But nothing prepared him for Milkwood: a fat, ugly bastard who could take a beating like a government mule, but never, ever won. So when Malcolm risks his life to discover Milkwood's secret, he convinces the fighter to stop being a punching bag and to go for broke in the local tournament. Only problem? A beautiful woman called Lash who needs Milkwood for her own purposes, and a fouler creature on her heels known only as Dizzy Colt. But for Malcolm and Milkwood? Hell, it’s just another day of Blood and SawdustPRAISE FOR BLOOD AND SAWDUST!"With wicked, playful prose that blends the best of pulp with the supernatural, Jason Ridler’s Blood and Sawdust creates an unholy, hell-raising hybrid, the kind of tale Christopher Moore and Jim Thompson might swap after a long night of drinking, trying to one-up one another with acerbic absurdity." Joe Clifford, Author of CHOICE CUTS and JUNKIE LOVEPRAISE FOR THE WORK OF JASON RIDLER!"An exciting new writer." Lucius Shepard, multiple-award-winning author of HANDBOOK OF AMERICAN PRAYER. “Jason Ridler is kind of like a bull rider who’s tossed a saddle on a Tiger tank, and he’s riding that bucking sucker for all he’s worth, because, hey, no one told him that he couldn’t do it, did they? So here he is, the Man in the Barbed-Wire Straitjacket." Norman Partridge, Award Winning Author of DARK HARVEST. "Jason Ridler’s work is intense and taut, with incredible characters and plots that keep your mind buzzing long after you’ve reached the final page." Trent Zelazny, author of TOO LATE TO CALL TEXAS, and FRACTAL DESPONDENCY. ABOUT THE AUTHORJason S. Ridler is the author of BLOOD AND SAWDUST, the Spar Battersea thrillers (DEATH MATCH, CON JOB and DICE ROLL), the short story collection KNOCKOUTS, and has published over fifty stories in such magazines and anthologies as Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Brain Harvest, Chilling Tales, and more. His popular non-fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Dark Scribe, and the Internet Review of Science Fiction. A former punk rock musician and cemetery groundskeeper, Mr. Ridler holds a Ph.D. in War Studies from the Royal Military College of Canada. Visit him at twitter at http://twitter.com/JayRidler, Facebook ,http://www.facebook.com/Ridlerville, or his writing blog, Ridlerville, atwww.jsridler.com

    Then, for her, everything changed…as the world ended. The earthquakes, the global floods and the devastating fires arrived first. The human race, displaced and panicked, at first fled, migrating to any place there was food and shelter. Then the worldwide plague arrived with its waves of death. And as mankind suffered and died out, vampires, their numbers dwindling from the same sickness, struggled and fought fiercely among themselves to survive in a world where there weren’t enough humans left to feed upon. As the months went by the vampires become fewer, more desperate and ruthless. Emma, as the world disintegrated around her, found herself alone, the old life she’d known, her family and friends all dead…and fighting off an unnatural hunger as she became one of the undead. Defying her unwanted destiny she was determined to resist the increasing bloodlust, the need to kill and feed on human blood, of losing her humanity, for as long as she could bear it, but she was so hungry, and the night, the wolves, called. And then she met Matthew and was no longer alone…but could the love she felt for him protect him from her hunger; could her love protect him from the other vampires?

    Not the fleeting, magical, mysterious death of resurrection, but truly, unequivocally, eternally dead. She knows she’s dead because Roman told her. And why would he lie when he is dying too?

    But when you're a member of the Flinch family, normal has never been easy.For hundreds of years, the eldest male Flinch has been servant and guardian to the vampire, Lord Underwood. While the Flinches have changed through the generations, Underwood has remained eternal. David had hoped to be spared the horror of serving his family's lord and master, but when he is summoned to the Flinch home in Spain by his dying older brother, he knows his luck has run out. After fifty years of slumber, Underwood is to be resurrected from the grave in a ritual of human sacrifice, and David, by right of succession, is to be his resurrector. But there is another Flinch, one who craves the role of guardian to the vampire: David’s sister, Lydia. It’s a job she means to have, even if it means making David’s the first blood shed in this new age of Underwood and Flinch.Winner of the Polidori Award for Best Vampire Novel 2010 and 2011.Finalist in the 2010 Parsec Awards and Winner in 2012.

    Dangerous magical and supernatural items sometimes find their way into mortal hands or onto the market, and Cassidy is part of a shadowy Alliance of mortals and mages whose job it is to take those deadly curiosities out of circulation.Welcome to Trifles & Folly, an antique and curio shop with a dark secret. Proprietor Cassidy Kincaide continues a family tradition begun in 1670—acquiring and neutralizing dangerous supernatural items. It’s the perfect job for Cassidy, whose psychic gift lets her touch an object and know its history. Together with her business partner Sorren, a 500 year-old vampire and former jewel thief, Cassidy makes it her business to get infernal objects off the market. When mundane antiques suddenly become magically malicious, it’s time for Cassidy and Sorren to get rid of these Deadly Curiosities before the bodies start piling up.

    Hamilton is going to deliver. Laurell K. Hamilton, Dabel Brothers Productions, and Marvel are coming together to give readers a look into Anita Blake's past. Written by Laurell K. Hamilton herself, along with Jonathon Green, this July will see the release of part one of a two issue limited series that takes place almost a year before the events currently being chronicled in Guilty Pleasures. You will get to see the first time Anita and Jean-Claude meet, Anita's first time inside Guilty Pleasures, her first serial killer case, and a very early encounter with Edward. Prepare to be thrilled by this original story produced especially for comics.

    For two hundred years he has wandered the world, enslaved by his lunatic appetites and tormented by the memory of his first and most monstrous crime. Now, the last of his kind, he knows he cannot go on.But as Jake counts down to suicide, a violent murder and an extraordinary meeting plunge him straight back into the desperate pursuit of life — and love.Sexy, smart, bloody and heartbreaking, The Last Werewolf takes literature by the throat.

    Chapters: Living Dead in Dallas, Dead to the World, Definitely Dead, Club Dead, Dead Until Dark, Dead as a Doornail, Dead and Gone, All Together Dead, From Dead to Worse, a Touch of Dead, Dead in the Family. Excerpt: A Touch of Dead A Touch of Dead is a collection of short stories from Charlaine Harris 's series The Southern Vampire Mysteries . This title was released on October 6th, 2009. This book only contains the short stories Harris has published in which Sookie Stackhouse is present. Stories References (URLs online) A hyperlinked version of this chapter is at All Together Dead All Together Dead is the seventh book in Charlaine Harris 's series The Southern Vampire Mysteries . After being betrayed by her vampire love, Bill Compton, Sookie Stackhouse attends an all-important central U.S. Vampire Summit on the shores of Lake Michigan as a "human geiger counter" for Sophie-Anne Leclerq, Vampire Queen of Louisiana and who will be tried during the event for murdering her husband, King of Arkansas. The summit is a tense situation. The queen is in a precarious position, her power base weakened by hurricane damage to New Orleans. And there are some vamps who would like to finish what nature started. Sookie knows the queen is innocent, but she is hardly prepared for other shocking murders, not to mention protests by the Fellowship of the Sun, a right-wing anti-vampire movement. Sookie's bond with Eric Northman gets closer and she discovers Quinn 's past. Plot summary The summit, which has attracted undead power players from all over the central United States, is sure to be tense, due in no small part to the rampi...

    A fixture in 1740s Parisian society, Saint-Germain is a perfect gentleman--and a vampire. When the fiery young Madeline falls in love with him, a group of evil sorcerers targets her for their black mass--and only Saint-Germain can save her soul.

    Not since he was trained to kill creatures that were supposed to exist only in nightmares.Yet the teenage girl on his doorstep not only knows his real name, she claims she's his daughter.Before Lockman can learn how the girl found him, he's attacked by a black-ops team of assassins. But these aren't ordinary killers—they're heavily armed vampires sent by his most hated enemy.Forced on the run, Lockman protects his daughter from an onslaught of horrors while searching for who betrayed him and why. The investigation leads him to Detroit, where he unwittingly sets a plan into motion that could trigger a paranormal apocalypse and cost him his soul.For fans of Jim Butcher, Simon R. Green, and Laurell K. Hamilton… Darker Things is an 82,000-word urban fantasy loaded with double-crosses, thrilling action, and shocking twists.

    A manhunt ensues—though the authorities aren’t sure if it’s a man they should be looking for.Some suspect an escapee from the White Tower, a foreboding biotech facility owned by the Godfrey family—their personal fortune and the local economy having moved on from Pittsburgh steel—where, if rumors are true, biological experiments of the most unethical kind take place. Others turn to Peter Rumancek, a Gypsy trailer-trash kid who has told impressionable high school classmates that he’s a werewolf. Or perhaps it’s Roman, the son of the late JR Godfrey, who rules the adolescent social scene with the casual arrogance of a cold-blooded aristocrat, his superior status unquestioned despite his decidedly freakish sister, Shelley, whose monstrous medical conditions belie a sweet intelligence, and his otherworldly control freak of a mother, Olivia. At once a riveting mystery and a fascinating revelation of the grotesque and the darkness in us all, Hemlock Grove has the architecture and energy to become a classic in its own right—and Brian McGreevy the talent and ambition to enthrall us for years to come.

     Did his greedy eyes shine silver like a coyote’s? Did he make you feel like prey?  You can’t remember now.   You just saw the founder of the Suicide Motor Club. Be grateful his brake lights never flashed. Be grateful his car was already full.   They roam America, littering the highways with smashed cars and bled-out bodies, a gruesome reflection of the unsettled sixties. But to anyone unlucky enough to meet them in the lonely hours of the night, they’re just a blurry memory.   That is—to all but one...   Two years ago, they left a witness in the mangled wreck of her family car, her husband dead, her son taken. She remembers their awful faces, despite their tricks and glamours. And she’s coming for them—her thirst for vengeance even more powerful than their hunger for blood.   On the deserted highways of America, the hunters are about to become the hunted...

    Prince Vulcan and an army of vampires invade the city of Los Angeles, the first step in a plan to conquer the world

    A vampire must never harm a human 2. A vampire must never turn a human 3. A vampire must never love a human DI Joel Solomon has a secret: he believes in vampires. But a ritual murder in the Oxfordshire countryside is just the first incident in a horrifying chain of events drawing the Detective Inspector into his worst nightmare. Are vampires really claiming fresh victims? Alex Bishop is an agent of the Vampire Intelligence Agency (VIA), tasked with enforcing the laws of the global Vampire Federation and hunting down rogue members of her race. But when the Federation comes under attack from an uprising led by the traditionalist vampire Gabriel Stone, Alex finds herself fighting for survival. From the streets of London and Oxford to the canals of Venice and the mountains of Transylvania, Joel and Alex are plunged into a deadly game of cat and mouse as the war between the Trads and the Feds threatens to destroy them - and everything they believe in!

    He doesn't need to hunt, respects human life, and would never hurt a soul. But a series of appalling murders makes his lover, Helen, question her faith in him.