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In Charlie Hall's world, shadows can be altered, for entertainment and cosmetic preferences--but also to increase power and influence. You can alter someone's feelings--and memories--but manipulating shadows has a cost, with the potential to take hours or days from your life. Your shadow holds all the parts of you that you want to keep hidden--a second self, standing just to your left, walking behind you into lit rooms. And sometimes, it has a life of its own.

Charlie is a low-level con artist, working as a bartender while trying to distance herself from the powerful and dangerous underground world of shadow trading. She gets by doing odd jobs for her patrons and the naive new money in her town at the edge of the Berkshires. But when a terrible figure from her past returns, Charlie's present life is thrown into chaos, and her future seems at best, unclear--and at worst, non-existent. Determined to survive, Charlie throws herself into a maelstrom of secrets and murder, setting her against a cast of doppelgangers, mercurial billionaires, shadow thieves, and her own sister--all desperate to control the magic of the shadows.

A doll that may be haunted leads three friends on a thrilling adventure in this delightfully creepy novel from the New York Times best-selling cocreator of the Spiderwick Chronicles.

Zach, Poppy, and Alice have been friends forever. And for almost as long, they've been playing one continuous, ever-changing game of pirates and thieves, mermaids and warriors. Ruling over all is the Great Queen, a bone-china doll cursing those who displease her. But they are in middle school now. Zach's father pushes him to give up make-believe, and Zach quits the game. Their friendship might be over, until Poppy declares she's been having dreams about the Queen - and the ghost of a girl who will not rest until the bone-china doll is buried in her empty grave.

Zach and Alice and Poppy set off on one last adventure to lay the Queen's ghost to rest. But nothing goes according to plan, and as their adventure turns into an epic journey, creepy things begin to happen. Is the doll just a doll or something more sinister? And if there really is a ghost, will it let them go now that it has them in its clutches?

Acclaimed authors Holly Black (Ironside) and Cecil Castellucci (Boy Proof) have united in geekdom to edit short stories from some of the best selling and most promising geeks in young adult literature: M.T. Anderson, Libba Bray, Cassandra Clare, John Green, Tracy Lynn, Cynthia and Greg Leitich Smith, David Levithan, Kelly Link, Barry Lyga, Wendy Mass, Garth Nix, Scott Westerfield, Lisa Yee, and Sara Zarr.

With illustrated interstitials from comic book artists Hope Larson and Bryan Lee O'Malley, Geektastic covers all things geeky, from Klingons and Jedi Knights to fan fiction, theater geeks, and cosplayers. Whether you're a former, current, or future geek, or if you just want to get in touch with your inner geek, Geektastic will help you get your geek on!

Table of Contents:

• Once You're a Jedi, You're a Jedi All the Way - shortfiction by Holly Black and Cecil Castellucci
• Comic: Top Five Words or Phrases You Need to Know in Klingon
• One of Us - shortfiction by Liz Braswell [as by Tracy Lynn]
• Comic: How to Tell If Your Dice Are Lucky or Unlucky
• Definitional Chaos - shortfiction by Scott Westerfeld
• Comic: I Totally Shouldn't Post This, But...
• I Never - shortfiction by Cassandra Clare
• Comic: How to Look Cool and Not Drool in Front of Your Favorite Author
• The King of Pelinesse - shortfiction by M. T. Anderson
• Comic: How to Identify... The Living Dead
• The Wrath of Dawn - shortfiction by Cynthia Smith and Greg Leitich Smith
• Comic: How to Cheat Like a Nerd
• Quiz Bowl Antichrist - shortfiction by David Levithan
• Comic: How to Cosplay with Common Household Objects
• The Quiet Knight - shortstory by Garth Nix
• Comic: What Your Instrument Says About You
• Everyone But You - shortfiction by Lisa Yee
• Comic: What to Remember When Going to a Convention
• Secret Identity - novelette by Kelly Link
• Comic: What Your Lunch Table Status Means
• Freak the Geek - shortfiction by John Green
• Comic: How to Hook Up at the Science Fair
• Truth About Dino Girl - shortfiction by Barry Lyga
• Comic: Theater Types
• This Is My Audition Monologue - shortfiction by Sara Zarr
• Comic: The Best Ways to Stay Awake for Gaming
• The Stars at the Finish Line - shortfiction by Wendy Mass
• Comic: What Kind of Geek Are You?
• It's Just a Jump to the Left - shortfiction by Libba Bray

This short story originally appear in the anthology Young Warriors: Stories of Strength (2005) edited by Tamora Pierce and Josepha Sherman, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, September 2012.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

This novelette originally appeared almost simultaneously in Lightspeed, September 2014, and the anthology Monstrous Affections: An Anthology of Beastly Tales (2014), edited by Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant. It can also be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Nine (2015), edited by Jonathan Strahan and The Year's Best Military SF & Space Opera: First Annual Edition (2015), edited by David Afsharirad.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Full Moon City (2010), edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Darrell Schweitzer. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Five (2011), edited by Jonathan Strahan, and Circus: Fantasy Under the Big Top (2012) edited by Ekaterina Sedia.

This short story originally appeared in the anthology So Fey: Queer Fairy Fiction (2007), edited by Steve Berman. It can also be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Two (2008), edited by Jonathan Strahan, Bloody Fabulous (2012), edited by Ekaterina Sedia, and Beyond the Woods: Fairy Tales Retold (2016), edited by Paula Guran. The story is included in the collection The Poison Eaters and Other Stories (2010).

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology The Eternal Kiss: 13 Vampire Tales of Blood and Desire (2009), edited by Trisha Telep. It can also be found in the anthologies:

• The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Four (2010), edited by Jonathan Strahan
• The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2010, edited by Paula Guran
• Vampires: The Recent Undead (2011), edited by Paula Guran
• The Urban Fantasy Anthology (2011), edited by Peter S. Beagle and Joe R. Lansdale

The story is included in the collection The Poison Eaters and Other Stories (2010). It was expanded into the full novel The Coldest Girl in Coldtown (2013).

Tana lives in a world where walled cities called Coldtowns exist. In them, quarantined monsters and humans mingle in a decadently bloody mix of predator and prey. It's an eternal party, shown on TV 24 hours a day - gorgeous, glamorous, deadly! Because, once you pass through Coldtown's gates, you can never leave...

A wholly original story of rage and revenge, love and loathing from bestselling author, Holly Black. Fans of TRUE BLOOD will love this dark and sexy tale.

Children can have a cruel, absolute sense of justice. Children can kill a monster and feel quite proud of themselves. A girl can look at her brother and believe they're destined to be a knight and a bard who battle evil. She can believe she's found the thing she's been made for.

Hazel lives with her brother, Ben, in the strange town of Fairfold where humans and fae exist side by side. The faeries' seemingly harmless magic attracts tourists, but Hazel knows how dangerous they can be, and she knows how to stop them. Or she did, once.

At the center of it all, there is a glass coffin in the woods. It rests right on the ground and in it sleeps a boy with horns on his head and ears as pointy as knives. Hazel and Ben were both in love with him as children. The boy has slept there for generations, never waking.

Until one day, he does...

As the world turns upside down and a hero is needed to save them all, Hazel tries to remember her years spent pretending to be a knight. But swept up in new love, shifting loyalties, and the fresh sting of betrayal, will it be enough?

Pick your poison: Vampires, devils, werewolves, faeries, or...? Find them all here in Holly Black's amazing first collection. In her debut collection, "New York Times" best-selling author Holly Black returns to the world of Tithe in two darkly exquisite new tales. Then Black takes readers on a tour of a faerie market and introduces a girl poisonous to the touch and another who challenges the devil to a competitive eating match. Some of these stories have been published in anthologies such as "21 Proms, The Faery Reel, " and "The Restless Dead," and many have been reprinted in many "Best of " anthologies. "The Poison Eaters" is Holly Black's much-anticipated first collection, and her ability to stare into the void--and to find humanity and humor there--will speak to young adult and adult readers alike.

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Magic in the Mirrorstone: Tales of Fantasy (2008), edited by Steve Berman. It can also be found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Three (2009), edited by Jonathan Strahan. The story is included in the collection The Poison Eaters and Other Stories (2010).

It's the epic battle of brains against manes. Which side are you on?

It's a question as old as time itself: which is better, the zombie or the unicorn? This all-original anthology edited by Holly Black (Team Unicorn) and Justine Larbalestier (Team Zombie) makes strong arguments for both sides in the form of spectacular short stories. Half of the stories portray the strengths--for good and evil--of unicorns, and half show the good (and really, really badass) side of zombies. Contributors include many bestselling authors, including Cassandra Clare, Libba Bray, Maureen Johnson, Meg Cabot, Scott Westerfeld, and Margo Lanagan.

This anthology will have everyone asking: Team Zombie or Team Unicorn?

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier
• The Highest Justice - short story by Garth Nix
• Love Will Tear Us Apart - novelette by Alaya Dawn Johnson
• The Purity Test - short story by Naomi Novik
• Bougainvillea - novelette by Carrie Ryan
• A Thousand Flowers - novelette by Margo Lanagan
• The Children of the Revolution - novelette by Maureen Johnson
• The Care and Feeding of Your Baby Killer Unicorn - novelette by Diana Peterfreund
• Inoculata - novelette by Scott Westerfeld
• Princess Prettypants - novelette by Meg Cabot
• Cold Hands - short story by Cassandra Clare
• The Third Virgin - novelette by Kathleen Duey
• Prom Night - novelette by Libba Bray

Bordertown: a city on the border between our human world and the elfin realm. Runaway teens come from both sides of the border to find adventure, to find themselves. Elves play in rock bands and race down the street on spell-powered motorbikes. Human kids recreate themselves in the squats and clubs and artists' studios of Soho.

Terri Windling's original Bordertown series was the forerunner of today's urban fantasy, introducing authors that included Charles de Lint, Will Shetterly, Emma Bull, and Ellen Kushner. In this volume of all-new work (including a 15-page graphic story), the original writers are now joined by the generation that grew up dreaming of Bordertown, including acclaimed authors Holly Black, Cassandra Clare, Cory Doctorow, Neil Gaiman, Catherynne M. Valente, and many more. They all meet here on the streets of Bordertown in more than twenty new interconnected songs, poems, and stories.

Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Holly Black
• Introduction - essay by Terri Windling
• Welcome to Bordertown - novella by Terri Windling and Ellen Kushner
• Shannon's Law - novelette by Cory Doctorow
• Cruel Sister - poem by Patricia A. McKillip
• A Voice Like a Hole - short story by Catherynne M. Valente
• Stairs in Her Hair - poem by Amal El-Mohtar
• Incunabulum - novelette by Emma Bull
• Run Back Across the Border - poem by Steven Brust
• A Prince of Thirteen Days - novelette by Alaya Dawn Johnson
• The Sages of Elsewhere - short fiction by Will Shetterly
• Soulja Grrrl: A Long Line Rap - poem by Jane Yolen
• Crossings - short fiction by Janni Lee Simner
• Fair Trade (Comic) - short fiction by Sara Ryan and Dylan Meconis
• Night Song for a Halfie - poem by Jane Yolen
• Our Stars, Our Selves - short fiction by Tim Pratt
• Elf Blood - short fiction by Annette Curtis Klause
• Ours is the Prettiest - short fiction by Nalo Hopkinson
• The Wall - poem by Delia Sherman
• We Do Not Come in Peace - short fiction by Christopher Barzak
• A Borderland Jump-Rope Rhyme - poem by Jane Yolen
• The Rowan Gentleman - short fiction by Cassandra Clare and Holly Black
• The Song of the Song - poem by Neil Gaiman
• A Tangle of Green Men - novella by Charles de Lint

A runaway queen. A reluctant prince. And a quest that may destroy them both.

Eight years have passed since the Battle of the Serpent. But in the icy north, Lady Nore of the Court of Teeth has reclaimed the Ice Needle Citadel. There, she is using an ancient relic to create monsters of stick and snow who will do her bidding and exact her revenge.

Suren, child queen of the Court of Teeth, and the one person with power over her mother, fled to the human world. There, she lives feral in the woods. Lonely, and still haunted by the merciless torments she endured in the Court of Teeth, she bides her time by releasing mortals from foolish bargains. She believes herself forgotten until the storm hag, Bogdana chases her through the night streets. Suren is saved by none other than Prince Oak, heir to Elfhame, to whom she was once promised in marriage and who she has resented for years.

Now seventeen, Oak is charming, beautiful, and manipulative. He's on a mission that will lead him into the north, and he wants Suren's help. But if she agrees, it will mean guarding her heart against the boy she once knew and a prince she cannot trust, as well as confronting all the horrors she thought she left behind.

An imprisoned prince. A vengeful queen. And a battle that will determine the future of Elfhame.

Prince Oak is paying for his betrayal. Imprisoned in the icy north and bound to the will of a monstrous new queen, he must rely on charm and calculation to survive. With High King Cardan and High Queen Jude willing to use any means necessary to retrieve their stolen heir, Oak will have to decide whether to attempt regaining the trust of the girl he's always loved or to remain loyal to Elfhame and hand over the means to end her reign - even if it means ending Wren, too?

With a new war looming on the horizon and treachery lurking in every corner, neither Oak's guile nor his wit will be enough to keep everyone he loves alive. It's just a question of whom he will doom.

Most kids would do anything to pass the Iron Trial.

Not Callum Hunt. He wants to fail.

All his life, Call has been warned by his father to stay away from magic. If he succeeds at the Iron Trial and is admitted into the Magisterium, he is sure it can only mean bad things for him.

So he tries his best to do his worst - and fails at failing.

Now the Magisterium awaits him. It's a place that's both sensational and sinister, with dark ties to his past and a twisty path to his future.

The Iron Trial is just the beginning, for the biggest test is still to come... From the remarkable imaginations of bestselling authors Holly Black and Cassandra Clare comes a heart-stopping, mind-blowing, pulse-pounding plunge into the magical unknown.

Callum Hunt's summer break isn't like other kids'. His closest companion is a Chaos-ridden wolf, Havoc. His father suspects him of being secretly evil. And, of course, most kids aren't heading back to the magical world of the Magisterium in the fall.

It's not easy for Call... and it gets even harder after he checks out his basement and discovers that his dad might be trying to destroy both him and Havoc.

Call escapes to the Magisterium -- but things only intensify there. The Alkahest -- a copper gauntlet capable of separating certain magicians from their magic -- has been stolen. And in their search to discover the culprit, Call and his friends Aaron and Tamara awaken the attention of some very dangerous foes -- and get closer to an even more dangerous truth.

As the mysteries of the Magisterium deepen and widen, bestselling authors Holly Black and Cassandra Clare take readers on an extraordinary journey through one boy's conflict -- and a whole world's fate.

Magic can save you. Magic can kill you.

It should be a time of celebration. The Enemy of Death is dead; a severed head proof of his downfall. The magical world has no reason to believe otherwise, and Callum, Tamara and Aaron are celebrated as heroes.

But at a party held in their honour, things go horribly, brutally wrong. A fellow student is callously murdered, and it seems Call's worst fears are confirmed: there is a spy in the Magisterium.

No one is safe.

Now, using the powerful magic they've been taught, the trio must risk their lives to track down the killer. But magic is dangerous--in the wrong hands it could bring terrible destruction. And reveal the deadliest secret of all...

Callum Hunt's life has fallen apart.

His friend is gone. The spy has escaped. His secret is out.

He is facing an existence behind bars, banished from the rest of the magical community for what he is - for what he might become.

But a shocking revelation has promised freedom - at a cost. Will he stay strong, and faithful to his friends and teachers? Or take the risk, and destroy everything he's ever loved?

This fourth year at the Magisterium will be unlike anything else that has gone before...

Callum Hunt has been a hero and an outcast, a force of good and a portent of evil. While the doors of the Magisterium have been open to him, he has never felt entirely welcome. If anything, he has felt others' resentment... and fear.

Now, as he begins his final year at the magical school, his place is less certain than ever. With one unique exception, he is estranged from most of his friends. A furtive darkness still hounds him. And the greatest challenge he will ever face is right around the corner.

In this monumental conclusion to the Magisterium series, bestselling authors Holly Black and Cassandra Clare push Callum to the brink of annihilation, showing how magic has the ability to both save and doom, create and destroy.

An original novel set between Disney's Maleficent and Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, in which newly-queened Aurora struggles to be the best leader to both the humans and Fair Folk under her reign; her beau, Prince Phillip, longs to get to know Aurora and her kingdom better; and Maleficent has trouble letting go of the past.

Welcome to the realm of very scary faeries!

Sixteen-year-old Kaye is a modern nomad. Fierce and independent, she travels from city to city with her mother's rock band until an ominous attack forces Kaye back to her childhood home. There, amid the industrial, blue-collar New Jersey backdrop, Kaye soon finds herself an unwilling pawn in an ancient power struggle between two rival faerie kingdoms -- a struggle that could very well mean her death.

When seventeen-year-old Valerie runs away to New York City, she's trying to escape a life that has utterly betrayed her. Sporting a new identity, she takes up with a gang of squatters who live in the city's labyrinthine subway system.

But there's something eerily beguiling about Val's new friends. And when one talks Val into tracking down the lair of a mysterious creature with whom they are all involved, Val finds herself torn between her newfound affection for an honorable monster and her fear of what her new friends are becoming.

In the realm of Faerie, the time has come for Roiben's coronation. Uneasy in the midst of the malevolent Unseelie Court, pixie Kaye is sure of only one thing -- her love for Roiben. But when Kaye, drunk on faerie wine, declares herself to Roiben, he sends her on a seemingly impossible quest. Now Kaye can't see or speak to Roiben unless she can find the one thing she knows doesn't exist: a faerie who can tell a lie.

Miserable and convinced she belongs nowhere, Kaye decides to tell her mother the truth -- that she is a changeling left in place of the human daughter stolen long ago. Her mother's shock and horror sends Kaye back to the world of Faerie to find her human counterpart and return her to Ironside. But once back in the faerie courts, Kaye finds herself a pawn in the games of Silarial, queen of the Seelie Court. Silarial wants Roiben's throne, and she will use Kaye, and any means necessary, to get it. In this game of wits and weapons, can a pixie outplay a queen?

Holly Black spins a seductive tale at once achingly real and chillingly enchanted, set in a dangerous world where pleasure mingles with pain and nothing is exactly as it appears.

Cassel comes from a family of curse workers -- people who have the power to change your emotions, your memories, your luck, by the slightest touch of their hands. And since curse work is illegal, they're all mobsters, or con artists. Except for Cassel. He hasn't got the magic touch, so he's an outsider, the straight kid in a crooked family. You just have to ignore one small detail -- he killed his best friend, Lila, three years ago.

Ever since, Cassel has carefully built up a façade of normalcy, blending into the crowd. But his façade starts crumbling when he starts sleepwalking, propelled into the night by terrifying dreams about a white cat that wants to tell him something. He's noticing other disturbing things, too, including the strange behavior of his two brothers. They are keeping secrets from him, caught up in a mysterious plot. As Cassel begins to suspect he's part of a huge con game, he also wonders what really happened to Lila. Could she still be alive? To find that out, Cassel will have to out-con the conmen.

Holly Black has created a gripping tale of mobsters and dark magic where a single touch can bring love -- or death -- and your dreams might be more real than your memories.

The cons get twistier and the stakes get higher in Red Glove, the sequel to White Cat.

In a world where magic is illegal, Cassel Sharpe has the most deadly ability of all: With one touch, he can transform any object - including a person - into something else entirely. And that makes him a wanted man. The Feds are willing to forgive all his past crimes if he'll only leave his con-artist family behind and go straight. But why does going straight feel so crooked?

For one thing, it means being on the opposite side of the law from Lila, the girl he loves. She's the daughter of a mob boss and, though Cassel is pretty sure she can never love him back, he can't stop obsessing over her. Which would be bad enough, even if her father wasn't keeping Cassel's mother prisoner until she returns the priceless diamond she scammed off him years ago. Too bad she can't remember where she put it.

The Feds say they need Cassel to get rid of a powerful man who is spinning dangerously out of control. But if they want Cassel to use his unique talent to hurt people, what separates the good guys from the bad ones? With no easy answers and no one he can trust, love might be the most dangerous gamble of all.

Sometimes the difference between a love story and a horror story is where the ending comes

While Jude fought for power in the Court of Elfhame against the cruel Prince Cardan, her sister Taryn began to fall in love with the trickster, Locke.

Half-apology and half-explanation, it turns out that Taryn has some secrets of her own to reveal.

Of course I want to be like them. They're beautiful as blades forged in some divine fire. They will live forever.

And Cardan is even more beautiful than the rest. I hate him more than all the others. I hate him so much that sometimes when I look at him, I can hardly breathe.

Jude was seven years old when her parents were murdered and she and her two sisters were stolen away to live in the treacherous High Court of Faerie. Ten years later, Jude wants nothing more than to belong there, despite her mortality. But many of the fey despise humans. Especially Prince Cardan, the youngest and wickedest son of the High King.

To win a place at the Court, she must defy him--and face the consequences.

In doing so, she becomes embroiled in palace intrigues and deceptions, discovering her own capacity for bloodshed. But as civil war threatens to drown the Courts of Faerie in violence, Jude will need to risk her life in a dangerous alliance to save her sisters, and Faerie itself.

You must be strong enough to strike and strike and strike again without tiring.

The first lesson is to make yourself strong.

After the jaw-dropping revelation that Oak is the heir to Faerie, Jude must keep her younger brother safe. To do so, she has bound the wicked king, Cardan, to her, and made herself the power behind the throne. Navigating the constantly shifting political alliances of Faerie would be difficult enough if Cardan were easy to control. But he does everything in his power to humiliate and undermine her even as his fascination with her remains undiminished.

When it becomes all too clear that someone close to Jude means to betray her, threatening her own life and the lives of everyone she loves, Jude must uncover the traitor and fight her own complicated feelings for Cardan to maintain control as a mortal in a Faerie world.

Power is much easier to acquire than it is to hold onto. Jude learned this lesson when she released her control over the wicked king, Cardan, in exchange for immeasurable power.

Now as the exiled mortal Queen of Faerie, Jude is powerless and left reeling from Cardan's betrayal. She bides her time determined to reclaim everything he took from her. Opportunity arrives in the form of her deceptive twin sister, Taryn, whose mortal life is in peril.

Jude must risk venturing back into the treacherous Faerie Court, and confront her lingering feelings for Cardan, if she wishes to save her sister. But Elfhame is not as she left it. War is brewing. As Jude slips deep within enemy lines she becomes ensnared in the conflict's bloody politics.

And, when a dormant yet powerful curse is unleashed, panic spreads throughout the land, forcing her to choose between her ambition and her humanity...