Dark Fantasy Thriller

The spider queen covets Princess Aithlin’s magic, and she will go to any length to possess it. Aithlin, the last guardian, should avoid the realm of the spider queen at all costs, but after her friend is kidnapped, she has no choice but to risk everything to save him. For the sake of her friend, her family, her kingdom, and the entire world, she must journey into the heart of the enemy’s lair—and do it all without using her magic. And she needs to get it all done in three days so she can get back in time for her brother’s coronation. This may be a rescue mission, but Aithlin has an ...

To save the realm, the king must die. Sent away as a child for her own safety, Princess Aithlin was raised in a temple of warrior priests, far from the king's reach. Within its grim walls, she was trained in the art of war, the use of magic, and how to deliver justice upon the wicked. Preparing to deal death from the shadows, the princess finds herself out of her element. Backstabbing companions and unlikely allies make it difficult to tell friend from foe. Her survival will depend on figuring out who she can trust. With the fate of her younger brother and the future of the kingdom at stake...

After Del Larouche defeats the Gris-gris man, she struggles to find her place in the adult world. She just wants a normal life. But her horrible "gift" means her life will never be normal. When six-year-old Clara goes missing from the St. Augustine Orphanage - the third child in two weeks - a frantic search begins and Del agrees to use her gift to help find the girl. As the dark layers of New Orleans are peeled back, a terrible truth is exposed. What she finds lurking in the shadows of the old city is unimaginable. But it’s what the lurking shadows find…that is truly deadly.

Today the names of H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, August Derleth, and Clark Ashton Smith, all regular contributors to the pulp magazine Weird Tales during the first half of the twentieth century, are recognizable even to casual readers of the bizarre and fantastic. And yet despite being more popular than them all during the golden era of genre pulp fiction, there is another author whose name and work have fallen into obscurity: Seabury Quinn. The Complete Tales of Jules de Grandin collects all ninety-three published works featuring the supernatural detective Dr. Jules de Grandin.

Orphaned as a baby, 19-year-old Signa has been raised by a string of guardians, each more interested in her wealth than her wellbeing—and each has met an untimely end. Her remaining relatives are the elusive Hawthornes, an eccentric family living at Thorn Grove, an estate both glittering and gloomy. Its patriarch mourns his late wife through wild parties, while his son grapples for control of the family's waning reputation and his daughter suffers from a mysterious illness.

Heather Morell is haunted. Otherworldly nightmares and monstrous hallucinations lurk around every corner, relics of childhood bereavement and schizophrenia. Until she meets Evelyn and Raine—a bad-tempered mage and her self-proclaimed bodyguard—and learns that she’s not insane after all. The monsters she sees are all too real, the god-thing in her nightmares is teaching her the secrets of creation, and her twin sister—the lost girl who supposedly never existed—might still be clinging on, a dwindling soul somewhere beyond the walls of reality, Outside.

Nobody does vampire romance quite like Lynsay Sands! Tall, Dark & Hungry is the fourth book in her insanely popular Argeneau vampire series—and she brilliantly blends laughter with steamy passion in this story about a British lass who falls hard for a tasty immortal in-law she meets when she crosses the ocean to attend a cousin’s New York wedding. Paranormal romance is hot, hot, hot! And Lynsay Sands is not only one of the pioneer authors of this subgenre…she’s one of the very best!

A collection of twenty-five horror/thriller stories with surprise endings to thrill you and chill you to the bone. The creepers include: ALONE: Laura keeps hearing weird noises in her house while her husband is on a business trip. FOREVER YOUNG: An elderly multibillionaire will pay five hundred million to be young again, but he also needs a young female to sacrifice to an island of cannibals. LOVE ON THE ROCKS: After twenty years of marriage, Louise can't stand the sight of him and wants a divorse. His temper is boiling over. Is there another man? THE ALIEN: Marge just found out her ...

The shadows of the past come alive. After twenty years of silence, Dina returns, driven by an insatiable hunger for power and revenge. Her eyes are fixed on the legendary scarab, the key to an ancient power that can reduce the world to ashes. Lillian and Roy Sawyer are the only ones who know Dina's true intentions. But as the swinging sixties are in full swing, Dina's next move remains a mystery. Will they uncover her plans before it's too late, or will Dina finally triumph and plunge the world into a new era of darkness?

For more than 30 years, Ellen Datlow has been at the center of horror. Bringing you the most frightening and terrifying stories, Datlow always has her finger on the pulse of what horror fans crave. Now, with the 11th volume of the series, Daltow's back again to bring you the stories that will keep you up at night. With each passing year, science, technology, and the march of time shine light into the craggy corners of the universe, making the fears of an earlier generation seem quaint. This light creates its own shadows. The Best Horror of the Year chronicles these shifting shadows.

The kingdoms of Belleger and Amika had been fighting for generations. But then they learned of a terrible threat moving through them to destroy the Last Repository, an immense hidden library. To face this greater enemy, King Bifalt of Belleger and Queen Estie of Amika allied their lands and prepared for war.

Magiere the dhampir and her partner, the half-elf Leesil, are on a journey to uncover the secrets of their mysterious pasts. But first their expertise as vampire hunters is required on behalf of a small village being tormented by a creature of unlimited and unimaginable power.

Red pill or blue pill? Neo had it easy. Which would you choose: A classy sweetheart to treat you like a king, or a lusty babe to rock your world. The gift of healing to ease your pain, or the power of hellfire to dish it out. More importantly…blonde or brunette. Or do you have the will to keep it all? When his father is murdered, Kyle Bishop inherits the mantle of the Arbiter, humanity's last hope of survival in the eternal war between Heaven and Hell. The Celestial Court appoints two chaperones, a female angel and a female demon, to protect the young Arbiter from otherworldly threats. Or...

I’m a hunter. But I don’t hunt the usual game you might find in forests—I hunt monsters. For most of my adult life, I’ve imagined the moment I finally come across a certain vampire—the one who took my family from me and left me with a scar on my wrist in the shape of a bite. All my kills are leading up to this one moment—the moment I end the bastard for good. So when I find myself face to face with what I think is a vampire in the woods—one with the same eyes, the same long, black hair, and the same snarling fangs as the one all those years ago, I make my move. But this ...

“It’s in all of us. Humans too. But the supernaturals have more than the Norms do. Part of what makes a vampire a vampire is drawn from the Dark. All fairies, regardless of whether they are Dark Fey or Light Fey, have Dark in them. Shapeshifters too, although I’ve been told they fight it. But never underestimate the Dark. If you don’t want it to crawl into bed with you late at night, don’t pull back the covers.” Someone's abducting members of parliament, and they smell like wet dog. This could mean disaster for the country. For Georgia Deverell, it means so much more. The half-...

French Quarter P.I. Wyatt Thomas deals with murder and illusion at the Louisiana Hospital of the Insane Secrets fester, and danger lurks in the shadowed depths of Louisiana's bayous. Private investigator Wyatt Thomas is summoned to the sleepy town of Pinebridge by notorious mob boss Frankie Castellano. His mission is to find Frankie’s missing half-sister, Bella Donna Castellano, who vanished from the Louisiana Mental Hospital under suspicious circumstances. On his first night in town, Wyatt stumbles upon a gruesome murder, drawing him into a web of corruption and cruelty. Partnering with ...

No princess is guaranteed a happy ending. We have to fight for it. The Blood Fae infiltrate my lands, seeking to take over the Four Kingdoms. Their high leader wants my brother dead...and because her body is decaying, she wants to wear me as her new second skin. I'm not in the mood to be turned into a coat, or to bury my brother. I just saved him and united my males. I intend to enjoy this new life of mine and these four handsome, exasperating Fae kings. Time for me to teach these males of mine how to kick some vampire tushy. It's a nice kingdom we've got here...if we can keep it.

18-year-old Rowan James has spent her whole life harboring unpleasant truths—that’s what happens when you can smell lies on the teller’s breath—and building walls around herself to block them out. Like her younger sister, Linden, who can taste the feelings of others, Rowan has long struggled with her gift, which has taught her that everyone distorts the truth, and no one is who they seem to be. So when her old rival Hadrian Fitch shows up on her front porch—bloodied and bruised and asking for the kind of help only she can provide—her first instinct is distrust.

Stephen Bradford is a teenager who continually suffers from inner turmoil revolving around the family dysfunction he experiences at home as well as complications in school. He decides he wants to throw a high school party right around the time his mother leaves for a business trip. On the eve of the celebrations, Stephen begins to notice subtle changes in the atmosphere that call to mind traumatic and horrifying experiences from his childhood that are about to intermingle with the present in the most unexpected of ways.

A year ago, Cal Thompson was a college freshman more interested in meeting girls and partying than in attending biology class. Now, after a fateful encounter with a mysterious woman named Morgan, biology has become, literally, Cal's life. Cal was infected by a parasite that has a truly horrifying effect on its host. Cal himself is a carrier, unchanged by the parasite, but he's infected the girlfriends he's had since Morgan. All three have turned into the ravening ghouls Cal calls Peeps. The rest of us know them as vampires.