Mystery Game

Charles Stross builds a new series with Empire Games. Expanding on the world he created in the Family Trade series, a new generation of paratime travelers walk between parallel universes. The year is 2020. It's 17 years since the Revolution overthrew the last king of the New British Empire, and the newly reconstituted North American Commonwealth is developing rapidly, on course to defeat the French and bring democracy to a troubled world.

To the distaste of the Compton Dando villagers, the big house has been taken over by a group of New Age eccentrics. And when the first death is reported, no one is surprised...or disappointed. The coroner rules it an accident. But only weeks later, there’s another death. And this time, it is murder. Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby is called to the scene immediately, and there’ll be no escape until he has sifted through the world of psychics, cult leaders and horrifying deaths to get to the cause of it all.

Mind Game takes Jane MacGuire back to Scotland, where she continues her search for the treasure she's been chasing for years. But now she's being plagued by dreams of a girl in danger. Who is this girl, and what is she trying to tell Jane? And will Jane figure it out before it's too late - for her and the mysterious young woman? Things are further complicated when Seth Caleb comes back into Jane's life. This time he's the one in trouble, and Jane will find herself pulled unexpectedly into his world as she fights to save him.

Charlie and his friends enter the God Game, a video game run by underground hackers and controlled by a mysterious AI that believes it’s God. Through their phone screens and high-tech glasses, the teens’ realities blur with a virtual world of creeping vines, smoldering torches, runes, glyphs, gods, and mythical creatures. When they accomplish a mission, the game rewards them with expensive tech, revenge on high-school tormentors, and cash flowing from ATMs. Slaying a hydra and drawing a bloody pentagram as payment to a Greek god seem harmless at first. Fun even.

A forbidden artifact from her fiance’s past beckons to Selena. Jessica leads a double-life from her friends and coworkers in the children’s wing of a hospital. Maya can’t resist the temptation to explore an off-limits area of Freddy Fazbear’s Mega Pizzaplex. But in the world of Five Nights at Freddy's, everything comes with a price to pay. In this first volume, Five Nights at Freddy's creator Scott Cawthon spins three sinister novella-length tales from uncharted corners of his series' canon.

To everyone else it was “just” a weekend house party—complete with a pheasant shoot, inside jokes, and after-dinner games. But for American Nicola Harris, swept off her feet by aristocratic Englishman James Shuttleworth, the weekend is her first chance to penetrate his close-knit circle of posh friends—people with names like Badger and Trez, people who will soon have the titles of Earl and Countess. Nicola is eager to fit in, but she can’t seem to navigate this insular world, where everyone speaks a private language and secrets are hinted at behind the jolly jokes and witty barbs.

Julie’s mother Kate is a force of nature–a glamorous woman of seventy, a self-made real estate developer, a grande dame in Florida society, and a power broker in Florida politics. It wasn’t easy for Julie to grow up in the shadow of such a dynamo, but she loves her mother, and she and her husband Eric are thrilled when Kate marries her long-lost high school sweetheart, a salt-of-the-earth man named Charlie. But their storybook romance ends abruptly.

Thad Beaumont would like to say he is innocent. He'd like to say he has nothing to do with the twisted imagination that produced his best-selling novels. He'd like to say he has nothing to do with the series of monstrous murders that keep coming closer to his home. But how can Thad deny the ultimate embodiment of evil that goes by the name he gave it - and signs its crimes with Thad's bloody fingerprints?

When Bob Lee Swagger is approached by a woman who lost a son to war and has spent the years since risking all that she has to find the sniper who pulled the trigger, he knows right away he'll do everything in his power to help her. But what begins as a favor becomes an obsession, and soon Swagger is back in the action, teaming up with the Mossad, the FBI, and local American law enforcement, as he tracks a sniper who is his own equal and attempts to decipher that assassin's ultimate target before it's too late.

London, 2012. The eyes of the world are on Britain as the country prepares to host the Olympic Games.​ But the glare of the spotlight makes London a target for some of the most dangerous people on earth. And the moment the bid is won, an international conspiracy is set in motion to unleash a devastating attack that will leave the world in chaos.​ One man stands between triumph and disaster: Commander William Warwick, heading up Scotland Yard's elite team.

Herobrine, the artificially intelligent virus, was deleted. The computer it resided in was completely destroyed. Without their leader, the few survivors of its evil army were cast away into the shadows. It looked as if there would finally be peace and happiness throughout the servers of Minecraft.

The cause of the devastation is a phenomenon that will come to be known as The Pulse, and the delivery method is a cell phone. Everyone's cell phone. Clay and the few desperate survivors who join him suddenly find themselves in the pitch-black night of civilization's darkest age, surrounded by chaos, carnage, and a human horde that has been reduced to its basest nature...and then begins to evolve.

Lucy and her friends' time at Minecrafters Academy is coming to an end, and the entire school is preparing for graduation. But when an explosion shakes the campus and Lucy's old friend Steve appears with bad news from his village, all plans to celebrate come to a halt. The school is no longer under attack - it's being destroyed. And it's time for the students to use their training outside the safety of the Academy. Lucy, Jane, and Phoebe must use the skills they've honed in school to battle the evil force.

The final thrilling instalment of The Centurions, an epic historical adventure set in Ancient Rome. Correus and Flavius, half brothers and rivals, have won respect in service to the Empire. Correus, an esteemed soldier in the Roman Army of Eagles, has been entrusted with the honoured task of running the Emperor’s brutal games. Flavius, a Centurion at his brother’s side, has risen to become the Emperor’s most trusted advisor. Now Correus has been given the deadly task of quelling a barbarian uprising in Germany.

Detective Inspector Joseph Stone is plunged into a world where a harmless Nerf gun ‘hit’ spirals into a deadly pursuit. Ryan and Gabby, members of an Assassins gaming club, unwittingly become entangled with someone taking their obsession to a murderous level. Joseph's and DC Megan Anderson’s investigation uncovers a sinister game that blurs the line between reality and fiction.

Reporter Anne Lemire writes the Rumor Clinic, a newspaper column that disproves the many harmful rumors floating around town, some of them spread by Axis spies and others just gossip mixed with fear and ignorance. Tired of chasing silly rumors about Rosie Riveters' safety on the job, she wants to write about something bigger. Special Agent Devon Mulvey, one of the few Catholics at the FBI, spends his weekdays preventing industrial sabotage and his Sundays spying on clerics with suspect loyalties—and he spends his evenings wooing the many lonely women whose husbands are off at war.

As the five Kingdom Keepers enter high school, everything is about to change. The Maintenance Base that controls all four parks in Disney World is under attack by the Overtakers, a group determined to change Disney forever. Relationships between the Keepers are no longer as simple as they once were. In fact, nothing is as simple as it once was. An after-hours visit to Typhoon Lagoon is a game changer. The Keepers lose one of their most valuable supporters. But there’s work to do....

Glitches are appearing across the Minecraft server. Blocks are flickering unexpectedly and randomly disappearing. To make matters worse, villagers are claiming that their entire villages have mysteriously vanished, and they desperately need Gameknight999's help. What's causing the server to overload and glitch, and where have all the NPCs gone? The User-that-is-not-a-user suspects the two questions are related, and that somehow Herobrine's henchmen are responsible.

The ghast king Malacoda and the terrible enderman Erebus have led their monster army to the server that houses the Source: a virus with plans to destroy Minecraft and all the digital lives on its servers before escaping once and for all into the real world. Only Gameknight999, the user-that-is-not-a-user, and his small army of NPCs can stop them. But the monster horde is growing bigger by the day, as if they are being helped by an unknown someone...or something.

Wrapping up a normal day at the office, criminal psychologist Kieran Finnegan is accosted by a desperate woman who shoves an infant into her arms and then flees, only to be murdered minutes later on a busy Manhattan street. Who was the woman? Where did the baby come from? Kieran can't stop thinking about the child and the victim, so her boyfriend, Craig Frasier, does what any good special agent boyfriend would do - he gets the FBI involved. And asks Kieran to keep out of it. But the Finnegans have a knack for getting into trouble....