The demon Lailoken, as old as time, is tricked by angelic powers, the Fire Lords, and trapped in a human body. He becomes Merlinus, a wandering wise man expert in magic, destined to work for good among humans, opposed by the Furor, Odin. An encounter with the unicorn - a spirit similarly earthbound - brings him to Ygrane, queen of the Celts, and she sets him a task to find her king, a man seen in vision and fated to be her love-match.

We are in a small room with the vampire, face to face, as he speaks--as he pours out the hypnotic, shocking, moving, and erotically charged confessions of his first two hundred years as one of the living dead. . . He speaks quietly, plainly, even gently . . . carrying us back to the night when he departed human existence as heir--young, romantic, cultivated--to a great Louisiana plantation, and was inducted by the radiant and sinister Lestat into the other, the "endless," life....

The dream chooses the dreamer, not the other way around - and Lazlo Strange, war orphan and junior librarian, has always feared that his dream chose poorly. Since he was five years old, he's been obsessed with the mythic lost city of Weep, but it would take someone bolder than he to cross half the world in search of it. Then a stunning opportunity presents itself in the person of a hero called the Godslayer and a band of legendary warriors, and he has to seize his chance or lose his dream forever.

Prepare to meet the wicked progeny of the master of modern horror. In Lovecraft's Monsters, H. P. Lovecraft's most famous creations--Cthulhu, Shoggoths, Deep Ones, Elder Things, Yog-Sothoth, and more--appear in all their terrifying glory. Each story is a gripping new take on a classic Lovecraftian creature. Contributors include such literary luminaries as Neil Gaiman, Joe R. Lansdale, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Karl Edward Wagner, Elizabeth Bear, and Nick Mamatas.

Ashlock wakes in the courtyard of a demonic sect... as a tree. A tree that eats people. An odd start to a new life. Almost as strange as the humans flying through the skies on flaming swords and challenging the heavens. After all, this is a world where humans could chase the goal of immortality through the art of cultivation. But Ashlock is merely a sapling in a desolate courtyard, left alone with his thoughts and unable to speak to those passing him by. Unless he does something about it.

Described as American Gods meets The Avengers, Paternus combines myths from around the world in a modern story of action and intrigue that is “urban fantasy on the surface, but so much more at its core!”

The Jazz Age is in full swing, but Casiopea Tun is too busy cleaning the floors of her wealthy grandfather’s house to listen to any fast tunes. Nevertheless, she dreams of a life far from her dusty small town in southern Mexico. A life she can call her own. Yet this new life seems as distant as the stars, until the day she finds a curious wooden box in her grandfather’s room. She opens it - and accidentally frees the spirit of the Mayan god of death, who requests her help in recovering his throne from his treacherous brother.

The House of Berethnet has ruled Inys for a thousand years. Still unwed, Queen Sabran the Ninth must conceive a daughter to protect her realm from destruction - but assassins are getting closer to her door. Ead Duryan is an outsider at court. Though she has risen to the position of lady-in-waiting, she is loyal to a hidden society of mages. Ead keeps a watchful eye on Sabran, secretly protecting her with forbidden magic.

Thomas Covenant is a leper, a bitter and solitary pariah who is mystically transported to another Earth where time moves differently than ours, one in which magic takes many forms. The Land is threatened by many evils, the most immediate of which is a maddened Cavewight whose subterranean excavations have unearthed the ancient and puissant Staff of Law. More dangerous to the free people of the Land is the Gray Slayer, Lord Foul, the Despiser, who intends to destroy the actual foundations of the Earth that he might wage war against the universe’s creator.

Villains take center stage in this collection of 19 dark and magical stories. Listeners will be cheering for all the wrong heroes as some of the most fearsome, devious, and brutal antagonists perform savage deeds towards wicked ends. And why not? These characters are the champions of their own stories - evil is a matter of perspective. Contributors also include Mark Adler, Bradley P. Beaulieu, E.V. Morrigan, Peter Orullian, Matthew Ward, Kaaron Warren, Deborah A. Wolf, and Janny Wurts.

Long ago, the world fell into twilight, when the great empires of old consumed each other in sorcerous cataclysms. In the south, the Star Towers fell, swallowed by the sea, while the black glaciers descended upon the northern holdfasts, entombing the cities of Min-Ceruth in ice and sorcery. Then from the ancient empire of Menekar, the paladins of Ama came, putting every surviving sorcerer to the sword and cleansing their taint from the land. The pulse of magic slowed, fading like the heartbeat of a dying man. But after a thousand years, it has begun to quicken again.

In the grim nation of Nidal, carefully chosen children are trained to practice dark magic, summoning forth creatures of horror and shadow. Isiem is one such student, a promising young shadowcaster whose powers are the envy of his peers. Upon coming of age, he's dispatched on a mission of genocide against the winged humanoids of Devii's Perch. Yet as the body count rises and Isiem comes face to face with the people he's exterminating, lines begin to blur, and the shadowcaster must ask himself who the real monsters are....

Blade, Magik, Nico Minoru, and Ghost Rider have joined forces to form the Midnight Suns. Trained by the Caretaker at the Abbey, a gothic fortress in a pocket dimension, this brand-new team of supernatural heroes is the world's first line of defense against the demonic forces of the underworld. With a looming prophecy of magical upheaval that threatens to unleash apocalyptic danger, the Suns must learn to work together—and quickly. But they aren't the only ones paying attention to the disruption of mystical forces.

When the Black Dragon seized the Deep of Ylferdun, young Gareth braved the far Winterlands to find John Aversin, Dragonsbane - the only living man ever to slay a dragon. In return for the promise of the King to send help to the Winterlands, Aversin agreed to attempt the nearly impossible feat again.With them, to guard them on the haunted trip south, went Jenny Waynest, a half-taught sorceress and mother of Aversin's sons.But at the decadent Court, nothing was as expected. Rebellion threatened the land.

Men do not become mystics. They become warriors. But eighteen-year-old Salo has never been good at conforming to his tribe’s expectations. For as long as he can remember, he has loved books and magic in a culture where such things are considered unmanly. Despite it being sacrilege, Salo has worked on a magical device in secret that will awaken his latent magical powers. And when his village is attacked by a cruel enchantress, Salo knows that it is time to take action.