Jessie Tunnell

Charlie Gordon knows that he isn't very bright. At 32, he mops floors in a bakery and earns just enough to get by. Three evenings a week, he studies at a center for mentally challenged adults. But all of this is about to change for Charlie. As part of a daring experiment, doctors are going to perform surgery on Charlie's brain. They hope the operation and special medication will increase his intelligence, just as it has for the laboratory mouse, Algernon.

Ryder, Garrett, Kenzo, and Diesel - The Vipers. Their deals are as sordid as their business, and their reputation is enough to bring a grown man to his knees, forcing him to beg for mercy. They are not people you mess with, yet my dad did. The old man ran up a debt with them and then sold me to cover his losses. Yes, sold me. They own me now. I’m theirs in every sense of the word. But I’ve never been meek and compliant.

Pain is an abyss. How naive of me to think I’d already reached the very depths of it when fate shook my world with a crushing blow. It turns out there are fathomless levels of pain, like a winding labyrinth of doors leading to shadowy figures and long-forgotten secrets. The kind of inescapable descent into madness that twists nightmares into reality. What lies at the end of this obscure path I have yet to discover. But where it begins is a place called Infernium: an asylum feared by those in Nightshade and untrodden by the angels who’ve forsaken its many lost souls.

My father called them messengers. He once told me they walked among us and that somewhere in this dark and godless city, there shined a faint sliver of hope. I had only to look for the signs. Well, I’ve spent my whole life investigating the inexplicable and all I've found are the unsettling vestiges of iniquity—the evidence of another world shrouded by the obscure. Purgatory to some, where depravity hides in shadows, and girls like me are little more than delicious bites of temptation. Others call it Nightshade.

She betrayed him, and now he wants revenge against the sister who became his forbidden obsession the second he laid eyes on her. After she sends him to prison for years, he’s free and ready to haunt her.

Life was far from perfect after my mother's sudden death, but it was one I'd grown to love. And now, it's a life I'll never know again. Not after she and her two cruel sons entered our lives. My father swore he'd never love again, but just as suddenly as Merelda arrived, she became the very center of his world . . . and just as quickly, I was all but forgotten. Still, I did not complain . . . if only for my father's sake. Not even when cruel words turned into even crueler punishments at my new step family's hands.

When I was a little girl, I dreamed a handsome knight would come and rescue me from my wretched mother. He'd ride up on his white steed and break the curse I've been fated to carry since the day I was born. Funny how things changed over time, how the fairytale twisted into something far more crooked—and darker—than I ever imagined. In reality, my knight is scarred and broken, living alone in a castle of bones that overlooks the sea. He isn’t searching for me. He never was.

An outcast her entire life, Corvina Clemm is left adrift after losing her mother. When she receives the admission letter from the mysterious University of Verenmore, she accepts it as a sign from the universe. The last thing she expects though is an olden, secluded castle on top of a mountain riddled with secrets, deceit, and death.

Hades, God of the Dead, does not take sides or bend the rules. He makes no exceptions to these values—not for god or mortal, even his lover, Persephone, Goddess of Spring. Usually, fear prevents retaliation. But not this time. When Hera, Goddess of Women, approaches Hades with a plan to overthrow Zeus, he declines to offer help. As punishment, Hera sentences Hades to perform a series of labors.

Hades, god of the underworld, is known for his inflexible rule, luxurious night clubs, and impossible bargains. Used to control, he is not prepared to discover the Fates have chosen his future wife and queen - Persephone, goddess of spring. Despite her attraction to the god, Persephone, an ambitious journalism student, is determined to expose Hades for his cruel and ruthless ways. Hades finds himself faced with the impossible - proving his future bride wrong.