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Serpentine
Philip Pullman - 2020
Serpentine is a perfect gift for every Pullman fan, new and old. 'Lyra Silvertongue, you're very welcome . . . Yes, I know your new name. Serafina Pekkala told me everything about your exploits' Lyra and her daemon Pantalaimon have left the events of His Dark Materials far behind. In this snapshot of their forever-changed lives they return to the North to visit an old friend, where we will learn that things are not exactly as they seem . . . Illustrated throughout by Tom Duxbury, the perfect re-entry for fans of His Dark Materials and a wonderful companion to The Book of Dust.
Nil
Lynne Matson - 2014
You have one year. Exactly 365 days--to escape, or you die.Seventeen-year-old Charley doesn’t know the rules. She doesn’t even know where she is. The last thing she remembers is blacking out, and when she wakes up, she’s lying naked in an empty rock field.Lost and alone, Charley finds no sign of other people until she meets Thad, the gorgeous leader of a clan of teenage refugees. Soon Charley learns that leaving the island is harder than she thought . . . and so is falling in love. With Thad’s time running out, Charley realizes that to save their future, Charley must first save him. And on an island rife with dangers, their greatest threat is time.
Ghost Flower
Michele Jaffe - 2012
When she's approached by two wealthy teens who claim she bears an uncanny resemblance to their missing cousin Aurora, her life takes a turn for the dark and mysterious. Drawn into a scheme to win Aurora's inheritance, Eve finds herself impersonating the girl, who disappeared three years ago on the night her best friend Elizabeth died. But when Liza's ghost begins to haunt Eve, doing harm to the people close to her under the guise of "protecting" her, Eve finds herself in a nightmare maze of lies and deception that leads her to question even her own identity. She realizes her only chance is to uncover the truth about what happened the night Liza died, and to find Liza's killer - before she's next. This teen thriller by Michele Jaffe will keep readers turning pages well into the night.
Gone
Michael Grant - 2008
Gone. Except for the young.There are teens, but not one single adult. Just as suddenly, there are no phones, no internet, no television. No way to get help. And no way to figure out what's happened.Hunger threatens. Bullies rule. A sinister creature lurks. Animals are mutating. And the teens themselves are changing, developing new talents—unimaginable, dangerous, deadly powers—that grow stronger by the day. It's a terrifying new world. Sides are being chosen, a fight is shaping up. Townies against rich kids. Bullies against the weak. Powerful against powerless. And time is running out: On your 15th birthday, you disappear just like everyone else...
Alice in Zombieland
Gena Showalter - 2012
Forever.If anyone had told Alice Bell that her entire life would change course between one heartbeat and the next, she would have laughed. From blissful to tragic, innocent to ruined? Please. But that's all it took. One heartbeat. A blink, a breath, a second, and everything she knew and loved was gone.Her father was right. The monsters are real.To avenge her family, Ali must learn to fight the undead. To survive, she must learn to trust the baddest of the bad boys, Cole Holland. But Cole has secrets of his own, and if Ali isn't careful, those secrets might just prove to be more dangerous than the zombies.
Bugs in the Arroyo
Steven Gould - 2009
When Kimball comes upon twelve-year-old Thayet, she's been stuck on a rock in a river of bugs for two days, no food, no water, and no way back.This is an excerpt from 7th Sigma.
The Sarah Roberts Series Vol. 1-3
Jonas Saul - 2011
Prophecies. Dark Visions. Future events with dire consequences only she can avert.Sarah is an Automatic Writer who suffers from a rare obsessive-compulsive disorder called trichotillomania. She has dealt with kidnappings before, so when she receives a message that details a kidnapping, when it is to take place, and what she can do to stop it, she's ready. But things go wrong fast when the kidnappers recognize her from a previous intervention on her part. People are killed. Witnesses place Sarah at the scene. The police find her notebook riddled with prophecies of accidents and crimes from her automatic writing episodes and they want answers.Sarah is in a fight for her life with no one to trust. Her Dark Visions have brought her into the hands of a kidnapping ring who will do anything to find out how she knows so much about them.While the police hunt Sarah for the wrong reasons, her parents think she is at a sleepover. Her life is in her own hands and whether she makes it out of this mess alive or not depends on how many people have to die.The Warning (Sarah Roberts Book Two)At the end of Dark Visions (Sarah Roberts Book One), Sarah had spent the last four years saving people and averting serious accidents using the messages she receives from the dead.In The Warning, Sarah has learned the whereabouts of her sister's murderer. It is time to exact justice for the gruesome murder of Vivian Roberts, whose killer has never been found. When Sarah receives the warning, a message that tells her to stand down and let it go, she refuses. Against sound advice, Sarah enters a heavily guarded compound where the odds are stacked against her.In The Warning, Sarah Roberts becomes the hunted rather than the hunter.How many people have to die to catch one murderer? Sarah must face the reality that has become her life as an Automatic Writer. The Warning begins as a flame, ignites to a fire and explodes in an inferno of violence over a girl who receives messages from the dead to help the living.The Crypt (Sarah Roberts Book Three)Sarah Roberts is in Budapest searching for a weapon. During her time there, she notices a strange man wearing a fedora following her. Before she can find out who he is, she gets arrested. After her release from the Hungarian jail, she is ordered out of the country.The man in the fedora shows up at her Budapest hotel before she has a chance to leave for the airport. He is from a psychic research organization and he wants to take her back to the States with him to further understand her automatic writing abilities. When Sarah refuses to go, she is informed that she does not have a choice because she is now property of the United States government.While Sarah remains in Hungary after her deadline and then travels to Italy in a struggle to locate Armond Stuart, she has to keep the fedora-wearing American and his ten-man team off her back. The only way to escape their reach is to fake her own death. Convinced that is her only option, Sarah concocts a plan that will deal with Armond and have herself killed in the process.
The Shell Collector
Christopher Golden - 2005
He's a part-time lobsterman and full-time painter who sells his art at galleries in Rockport and Newburyport. Between the two jobs he makes enough money to get by, living in an in-law apartment in the family home owned by his brother Jim. Jim runs Feehan & Sons Funeral Home, a business started by their grandfather in 1921.All in all, despite the tension with his brother, and despite the grumbling of his friends, whose business has suffered because of a lengthy red tide and a spectacularly bad overall fishing season, Richie enjoys his life very much. He's content, and believes that's pretty much all a man can ask from his life.That is, until a horrible mystery begins to unfold in Gloucester.Out lobstering, Richie sees something nightmarish in the surf one day, catches a bare glimpse of it beneath the surface. He doesn't dare speak of it for fear of what others might say-he doesn't want to become the town crazy. But he's having a hard time sleeping at night, and several days later, while out hauling in his traps for the winter, Richie finds one of them stuck on something. When he finally hauls it up, there's a corpse attached, a corpse that has been eaten at by sea creatures, including something large . . . the corpse of Greta Wagner, a woman who had been waked at Feehan & Sons two weeks earlier and buried a couple of days later.Someone stole her corpse from the ground.And her grave won't be the only one disturbed.
Messenger’s Legacy
Peter V. Brett - 2014
Each night, the world is overrun by demons—bloodthirsty creatures of nightmare that have been hunting the surface for over 300 years. A scant few hamlets and half-starved city-states are all that remain of a once proud civilization, and it is only by hiding behind wards, ancient symbols with the power to repel the demons, that they survive. A handful of Messengers brave the night to keep the lines of communication open between the increasingly isolated populace. Briar Damaj is a boy of six in the small village of Bogton. Half Krasian, the village children call him Mudboy for his dark skin. When tragedy strikes, Briar decides the town is better off without him, fleeing into the bog with nothing but his wits and a bit of herb lore to protect him. After twenty years, Ragen Messenger has agreed to retire and pass on his route to his protégé, Arlen Bales. But for all that he’s earned the rest, he has no idea what to do with the rest of his life. When he learns Briar, the son of an old friend, is missing, Ragen is willing to risk any danger to bring him safely home.
The First Dragoneer
M.R. Mathias - 2010
When they cross a ridge and leave the protected boundries of their kingdom, they find themselves a cavern to explore. Inside the cavern they find exactly what they were seeking..... Lurking inside this hole in the earth is something they will never forget.... If they can live to remember!** A Note - Though March is the "First Dragoneer," he does not enter the Dragoneer Saga in Book One - The Royal Dragoneers. He arrives though, in the early chapters of the Dragon Saga Book II - Cold Hearted Son of a Witch, and remains in the series from that point.
Petrified
Graham Masterton - 2011
Although Suki, his little girl, seemed thrilled to be kidnapped from her mom’s parents’ house, an electric storm has hit, and it looks like the Lord isn’t going to make it easy for Braydon to get away. Braydon’s right. A huge truck jack-knifes in front of him, his car catches alight, and Sukie winds up in hospital with terrible burns – burns which only exacerbate the terrible nightmare she’s had for years about scary things flying through the sky, like shadows . . .
Flyaway
Kathleen Jennings - 2020
In a small Western Queensland town, a reserved young woman receives a note from one of her vanished brothers—a note that makes question her memories of their disappearance and her father’s departure.A beguiling story that proves that gothic delights and uncanny family horror can live—and even thrive—under a burning sun, Flyaway introduces readers to Bettina Scott, whose search for the truth throws her into tales of eerie dogs, vanished schools, cursed monsters, and enchanted bottles.In these pages Jennings assures you that gothic delights, uncanny family horror, and strange, unsettling prose can live—and even thrive—under a burning sun.Holly Black describes as “half mystery, half fairy tale, all exquisitely rendered and full of teeth.” Flyaway enchants you with the sly, beautiful darkness of Karen Russell and a world utterly its own.
Positive
David Wellington - 2015
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The tattooed plus sign on Finnegan's hand marks him as a Positive. At any time, the zombie virus could explode in his body, turning him from a rational human into a ravenous monster. His only chance of a normal life is to survive the last two years of the potential incubation period. If he reaches his twenty-first birthday without an incident, he'll be cleared.Until then, Finn must go to a special facility for positives, segregated from society to keep the healthy population safe. But when the military caravan transporting him is attacked, Finn becomes separated. To make it to safety, he must embark on a perilous cross-country journey across an America transformed—a dark and dangerous land populated with heroes, villains, madmen, and hordes of zombies. And though the zombies are everywhere, Finn discovers that the real danger may be his fellow humans.Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome meets World War Z and I Am Legend in this thrilling tale that has it all: a compelling story, great characters, and explosive action, making Positive the ultimate zombie novel of our time.
The Situation
Jeff VanderMeer - 2008
“The Situation” is based on a short story by Jeff VanderMeer which Margo Lanagan called “darkly hilarious” and Kevin Brockmeier “a work of surreal humor, bemused sadness, and meticulous artifice...as if the workplace novels of Sinclair Lewis and Joshua Ferris had been inverted, shaken, and diced until they came out looking like a Terry Gilliam creation.”
The Goddess Legacy
Aimee Carter - 2012
Now Aimée Carter pulls back the curtain on how they became the powerful, petty, loving and dangerous immortals that Kate Winters knows.Calliope/Hera represented constancy and yet had a husband who never matched her faithfulness....Ava/Aphrodite was the goddess of love and yet commitment was a totally different deal....Persephone was urged to marry one man, yet longed for another....James/Hermes loved to make trouble for others - but never knew true loss before....Henry/Hades's solitary existence had grown too wearisome to continue. But meeting Kate Winters gave him a new hope....
Five original novellas of love, loss and longing and the will to survive throughout the ages.
Contents:The Goddess QueenThe Lovestruck GoddessGoddess of the UnderworldGod of ThievesGod of Darkness