It's the first and greatest rule Inkwell Featherfield ever learned. It's also the only way he knows how to survive—besides picking pockets, dodging the law, and using every ounce of his plucky charm. But none of this will be enough to save him now. If only he'd never snooped around a dead man's house. If only he'd never found that pocket watch full of strange magic. If only he'd known the old man had snuffed it at the hands of the ghostly Spektors, or that such dark spirits even existed, because now they're after him.

You never want to ruin a really good dramatic exit. When you flee home on a cyborg horse the exact second you turn eighteen, you don’t really expect to go back to the place you fled from, you know? But sometimes your old life hits you from behind. Sometimes you spend years away from home, killing dangerous people who had the bad luck to get infected by a lungful of ghostfog, only to find out that your dad, the king, is dead, and now your siblings are ordering you back home for a high stakes family reunion.

Tashué’s faith in the law is beginning to crack. Three years ago, he stood by when the Authority condemned Jason to the brutality of the Rift for non-compliance. When Tashué’s son refused to register as tainted, the laws had to be upheld. He’d never doubted his job as a Regulation Officer before, but three years of watching your son wither away can break down even the strongest convictions. Then a dead girl washed up on the bank of the Brightwash, tattooed and mutilated.

Varcade fled to the deserts of Harrah to escape his past as an Educator, a member of an order of zealot warrior-monks that aims to shape the world according to their sacred Teachings by force. Varcade makes his living as a reckless sword-for-hire, caring only about himself, until his self-centered lifestyle is turned on its head when he is contracted to recruit a misfit team of unruly assassins and take out the mighty Bone Lord of Akrab. But the Bone Lord is aware of the plot and sends her band of Dusters to stop them.

The world of Avarin is tearing itself apart. The Domain worships life, its rulers lead eternal lives, and death is a shame that must not be mourned. For the clans to the south, however, death is all that keeps the Earth alive. But old enemies are rising. A madness spreads throughout the Domain, and Lynn, a rogue griffin rider in hiding, might be the only one who knows how to fight it, while Adrian, a Domain prince seeking to bring his dead loved ones to worthiness, leads the Domain armies against the madmen.

This is a tale of sorrow, a tale of survival, a tale of one man's search for meaning in his universe, and how that search, and the indomitable will that drove it, gave birth to a legend.

It's a simple story. Boy finds proof that reality is a computer program. Boy uses program to manipulate time and space. Boy gets in trouble. Boy flees back in time to Medieval England to live as a wizard while he tries to think of a way to fix things. Boy gets in more trouble. Oh, and boy meets girl at some point.

A warrior with nothing to fight for is paired with a thieving assassin with nothing to lose. Together they must steal a treasure that no one can reach. The Crown Tower is the impregnable remains of the grandest fortress ever built and home to the realm’s most valuable possessions. But it isn’t gold or jewels the old wizard is after, and this prize can only be obtained by the combined talents of two remarkable men. Now if Arcadius can just keep Hadrian and Royce from killing each other, they just might succeed.

Ferrin is no ordinary blacksmith. He is born with magic in a world where it’s not only feared, but outlawed. Struggling to keep food on the table, Ferrin decides to use his gift to aid in his work. That decision brings the Black Watch to his doorstep. Caged alongside a helpless band of half-starved wielders, Ferrin formulates a strategy to escape. Armed with nothing more than his sarcastic wit and a determination to never give in, he attempts the impossible.

If you’re a fan of fiction that is more than just black and white, this latest story collection from number-one New York Times best-selling author George R. R. Martin and award-winning editor Gardner Dozois is filled with subtle shades of gray. Twenty-one all-original stories, by an all-star list of contributors, will delight and astonish you in equal measure with their cunning twists and dazzling reversals. And George R. R. Martin himself offers a brand-new A Game of Thrones tale chronicling one of the biggest rogues in the entire history of Ice and Fire.

Amidst a murky underworld of flesh-trafficking, prostitution, and institutionalized corruption, elite soldier Jez Kornfeld is thrown into a world where nothing is what it seems, nobody can be trusted, and everything can be violently torn from him.

A storm. Rain-lashed city streets. A flash of lightning. A scruffy lad sees a girl leap desperately from a horse-drawn carriage in a vain attempt to escape her captors. Can the lad stand by and let her be caught again? Of course not, because he's...Dodger. Seventeen-year-old Dodger may be a street urchin, but he gleans a living from London's sewers, and he knows a jewel when he sees one. He's not about to let anything happen to the unknown girl - not even if her fate impacts the most powerful people in England.

Ryker only has one goal in his life right now: Turn a certain adventuring guild into a flaming wreck while dancing merrily through the smoldering ruins. All for the chance to get back at a handful of people. It isn’t as if they didn’t deserve it either. They had driven him from his home. Chased him physically from the very guild house itself. Simply because he wasn’t as strong as they expected him to be. As strong as he’d expected himself to be. He’d returned the next day and left with something he’d hidden away and told no one about when he found it in one of his few Dungeon Dives.

The first time somebody tried to kill him was an accident. The second time was deliberate. Now Paul Mulchrone finds himself on the run with nobody to turn to except a nurse who has read one-too-many crime novels and a renegade copper with a penchant for violence. Together they must solve one of the most notorious crimes in Irish history. Or else they’ll be history.

He was a decorated soldier, thought to have died 20 years ago. But yesterday in Karrnath his body washed ashore, unkempt, dressed in rags... and murdered.Now it’s up to a hardened soldier out for cold vengeance and a chronicler looking for a story to unravel a dead man’s past - and with it, the future of Khorvaire.

In the time of the Ancients the universe was united - but that was so far in the past that not even memory remains, only the broken artifacts that a few Makers can reshape into their original uses. What survives is shattered into enclaves - some tiny, some ruined, some wild. Into the gaps between settlements, and onto the road that connects all human reality and the reality that is not human and may never have been human, have crept monsters.

Drothe has been a member of the Kin for years, rubbing elbows with thieves and murderers while smuggling relics on the side. But when an ancient book falls into his hands, Drothe finds himself in possession of a relic capable of bringing down emperors - a relic everyone in the underworld would kill to obtain.

There is more in our world than you know. Deep in the darkness of a government building, one man needs to find the perfect solution to a vampire’s request that the government satisfy the debt of honor owed him. If he falls short, the failure will be paid in the blood of the military. He needs three uniquely qualified individuals. He can find only one. One woman, dying, might be the ace-in-the-hole he needs to appease the Vampire. But then, she might also be the one person needed to save humanity. If she is accepted, will she willingly change?

Somewhere on the frontier between thought and reality exists the Discworld, a parallel time and place that might sound and smell very much like our own, but which looks completely different. Particularly as it’s carried though space on the back of a giant turtle (sex unknown). It plays by different rules. But then, some things are the same everywhere. The Disc’s very existence is about to be threatened by a strange new blight: the world’s first tourist, upon whose survival rests the peace and prosperity of the land.

It should have been a case like any other: a missing princess, a king willing to pay in gold for her return. But before he realizes it, private investigator Eddie LaCrosse, a slightly shopworn sword jockey with a talent for discretion and detection, is swept up in a web of mystery and deceit involving a brutally murdered royal heir, a queen accused of an unspeakable crime, and the tragic past he thought he'd left behind.

Ryker only has one goal in his life right now: Turn a certain adventuring guild into a flaming wreck while dancing merrily through the smoldering ruins. All for the chance to get back at a handful of people. It isn’t as if they didn’t deserve it either. They had driven him from his home. Chased him physically from the very guild house itself. Simply because he wasn’t as strong as they expected him to be. As strong as he’d expected himself to be. He’d returned the next day and left with something he’d hidden away and told no one about when he found it in one of his few Dungeon Dives.

Two years after his parents' sudden disappearance, Ben Greenwood stumbles upon a cryptic letter that could shed some light on their whereabouts. But before he can track them down, he'll need to find the mysterious organization that sent the letter: The Royal Institute of Magic. To succeed, Ben will have to navigate a land filled with fantastic creatures and spellshooters, where magic can be bought and sold, to unravel an ancient family secret that could hold the key to defeating an evil the institute has been fighting for the last 500 years.

Drug dealers, hustlers, brothels, dirty politics, corrupt cops...and sorcery. Welcome to Low Town. In the forgotten back alleys and flophouses that lie in the shadows of Rigus, the finest city of the Thirteen Lands, you will find Low Town. It is an ugly place, and its cham­pion is an ugly man. Disgraced intelligence agent. Forgotten war hero. Independent drug dealer. After a fall from grace five years ago, a man known as the Warden leads a life of crime, addicted to cheap violence and expensive drugs.

Vlad Taltos, a mobster and assassin in the magical metropolis of Adrilankha, is given the largest contract of his career, but the job is even more complicated than he expects.

In the bustling capital city of the Mahruse Empire, Felicienne Shyrise spends her days as a talented investigator, taking on stolen goods and missing person cases and the occasional murder the city guard are too incompetent - or too lazy - to resolve. During the nights she hones her skills playing Dominion, a board game almost as complicated as life itself. She dreams of making a name for herself and becoming the richest woman in the Empire.

Tasked with a new assignment, journalist Harriton is given explicit orders to write a series of articles on the Virtual Gaming World of Fayroll and its developers. Harriton grudgingly accepts the assignment but soon finds himself enthralled by the virtual fantasy world and its amazing quests, unpredictable challenges and nearly endless possibilities.

When the fae beckon, few resist. Even fewer return. As a veil witch, I'm used to taking out the supernatural trash. Everything from poltergeists to vampires, you name it and I've dealt with it. So opening a paranormal cleanup business just seemed to make sense. If I'm already dealing with the pests, why not get paid? But when I accidentally breach the faerie realm to encounter a girl recently reported missing, start seeing the ghost of a witch whose disappearance has never been solved, and discover a Book of Shadows that opens only for me, I can't just go back to business as usual.

New York Times best-selling author Simon R. Green has crafted numerous acclaimed science-fiction and fantasy novels, including Blue Moon Rising, Blood and Honor, and Shadows Fall. In this first installment of the Ghost Finders series, JC Chance, Melody Chambers, and Happy Jack Palmer are agents of the Carnacki Institute - a place where the sole purpose is to “do something” about ghosts. But what exactly?

Sancia Grado is a thief, and a damn good one. And her latest target, a heavily guarded warehouse on Tevanne’s docks, is nothing her unique abilities can’t handle. But unbeknownst to her, Sancia’s been sent to steal an artifact of unimaginable power, an object that could revolutionize the magical technology known as scriving. The Merchant Houses who control this magic - the art of using coded commands to imbue everyday objects with sentience - have already used it to transform Tevanne into a vast, remorseless capitalist machine.

Hitman Don Drake owes a gambling debt to a demon. Forced to carry out one more assassination to clear his debt, Don unwittingly kills an innocent child and brings the Furies of Greek myth down upon himself. Rescued by an almost fallen angel called Trixie, Don and his magical accomplice - the Burned Man, an imprisoned archdemon - are forced to deal with Lucifer himself whilst battling a powerful evil magician.