Contemporary Science Fiction

Black Hollow is a town with a dark secret. For centuries, residents have foretold the return of the Dreamwalker - an ominous figure from local folklore said to lure young women into the woods and possess them. Yet the boundary between fact and fable is blurred by a troubling statistic: Occasionally, women do go missing. And after they return, they almost always end up dead.

Ten years ago, Zelda led a band of merry adventurers whose knacks let them travel to alternate realities and battle the black rot that threatened to unmake each world. Zelda was the warrior; Ish could locate people anywhere; Ramon always knew what path to take; Sarah could turn catastrophe aside. Keeping them all connected: Sal, Zelda’s lover and the group's heart.

Claire Connolly is a good girl with a dangerous secret: She's a Sensitive, a human endowed with magic that seeped through the Veil. Claire knows that revealing her skills would mean being confined to Devil's Isle. Unfortunately, hiding her power has left her untrained and unfocused. Liam Quinn knows from experience that magic makes monsters of the weak, and he has no time for a Sensitive with no control of her own strength.

Winter lasts most of the year at the edge of the Russian wilderness, and in the long nights, Vasilisa and her siblings love to gather by the fire to listen to their nurse’s fairy tales. Above all, Vasya loves the story of Frost, the blue-eyed winter demon. Wise Russians fear him, for he claims unwary souls, and they honor the spirits that protect their homes from evil. Then Vasya’s widowed father brings home a new wife from Moscow. Fiercely devout, Vasya’s stepmother forbids her family from honoring their household spirits, but Vasya fears what this may bring.

Car mechanic Mercy Thompson has always known there was something different about her, and not just the way she can make a VW engine sit up and beg. Mercy is a shapeshifter, a talent she inherited from her long-gone father. She's never known any others of her kind. Until now.

Five days after Owen Zastava Pitt pushed his insufferable boss out of a 14th story window, he woke up in the hospital with a scarred face, an unbelievable memory, and a job offer. It turns out that monsters are real. All the things from myth, legend, and B-movies are out there, waiting in the shadows. Some of them are evil, and some are just hungry. Monster Hunter International is the premier eradication company in the business. And now Owen is their newest recruit.

In the wake of a brutal war, the archangel Raphael and his hunter consort, Elena, are dealing with the treacherously shifting tides of archangelic politics and the people of a battered but not broken city. The last thing their city needs is more death, especially a death that bears the eerie signature of an insane enemy archangel who cannot - should not - be walking the streets.

Welcome to Charon's Crossing. The tea is hot, the scones are fresh, and the dead are just passing through. When a reaper comes to collect Wallace from his own funeral, Wallace begins to suspect he might be dead. And when Hugo, the owner of a peculiar tea shop, promises to help him cross over, Wallace decides he’s definitely dead.

As a cassandra sangue, or blood prophet, Meg Corbyn can see the future when her skin is cut - a gift that feels more like a curse. Meg's Controller keeps her enslaved so he can have full access to her visions. But when she escapes, the only safe place Meg can hide is at the Lakeside Courtyard - a business district operated by the Others. Shape-shifter Simon Wolfgard is reluctant to hire the stranger who inquires about the Human Liaison job.

Morgan Rowlands loves Cal Blaire. He taught her about Wicca and helped her find out who she is. But now they share a secret. A terrible, dark secret that binds them together, even as it tears them apart.

The third book in Kat Richardson's best-selling Greywalker series, Underground features heroine Harper Blaine, walker of the shadowy line between the living and the dead. Seattle's homeless are turning up dead and mutilated, and zombies have been seen stalking the Underground. Harper sets out to find the source, and soon comes to realize she's tangling with an ancient evil.

Seventeen-year-old Evie Dasher knows firsthand the devastating consequences of humanity's war with the aliens. When she's caught up in a raid at a notorious club known as one of the few places where humans and the surviving Luxen can mingle freely, she meets Luc, an unnaturally beautiful guy she initially assumes is a Luxen...but is in fact something much more powerful. Her growing attraction for Luc will lead her deeper and deeper into a world she'd only heard about, a world where everything she thought she knew will be turned on its head....

Crossover sensation Melissa de la Cruz created an instant New York Times best seller with the inventive Witches of East End. In this follow-up, everything is going smoothly in North Hampton now that Joanna and her daughters, Ingrid and Freya, are allowed to perform magic again. But chaos erupts with the arrival of Freya’s twin brother, Freddie, who’s finally escaped from Limbo. And Freddie’s convinced that Freya’s fiancé, Killian Gardiner, is the one who landed him there in the first place.

Quentin Coldwater is brilliant but miserable. A senior in high school, he's still secretly preoccupied with a series of fantasy novels he read as a child, set in a magical land called Fillory. Imagine his surprise when he finds himself unexpectedly admitted to a very secret, very exclusive college of magic in upstate New York, where he receives a thorough and rigorous education in the craft of modern sorcery.

When Regina's friends insist on setting her up a "Fantasy Fix" to help her get over her cheating ex, she dreams up some kinky out-of-this-world encounters that they could never possibly bring to life. But the next thing Regina knows, her friends have got her laced into a shiny black corset, tight leather pants, and a sexy pair of stilettos. It's time for some downtown vampire-fantasy fun...

Sabina Kane doesn't really fit in. And being an assassin doesn't help matters. But she's never brought her work home. Until now. Sabina's latest mission is uncomfortably complex and threatens the fragile peace between the vampire and mage races. As she scrambles to figure out which side she's on, she uncovers a tangled political web, some nasty facts about her family, and some unexpected new talents. Any of these things could be worryingly life changing, but together they could be lethal.

Latro now finds himself in Egypt, a land of singing girls, of spiteful and conniving deities. Without his memory, his is unsure of everything, except for his desire to be free of the curse that causes him to forget. The visions Gene Wolfe conjures, of the wonders of Egypt, and of the adventures of Latro as he and his companions journey up the great Nile south into unknown or legendary territory, are unique and compelling.

Following the discoveries made by Cormac in Low Midnight, Kitty and her allies are ready to strike. But when their assassination attempt on the evil vampire Dux Bellorum fails, Kitty finds herself running out of time. The elusive vampire lord has begun his apocalyptic end game, and Kitty still doesn't know where he will strike. Meanwhile, pressure mounts in Denver, as Kitty and her pack begin to experience the true reach of Dux Bellorum's cult.

Jack Corman is failing at life. Jobless, jaded, and on the “wrong” side of 30, he’s facing the threat of eviction from his London flat while reeling from the sudden death of his father, onetime film director Bob Corman.

We've done the impossible and crossed through a portal into the world of dragons - the same place where my mother's been trapped for the past 15 years. With this lavender sky, orange sun, and a freaking planet hanging above us, it's clear that we're no longer on Earth. Our biggest problem is finding our way back...right?