Two little girls stand with their heads bowed in my living room. I’m told they’re my granddaughters. Daisy is nine, and Alice seven. Daisy is the spitting image of her mother. This is the first time I’ve met them since my daughter and I fell out after she married that waste of space, Vince. They’ve come to live with me because their mother — my daughter — was murdered. In her own home while they slept close by. I think Vince killed her. But the police can’t prove it. I’ve always known he was no good. He treated my daughter like dirt. I said he’d cheat on her — but she wouldn’t listen.

Who is Audrey Hoedemaker? It's a question her sister Maureen has heard more times than she can count, and she doesn't know what the short answer would be. Little sister, troubled teen, backpacker, musical theatre coach, con artist, childcare worker. Murderer. A tragic, traumatic childhood casts a long shadow on the Hoedemaker sisters. Maureen has worked hard to move beyond the violence of the past and build a good, honest life for herself. Audrey, however, just can't seem to do the same, careening from one state of chaos to another.

Lucas knows the perfect night entails just three things: video games, wine, and pad thai. Peanuts are a must! Other people? Not so much. Why complicate things when he’s happy alone? Then one day the apartment board, a vexing trio of authority, rings his doorbell. And Lucas’s solitude takes a startling hike. They demand to see his frying pan. Someone left one next to the recycling room overnight, and instead of removing the errant object, as Lucas suggests, they insist on finding the guilty party. But their plan backfires. Colossally.

It’s 1984, and life has changed beyond recognition. Airstrip One, formerly known as Great Britain, is a place where Big Brother is always watching, and nobody can hide. Except, perhaps, for Winston Smith. Whilst working at the Ministry of Truth, rewriting history, he secretly dreams of freedom. And in a world where love and sex are forbidden, where it’s hard to distinguish between friend and foe, he meets Julia and O’Brien and vows to rebel.

The 13 chapters of The Art of War, each devoted to one aspect of warfare, were compiled by the high-ranking Chinese military general, strategist, and philosopher Sun-Tzu. In spite of its battlefield specificity, The Art of War has found new life in the modern age, with leaders in fields as wide and far-reaching as world politics, human psychology, and corporate strategy finding valuable insight in its timeworn words.

Johnnie Rico never really intended to join up—and definitely not the infantry. But now that he’s in the thick of it, trying to get through combat training harder than anything he could have imagined, he knows everyone in his unit is one bad move away from buying the farm in the interstellar war the Terran Federation is waging against the Arachnids. Because everyone in the Mobile Infantry fights. And if the training doesn’t kill you, the Bugs are more than ready to finish the job.

Academy Award nominee Rachel McAdams stars in Mary Jane, a poignant and intimate drama following a single mother’s journey caring for her chronically ill young son. Set in New York City, the play unfolds in two parts—Mary Jane's small Queens apartment and a pediatric hospital. With unflinching honesty and unexpected humor, we witness Mary Jane's tireless devotion, her interactions with medical professionals, and her struggle to maintain her sense of self.

My fiancé brought me tea and scrambled eggs in bed that morning, and we snuggled together, talking about buying our rings, and about our perfect wedding next year. Then we headed into town. He held my hand and gazed at the ring I liked best, a smile spreading slowly over his face. Then a glass of bubbly to celebrate. I felt flushed, excited and ready for the rest of my life with the man I loved. We race to get on the train home. It screams to a halt and I run towards its open doors. Made it. I think he’s right behind me — but when I turn around, he’s gone.

As Charly struggles to recover from her brain injury, she begins to realize that the events of that fateful night are trapped in the damaged right side of her brain. Now, she must put the jigsaw pieces together to discover the identity of the man who tried to kill her...before he finishes the job he started.

Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television "family."

YOU ARE IN DANGER. You are afflicted with a mind parasite that feeds on your suffering and destroys your families so it can have something to drink from your ruined energetic body. To burn it out is the only way and it is the fire of your personal apocalypse, or revealing, that will perform this cleansing action. Contact me in any way you can should you require further help in this matter. I am here for you as a fellow human being, with a nervous system and feelings like yours, and as a practicing sorcerer, beyond feeling anything...

Joseph Walls spends his childhood in a haunted house. Elsewhere, Kristin Stevenson finds herself in a hospital bed. Before long, she and Joseph meet through their mutual friend, T.J. The trio spend their weekends exploring Appalachia in a blue Buick Roadmaster. On Halloween night in the year 2000, everything changes. Joseph takes his new friends to the house where he grew up. Unbeknownst to Joey, Kristin has been having bad dreams about this house.

It's 1974, and four students—Tom, Danny, JoJo, and Lara—move into a grand but decaying country residence near their university, attracted by its low rent. Whilst none of them love the place, Tom is the most unsettled. From the moment he enters the property, called Beulah, he imagines being alone there, engulfed by its shadows. On the run up to their first Christmas, JoJo finds a Ouija board, and they decide to use it—encouraged by Danny's drugs. In the midst of the game, Tom makes contact with something, possibly the spirit for which the house is named.

Jake, once a rising star in the literary world, is now a man on the edge of madness. Now, the characters he created—once confined to the pages of his stories—are haunting his every waking moment. Victor Black, the cold-blooded villain. The Butcher, pure evil incarnate. Eliza Nightshade, deadly and seductive. The eerie Twins, laughing in the shadows. And Mr. Snuggles, the sarcastic talking cat, now a chilling figure of Jake's spiraling mind, stalking him with yellow eyes and a grin that promises terror.

Cole Danner survived. His wife and daughter didn’t. The authorities assured him. Alone, severely injured and suicidal, he has no memory of how he escaped the crash into a mountain lake that claimed his girls. Until a series of otherworldly and brutal flashbacks brings him back from the brink, convinces him the crash was no accident, and leads him on a bewildering journey in search of his presumed-dead daughter. Sophie Danner survived. Her father and mother didn’t. Her new family assured her.

Moving from Reykjavík to the rural village of Búdardalur in Iceland, a successful yet overworked and divorced master chef, Bragi, hopes to start a new life with his two teenagers. He buys an old house by the sea and takes over management of a local motel and restaurant. Soon, a mysterious woman walks in: Karitas. Bragi feels strangely attracted to her. Thinking he's in love, he convinces himself Karitas will be part of his new life.

Long ago, an otherworldly creature made the Earth almost uninhabitable and nearly consumed all of mankind. Now angels protect, and rule over, New Eden—Earth’s last remaining city. By angelic decree, and scripture akin to propaganda, all redheads are enslaved. Alizard is the stubborn daughter of the two most powerful families in the city. She expects to inherit a position of great leadership until the day her hair turns red.

The old but otherwise unassuming house was the only place available on such short notice, and Hideo didn’t think to question it. Perhaps he should have, because it’s not long until he notices changes in his daughter Suzuka, and they’re not changes for the better. Something’s in there with them, and it hungers for blood. Will they make it alive?

In the city of fear, money holds dominion over all. With a new designer drug numbing the population, a rash of mysterious disappearances, and a murder rate rising higher than the tallest skyscraper, the only people with the means to distance themselves from the corruption are the ones fostering it. Enter Benjamin—a lone hundred-dollar bill caught in the middle. In a storm of pills, bullets, and bloodshed, Benjamin passes through the hands of several desperate criminals.

There’s something off about the house…as if it’s hiding a dark secret. That’s why artist, Emily Lawrence thinks it’s the perfect subject for a cover commissioned by a famous horror author. But that’s her little secret. Her husband, Miles, can only assume the house she is constantly sketching is her dream home. So, when Emily is sidelined by an unexpected, high-risk pregnancy, he buys it thinking it’ll be perfect for their growing family.

In 1886, Ingledene was the scene of the brutal deaths of a greengrocer and his wife at each other's hands. 138 years later, the house had lain empty for almost a decade with nobody willing to enter the dark and rotting home. That is until author River Johnson and her husband Cole arrive in the Devon town of Smallwood, looking for their ideal home. Their budget is far smaller than the average property values, but when Cole notices a joint listing for Ingledene and the greengrocers in the high street, the price is too good to pass up.

Christmas Eve, 1971... Five-year-old Billy Chapman witnessed his parents brutally murdered by a man disguised as Santa Claus, leaving him and his little brother to be raised in a strict Catholic orphanage ruled by the sadistic Mother Superior.

Cheating death, cheating time, looking for the easy way out. These things have consequences. Consequences that can be violent and painful.

John, a vampire living for near six thousand years, has gone by many names in his life. Warrior, king, god. Such great age can also be a curse, as his mind has not kept up with the regeneration of his body, and he struggles to even remember his own name. That is until powerful beings called the ascended come to Earth and remove a shield blocking our solar system from the Tree of Life. John is healed, and his mind restored, and he is ready to learn this new way of gaining power, this self-cultivation, and defend his world. But he's no longer the apex predator.

This collection includes What Vengeance Comes, Cold Sanctuary, and Crimson Deep.