death”] · ss Maclean’s Jun 1 ’54 · The Small Assassin · ss Dime Mystery Magazine Nov ’46 · The Crowd · ss Weird Tales May ’43 · Jack-in-the-Box · ss Dark Carnival, Arkham House: Sauk City, WI, 1947 · The Scythe · ss Weird Tales Jul ’43 · Uncle Einar · ss Dark Carnival, Arkham House: Sauk City, WI, 1947 · The Wind · ss Weird Tales Mar ’43 · The Man Upstairs · ss Harper’s Mar ’47 · There Was an Old Woman · ss Weird Tales Jul ’44 · The Cistern · ss Mademoiselle May ’47 · Homecoming · ss Mademoiselle Oct ’46 · The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone · ss Charm Jul ’54