Dark Library

Tales from the Library of a Twisted Mind is a collection of dark short stories, having a common theme of being a bit warped. Perhaps not the best bedtime reading. Tales to thrill, shock and tantalise. With fore and after words on each story by the author.

Legends abound of the glorious - or infamous - deeds of the emperor's sons. Yet almost nothing is known of Alpharius, the most mysterious of them all, for the lord of the Alpha Legion is unparalleled in the art of obfuscation. Such are his gifts of secrecy and deceit that even his rediscovery has remained an enigma - until now. But when the tale comes from the serpent’s mouth, where do the lies end and the truth begin?

Hazel Trépas has always known she wasn’t like the rest of her siblings. A thirteenth child, promised away to one of the gods, she spends her childhood waiting for her godfather—Merrick, the Dreaded End—to arrive. When he does, he lays out exactly how he’s planned Hazel’s future. She will become a great healer, known throughout the kingdom for her precision and skill. To aid her endeavors, Merrick blesses Hazel with a gift, the ability to instantly deduce the exact cure needed to treat the sick. But all gifts come with a price.

Mount Orange, Florida, is famous for two things: cerulean freshwater springs, ideal for free divers who aren't afraid of lurking gators. And the gruesome cold case murder of best friends, Bailey and Celeste, twenty years ago. Bailey and Celeste's murders cast a permanent darkness over sunny Mount Orange. Tru has always lived in that shadow. Now she's supposed to head to FSU in the fall with her boyfriend, but those unsolved murders—and the death of her own sister—invade her every thought. It’s only in the shadowy deep of Hidden Glen Springs that she can breathe.

The Nightwalkers are terrorizing Gotham City, and Bruce Wayne is next on their list. Bruce is turning 18 and inheriting his family's fortune, not to mention the keys to Wayne Industries and all the tech gadgetry that he could ever desire. But on the way home from his birthday party, he makes an impulsive choice that leads to community service at Arkham Asylum, the infamous prison. There, he meets Madeleine Wallace, a brilliant killer with ties to the Nightwalkers. A girl who will speak only to Bruce. She is the mystery he must unravel.

Meet Genevieve Dieudonné. She’s beautiful, powerful, resourceful, courageous, and over four hundred years old. In the crowded cities and dark forests of the Warhammer world, Genevieve and her unlikely companions battle the forces of malevolence and insanity. However, the vampire blood running through Genevieve’s veins means she must constantly fight the urge to surrender to the evil within.

It’s the first week of senior year at Meadowbrook Academy. For Amy and her best friend Sarah, that means late-night parties at the boathouse, bike rides through their sleepy Connecticut town, and the crisp beginning of a New England fall. Then tragedy strikes: Sarah and her boyfriend are brutally murdered in their dorm room. Now the week Amy has been dreaming about for years has turned into a nightmare, especially when all eyes turn to her as the culprit.

Sixteen-year-old Deka lives in fear and anticipation of the blood ceremony that will determine whether she will become a member of her village. Already different from everyone else because of her unnatural intuition, Deka prays for red blood so she can finally feel like she belongs. But on the day of the ceremony, her blood runs gold, the color of impurity–and Deka knows she will face a consequence worse than death.

Annaleigh lives a sheltered life at Highmoor with her sisters and their father and stepmother. Once there were 12, but loneliness fills the grand halls now that four of the girls' lives have been cut short. Disturbed by a series of ghostly visions, Annaleigh becomes increasingly suspicious that her sister's deaths were no accidents. The girls have been sneaking out every night to attend glittering balls, dancing until dawn in silk gowns and shimmering slippers, and Annaleigh isn't sure whether to try to stop them or to join their forbidden trysts.

Fourteen-year-old Jason faces an identity crisis after discovering that he is the son of aliens who stayed on earth following a botched invasion mission.

Iris Hollow and her two older sisters are unquestionably strange. Ever since they disappeared on a suburban street in Scotland as children only to return a month a later with no memory of what happened to them, odd, eerie occurrences seem to follow in their wake. And they're changing. First, their dark hair turned white. Then, their blue eyes slowly turned black. They have insatiable appetites yet never gain weight. People find them disturbingly intoxicating, unbearably beautiful, and inexplicably dangerous.

Welcome to the world of Lost Libraries… You don’t remember them? There’s a reason for that. Fall into this compilation of stories and find out what happened to the supernatural. My life has only known servitude, manipulation and compliance. Not everything is as it seems in the world. As I learn the truth about reality and myself, I find my ability truly is a gift instead of the curse I’ve always thought it was. Am I willing to take my true place and become who I was always meant to be? Or will I cower and go back to living in the shadow of another? I'm about to find out exactly what...

Fresh from the siege of Praag, dwarf slayer Gotrek Gurnisson and his sworn human companion Felix Jaeger are beset by a new and terrible foe in their unceasing war against Chaos. A powerful evil is rising in darkest Sylvania, and it threatens to reach forth and tear the very heart out of the Empire - and out of Felix's relationship with Ulrika Magdova. Faced with the machinations of a powerful centuries-old vampire, can the duo's deadly battle result in anything but death and tragedy?

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.

Maleneth's return to the City of Echoes is not a happy one – Nightcliff has collapsed into violent, decadent debauchery. Khaine himself is usurped, and her precious coven lies in tatters. Accompanied by an ogor mercenary and a Kharadron anarchist, Maleneth sets out to avenge her sisters, but soon finds herself embroiled in a conspiracy, the ramifications of which threaten not just the city, but the Realm of Shadow itself. To stop it, she must ascend to the blood-soaked summit of Nightcliff’s Bladed Spire, and face an enemy of sky-cracking power before time itself slips out of reach.

The Aeronautica Imperialis are the masters of the skies in the 41st millennium, waging wars of breakneck aerial combat where only skill stands between victory and death. Flight Commander Lucille von Shard is an ace, a living exemplar of what it means to fly in the name of the Emperor… or so Propagandist Kile Simlex is told. Braving the foetid waters of Bacchus and its rampaging greenskin hordes, Simlex is tasked with producing a cinema-pict portraying Shard as an Imperial hero. Shortly after his arrival planetside, however, he discovers the war effort is in shambles.

The End Times are coming. With the hordes of Chaos marshalling in the north, Emperor Karl Franz leads his armies in defence of his realm. But when the worst happens, Reiksmarshal Kurt Helborg must return to Altdorf, the capital of the Empire. There, he must steel himself and prepare his soldiers to defend the jewel of the Empire from the corrupted advance of the forces of Chaos. As plague spreads and the defences weaken, all seems lost—until help arrives from a most unexpected source... if Helborg can bring himself to accept it.

Famed across the known world, jealously guarded by private collectors, built up over centuries, destroyed in a single day, ornamented with gold leaf and frescoes, or filled with bean bags and children’s drawings - the history of the library is rich, varied, and stuffed full of incident.

Willa and her clan are the last of the Faeran, an ancient race of forest people who have lived in the Great Smoky Mountains for as long as the trees have grown there. But as crews of newly arrived humans start cutting down great swaths of the forest she loves, Willa is helpless to stop them. How can she fight the destroyers of the forest and their powerful machines?

Family meant everything to Ayden Stratton. It always had even when he didn’t always allow it to show. Because of that, he understood the fury in Tobias Blaise’s eyes when they learned that his sister had been dragged out the backdoor of her restaurant despite every effort to stop her from being kidnapped. Fury didn’t begin to describe what he saw in his brother’s face. Cassidy Blaise might be Tobias’s sister, but she was Benjamin’s entire world. Tobias Blaise never expected to find any woman he wanted to spend his life with, let alone one who looked at him the way Ellis did, ...