Showing titles in Contemporary

Kathleen has always been dramatic. She suffers from the bizarre malady of experiencing stabbing pain in her feet. On her 16th birthday, she woke screaming from the sensation that her tongue had been cut out. No doctor can find a medical explanation for her pain, and even the most powerful drugs have proven useless. Only the touch of seawater can ease her pain, and just temporarily at that.

When Monster Hunter International's top hunter, Owen Zastava Pitt, was given a tip about some hunters who had gone missing in action, he didn't realize their rescue mission would snowball into the single biggest operation in MHI's history. Their men are being held prisoner in a horrific nightmare dimension, and the only way to reach them is through the radioactive ruins of a monster-infested war zone. As if that wasn't bad enough, it's also the home base of the powerful creature behind the devastating attacks on the Last Dragon and Copper Lake.

Hadley Whitaker is a liar, a killer, and a chocoholic, but she's getting better about the first two. Or maybe she's just getting better at them. Some days it's hard for her to tell fact from fiction, but only one truth matters. Goddess willing, she's going to be the next Potentate of Atlanta. Even if it means playing nice with Midas Kinase, a shifter whose mysterious past might just be grimmer than her own. When a bloodthirsty rogue begins hunting the city's paranormals, Hadley ropes Midas into letting her work the case. But that rope starts to feel more like a noose.

"Dude! It finally came!" My roommate barely withheld his excitement as he barreled into the living room of our apartment with a package in his hand. "Check it out, Jacob." He smiled as he tore at the brown paper surrounding his purchase. As he ripped the covering off the package, bits and pieces scattered all across the floor of the living room like confetti. For a second, I thought about lecturing Todd about not making a mess of our apartment, but who was I kidding? This place was already a shithole. At least some half-assed confetti would make it feel a little livelier.

April May and the Carls are back in the much-anticipated sequel to Hank Green's number-one New York Times best-selling debut novel, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing. The Carls disappeared the same way they appeared, in an instant. While they were on Earth, they caused confusion and destruction without ever lifting a finger. Months later, the world is as confused as ever. Andy has picked up April’s mantle of fame; Maya, ravaged by grief, begins to follow a string of mysteries that she is convinced will lead her to April; and Miranda infiltrates a scientific operation.

The world has been saved; life is beautiful and everyone loves and appreciates the hero, even though they have put him in some godforsaken place. To keep him safe, or so they say.... But it's too boring there! Only at first glance, however, because entertainment can be found anywhere and the street phase of the world tournament, Battle of the Champions, is just the right thing to pass the time, especially if some divine gifts are taken into consideration, which, regardless of his unique strategic and tactical talent, seriously complicate his life.

Mo's latest assignment is assisting the police in containing an unusual outbreak: ordinary citizens suddenly imbued with extraordinary abilities of the superpowered kind. Unfortunately these people prefer playing superpranks instead of superheroics. The mayor of London being levitated by a dumpy man in Trafalgar Square would normally be a source of shared amusement for Mo and Bob, but they're currently separated because something's come between them - something evil.

For most people, the story of their lives is just that: the accumulation of time, encounters, and actions into a cohesive whole. But for an unfortunate few, that day-to-day existence is affected - perhaps infected is a better word - by memetic incursion: where fairy tale narratives become reality, often with disastrous results.

After stumbling upon the algorithm that turned him and his fellow merchant bankers into vampires, Alex Schwartz was drafted by The Laundry, Britain's secret counter-occult agency that's humanity's first line of defense against the forces of darkness. Dependent on his new employers for his continued existence - as Alex has no stomach for predatory bloodsucking - he has little choice but to accept his new role as an operative in training.

When a superpowered assassin attempts to kill the governor of Louisiana, there's only one person who can stop it: Sienna Nealon. But no sooner is she on the case than Sienna finds herself embroiled in a murky web of political entanglements, corruption, and stuck with a mystery that makes no sense. With time running out, can Sienna find her way to the bottom of an old mystery before the assassin strikes again?

The long-awaited new novel from Haruki Murakami, his first in six years, revisits a Town his listeners will remember, a place where a Dream Reader reviews dreams and where our shadows become untethered from our selves. A love story, a quest, an ode to books and to the libraries that house them, and a parable for these strange post-pandemic times, The City and Its Uncertain Walls is a singular and towering achievement by one of modern literature’s most important writers.

Following a confrontation with her reclusive great-grandfather, the onetime Wizard of Oz, Rainary Ko, the granddaughter of Oz’s Wicked Witch of the West, has re-upped in a mission to settle a few scores and right a wrong or two. Her memory and her passions reviving, Rain turns her gaze back to her native Oz. While the Grimmerie, which she had cast into the sea, retains its arcane power over her, the lover she left behind in Oz proves no less haunting. Once bewitched, twice bewitching, Rain Ko must consider how to achieve a life less suffused with grief than the one she is enduring.

Charlie Reade looks like a regular high school kid, great at baseball and football, a decent student. But he carries a heavy load. His mom was killed in a hit-and-run accident when he was 10, and grief drove his dad to drink. Charlie learned how to take care of himself—and his dad. Then, when Charlie is 17, he meets a dog named Radar and his aging master, Howard Bowditch, a recluse in a big house at the top of a big hill, with a locked shed in the backyard. Sometimes strange sounds emerge from it.

One night Lauren finds a strange man in her flat who claims to be her husband. All the evidence – from photos to electricity bills – suggests he’s right. Lauren’s attic, she slowly realises, is creating an endless supply of husbands for her. But when you can change husbands as easily as a lightbulb, how do you know whether the one you have now is the good enough one, or the wrong one, or the best one? And how long should you keep trying to find out?

When retired FBI Agent Patrick Henderson calls in an 'X-Ray Sierra India' incident, the operator doesn't understand. He tells them to pass it up the chain till someone does. That person is FBI Special Agent Kimberley Reynolds. Leaving Quantico for snowbound Northern Wisconsin, she finds that a tornado has flattened half the town - and there's no sign of Henderson. Things soon go from weird to worse, as neighbours report unsettling sightings, key evidence goes missing, and the snow keeps rising - cutting off the town, with no way in or out...

When 38-year-old Conner O’Rourke returns to Ireland, he’s running from his past. His advertising agency in Sydney is going broke, the bank is foreclosing on his mortgage, and he’s hearing voices in his mind urging him to return to Inis Mór. His grandmother, whom he hasn’t seen in years, has contacted him saying she's critically ill and must speak with him, but when he arrives on Inis Mór, a wild, windswept, rocky little island some 30 miles off the West Coast of Ireland, she’s already passed, leaving him a cottage and a dilapidated sailing boat.

The year is 2048. Climate change and bio-warfare have ravaged much of the Earth, and societal meltdown has splintered the US into fragments. But out of the ruins, Northern California has built a thriving culture based on respect for the four sacred things: air, fire, water and earth.

Joanne Walker has three days to learn to use her shamanic powers and save the world from the unleashed Wild Hunt.

Diviner Alex Verus finally made one too many enemies on the Council of Mages, and now one of them is angry enough to have him executed. Fighting for his life is nothing new, but this kill order also calls for the death of Alex's dependents - and there's no way that he'll let Luna, Anne, and Vari take the heat. With only a week before he's history, Alex will have to figure out how to disassociate himself from his friends, scrounge up allies on the council, and hopefully keep his head attached to his body.

Alex Carlisle owes a debt beyond cash. Once upon a time - all of three months ago - Alex found himself in a foreign land hunted by mercenaries and demon lords. Only the intervention of a sultry, playful jinn got him home again. Zafirah didn't help him for free. Now she's come to collect. With her sights set on a dangerous family of ancient sorcerers, Zafirah needs every edge. She needs not only Alex, but the friends and lovers he brings with him. Her quest threatens to extract a price from angel, demon, and mortal alike...and most especially the witch who brought them all together.