The half-orc girl, Mikaia Goretusk, has been torn from her home. Her world. Her family. Her only allies are the holy knight, Arthur Shield, once sworn to kill everyone she has ever cared for, and the witch, Hazel Midd. Arthur struggles with the guilt of being unable to save his god. Hazel seeks desperately for something taken from her. They distrust each other, but both are compelled to protect the young girl.

Cruel gods rule the steam-powered city of Chime, demanding worship and tribute from their mortal subjects. Kayl lost her faith in them long ago, and now seeks to protect vulnerable and downtrodden mortals from their gods’ whims. But when Kayl discovers powers that she didn’t know she had—and destroys a mortal’s soul by accident—she becomes Chime’s most wanted.

He is the future sultan, a man who wields brutal magic and only knows how to be what they’ve made him. She is a commoner, a woman who champions the vulnerable and treads where she does not belong. Dilay Akar is the daughter of a judge. By day, she trains the wealthy in magic, and by night, she breaks the Sultan’s laws. But even those closest to her do not always appreciate what she is striving for, or believe that she can achieve it.

A thousand years ago the Heart of the World was shattered, its fragments scattered across the lands. In the chaos that followed, martial orders arose to gather these shards, for it was found that great powers were granted when these pieces were bonded to the flesh of the chosen. These are the Sharded Few, warriors imbued with the divine energies that once coursed through the Heart, and driven to absorb enough fragments to claim godhood.

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.

I was born a heresy, a girl with a man’s magic in a city divided by gender, with monks facing off against witches. I trained with the monks only under my father’s protection, head of the monastery. Rose to the top, despite everything set against me. Until he died. A suicide, they called it. Yeah, right. They killed him for his heresy. For me. My only hope to survive now is to find his killers before they come for me. To expose their lies as the real blasphemy.

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.

At just 15, Eskara Helsene fought in the greatest war mankind has ever known - and lost. There is only one place her enemies would send a Sourcerer as powerful as her: the Pit, a prison sunk so deep into the earth the sun is a distant memory. Now, she finds herself stripped of her magic; a young girl surrounded by thieves, murderers, and worse. In order to survive she will need to make new allies, play the inmates against each other, and find a way out. Her enemies will soon find out that Eskara is not so easily broken.

Ein is on a mission from God...the God of Death. Time is up for the emperor of Ten Kings, and it falls to Ein, an eight-year-old boy, to render the judgement of the reaper. He can't do it alone, but luckily the world is full of travelling heroes. There's only one catch; in order to serve him, they must first die.

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.

A call from a distraught wife, and another from Lt. Murphy of the Chicago PD Special Investigation Unit makes Harry believe things are looking up, but they are about to get worse, much worse. Someone is harnessing immense supernatural forces to commit a series of grisly murders. Someone has violated the first law of magic: Thou Shalt Not Kill. Tracking that someone takes Harry into the dangerous underbelly of Chicago, from mobsters to vampires....

One day, Jyosh will climb the heavens and slay a dragon god. Though nothing could seem less likely for a slave, especially one whose body is too broken to cycle sunshine into destructive magical energy. Until he meets a woman who can secretly teach him the lightblade, an energy sword transmuted from sunlight, capable of changing size, shape, and performing incredible magical feats according to the wielder’s skill level.

Fifty thousand gun-toting paladins march behind him, all baptized in angel blood, thirsty to burn unbelievers. Only the janissaries can stand against them. Their living legend, Kevah, once beheaded a magus amid a hail of ice daggers. But ever since his wife disappeared, he spends his days in a haze of hashish and poetry. To save the kingdom, Kevah must conquer his grief and become the legend he once was. But Micah writes his own legend in blood, and his righteous conquest will stop at nothing. When the gods choose sides, a legend will be etched upon the stars.

How do you keep the people you care about safe from enemies you can’t remember? Ten years ago, Nate Garrett awoke on a cold warehouse floor with no memory of his past and the only clues to his identity were a piece of paper with his name on it and a propensity toward magic. Now he’s a powerful sorcerer and a successful thief for hire, but it turns out that those who stole his memories aren’t done with him yet. When they cause a job to go bad, threatening a sixteen-year-old girl, Nate swears to protect her.

The Earth is under siege - and no one knows about it because the invaders erase those whom they consume. A handful of men and women stand on the border between the mundane and the magical. They have a special spark of soul - not quite enough to be naturally gifted in spellcraft but greater than the average person, a tiny flame that can ignite incredible potential. They possess the ability to fight back against the Vorid: the ability to become a Contractor.

Drake Sharazi, disgraced former captain of the Royal Guard, has spent the past seven years chasing fugitives as a hawker. He has never failed to complete an assignment, and this new runner will not be an exception. But being able to do a thing does not mean you should. Now he is forced to question the world around him as never before.

Bailey Monzac has just graduated college and is heading to her parents' ranch for the summer when dragons invade. Like something out of her worst nightmare, the fire-breathing beasts rain down chaos and devastation on unsuspecting human populations. One minute Bailey's planning her future; the next she's merely trying to survive. But it isn't long before she discovers she's different from the people around her - the dragons' destructive flames don't affect her.

Conryu has his life all figured out. At least until the final day of school arrives and with it the annual wizard's test. When Conryu passes the test, no one can believe it since everyone knows boys can't do magic. Suddenly thrust into a world of magic and danger, Conryu must figure out how to use his news powers and quickly.

A call from a distraught wife, and another from Lt. Murphy of the Chicago PD Special Investigation Unit makes Harry believe things are looking up, but they are about to get worse, much worse. Someone is harnessing immense supernatural forces to commit a series of grisly murders. Someone has violated the first law of magic: Thou Shalt Not Kill. Tracking that someone takes Harry into the dangerous underbelly of Chicago, from mobsters to vampires....

When out-of-shape IT technician Roen wakes up and starts hearing voices in his head, he naturally assumes he’s losing it. He isn’t. As of last night, he has a passenger in his brain - an ancient alien life-form called Tao, whose race crash-landed on Earth before the first fish crawled out of the oceans. Over the millennia his people have trained human heroes to be great leaders, to advance our species at a rate far beyond what it would have achieved on its own. Split into two opposing factions - the peace-loving, but under-represented Prophus, and the savage, powerful Genjix - the aliens have been in a state of civil war for centuries.

Tesser, the dragon of life itself, is one of seven: Earth’s primordial draconic guardians, destined to oversee its development and safety. Species rose and fell, and 10,000 years ago...Tesser disappeared. The golden dragon woke up this morning, buried deep beneath the city of Boston, with no idea how he got there, and no idea how humanity grew so fast and learned so much while he was away. He is lost, a fish out of water. Where is the magic? He’s got a lot of catching up to do if he’s going to find his missing sister and stop an incursion of daemons from beyond the Veil.

Modern gods and goddesses, remote, revered - and like the pantheon of heroes and heroines of ancient myth - possessing great power tempered with flaws. Now, find within this anthology great tales by gifted and award-winning authors who move superheroes from the four-color panels of comic books to the fantastic pages of fiction, stories that will remind anyone who ever wanted to wear a cape or don a cowl of the extraordinary powers of the imagination!

U.S. Marshal Jameson Arkeley, the country’s foremost authority on vampires, taught police investigator and vampire fighter Laura Caxton everything she knows about monsters. After a bloody war visited upon Gettysburg by an army of vampires, Arkeley gave up his own life to save others—except he didn’t exactly die.

If you've never read a Repairman Jack novel, this is the place to begin. It's 1990. A twenty-one-year-old named Jack has dropped out of college, leaving his old life behind to build a new one in New York City. Manhattan's rough edges are jagged enough to shred any unwary newcomer, but perhaps not one who is determined to stay off the grid, at any cost, in the busiest metropolis on earth. And to do so, he'll have to take jobs of a less than legal nature.

Ben McKelvie believes he's moving up in the world when he and his fiancée buy a house in the cushy Washington, DC, suburb of Barcroft. Instead he's moving down - way down - thanks to Madeleine Roux, the crazy neighbor whose vermin-infested property is a permanent eyesore and looming hazard to public health. First Ben's fiancée leaves him; then his dog dies, apparently killed by a predator drawn into Barcroft by Madeleine's noxious menagerie. But the worst is yet to come for Ben.

My name is Landon Hamilton. Once upon a time I was a twenty-three year old security guard, trying to regain my life after spending a year in prison for stealing people's credit card numbers. Now, I'm dead. Okay, I was supposed to be dead. I got killed after all; but a funny thing happened after I had turned the mortal coil...

Mae Malveaux, an attorney with Minneapolis Child Protective Services, is burnt-out, tired, and frustrated. Passing on an invite from Jill, her flirtatious coworker, Mae just wants a quiet night in. Leaving the office late, she's surprised to find the Heritage Line streetcars up and running and hops aboard, eager for a quick trip home. But this is no ordinary streetcar....

The job was simple: decapitate the zombie, get paid, get out. Warlock Marcus Shifter followed the plan perfectly. The corpse, however, did not. Now there's a body on the loose, accusations of illegal necromancy are flying, and the answers are waiting in the perilous alleys between the mortal and paranormal worlds. They're no place for someone who mostly gave up magic after a childhood accident. And given his tendency to shoot off his mouth and his Glock, Marcus is having a hell of a time digging up more than just bodies. When an apocalypse-minded megalomaniac threatens Marcus's family, things get personal.

It was a dark and stormy knight, and nine dark defenders embarked upon a most perilous quest. They're the ultimate defenders of humanity, modern day knights who do dark deeds for all the right reasons. In this all-star collection, nine of today's hottest paranormal authors bring us thrilling, all-new stories of supernatural knights that are brimming with magic mystery and mayhem.