Classic Fantasy

Once a fabled Blade of Namara, Aral Kingslayer fought for justice and his goddess alongside his familiar, a living shadow called Triss. Now with their goddess murdered and her temple destroyed, they are among the last of their kind. Surviving on the fringes of society, Aral becomes a drunken, broken, and wanted man, working whatever shadowy deal comes his way. Until a mysterious woman hires him to deliver a secret message - one that can either redeem him or doom him.

Live fast, die young. Tam Hashford is tired of working at her local pub, slinging drinks for world-famous mercenaries and listening to the bards sing of adventure and glory in the world beyond her sleepy hometown. When the biggest mercenary band of all rolls into town, led by the infamous Bloody Rose, Tam jumps at the chance to sign on as their bard. It's adventure she wants - and adventure she gets as the crew embark on a quest that will end in one of two ways: glory or death.

It started on the last day of high school, a day Diana Hansen had been anticipating for the last 12 years. Now, her real life could begin. For Diana, like her sister Claire, was a Keeper - gifted with the ability to reweave the possibilities of time and space to maintain the balance between Light and Darkness. What neither Diana nor Sam - formerly an angel, now a cat - could have anticipated was that her first Summons as an active Keeper would be to a shopping mall! But a quick trip to the Erlking's Emporium, a gift shop in a Kingston mall, confirmed Diana's worst suspicions.

It's the end of the 19th century in San Francisco's Chinatown, and ghost hunters from the Maoshan traditions of Daoism keep malevolent spiritual forces at bay. Li-lin, the daughter of a renowned Daoshi exorcist, is a young widow burdened with yin eyes - the unique ability to see the spirit world. Her spiritual visions and the death of her husband bring shame to Li-lin and her father - and shame is not something this immigrant family can afford.

Fenris isn't a hell planet, but it's nobody's bargain. With 2,000-hour days and an 8,000-hour year, it alternates blazing heat with killing cold. A planet like that tends to breed a special kind of person: tough enough to stay alive and smart enough to make the best of it. And when that kind of person discovers he's being cheated out of wealth he's risked his life for, that kind of planet is ripe for revolution.

Moon, Jade, and other favorites from the Indigo Cloud Court return with two new novellas from Martha Wells, who continues to enthusiastically ignore genre conventions in her exploration of the fascinating world of the Raksura. Her novellas and short stories contain all the elements fans have come to love from the Raksura books: courtly intrigue and politics, unfolding mysteries that reveal an increasingly strange wider world, and threats both mundane and magical.

Published in chronological order, with extensive story and bibliographic notes, this series not only provides access to stories that have been out of print for years, but gives them a historical and social context. Series editors Scott Conners and Ronald S. Hilger excavated the still-existing manuscripts, letters and various published versions of the stories, creating a definitive "preferred text" for Smith's entire body of work. This second volume of the series brings together 20 of his fantasy stories.

The Ultimate Horror Collection is a fully-indexed collection of over 60 classic horror stories, read by four Audie-winning narrators. Included here are stories by H.P. Lovecraft; Edgar Allan Poe; M.R. James; Oscar Wilde; Joseph Le Fanu; Bram Stoker; Mary Shelley; Robert Louis Stevenson; and Henry James.

A cursed druid, blackmailed by a faery queen to find a missing magic rock. Let's just hope they don't hack the druid off...for everyone's sake. Name's Colin McCool. Folks call me the Junkyard Druid. I hate that name. Despite my last name, I'm not "cool" like the other hunters in town. I don't run an occult bookstore, I've never owned a Harley, and I didn't inherit a family fortune passed down through generations of hunters before me. And I kind of have this curse on me that's messed up my life.

Queen Mab's niece, Fiona, has long been bored to tears by the intrigues of Court life. She'd prefer to cut loose at a punk club, knock back a few Thai beers, and hook up with a likely lad of similar interests. But when Fiona goes AWOL, she only gets as far as Manhattan's Inwood Park before a nasty demon nearly puts a permanent crimp in her plans---and a dark stranger sparks her desire.

Claire Hansen was a Keeper, gifted - or cursed - with the job of being one of Earth's Guardians, "summoned" to areas where anomalies existed, where rifts had opened - or had been opened. Such places were the world's danger spots where, if they weren't sealed in time, all the minions of hell might break through. After she'd closed the portal into hell at the Elysian Fields Guest House, Claire and her talking cat, Austin, found they'd acquired a new companion - Dean.

With the world clinging to a fragile peace forced on the Fae by humanity after the Faerie Wars, metalsmith Alex Blackwood is plunged into the world of the half-fae who traffic in illegal magical artifacts. Her best friend's murder and his cryptic last message place her in the crosshairs of a scheme to reignite the decade-old war between humans and fae. Worse, violent attacks against her and the arrival of a fae knight on a mission force Alex to face a devastating revelation of who and what she is.

My name is Mac Brennan, and that's the only thing I can remember about myself. Not why I woke up in a dumpster. Not why my right arm is as black as pitch and covered in glowing red tattoos, and certainly not why a vicious death cult is after me. Actually, that last part isn't true. I know why the death cult is after me. It's because I saved that damned girl from them. I didn't know who she was at the time, but I'd have done it anyway. I just don't like it when girls get beat up; call me old fashioned.

Every year, each village is required to send a young woman to the Empire's capital - her fate to be burned alive for the entertainment of the masses. For the last five years, one small village's tithe has been the same woman. Gilene's sacrifice protects all the other young women of her village, and her secret to staying alive lies with the magic only she possesses. But this year is different. Azarion, the Empire's most famous gladiator, has somehow seen through her illusion - and is set on blackmailing Gilene into using her abilities to help him escape his life of slavery.

In Ghost of a Smile, the Ghost Finders answer a desperate call for help from one of the world’s biggest drug companies. A team of police enforcement agents has already disappeared, and the Ghost Finders have no idea how to proceed. But they’d better figure something out fast, because time is running out—and failure means an entire building full of innocent victims will cease to exist.

Published in chronological order, with extensive story and bibliographic notes, this series not only provides access to stories that have been out of print for years, but gives them a historical and social context. Series editors Scott Conners and Ronald S. Hilger excavated the still-existing manuscripts, letters and various published versions of the stories, creating a definitive "preferred text" for Smith's entire body of work. This third volume of the series brings together 21 of his fantasy stories.

It always started like this, a pulse inside me, like a warning before the tide surged, roared... and froze everything. Twenty-year old Emma just landed in Rome, to find the father who walked out of her life more than a decade ago and was too busy eating pizza to call. Traveling with her is a secret she's carried alone since childhood: sometimes, around her, time stops. People and cars freeze, rain hangs still in the air and there's only her left in the silence. To make things worse, instead of her dad, Em runs into a past she'd rather forget in the person of Lily, her stepsister.

The armies of the Dark Lord are massing as his evil shadow spreads even wider. Men, Dwarves, Elves, and Ents unite forces to battle against the Dark. Meanwhile, Frodo and Sam struggle further into Mordor in their heroic quest to destroy the One Ring. The devastating conclusion of J. R. R. Tolkien’s classic tale of adventure, begun in The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers.

Henghis Hapthorn is the foremost penetrator of mysteries and uncoverer of secrets in a decadent, far-future Old Earth, one age before Jack Vance's Dying Earth. A superb rationalist, he has long disdained the notion that the universe has an alternative organizing principle: Magic. But now a new age is dawning, overturning the very foundations of Hapthorn's existence, and he must struggle to survive in a world where all the rules are changing.

After a massacre decimates half his team and leaves him crippled, Jaxon Law must relearn how to fight-and battle the anger and guilt threatening to overwhelm him. But when he rescues a beautiful woman who awakens his primal instincts, Jax is unprepared for the dangers that lie ahead.On the run from her employer, brilliant lab assistant Kira Locke has evidence that leads the Alpha Pack on a hunt for someone targeting human civilians with Psy abilities.