Search Worlds Without End

A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows

Imperator's Rule - kept a world enchained, a world so secret that only the piratical slavers of Bolodo Neyuregg LTD. knew its exact location. But now Bolodo Ltd. had made a crucial mistake. They had stolen the daughter of Adelaar aici Arash, head of the top-rated, interstellar Adelaris Security Systems. And Adelaar would use any means at her disposal to get her daughter back. So, with the aid of troubleshooter Swardheld Quale and his crew, Adelaar sets out to prowl the starways on a trail three years cold, a trail that will lead her to a plant of dread secrets and desperate rebellion - a land where death's shadow orbits endlessly overhead, awaiting only the Imperator's command to begin its rain of destruction.

King of Shadows

Susan Cooper

Only in the world of the theater can Nat Field find an escape from the tragedies that have shadowed his young life. So he is thrilled when he is chosen to join an American drama troupe traveling to London to perform A Midsummer Night's Dream in a new replica of the famous Globe theater.

Shortly after arriving in England, Nat goes to bed ill and awakens transported back in time four hundred years - to another London, and another production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Amid the bustle and excitement of an Elizabethan theatrical production, Nat finds the warm, nurturing father figure missing from his life - in none other than William Shakespeare himself. Does Nat have to remain trapped in the past forever, or give up the friendship he's so longed for in his own time?

Morrigan in Shadow

Seth Dickinson

This novelette originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, December 2015. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Military & Adventure SF 2015 (2016), edited by David Afsharirad.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

Gardner Dozois

Nebula Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, October-November 1999. The story can also be found in the anthology Nebula Awards Showcase 2002, edtied by Kim Stanley Robinson and the collections Strange Days: Fabulous Journeys with Gardner Dozois (2001) and When the Great Days Come (2011).

The Shadowy Third and Other Stories

Dave Duncan

Sald Harl would like nothing more than to soar on the wings of his noble eagle, but his youthful rides in the sky are cut short by an appointment to guard the prince. Sald watches his dreams of flight fade with his name and independence as he takes over his bodyguard duties. During a perilous journey to the edges of the kingdom a dark secret comes to life. Now the great Prince Shadow is accused of treason, and Sald must orchestrate a desperate plan of escape or he will lose the one thing he has been orderedto defend. His only option of freedom is a dangerous flight that no one has ever survived. Once again Sald hopes to feel the freedom of soaring though the air unshackled from servitude.

Shadow Flock

Greg Egan

This novelette originally appeared in Coming Soon Enough: Six Tales of Technology's Future (2014), edited by Stephen Cass. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Second Annual Collection (2015), edited by Gardner Dozois, and The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Nine (2015), edited by Jonathan Strahan.

Shadow of Earth

Phyllis Eisenstein

Two Worlds.

In 1588, the English fleet defeated the Spanish Armada, in the battle that led the way to England's rise and Spain's decline....

In 1588, the Armada conquered England and assured Spain's domination of the World for centuries to come...

To Celia, one world was real, the other a tantalizing "what-if?" speculation... Until she found herself living in it. And then the burning question was: how long could she go on living... as a slave, as the unwilling consort of a nobleman--and as a very frightened pregnant woman in a medieval wilderness?

Shadowbahn

Steve Erickson

When the Twin Towers suddenly reappear in the Badlands of South Dakota twenty years after their fall, nobody can explain their return. To the hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands drawn tothe "American Stonehenge"--including Parker and Zema, siblings on their way from L.A. to visit their mother in Michigan--the Towers seem to sing, even as everybody hears a different song. A rumor overtakes the throng that someone can be seen in the high windows of the southern structure.

On the ninety-third floor, Jesse Presley--the stillborn twin of the most famous singer who ever lived--suddenly awakes, driven mad over the hours and days tocome by a voice in his head that sounds like his but isn't, and by the memory of a country where he survived in his brother's place. Meanwhile, Parker and Zema cross a possessed landscape by a mysterious detour no one knows, charted on a map that no one has seen.

Haunting, audacious, and undaunted, Shadowbahn is a winding and reckless ride through intersections of danger, destiny, and the conjoined halves of a ruptured nation.

The Shadow Year

Jeffrey Ford

On New York's Long Island, in the unpredictable decade of the 1960s, a young boy spends much of his free time in the basement of his family's modest home, where he and his brother, Jim, have created Botch Town, a detailed cardboard replica of their community, complete with figurines representing friends and neighbors. Their little sister, Mary, smokes cigarettes, speaks in other voices, inhabits alternate personas... and, unbeknownst to her siblings, moves around the inanimate clay residents.

There is a strangeness in the air as disappearances, deaths, spectral sightings, and the arrival of a sinister man in a long white car mark this unforgettable shadow year. But strangest of all is the inescapable fact that all these troubling occurrences directly cor-respond to the changes little Mary has made to the miniature town in their basement.

Shadowkeep

Alan Dean Foster

Practer Fine, an adventurous young blacksmith, is given the task of finding the source of the unimaginable evil of Shadowkeep, a mysterious castle, and freeing his land from its enchantment, in a fantasy adventure based on the computer game "Shadowkeep".

The Shadowy Third

Ellen Glasgow

This story first appeared in Scribner's Magazine, December 1916. It was collected in The Shadowy Third and Other Stories (1923) and has appeared in a great numer of anthologies over the years, among them American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from Poe to the Pulps (2009) edtied by Peter Straub.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

Ellen Glasgow

Table of Contents:

The Shadowy Third - (1916) - novelette
Dare's Gift - (1917) - novelette
The Past - (1920) - shortstory
Whispering Leaves - (1923) - shortstory
A Point in Morals - (1899) - shortstory
The Difference - (1923) - shortstory
Jordan's End - (1923) - shortstory

Weighing Shadows

Lisa Goldstein

A new time-traveling fantasy from National Book Award-winner Lisa Goldstein.

Ann Decker fixes computers for a living, and in the evenings she passes the time sharpening her hacking skills. It's not a very interesting life, but she gets by--until one day she's contacted with a job offer for a company called Transformations Incorporated. None of her coworkers have ever heard of it before, and when Ann is finally told what the company does, she can hardly believe it: TI has invented technology to travel in time.

Soon Ann is visiting a matriarchy in ancient Crete, and then a woman mathematician at the Library of Alexandria. But Transformations Incorporated remains shrouded in mystery, and when Ann finally catches her breath, there are too many troubling questions still unanswered. Who are Transformations Incorporated, and what will they use this technology to gain? What ill effects might going back in time have on the present day? Is it really as harmless as TI says?

When a coworker turns up dead, Ann's superiors warn her about a covert group called Core out to sabotage the company. Something just isn't right, but before she has time to investigate, Ann is sent to a castle in the south of France, nearly a thousand years in the past. As the armies of the Crusade arrive to lay siege, and intrigue grows among the viscount's family, Ann will discover the startling truth--not just about the company that sent her there, but also about her own past.

A Crowd of Shadows

In the Shadow of Spindrift House

Nebula Award winning and Hugo Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, June 1976. The story can also be found in the anthology Nebula Winners Twelve (1978), edited by Gordon R. Dickson and the collection A Glow of Candles and Other Stories (1981).

Mira Grant

Nature abhors a straight line. The natural world is a place of curves and softened edges, of gentle mists and welcoming spirals. Nature remembers deviation; nature does not forgive.

For Harlowe Upton-Jones, life has never been a straight line. Shipped off to live with her paternal grandparents after a mysterious cult killed her mother and father, she has grown up chasing the question behind the curve, becoming part of a tight-knit teen detective agency. But "teen" is a limited time offer, and when her friends start looking for adult professions, it's up to Harlowe to find them one last case so that they can go out in a blaze of glory.

Welcome to Spindrift House.

The stories and legends surrounding the decrepit property are countless and contradictory, but one thing is clear: there are people willing to pay a great deal to determine the legal ownership of the house. When Harlowe and her friends agree to investigate the mystery behind the manor, they do so on the assumption that they'll be going down in history as the ones who determined who built Spindrift House--and why. The house has secrets. They have the skills. They have a plan. They have everything they need to solve the mystery.

Everything they need except for time. Because Spindrift House keeps its secrets for a reason, and it has no intention of letting them go.

Nature abhors a straight line.

Here's where the story bends.

Shadows Fall

Simon R. Green

Shadows Fall is the place where all stories find their ending, all quests are concluded and every lost soul finds its way home at last. Strange people and stranger creatures walk the sprawling streets and there are doors that can take you anywhere, to lands that no longer exist and worlds that someday might. But now Shadows Fall is under threat and the town has just one night in which to save itself.

Shadow on the Hearth

Judith Merril

Written in 1950 this is an early science fiction look at the after effects of a nuclear war. A typical day in a Westchester suburb of New York for a family of four is shattered by a nuclear attack on New York City.

A Skinful of Shadows

Frances Hardinge

A Skinful of Shadows is a dark YA historical fantasy set in the early part of the English Civil War. Kate is an illegitimate daughter of the aristocratic Fellmotte family, and as such, she shares their unique hereditary gift: the capacity to be possessed by ghosts. Reluctant to accept her appointed destiny as vessel for a coterie of her ancestors, she escapes. As she flees the pursuing Fellmottes across war-torn England, she accumulates a motley crew of her own allies, including outcasts, misfits, criminals, and one extremely angry dead bear. From Costa Book of the Year winner Frances Hardinge comes a new dark historical fantasy that's sure to satisfy her leagues of fans who are eager for more.

Shadows of the White Sun

Raymond Harris

Vell hangs in the sky like a rosy pearl, but it is indeed a poor, dry planet, where people starve and armies devastate whole continents, where superstition thrives and half the year is spent in darkness.

To Vell comes Seren of Khryashs, warrior and warlord, running from the death of his bitterest rival, Rhamant, the leading warrior, the Spear of Gheo. For all know of their rivalry, and all think Seren murdered the Spear.

Following Seren, dreaming of lust and vbengeance, is Risha Skhorb, court lady of Gheo, caught up in an interplanetary web of political intrigue.

Risha must wear the luruka scars, carved deep into her flesh, and she must accept the mantle of the goddess Ijejl, danding dreams and bringing visions, if she is to track down the man she loathes--and loves.

She bring him to justice... or perish in the attempt.

Cast Long Shadows

Cat Hellisen

Marjeta Petrell.

Replacement bride, shadow of a dead and perfect wife, step-mother to a duke's treasured daughter.

A girl out of her depth, alone and afraid.

Magic runs deep in her veins, stitched in blood ties, embroidered with kindness and pain.

In an unfamiliar court, Marjeta must discover who are her friends and who are enemies; who she can trust before she is accused of witchcraft and executed.

At the Shadow of a Dream

Howard V. Hendrix

Sturgeon Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in Aboriginal Science Fiction, Spring 1993, which was actually published in December of the preceding year. There are no other known publications available at this time.

When Shadows Fall

L. Ron Hubbard

In a future where Mother Earth has cast her children to the distant stars to begin anew and colonize the cosmos, the planet remains depleted of natural resources. Its air polluted by caustic iron and belching smoke, Earth faces her last desperate days in the grip of global environmental collapse.

In one final and feeble effort, Earth's Grand President Mankin musters the dregs of his fleet and sends three separate missions to the deepest reaches of space. Their mission: solicit help from far-flung colonial civilizations, or watch the planet die.

Also includes the science fiction adventures, "Battling Bolto," the story of a giant, con man who's running an interstellar scam, while the biggest trick of all lies right under his nose; and "Tough Old Man," in which an aging constable's lack of feelings is not a matter of insensitivity, but of a secret--and surprising--side of his character.

Contents:

Tough Old Man - (1950) - novelette
When Shadows Fall - (1948) - short story
Battling Bolto - (1950) - short story

Clive Barker's Shadows in Eden

Shaun Hutson

In Oxford and Paris psychic investigators are attempting to probe forbidden areas of the mind. In New York, writer David Blake is studying the methods of miracle healer Jonathon Mathias. Driven by their own desperate motives, these researchers are about to unlock Pandora's Box.

One Hundred Shadows

Hwang Jungeun

An oblique, hard-edged novel tinged with offbeat fantasy, One Hundred Shadows is set in a slum electronics market in central Seoul - an area earmarked for demolition in a city better known for its shiny skyscrapers and slick pop videos. Here, the awkward, tentative relationship between Eungyo and Mujae, who both dropped out of formal education to work as repair-shop assistants, is made yet more uncertain by their economic circumstances, while their matter-of-fact discussion of a strange recent development - the shadows of the slum's inhabitants have started to 'rise' - leaves the reader to make up their own mind as to the nature of this shape-shifting tale.

Hwang's spare prose is illuminated by arresting images, quirky dialogue and moments of great lyricism, crafting a deeply affecting novel of perfectly calibrated emotional restraint. Known for her interest in social minorities, Hwang eschews the dreary realism usually employed for such issues, without her social criticism being any less keen. As well as an important contribution to contemporary working-class literature, One Hundred Shadows depicts the little-known underside of a society which can be viciously superficial, complicating the shiny, ultra-modern face which South Korea presents to the world.

Promise of Shadows

Justina Ireland

Zephyr Mourning has never been very good at being a Harpy. She'd rather watch reality TV than learn forty-seven ways to kill a man, and she pretty much sucks at wielding magic. Zephyr was ready for a future pretending to be a normal human instead of a half-god assassin. But all that changed when her sister was murdered--and Zephyr used a forbidden dark power to save herself from the same fate.

On the run from a punishment worse than death, an unexpected reunion with a childhood friend upends Zephyr's world--and not only because her old friend has grown surprisingly, extremely hot. It seems that Zephyr might just be the Nyx, a dark goddess that is prophesied to shift the power balance: for hundreds of years the half-gods have lived in fear, and Zephyr is supposed to change that.

But how is she supposed to save everyone else when she can barely take care of herself?

A Portrait In Shadow

Nicole Jarvis

When Artemisia Gentileschi arrives in Florence seeking a haven for her art, she faces instant opposition from the powerful Accademia, self-proclaimed gatekeepers of Florence's magical art world. As artists create their masterpieces, they add layer upon layer of magics drawn from their own life essence, giving each work the power to heal -- or to curse. The all-male Accademia jealously guards its power and has no place for an ambitious young woman arriving from Rome under a cloud of scandal.

Haunted by the shadow of her harrowing past and fighting for every commission, Artemisia begins winning allies among luminaries such as Galileo Galilei, the influential Cristina de' Medici and the charming, wealthy Francesco Maria Maringhi. But not everyone in Florence wants to see Artemisia succeed, and when an incendiary preacher turns his ire from Galileo to the art world, Artemisia must choose between revenge and her dream of creating a legacy that will span the generations.

Daystar and Shadow

James B. Johnson

Their friends - the enemy! Their enemies - all mankind!

Daystar was a fugitive from the bands of civilized men who regarded him as a traitor. Shadow was a girl, another wanderer in the wastelands, When the two finally met and joined minds, the world would be transformed and the final struggle for Earth's dominion would be launched.

In the Shadow of the Gargoyle

In this unique book about horror fiction writer Clive Barker, readers get a fascinating look at the man and his work through a collection of interviews, essays, reviews, and discussions. Heavily illustrated with rare photos, stills, and drawings, 16 in full color. With an introduction by Stephen King.

Shadowblade

Anna Kashina

A young sword prodigy must impersonate a lost princess and throw her life into a deadly political game, in this kinetic epic fantasy novel by the author of the award-winning Majat Code series.

Naia dreams of becoming a Jaihar Blademaster, but after assaulting a teacher, her future seems ruined. The timely intervention of a powerful stranger suddenly elevates her into elite Upper Grounds training. She has no idea that the stranger is Dal Gassan, head of the Daljeer Circle. Seventeen years ago he witnessed the massacre of Challimar's court and rescued its sole survivor, a baby girl. Gassan plans to thrust a blade into the machinations of imperial succession: Naia. Disguised as the legendary Princess Xarimet of Challimar, Naia must challenge the imperial family, and win. Naia is no princess, but with her desert-kissed eyes and sword skills she might be close enough...

Thomas S. Roche
Nancy Kilpatrick

Contents:

Introduction - (1998) - essay by Nancy Kilpatrick and Thomas S. Roche
The Soft Sound of Wings - (1998) - short story by Charles L. Grant
How Do You Think It Feels? - (1998) - short story by Neil Gaiman
The Gargoyle's Shadow - (1998) - novelette by Katherine Kurtz
Scylla and Charybdis - (1998) - short story by Don D'Ammassa
Studies in Stone - (1998) - short story by Robert J. Harris and Jane Yolen
Hagoday - (1998) - short story by Melanie Tem
May This Be Your Last Sorrow - (1998) - short story by Charles de Lint
Little Dedo - (1998) - short story by Nancy Holder
The Gargoyle's Song - (1998) - novelette by Alan Rodgers
The Luststone - (1991) - novelette by Brian Lumley
Found Angels - (1998) - short story by Christa Faust and Caitlín R. Kiernan
The Hour of the Sisters - (1998) - novelette by Jo Clayton
Smiling Beasties - (1998) - short story by Wendy Webb
Now Entering Monkeyface - (1998) - short story by Marc Levinthal and John Mason Skipp
Tempters - (1998) - short story by Lucy Taylor
Cenotaph - (1998) - novelette by Brian Hodge
Bleeding Stones - (1973) - short story by Harlan Ellison
The Gallery - (1998) - uncredited essay

Shadow-Hawk

Garry Kilworth

Somewhere, deep in the mighty rainforest, is the Kingdom of the Sun Bear. And there, legend has it, are the seven ancient heads of the Punan - and the secret of untold riches.

To find and possess the heads, a man must brave not only the terrifying creatures of the forest, but must also risk the displeasure of the gods and spirits that inhabit it.

Yet, two groups set off in a ferocious rivalry in pursuit of the legend. They disturb the equilibrium of the forest and risk awful consequences. For, it seems, only one creature can benefit from such a quest - Shadow-hawk, the eater of men's souls.

77 Shadow Street

Dean Koontz

I am the One, the all and the only. I live in the Pendleton as surely as I live everywhere. I am the Pendleton's history and its destiny. The building is my place of conception, my monument, my killing ground....

The Pendleton stands on the summit of Shadow Hill at the highest point of an old heartland city, a Gilded Age palace built in the late 1800s as a tycoon's dream home. Almost from the beginning, its grandeur has been scarred by episodes of madness, suicide, mass murder, and whispers of things far worse. But since its rechristening in the 1970s as a luxury apartment building, the Pendleton has been at peace. For its fortunate residents--among them a successful songwriter and her young son, a disgraced ex-senator, a widowed attorney, and a driven money manager--the Pendleton's magnificent quarters are a sanctuary, its dark past all but forgotten.

But now inexplicable shadows caper across walls, security cameras relay impossible images, phantom voices mutter in strange tongues, not-quite-human figures lurk in the basement, elevators plunge into unknown depths. With each passing hour, a terrifying certainty grows: Whatever drove the Pendleton's past occupants to their unspeakable fates is at work again. Soon, all those within its boundaries will be engulfed by a dark tide from which few have escaped.

Dean Koontz transcends all expectations as he takes readers on a gripping journey to a place where nightmare visions become real--and where a group of singular individuals hold the key to humanity's destiny. Welcome to 77 Shadow Street.

Shadowfires

Dean Koontz

Rachael Leben's violently possessive ex-husband, Eric, hideously mangled in a freak accident, is dead. But his body has disappeared from the city morgue.

Now someone, or something, is watching Rachael. Calling her. Stalking her. And though no one will believe her, she knows who it is; that his walking corpse is a grotesque mockery of life, and his brilliant, warped mind, once again 'alive', is seething with jealous rage, seeking an unspeakable revenge.

Shiva in Shadow

Nancy Kress

This novella originally appeared in the anthology Between Worlds (2004) edited by Robert Silverberg, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, May 2014. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Second Annual Collection (2005), edited by Gardner Dozois, and The Final Frontier (2018), edited by Neil Clarke. The story is included in the collections Nano Comes to Clifford Falls: And Other Stories (2008) and The Best of Nancy Kress (2015).

In the Shadow of the Towers: Speculative Fiction in a Post-9/11 World

Douglas Lain

In the Shadow of the Towers compiles nearly twenty works of speculative fiction responding to and inspired by the events of 9/11, from writers seeking to confront, rebuild, and carry on, even in the face of overwhelming emotion.

Writer and editor Douglas Lain presents a thought-provoking anthology featuring a variety of award-winning and best-selling authors, from Jeff VanderMeer (Annihilation) and Cory Doctorow (Little Brother) to Susan Palwick (Flying in Place) and James Morrow (Towing Jehovah). Touching on themes as wide-ranging as politics, morality, and even heartfelt nostalgia, today's speculative fiction writers prove that the rubric of the fantastic offers an incomparable view into how we respond to tragedy.

Each contributor, in his or her own way, contemplates the same question:

How can we continue dreaming in the shadow of the towers?

Table of Contents:

There's a Hole in the City - (2005) - shortstory by Richard Bowes
My Eyes, Your Ears - (2010) - shortfiction by Ray Vukcevich
Beautiful Stuff - (2004) - shortstory by Susan Palwick
The Goat Variations - (2009) - shortstory by Jeff VanderMeer
The Three Resurrections of Jessica Churchill - (2015) - shortstory by Kelly Robson
Retribution - (2012) - shortfiction by Tim Marquitz
Until Forgiveness Comes - (2008) - shortstory by K. Tempest Bradford
Pipeline - (2005) - novelette by Brian W. Aldiss
Unexpected Outcomes - (2009) - shortstory by Tim Pratt
Closing Time - (2003) - novella by Jack Ketchum
The Last Apollo Mission - (2011) - novelette by Douglas Lain
Giliad - (2004) - novella by Gregory Feeley
Apologue - (2001) - shortstory by James Morrow
Beyond the Flags - shortfiction by Kris Saknussemm
Our Lady of Toledo Transmission - shortfiction by Rob McCleary
Out of My Sight, Out of My Mind - shortfiction by David D. Friedman
The Zenith Angle (excerpt) - shortfiction by Bruce Sterling
Little Brother (excerpt) - shortfiction by Cory Doctorow

Bleeding Shadows

Joe R. Lansdale

Bleeding Shadows is Joe R. Lansdale's largest, most varied collection to date. Weighing in at 480 pages and 150,000 words, these stories, poems, and novellas--supplemented by the author's introduction and by an invaluable set of story notes--move effortlessly from horror, adventure, and suspense to literary pastiche. It is, by any measure, a major addition to an already impressive body of work.

The volume opens with "Torn Away," in which a small town sheriff encounters a man on the run from his own predatory shadow. The stories that follow come from all points of the narrative compass. In "Morning, Noon, and Night," a young boy stumbles across a monstrous, multi-faceted killer from which there is no escape. "The Bleeding Shadow" is a tale of music, monsters, and deals-with-the devil set in post-WWII Texas. In "Star Light, Eyes Bright," an ordinary husband makes a startling discovery, one that leads to an unimaginable act of personal transformation. Elsewhere, the author offers us twisted Christmas stories ("Santa at the Café"), tales of a zombie apocalypse ("A Visit with Friends"), and one story--"Christmas with the Dead"--that encompasses both of these elements. Other highlights include a pair of informed, affectionate acts of literary homage. "Metal Men of Mars" pays tribute to the Martian novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs, while in "Dread Island," the masterful novella that concludes this collection, the world of Huckleberry Finn merges seamlessly with the worlds of H. P. Lovecraft and Joel Chandler Harris.

Sometimes funny, often horrifying, and always compulsively readable, this generous gathering of stories--few of which have previously appeared in book form--constitutes a significant publishing event. Bleeding Shadows is an indispensable, vastly entertaining volume, one that no admirer of Joe R. Lansdale's distinctive brand of fiction can afford to miss.

Table of Contents:

Introduction
Torn Away
The Bleeding Shadow
A Visit with Friends
Christmas Monkeys
Christmas with the Dead
Quarry
Six Finger Jack
Mr. Bear
Old Man in the Motorized Chair
Apache Witch
Soldierin'
Death Before Bed
Apocalypse
A Strange Poem
Little Words
The Man
Dead Air
Dog in Winter
Hide and Horns
The Stars are Falling
Metal Men of Mars
Morning, Noon, and Night
Santa at the Café
What Happened to Me
Oink
Star Light, Eyes Bright
Dead Sister
Shooting Pool
The Folding Man
Dread Island
Story Notes

Sung in Shadow

Tanith Lee

In a parallel world, in a Renaissance Italy just a little bit different from that we know, a dashing young man named Romulan met a lovely young lady named Iuletta. But between their romance stood the hatred of their feuding families - and a witchcraft that really worked.

Conservation of Shadows

Yoon Ha Lee

There is no such thing as conservation of shadows. When light destroys shadows, darkness does not gain in density elsewhere. When shadows steal over earth and across the sky, darkness is not diluted...

In this debut collection of short fiction from one of science fiction and fantasy's most notable new writers, Yoon Ha Lee often integrates tropes of science fiction with elements of myth to create tales that are both wonderfully fresh and deeply ancient. No matter what the theme, her wide variety of stories are strikingly original and always indelible.

Table of Contents:

Introduction - essay by Aliette de Bodard
Ghostweight - (2011)
The Shadow Postulates - (2007)
The Bones of Giants - (2009)
Between Two Dragons - (2010)
Swanwatch - (2009)
Effigy Nights - (2013)
Flower, Mercy, Needle, Chain - (2010)
Iseul's Lexicon - (2013)
Counting the Shapes - (2001)
Blue Ink - (2008)
The Battle of Candle Arc - (2012)
A Vector Alphabet of Interstellar Travel - (2011)
The Unstrung Zither - (2009)
The Black Abacus - (2002)
The Book of Locked Doors - (2012)
Conservation of Shadows - (2011)

Conservation of Shadows

Yoon Ha Lee

This short story originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, #59 August 2011. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2012, edited by Paula Guran and Clarkesworld: Year Five (2013), edited by Sean Wallace and Neil Clarke. It is included in the collection Conservation of Shadows (2013).

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

Ship of Shadows

Fritz Leiber

Hugo Award winning and Nebula Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July 1969. The story can also be found in the anthologies World's Best Science Fiction: 1970, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr, The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction: A Special 25th Anniversary Anthology (1974), edited by Edward L. Ferman, and The Hugo Winners, Volume 3: (1970-75) (1977), edited by Isaac Asimov. It is included in the collections Ship of Shadows (1979), The Leiber Chronicles: Fifty Years of Fritz Leiber (1990), Gummitch and Friends (1992) and Masters of Science Fiction: Fritz Leiber (2016). It is half of Tor Double #5: No Truce With Kings/Ship of Shadows (1989, with Poul Anderson).

Ship of Shadows (collection)

Fritz Leiber

A collection of stories.

FABULOUS VOYAGER...

Fritz Leiber, America's finest fantasist, is the winner of six Hugo Awards and three Nebula Awards. In this award winning new collection you can be transported to a shadowy alternate reality where Germany won the Second World War; watch a man play dice with the devil; sail in the farthest realms of dark imagining, or observe a war being fought back and forth across time on a shuttle of shifting and uncertain reality...

These are tales of humour and horror, invention and enchantment, conjuring us into the incomparable universe of Fritz Leiber, a fabulous voyager in the incandescent world of his own imagining.

Table of Contents:

Ship of Shadows - (1969) - novella
Catch That Zeppelin! - (1975) - shortstory
Gonna Roll the Bones - (1967) - novelette
Ill Met in Lankhmar - (1970) - novella
Belsen Express - (1975) - shortstory
The Big Time - (1958) - novel

The Shadows Between Us

Tricia Levenseller

"They've never found the body of the first and only boy who broke my heart. And they never will."

Alessandra is tired of being overlooked, but she has a plan to gain power:

1) Woo the Shadow King.
2) Marry him.
3) Kill him and take his kingdom for herself.

No one knows the extent of the freshly crowned Shadow King's power. Some say he can command the shadows that swirl around him to do his bidding. Others say they speak to him, whispering the thoughts of his enemies. Regardless, Alessandra knows what she deserves, and she's going to do everything within her power to get it.

But Alessandra's not the only one trying to kill the king. As attempts on his life are made, she finds herself trying to keep him alive long enough for him to make her his queen--all while struggling not to lose her heart. After all, who better for a Shadow King than a cunning, villainous queen?

Game of Shadows

Erika Lewis

Thousands of years ago in Ireland, an ancient race fought a world-changing battle -- and lost. Their land overrun, the Celtic gods and goddesses fled, while the mythical races and magical druids sailed to an uncharted continent, cloaked so mankind could never find it. This new homeland was named Tara.

In modern day Los Angeles, Ethan Makkai struggles with an overprotective mother who never lets him out of her sight, and a terrifying secret: he can see ghosts. Desperate for a taste of freedom, he leaves his apartment by himself for the first time -- only to find his life changed forever. After being attacked by dive-bombing birds, he races home to find the place trashed and his mother gone.

With the help of a captain from Tara who has been secretly watching the Makkais for a long time, Ethan sets out to save his mother; a journey that leads him to the hidden lands, and straight into the arms of a vicious sorcerer who will stop at nothing until he controls Tara. With new-found allies including Christian, the cousin he never knew he had, and Lily, the sword-slinging healer who'd rather fight than mend bones, Ethan travels an arduous road -- dodging imprisonment, battling beasts he thought only existed in nightmares, and accepting help from the beings he's always sought to avoid: ghosts. This L.A. teen must garner strength from his gift and embrace his destiny if he's going to save his mother, the fearless girl he's fallen for, and all the people of Tara.

The Shadow at the Bottom of the World

Thomas Ligotti

Brings together some of the best works of master horror writer Thomas Ligotti. The title story The Shadow at the Bottom of the World is the tale of a small town that is gripped by a kind of existential darkness.

The Shadowed Path: A Jonmarc Vanhanian Collection

Gail Z. Martin

NOTHING AHEAD BUT VENGEANCE - NOTHING BEHIND BUT BLOOD

Soldier. Fight slave. Smuggler. Warrior. Brigand Lord. You may have encountered Jonmarc Vahanian in the Chronicles of the Necromancer but you don't really know him until you walk in his footsteps. This is the start of his epic journey.

A blacksmith's son in a small fishing village before raiders killed his amily, Jonmarc was wounded and left for dead in the attack. He tried to rebuild his life, but when a dangerous bargain with a shadowy stranger went wrong, he found himself on the run.

Gail Z. Martin returns to the world of her internationally best-selling books with these thrilling ales of adventure and high fantasy, collected together here for the very first time.

Songs of Stars and Shadows

George R. R. Martin

A feast of legends to savor - some with a shudder, some with a smile - Deadly spiders big as pumpkins consume victims who scream with joy...The saga of a man who lives alone on his own planet...Adrian Colmer, Master Probe, takes on a client who claims to be the subject of telepathic torment...An all-too-possible revolution in the United States, post-1984...How Jupiter got its thirteenth moon...And other astonishing tales.

Table of Contents

Introduction (Songs of Stars and Shadows)
This Tower of Ashes - (1976)
Patrick Henry, Jupiter, and the Little Red Brick Spaceship - (1976)
Men of Greywater Station - (1976) with Howard Waldrop
The Lonely Songs of Laren Dorr - (1976)
Night of the Vampyres - (1975)
The Runners - (1975)
Night Shift - (1973)
". . . For a Single Yesterday" - (1975)
And Seven Times Never Kill Man - (1975)

Shadow on the Sun

Richard Matheson

Originally published as a mass-market Western in 1994, Shadow on the Sun has been out of print for years and was largely overlooked by horror fans and general readers.

Now at last this forgotten tale of supernatural terror returns to chill the blood of Matheson's many fans.

Southwest Arizona, a century ago. An uneasy true exists between the remote frontier community of Picture City and the neighboring Apaches. That delicate peace is shredded when the bodies of two white men are found hideously mutilated. The angry townspeople are certain the "savages" have broken the treaty, but Billjohn Finley, the local Indian agent, fears that darker, more unholy forces may be at work. There's a tall, dark stranger in town, who rode in wearing the dead men's clothes. A stranger who may not be entirely human....

Name of a Shadow

Ann Maxwell

PLANET WITH NO TOMORROWS

Its landscapes are washed by waterfalls of prismatic colors; its lush plains covered with turquoise aphrodisiac flowers. But soon there will be no flowers, no lovers, no tomorrows. The planet Malia has violated the Sole Restraint of Concorde, the space federation, by waging undeclared war on its former colony world, Vintra. Now Malia faces a swift and terrible fate: world-consuming molecular fire. As time ticks toward extinction for all Malians, Kayle, the mind-link, and Ryth, the pattern-master, race to discover why a people would knowingly commit an act of self destruction. Their only hope is a beautiful, unwilling accomplice, Faen, the last of an ancient aristocracy. She alone knows the secret of the sarsa, the musical instrument that can summon the undying wisdom of the shadows. She alone can call its name....

Timeshadow Rider

Ann Maxwell

Sharia and Kane, two Timeshadow Riders, share the power to see and know things others cannot--a power that makes them strong, feared, and dangerous. Now, as a deadly plague threatens their beloved planet, the Timeshadow Riders are a beleaguered civilization's final hope. And as passion flares between them like a firestorm, Sharia and Kane must battle the love that could ignite the greatest explosion of force and feeling of all!

Shadow Histories of the River Kingdom

Juliet E. McKenna

Imaginary friends should be a comfort when other consolations fail. But what if these longed-for companions think different? What if they're none too pleased to be summoned? What if untamed magic can spawn creatures from daydreams or nightmares? Could something eerie half-glimpsed in a shadow actually be there?

Shadow Histories of the River Kingdom introduces a brand new fantasy setting from acclaimed author Juliet E McKenna. This volume brings together stories previously available in a range of publications, not all easily found, as well as some new material.

Welcome to the River Kingdom, where shadows can be all too solid and dangerous.

Ombria in Shadow

Patricia A. McKillip

Ombria. It is a city that echoes with the footfalls of sapphire-heeled shoes that holds its breath as a straw-haired apparition glides through its streets that sees its dreams and nightmares take shape in the drawings of a bastard-heir. It is an enchanted time and place envisioned by World Fantasy Award winner Patricia A. McKillip, acclaimed author of The Tower at Stony Wood.

When Ombria's prince, Royce Greve, breathes his last in palace rooms high above the city he leaves his young son at the mercy of his ancient great-aunt, Domina Pearl a woman who has plotted her rise to power in Ombria for far too many years to allow a little boy to stand in her way. Already she has thrown Greve's pretty mistress out into the streets, where no one would expect her to live an hour. The boy will take her a little longer. Meanwhile, in a dreamlike underworld peopled by Ombria's ghosts, a sorceress weaves her spells and brews her potions, never revealing her real face or true heart. And somewhere in between, the struggle to rule the whole of Ombria both its light and shadows will rest in the hands of those whose fractured lives align like the lost pieces of a magical puzzle.

Phyllis Miller
Andre Norton

Robin McKinley

Maggie knows something's off about Val, her mom's new husband. Val is from Oldworld, where they still use magic, and he won't have any tech in his office-shed behind the house. But--more importantly--what are the huge, horrible, jagged, jumpy shadows following him around? Magic is illegal in Newworld, which is all about science. The magic-carrying gene was disabled two generations ago, back when Maggie's great-grandmother was a notable magician. But that was a long time ago.

Then Maggie meets Casimir, the most beautiful boy she has ever seen. He's from Oldworld too--and he's heard of Maggie's stepfather, and has a guess about Val's shadows. Maggie doesn't want to know... until earth-shattering events force her to depend on Val and his shadows. And perhaps on her own heritage.

In this dangerously unstable world, neither science nor magic has the necessary answers, but a truce between them is impossible. And although the two are supposed to be incompatible, Maggie's discovering the world will need both to survive.

House of Shadows

Mike and Susan feel a mounting sense of urgency and terror as they try to protect their younger brother who seems threatened by an invisible and powerful force in a house that has long been in their family, on which there is supposedly a curse.

Shadow of the Crown

Craig Mills

Kemp, a thief, must penetrate the Black Tower and raid the royal treasury, retrieving the wooden box that could help the exiled king regain his rightful place on the throne.

Your Shadow Half Remains

Sunny Moraine

ONE LOOK CAN KILL

Riley has not seen a single human face in longer than she can reckon. No faces, no eyes. Not if you want to survive.

But when a new neighbor moves in down the road, Riley's overwhelming need for human contact makes her throw caution to the wind. Somehow, in this world where other people can mean a gruesome, bloody death, Ellis makes her feel safe. As they grow closer, Riley's grip on reality begins to slip and she can no longer fight her deepest desires.

All Riley wants to do is look.

She Walks in Shadows

Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Paula R. Stiles

They emerge from the shadows, to claim the night.... Women from around the world delve into Lovecraftian depths, penning and illustrating a variety of Weird horrors. The pale and secretive Lavinia wanders through the woods, Asenath is a precocious teenager with an attitude, and the Ancient Egyptian pharaoh Nitocris has found a new body in distant America. And do you have time to hear a word from our beloved mother Shub-Niggurath? Defiant, destructive, terrifying, and harrowing, the women in She Walks in Shadows are monsters and mothers, heroes and devourers. Observe them in all their glory. Iä! Iä!

Table of Contents:

"Bitter Perfume" by Laura Blackwell
"Violet is the Color of Your Energy" by Nadia Bulkin
"Body to Body to Body" by Selena Chambers
"Magna Mater" by Arinn Dembo
"De Deabus Minoribus Exterioris Theomagicae" by Jilly Dreadful
"Hairwork" by Gemma Files
"The Head of T'la-yub" by Nelly Geraldine García-Rosas (translated by Silvia Moreno-Garcia)
"Bring the Moon to Me" by Amelia Gorman
"Chosen" by Lyndsey Holder
"Eight Seconds" by Pandora Hope
"Cthulhu of the Dead Sea" by Inkeri Kontro
"Turn out the Light" by Penelope Love
"The Adventurer's Wife" by Premee Mohamed
"Notes Found in a Decommissioned Asylum, December 1961" by Sharon Mock
"The Eye of Juno" by Eugenie Mora
"Ammutseba Rising" by Ann K. Schwader
"Cypress God" by Rodopi Sisamis
"Lavinia's Wood" by Angela Slatter
"The Opera Singer" by Priya Sridhar
"Provenance" by Benjanun Sriduangkaew
"The Thing in The Cheerleading Squad" by Molly Tanzer
"Lockbox" by E. Catherine Tobler
"When She Quickens" by Mary Turzillo
"Shub-Niggurath's Witnesses" by Valerie Valdes
"Queen of a New America" by Wendy N. Wagner

Gods of Jade and Shadow

Silvia Moreno-Garcia

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. Failure will mean Casiopea's demise, but success could make her dreams come true.

In the company of the strangely alluring god and armed with her wits, Casiopea begins an adventure that will take her on a cross-country odyssey from the jungles of Yucatán to the bright lights of Mexico City--and deep into the darkness of the Mayan underworld.

The Shadow Hunter

Pat Murphy

On the wrong end of history, a Neanderthal boy fights to get home

For generations, the people of the valley have hunted the bear, killing it to draw on its mystical power. On his first hunt, a young member of the tribe pursues the bear through the wilderness. Moments before their battle begins, the boy plunges into darkness--and awakes in a world beyond his wildest imagination, where nature is corrupted and the boundaries of time mean nothing at all.

The researchers who brought him into the future call the Neanderthal boy "Sam." The portal he fell through is the plaything of a billionaire intent on repopulating the world of its many extinct animals: birds, wolves, and bears. Sam was brought along by accident, but he will find a purpose in these alien surroundings. Guided by one woman who can see the past and another who can look into the future, the boy who hunted the bear will unlock the mysteries of time itself.

Light and Shadow: Eight Short Stories

Linda Nagata

Light and Shadow collects eight stories by award-winning author Linda Nagata. Visit high-tech future battlefields, surreal other worlds, an orbital habitat, and a distant moon. Embrace action, and harrowing adventure. Half of these stories have appeared in various best-of-the-year anthologies, and each is introduced with brief notes from the author.

Table of Contents:

"Through Your Eyes" (2013) - short story
"Halfway Home" (2013) - short story
"Codename: Delphi" (2014) - short story
"Attitude" (2014) - novelette
"A Moment Before It Struck" (2012) - short story
"Light and Shadow" (2014) - short story
"Nightside on Callisto" (2012) - short story
"The Way Home" (2015) - short story

House of Shadows

Rachel Neumeier

Orphaned, two sisters are left to find their own way. Sweet and proper, Karah's future seems secure at a glamorous Flower House. She could be pampered for the rest of her life... if she agrees to play their game.

Nemienne, neither sweet nor proper, has fewer choices. Left with no alternative, she accepts a mysterious mage's offer of an apprenticeship. Agreeing means a home and survival, but can Nemienne trust the mage? With the arrival of a foreign bard into the quiet city, dangerous secrets are unearthed, and both sisters find themselves at the center of a plot that threatens not only to upset their newly found lives, but also to destroy their kingdom.

House of Small Shadows

Adam Nevill

Catherine's last job ended badly. Corporate bullying at a top television production company saw her fired and forced to leave London, but she was determined to get her life back. A new job and now things look much brighter. Especially when a challenging new project presents itself - to catalogue the late M H Mason's wildly eccentric cache of antique dolls and puppets. Rarest of all, she'll get to examine his elaborate displays of posed, costumed and preserved animals, depicting scenes from World War I. When Mason's elderly niece invites her to stay at the Red House itself, where she maintains the collection, Catherine can't believe her luck. Until his niece exposes her to the dark message behind her uncle's 'Art'. Catherine tries to concentrate on the job, but M H Mason's damaged visions raise dark shadows from her own past. Shadows she'd hoped had finally been erased. Soon the barriers between reality, sanity and memory start to merge. And some truths seem too terrible to be real.

Saturday's Shadow

William F. Nolan

WFA nominated novelette. It originally appeared in the anthology Shadows 2 (1979), edited by Charles L. Grant. The story can also be found in the anthology Masters of Darkness (1986), edited by Dennis Etchison. It is included in the collections Things Beyond Midnight (1984), and Dark Universe: Stories 1951-2001 (2001).

Brother to Shadows

Andre Norton

A senior member of an order of spies, assassins, and bodyguards forces Jofre out into an unfamiliar world, where he encounters an obsessed alien archaeologist and a beautiful, deadly rival. By the award-winning author of the "Witch World" series.

The Shadow of Sorcery

Andrew J. Offutt

Hoping to find the fabled Rings of Senek, adventurer Shadowspawn travels to the outskirts of a city ruled by sorcerers where he must first navigate the labyrinthine maze beneath the city.

The Shadow Speaker

Nnedi Okorafor

Driven by vengeance. Destined for peace. Niger, West Africa, 2070: After fifteen-year old Ejii witnesses her father's beheading, her world shatters. In an era of mind-blowing technology and seductive magic, Ejii embarks on a mystical journey to track down her father's killer. With a newfound friend by her side, Ejii comes face to face with an earth turned inside out--and with her own magical powers. But Ejii soon discovers that her travels across the sands of the Sahara have a greater purpose. Her people need to be protected from a force seeking to annihilate them. And Ejii may be just the hero to do it. This futuristic, fantastical adventure heralds a bright new talent on the YA fantasy scene.

The Boy Who Cast No Shadow

Thomas Olde Heuvelt

This story appeared in the Postscripts anthology Unfit For Eden.

The Boy Who Cast No Shadow won the prestigious Paul Harland Award for best Dutch story of the Fantastic in 2010. Mr. Olde Heuvelt tells us he wrote it in a four-day rush in between two chapters of a novel which was giving him uncontrollable screaming fits at the time. "To me," he adds, "it's a story about being different and coming to terms with the fact that that ain't such a bad thing. With this story I humbly paid homage to Joe Hill's Pop Art, which I think is the best short story of the 21st Century."

This story was anthologized in The Apex Book of Wold SF 4, edited by Mahvesh Murad.

Read this story for free from PS Publishing (epub or mobi).

Stalking Shadows

Cyla Panin

Seventeen-year-old Marie mixes perfumes to sell on market day in her small eighteenth-century French town. She wants to make enough to save a dowry for her sister, Ama, in hopes of Ama marrying well and Marie living in the level of freedom afforded only to spinster aunts. But her perfumes are more than sweet scents in cheap, cut-glass bottles: A certain few are laced with death. Marie laces the perfume delicately--not with poison but with a hint of honeysuckle she's trained her sister to respond to. Marie marks her victim, and Ama attacks. But she doesn't attack as a girl. She kills as a beast.

Marking Ama's victims controls the damage to keep suspicion at bay. But when a young boy turns up dead one morning, Marie is forced to acknowledge she might be losing control of Ama. And if she can't control her, she'll have to cure her. Marie knows the only place she'll find the cure is in the mansion where Ama was cursed in the first place, home of Lord Sebastien LaClaire. But once she gets into the mansion, she discovers dark secrets hidden away--secrets of the curse, of Lord Sebastien... and of herself

When I Cast Your Shadow

Sarah Porter

A TEENAGE GIRL CALLS HER BELOVED OLDER BROTHER BACK FROM THE GRAVE, WITH DISASTROUS CONSEQUENCES....

RUBY
Haunted by her dead brother, unable to let him go, Ruby must figure out whether his nightly appearances in her dreams are the answer to her prayers--or a nightmare come true...

EVERETT
He's always been jealous of his dashing older brother. Now Everett must do everything he can to save his twin sister Ruby from his clutches.

DASHIELL
Charming, handsome, and manipulative, Dash has run afoul of some very powerful forces in the Land of the Dead. His only bargaining chips are Ruby and Everett. At stake is the very survival of the Bohnacker family, bodies and souls....

Shadowman

Geo W. Proctor

Tula, founded by an Earthly conglomerate fifty years before - the perfect world, a utopia in the stars, where crime and conflict are completely unknown... until a single shadowy assassin strikes in terror.

To Kill a Shadow

Katherine Quinn

Jude Maddox knows nothing of love or even light. He knows only his grim duty as the Hand of Death, to lead the Knights of the Eternal Star into a land filled with nightmares and certain demise. It's only when he sees her--a young woman with wild, amber eyes who's as fierce, defiant, and swift as the shadow beasts themselves--that he feels the warmth of life in his blood...

The other Knights may fear their lethal commander, with his hard, merciless demeanor. Outcast Kiara Frey sees only a leader, a man who knows how to survive. Someone like her. But wanting him is as treacherous as the shadows themselves... and just as seductive.

With a kingdom on the verge of collapse, the Knights must now venture into the darkest heart of the land and uncover the secrets of the misted shadows, where evil will prey upon their minds and feast on their flesh.

It will betray their senses. It will surpass their nightmares. Most of them will die.

But they have no other choice. Because the only way to fight the darkness... is to become it.

Shadow in the Empire of Light

Jane Routley

MAGIC. MURDER. MAYHEM. But keep it in the family.

Shine's life is usually dull: an orphan without magic in a family of powerful mages, she's left to run the family estate with only an eccentric aunt and telepathic cat for company.

But when the family descend on the house for the annual Fertility Festival, Shine is plunged into dark intrigue; stolen letters, a fugitive spy, and family drama mix with murder, sex and secrets, and Shine is forced to decide both her loyalties and future...

Those Shadows Laugh

Geoff Ryman

This novelette originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, September-October 2016. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fourth Annual Collection (2017), edited by Gardner Dozois, and The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Eleven (2017), edited by Jonathan Strahan.

The Shadow War of the Night Dragons, Book One: The Dead City: Prologue

John Saul

They call it the Academy. A secluded, cliff-top mansion overlooking the rugged Pacific coast. A school for children gifted -- or cursed -- with extraordinary minds. Children soon to come under the influence of an intelligence even more brilliant than their own -- and unspeakably evil. For within this mind a dark plan is taking form. A plan so horrifying, no one will believe it. No one but the children. And for them it is already too late. Too late, unless one young student can resist the seductive invitation that will lead... into the Shadows.

John Scalzi

Old Man's War author John Scalzi's sendup of the heroic fantasy genre was a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Short Story.

This was Tor.com's April Fool's Day Joke in 2011. The title was chosen based on the statistically-most-used words in Fantasy novels. Fun Fact: Scalzi's agent actually received a call from someone in Hollywood, wanting to buy the option on this "novel" for a movie.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

Watch Hugo-nominated Fan Writer "Mark Reads" Oshiro's hilarious video reading of this story here. (PG for profanity)

Shadow Man

Melissa Scott

In the far future, human culture has developed five distinctive genders due to the effects of a drug easing sickness from faster-than-light travel. But on the planet Hara, where society is increasingly instability, caught between hard-liner traditions and the realities of life, only male and female genders are legal, and the ''odd-bodied'' population are forced to pass as one or the other. Warreven Stiller, a lawyer and an intersexed person, is an advocate for those who have violated Haran taboos. When Hara regains contact with the Concord worlds, Warreven finds a larger role in breaking the long-standing role society has forced on ''him,'' but the search for personal identity becomes a battleground of political intrigue and cultural clash.

Ormeshadow

Priya Sharma

Uprooted from Bath by his father's failures, Gideon Belman finds himself stranded on Ormeshadow farm, an ancient place of chalk and ash and shadow. The land crests the Orme, a buried, sleeping dragon that dreams resentment, jealousy, estrangement, death. Or so the folklore says. Growing up in a house that hates him, Gideon finds his only comforts in the land. Gideon will live or die by the Orme, as all his family has.

This historical novella is about a farming family, the Belmans; their estrangements, jealousies, adultery, abuse, and suicide, as seen through the eyes of Gideon Belman from childhood to young man. The Belman fabled fortune and personal myths are rooted in the Orme, a land named from the Norse word for dragon. The Orme legends become a cornerstone for Gideon when he loses everything that he loves. Burning with resentment and intrigue, this fantastical family drama invites readers to dig up the secrets of the Belman family, and wonder whether myths and legends are real enough to answer for a history of sin.

Silk Roads and Shadows

Susan Shwartz

Alexandra, sister of the dying Emperor of Byzantium, undertakes a mission to smuggle live silkworms from the mysterious Empire of Ch'in. Hounded by ferocious sorcery and an array of magical helpers, she must walk the length of the known world to save an empire threatened by her very existence.

The Shadow People

Margaret St. Clair

They called it Underearth. It was a kind of Hell in reverse--a world of cold, darkness and dread existing unsuspected beneath Earth's surface, peopled by weird half-human creatures who had once been men and women.

Aldridge found the fantastic entrance to it in his desperate search for Carol, the beautiful, mysterious girl he loved. All he knew was that she had vanished into the Otherworld and that he had to find her.

He did find her--but she was strangely changed into an almost mindless automaton. The he learned one more thing: either he or she could escape to the normal world they had known, but not both. And only he could make the choice. . . .

The Shadow Builder

Bram Stoker

The Shadow Builder dwells in the gloomy nether regions of the universe, lonely and haunting in his realm. He dwells in the area beyond the Gate of Dread, where the great procession meets its final end. The Shadow Builder sees all from his gloom, happiness and sadness, hope and despair. He focuses intently on the relationship between a mother and son, watching everything unfold from his Threshold. It his from these two that he learns the truth about his power, the power of death.

This short story originally appeared in the 1881 collection Under the Sunset.

It was the basis for the 1998 movie Shadow Builder.

Shadowland

Peter Straub

IF YOUR SHADOW DOESN'T MOVE WHEN YOU DO, THEN YOU'RE IN SHADOWLAND.

In a private school in New England, a friendship is forged between two boys that will change their lives for ever. As Del Nightingale and Tom Flanagan battle to survive the oppressive regime of bullying and terror overseen by the sadistic headmaster, Del introduces Tom to his world of magic tricks. But when they escape to spend the summer holiday together at Shadowland - the lakeside estate of Del's uncle - their hobby suddenly takes on much more sinister tones. After a summer exploring the mysteries and terrors of Shadowland nothing will be the same.

Shadowboxer

Tricia Sullivan

Jade is a seventeen-year-old mixed martial arts fighter. When she's in the cage she dominates her opponents--but in real life she's out of control.

After she has a confrontation with a Hollywood martial arts star that threatens her gym's reputation, Jade's coach sends her to a training camp in Thailand for an attitude adjustment.

Hoping to discover herself, she instead uncovers a shocking conspiracy. In a world just beyond our own, a man is stealing the souls of children to try and live forever.

Shadow's End

Sheri S. Tepper

Lutha Talstaff is sent to the remote, unpopulated planet Dinadh with her young son and her lover, and soon realizes they are part of a cosmic pattern that will alter their understanding of life, love, good, and evil.

The Shadow Collector

Shveta Thakrar

This short story originally appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Issue 9, March-April 2016.

Read the full story for free at Uncanny Magazine.

Shadows of Carcosa: Tales of Cosmic Horror by Lovecraft, Chambers, Machen, Poe, and Other Masters of the Weird

D. Thin

From the fictional land of Carcosa that inspired the HBO show True Detective to H. P. Lovecraft's accursed New England hills, this collection features some of the most legendary landscapes of the cosmic horror genre. The collection includes the following twelve stories:

Edgar Allan Poe, "MS. Found in a Bottle"
Bram Stoker, "The Squaw"
Ambrose Bierce, "Moxon's Master"
Ambrose Bierce, "The Damned Thing"
Ambrose Bierce, "An Inhabitant of Carcosa"
R. W. Chambers, "The Repairer of Reputations"
M. P. Shiel, "The House of Sounds"
Arthur Machen, "The White People"
Algernon Blackwood, "The Willows"
Henry James, "The Jolly Corner"
Walter de la Mare, "Seaton's Aunt"
H. P. Lovecraft, "The Colour Out of Space"

"The true weird tale has something more than a secret murder, bloody bones, or a sheeted form clanking chains. An atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; a hint of that most terrible conception of the human brain--a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space." -- H. P. Lovecraft

Legion From the Shadows

Karl Edward Wagner

Karl Wagner wrote this pastiche of Robert E. Howard's pictish king, Bran Mac Morn, during the heyday of Howard reprints in paperback.

Wagner wove a tale of swords and sorcery around the very real disappearance of the Roman 9th Legion in Britain.

Set in the earliest days of Britain, Legion from the Shadows chronicles the efforts of Bran Mak Morn, King of the Picts, to hold the land against Roman invaders. But soon Bran Mak Morn must lead his folk not only against the Romans but also against the dreaded People of the Dark.

Shadows of War: Stories

Robert Westall

In 'Adolf', a young boy becomes convinced his elderly neighbour is actually Adolf Hitler in hiding. The British soldiers in 'The German Ghost' have an otherworldly encounter with a mysterious and sinister figure in black. 'East Doddingham Dinah' is a stray cat who takes up residence on an RAF base and seems to possess the unsettling ability to know which planes will be shot down. A late-night aerial mission at 24,000 feet becomes a terrifying supernatural experience for the crew in 'After the Funeral'.

Master storyteller Robert Westall (1929-1993) loved writing about three subjects above all: World War II, cats, and ghosts, and all three of these interests are on display in this collection featuring eleven of Westall's finest wartime stories, several of them supernatural. Originally published between 1982 and 1997, these stories are gathered together here for the first time and will delight readers of all ages.

Table of Contents:

The German Ghost (1997)
Adolf (1989)
Daddy-Long-Legs (1994)
Gifts from the Sea (1989)
After the Funeral (1991)
Cathedral (1997)
Zakky (1989)
The Making of Me (1989)
The Christmas Cat (1994)
The Haunting of Chas McGill (1982)
East Doddingham Dinah (1989)

Spectral Shadows: Three Supernatural Novellas

Robert Westall

Three supernatural novellas by Robert Westall, hailed as the finest British author of ghost stories since M. R. James, collected together for the first time...

BLACKHAM'S WIMPEY

Why should three successive crews flying a Second World War bomber - Blackham's Wimpey - be driven to madness, despair, even death, though the plane returns from each mission without a scratch?

THE WHEATSTONE POND

Too many deaths, too many suicides. It was more than coincidence. The Wheatstone Pond was a killer. When it's drained, antique dealer Jeff Morgan gets interested, hoping there'll be a few valuable wrecks of model boats down there. He isn't prepared for the horror he will find instead...

YAXLEY'S CAT

Sepp Yaxley vanished seven years ago, and no one has seen him since. Rose and her children Tim and Jane thought his vacant cottage, alone by the marshes, seemed like the perfect place for a holiday adventure. But that was before they decided to find out what happened to old Yaxley. Before they started to find strange things in the garden. Before the neighbors began to act weird. Before Yaxley's cat came back...

A Sense of Shadow

Kate Wilhelm

They came to his deathbed. Four dutiful children. Each the victim of a different mother. Each mother the victim of a tragic accident, unsolved murder, mysterious disappearance. As he sank away they glowered their hatred. It was a hatred he expected, and his revenge was well-planned. He left a multimillion dollar legacy, bearing a ghoulish price tag. They could pay with their sanity, or their psyches, or their souls, they would be part of an experiment., something to do with brain waves. It would be a great service to science, they were told. Just one last little joke on his kids, and they swore they could hear him laughing all the way to hell.

Shadows of Ecstacy

Charles Williams

A humanistic adept has discovered that by focusing his energies inward he can extend his life almost indefinitely. He undertakes an experiment using African lore to die and resurrect his own body thereby assuring his immortality. His followers begin a revolutionary movement to supplant European civilisation. The first of Williams's novels to be written, though not the first published.

A Glass of Shadow

Liz Williams

A collection of 19 stories personally selected by the author, including two original to the collection, tales that draw aside the veils of mundane reality to reveal the hidden truths of this world and beyond. Stories that transport the reader from the icy Mars of Winterstrike to the searing deserts of Kazakhstan; from the exotic streets of Inspector Chen's Singapore Three to the forgotten waterways and hidden courtyards of Venice. Liz Williams writes science fiction with the rich textures of the very best fantasy, and fantasy with the sensibilities of high-end science fiction. She reveals the world around us in subtly different shades and portrays other realms with a vividness that defies doubt.

Table of Contents

Introduction - essay by Tanith Lee
Mr DeQuincy and the Daughters of Madness - (2000) - short fiction
Mr Animation and the Wu Zhiang Zombies - (2001) - short story
Necrochip - (1999) - short fiction
The Flower of Tekheli - (2004) - short story
Tycho and the Stargazer - (2003) - short story
Indicating the Awakening of Persons Buried Alive - (2004) - short fiction
Voivodoi - (1998) - short story
On Windhover Down - (2004) - short story
Troytown - short fiction
Woewater - (2002) - short story
Blackthorn and Nettles - (2005) - short story
The Water Cure - (2004) - short story
All Fish and Dracula - (2005) - short story
Who Pays - (2008) - short fiction
Ikiryoh - (2005) - short story
The Age of Ice - (2006) - short story
La Malcontenta - (2005) - short story
Dusking - (2009) - short story
A Glass of Shadow - short fiction

Shadows of Death

J. N. Williamson

HOUSE TO SWAP:PROFESSOR AND WIFE SEEK TO TRADE ARIZONA HOME. GREAT OPPORTUNITY FOR THE RIGHT PERSON.

The ad seems the answer to Sherry's dreams. It will take her far away from Indianapolis and the unhappiness of her past. It doesn't warn of the horror waiting in that isolated house... about the strange experiments that have opened a door to the other side... about the dead whose shadows brush the whitewashed wall, waiting for the one human who can bring them back from paradise... or hell.

That human is Sherry, who does not know the terrifying secrets that haunt the charming house in Red Mountain...who cannot guess the fate awaiting her--until something reaches out its boney hand... touches her with withered lips... unleashes her blood-chilling scream and whispers of the killing time to come.

Shadowdrop

Chris Willrich

This novella originally appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, #261, in September 2018.

Read the full story for free at Beneath Ceaseless Skies.

Jack of Shadows

Roger Zelazny

They're going to have a devil of a time trying to catch the sharpest thief in hell....

Ravenshadow

Win Blevins

In following the white man's road, Joseph Blue Crow has lost his Lakota heritage and is haunted by the loss. After the inexplicable suicide of the woman he loves, and as he sinks into alcoholism and despair and stands on the precipice of suicide, his best friend tells him, "You got to go on the mountain."

Blue's journey takes him on a torturous path, and as he is guided by a shaman and a spirit bird, under whose wings lay the shadows of the past, he revisits--and relives--the massacre of Wounded Knee, standing beside his people as they fall under the gun and cannon fire.

The Arsenal of Miracles / Endless Shadow

John Brunner
Gardner F. Fox

The Arsenal of Miracles

When Earth's stellar empire was attacked by the Lyanir, a powerful race from the uncharted stars, it was Bran Magannon, High Admiral of Space, who met their battle-challenge. He saved the Empire, but he also fell in love with the beautiful young Lyarnin queen Peganna. To the people of Empire his name became that of traitor. Now he was a lone, brooding outcast among Earth's outpost worlds, called Bran the Wanderer. Then Peganna of the Silver hair returned and told him of a fabled cache of deadly weapons left aeons ago by the long-dead race of the Crenn Lir. She wanted those weapons for her people, to use against the Empire if need be.

Endless Shadow

Two worlds in conflict: Azrael--Where pain was the only reality, & murder was not a crime but a ritual.

Ipewell--Where motherhood was honored & manhood meant a life of servitude & fear. These two worlds were at the heart of a taut dangerous situation which threatened to explode. Jorgen Thorkild, director of the Bridge System that connected forty worlds among the stars, had to try to tame them. But Thorkild faced still another problem: the loss of his own sanity!

Shadow on the Stars

Robert B. Marcus, Jr.

As a telepath Camarch is despised by humanity. Pursued by the authorities for a crime he didn't commit and haunted by a paralyzing alien force, he finds himself aboard the starship Birmingham. To his horror he learns he has been virtually kidnapped from his time and place to play a role far in the future. Amid the mind-bending ruins of C'hah Lai, Camarch discovers that juggling the future has devastating ramifications for the past.

Shadows of the Future: H. G. Wells, Science Fiction and Prophecy

Patrick Parrinder

H. G. Wells - inventor of the concept of the time machine and the phrase "the shape of things to come" - described his life's work as one of critical anticipation. This book unravels the complex layers of meaning in "The Time Machine", and shows how, throughout his life, he sought to exploit the potential of literary and cultural prophecy in new ways.

Described by John Middleton Murry as "the last prophet of bourgeois Europe", he was its first futurologist. In "Shadows of the Future", Wells's assumption of the prophet's role is related to his championing of the modern scientific outlook, and to the theory and practice of science fiction and utopian literature. Parrinder explores the connections between novelty and repetition, between imagining the future and imagining the past, and between prophecy and parody as literary modes. Wells's science fiction is reexamined both as a projection of the cosmology implicit in the writings of Darwin and Huxley, and as a new variation on the Romantic and Enlightenment themes of such earlier authors as Blake, Gibbon and Mary Shelley. Later chapters relate Wells's fiction to his nonfiction and look at the uneasy relationship of his utopianism to literary prophecy, and at the paradoxes inherent in the militant internationalism of the "prophet at large". Finally, Well's influence is traced in a study of the antiutopian fictions in Zamayatin and Orwell, and in a broad account of the connections between science fiction and the scientific outlook down to our time.

Shadows Over Baker Street

Michael Reaves
John Pelan

Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes is among the most famous literary figures of all time. For more than a hundred years, his adventures have stood as imperishable monuments to the ability of human reason to penetrate every mystery, solve every puzzle, and punish every crime.

For nearly as long, the macabre tales of H. P. Lovecraft have haunted readers with their nightmarish glimpses into realms of cosmic chaos and undying evil. But what would happen if Conan Doyle's peerless detective and his allies were to find themselves faced with mysteries whose solutions lay not only beyond the grasp of logic, but of sanity itself.

In this collection of all-new, all-original tales, twenty of today's most cutting edge writers provide their answers to that burning question.

"A Study in Emerald" by Neil Gaiman: A gruesome murder exposes a plot against the Crown, a seditious conspiracy so cunningly wrought that only one man in all London could have planned it – and only one man can hope to stop it.

"A Case of Royal Blood" by Steven-Elliot Altman: Sherlock Holmes and H. G. Wells join forces to protect a princess stalked by a ghost – or perhaps something far worse than a ghost.

"Art in the Blood" by Brian Stableford: One man's horrific affliction leads Sherlock Holmes to an ancient curse that threatens to awaken the crawling chaos slumbering in the blood of all humankind.

"The Curious Case of Miss Violet Stone" by Poppy Z. Brite and David Ferguson: A girl who has not eaten in more than three years teaches Holmes and Watson that sometimes the impossible cannot be eliminated.

"The Horror of the Many Faces" by Tim Lebbon: Dr. Watson witnesses a maniacal murder in London – and recognizes the villain as none other than his friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes.

Elizabeth Bear
Poppy Z. Brite
Simon Clark
David Ferguson
Paul Finch
Neil Gaiman
Barbara Hambly
Caitlin R. Kiernan
Tim Lebbon
James Lowder
Richard A. Lupoff
F. Gwynplaine McIntyre
John Pelan
Steve Perry
Michael Reaves
Brian Stableford
John P. Vourlis
David Niall Wilson
Patricia Lee Macomber

Of Stars and Shadows

Mark W. Tiedemann

One year after the Great Sack, Protector General Ril Cowel took what remained of the fleet of Camrus and set out after the empire responsible for hammering his home into oblivion, the Empire of B'Nan. Cowel chased the mythic emperor for fifteen years. At last, fate seemed to hand him his chance, and in a swift strike Cowel damaged the imperial fleet and killed B'Nan. The terror now over, he intended to dismantle the empire, to take it apart so that it could no longer destroy worlds like his own.

But the more Ril Cowel tries, the harder it seems to be rid of the vast machinery B'Nan had constructed over a thousand years or more. For the emperor was reputed to have lived the entire time his empire grew. Cowel never gave credence to such stories...until he becomes emperor himself.

Shadows of the New Sun: Wolfe on Writing / Writers on Wolfe

Peter Wright

Gene Wolfe is one of the most important American writers to emerge in the latter half of the twentieth century. The fact that he publishes in the field of fantastic literature (which includes horror, science and speculative fiction) has meant that his significance has been largely unacknowledged beyond and, at times, even within the genre. Nevertheless, he remains the author of some of the most stylistically distinct, structurally complex, and intellectually invigorating imaginative fiction of recent years. This collection of interviews and essays places under one cover an amazing selection of difficult-to-find resources for the avid Gene Wolfe reader and scholar. Essays concern the nature of writing, including character, structure and the profession of the writer. Also included are a series of interviews with Wolfe and the holy grail of 'New Sun' aficionados: Books in the Book of the New Sun, previously only available in a rare small-press volume. This collection will inspire fans and scholars alike to commit themselves to debating new interpretations of Wolfe's fiction.

Contents:

1 - Introduction (Shadows of the New Sun: Wolfe on Writing / Writers on Wolfe) - (2007) - essay by Peter Wright
11 - Gene Wolfe: An Interview - (1973) - interview of Gene Wolfe - interview by Malcolm Edwards
24 - An Interview with Gene Wolfe - (1981) - interview of Gene Wolfe - interview by Joan Gordon
36 - An Interview with Gene Wolfe - (1981) - interview of Gene Wolfe - interview by Melissa Mia Hall
44 - Interview: Gene Wolfe: 'The Legerdemain of the Wolfe' - (1983) - interview of Gene Wolfe - interview by Robert Frazier
56 - Riding a Bicycle Backwards: An Interview with Gene Wolfe - (1984) - interview of Gene Wolfe - interview by Colin Greenland
66 - Gene Wolfe in Conversation - (1985) - interview of Gene Wolfe - interview by Nancy Kress and Calvin Rich
73 - An Interview with Gene Wolfe - (1986) - interview of Gene Wolfe - interview by Elliott Swanson
79 - On Encompassing the Entire Universe: An Interview with Gene Wolfe - (1988) - interview of Gene Wolfe - interview by Larry McCaffery
101 - Gene Wolfe Interview - (2007) - interview of Gene Wolfe - interview by James B. Jordan
132 - Gene Wolfe Interview - (1994) - interview of Gene Wolfe - interview by Brendan Baber
139 - Peter and the Wolfe: Gene Wolfe In Conversation - (2007) - interview of Gene Wolfe - interview by Peter Wright
167 - Suns New, Long, and Short: An Interview with Gene Wolfe - (1998) - interview of Gene Wolfe - interview by Lawrence Person
177 - A Magus of Many Suns: An Interview with Gene Wolfe - (2002) - interview of Gene Wolfe - interview by Nick Gevers
184 - Some Moments with the Magus: An Interview with Gene Wolfe - (2003) - interview of Gene Wolfe - interview by Nick Gevers and Michael Andre-Driussi and James B. Jordan
193 - The Books in The Book of the New Sun - (1984) - essay by Gene Wolfe
203 - Wolfe's Rules: What You Must Do To Be a Writer - essay by Gene Wolfe
204 - Balding, Avuncular Gene's Quick and Dirty Guide to Creating Memorable Characters - essay by Gene Wolfe
206 - Wolfe's Irreproducible Truths about Novels - essay by Gene Wolfe
208 - Nor the Summers as Golden: Writing Multivolume Works - essay by Gene Wolfe
214 - What Do They Mean, SF? - (1980) - essay by Gene Wolfe
219 - The Special Problems of Science Fiction - essay by Gene Wolfe
224 - How to Be a Writer's Family - essay by Gene Wolfe
228 - Libraries on the Superhighway - Rest Stop or Roadkill? - essay by Gene Wolfe
238 - The Handbook of Permissive English - (2007) - essay by Gene Wolfe
241 - More than Half of You Can't Read This - essay by Gene Wolfe
243 - Wolfe's Inalienable Truths About Reviewing - essay by Gene Wolfe
244 - A Fantasist Reads The Bible and Its Critics - essay by Gene Wolfe

A Gathering of Shadows

A Darker Shade of Magic: Book 2

V. E. Schwab

Four months have passed since the shadow stone fell into Kell's possession. Four months since his path crossed with Delilah Bard. Four months since Rhy was wounded and the Dane twins fell, and the stone was cast with Holland's dying body through the rift, and into Black London.

In many ways, things have almost returned to normal, though Rhy is more sober, and Kell is now plagued by his guilt. Restless, and having given up smuggling, Kell is visited by dreams of ominous magical events, waking only to think of Lila, who disappeared from the docks like she always meant to do. As Red London finalizes preparations for the Element Games-an extravagent international competition of magic, meant to entertain and keep healthy the ties between neighboring countries-a certain pirate ship draws closer, carrying old friends back into port.

But while Red London is caught up in the pageantry and thrills of the Games, another London is coming back to life, and those who were thought to be forever gone have returned. After all, a shadow that was gone in the night reappears in the morning, and so it seems Black London has risen again-and so to keep magic's balance, another London must fall.

A Guile of Dragons

A Tournament of Shadows: Book 1

James Enge

Those of you who have met Morlock will get to run the streets with him a bit earlier in his wanderings. The new trilogy, A Tournament of Shadows focuses on an adult, but not yet centuries old Morlock we see in Blood of Ambrose, This Crooked Way, and The Wolf Age The first of the new series is A Guile of Dragons.

Wrath-Bearing Tree

A Tournament of Shadows: Book 2

James Enge

The tale of the early days of Morlock Ambrosius continues!

Into the Unguarded Lands . . . . The masked powers of Fate and Chaos are killing gods in the land of Kaen, facing the Wardlands across the Narrow Sea. Vocates Aloe Oaij and Morlock Ambrosius go into the Unguarded Lands, on a mission to find the reasons for the godslaying, and to avert any threat to the lands the Graith of Guardians has sworn to protect. After crash-landing on the hostile coast of Kaen, they will face vengeful frightened gods, a calmly murderous dragon, a demon called Andhrakhar, and a bitter old necromancer named Merlin Ambrosius. Amid these dangers they will find that they can trust no one but themselves-and each other.

The Wide World's End

A Tournament of Shadows: Book 3

James Enge

The tale of the early days of Morlock Ambrosius--master of all magical makers, wandering swordsman, and son of Merlin--concludes!

From beyond the northern edge of the world, the Sunkillers (undying enemies of everything that lives and breathes and is an individual) are reaching into the sky of Laent to drain out its light and warmth. Their hope is to scrape sky, land, and sea clean of mortal life and return to where they once dwelled, before the first rising of the sun. Against them stand only the Graith of Guardians, defenders of the peaceful anarchy of the Wardlands. But the agents of the Sunkillers are abroad even in the Wardlands: plotting, betraying, murdering among the Graith.

Married now for a century, Morlock Ambrosius and Aloê Oaij will take different paths to counter the threat. As Aloê ferrets out the enemy within the Graith, Morlock joins forces with his sister, the formidable Ambrosia Viviana, and crosses the monster-haunted plains of the deep north to confront the Sunkillers in their own realm. Morlock and Aloê think their parting is temporary, but it is final. They may or may not save the world, but they will not save each other, or themselves.

Sea of Shadows

Age of Legends: Book 1

Kelley Armstrong

In the Forest of the Dead, where the empire's worst criminals are exiled, twin sisters Moria and Ashyn are charged with a dangerous task. For they are the Keeper and the Seeker, and each year they must quiet the enraged souls of the damned.

Only this year, the souls will not be quieted.

Ambushed and separated by an ancient evil, the sisters' journey to find each other sends them far from the only home they've ever known. Accompanied by a stubborn imperial guard and a dashing condemned thief, the girls cross a once-empty wasteland, now filled with reawakened monsters of legend, as they travel to warn the emperor. But a terrible secret awaits them at court--one that will alter the balance of their world forever.

The Shadows of God

Age of Unreason: Book 4

J. Gregory Keyes

As the ruthless forces of Russia lay waste to the New World, English troops make landfall in the east, determined to reconquer the colonies. Trapped in between are the Native Americans, ex-slaves, and European refugees, led by Benjamin Franklin and the Choctaw shaman Red Shoes. But the balance of power rests with the French woman Adrienne de Montchevreuil, whose grasp of science is the equal of Franklin's, whose magic may be stronger than the Choctaw, and whose shocking secret may call into question where her true allegiances lie....

Shadow of the Scorpion

Agent Cormac Series

Neal Asher

Ian Cormac's Early Years!

Raised to adulthood during the end of the war between the human Polity and a vicious alien race, the Prador, Ian Cormac, is haunted by childhood memories of a sinister scorpion-shaped war drone and the burden of losses he doesn't remember. Cormac signs up with Earth Central Security and is sent out to help restore and maintain order on worlds devastated by the war.There he discovers that though the Prador remain as murderous as ever, they are not anywhere near as treacherous or dangerous as some of his fellow humans, some closer to him than he would like. Amidst the ruins left by wartime genocides, Cormac will discover in himself a cold capacity for violence and learn some horrible truths about his own past while trying to stay alive on his course of vengeance.

Alien: Out of the Shadows

Aliens Universe: Out of the Shadows: Book 1

Tim Lebbon

In a dramatic twist, this novel will return us to that time, to Ellen Ripley, and to never-before-revealed secrets of the Weyland-Yutani Corporations... secrets which launch a terrifying new adventure that bridges the gap between Alien and Aliens.

Officially sanctioned and true to the Alien canon, Alien: Out of the Shadows expands upon the well-loved mythos and is a must for all Alien fans.

Alien: Sea of Sorrows

Aliens Universe: Out of the Shadows: Book 2

James A. Moore

As a deputy commissioner for the ICC, Alan Decker's job is to make sure the settlements on LV178 follow all the rules, keeping the colonists safe. But the planet known as New Galveston holds secrets, lurking deep beneath the toxic sands dubbed the Sea of Sorrows.

The Weyland-Yutani Corporation has secrets of its own, as Decker discovers when he is forced to join a team of mercenaries sent to investigate an ancient excavation. Somewhere in that long-forgotten dig lies the thing the company wants most in the universe--a living Xenomorph.

Decker doesn't understand why they need him, until his own past comes back to haunt him. Centuries ago, his ancestor fought the Aliens, launching a bloody vendetta that was never satisfied. That was when the creatures swore revenge on the Destroyer... Ellen Ripley.

Alien: River of Pain

Aliens Universe: Out of the Shadows: Book 3

The Touch of Your Shadow, the Whisper of Your Name

When Ellen Ripley finally returns to Earth, she learns that the planet LV-426--now called Acheron--has been colonized. But LV-426 is where Ripley and the crew of the Nostromo found the original Xenomorph--the killing machine known as the Alien.

Protected by the Colonial Marines, the colonists seek to terraform the storm-swept planet. Two such residents are Anne and Russell Jorden, seeking a fortune that eluded them on Earth. On Acheron, Anne gives birth to the colony's first newborn. Rebecca Jordan, also known as Newt.

The wildcatters discover a vast, decaying spaceship. The horseshoe-shaped vessel is of particular interest to Weyland-Yutani, and may be the answer to their dreams. But what Anne and Russ find on board proves to be the stuff, not of dreams, but of nightmares.

Shadow of Night

All Souls Trilogy: Book 2

Deborah Harkness

Deborah Harkness exploded onto the literary scene with her debut novel, A Discovery of Witches, Book One of the magical All Souls Trilogy and an international publishing phenomenon. The novel introduced Diana Bishop, Oxford scholar and reluctant witch, and the handsome geneticist and vampire Matthew Clairmont; together they found themselves at the center of a supernatural battle over an enchanted manuscript known as Ashmole 782.

Now, picking up from A Discovery of Witches' cliffhanger ending, Shadow of Night plunges Diana and Matthew into Elizabethan London, a world of spies, subterfuge, and a coterie of Matthew's old friends, the mysterious School of Night that includes Christopher Marlowe and Walter Raleigh. Here, Diana must locate a witch to tutor her in magic, Matthew is forced to confront a past he thought he had put to rest, and the mystery of Ashmole 782 deepens.

Deborah Harkness has crafted a gripping journey through a world of alchemy, time travel, and magical discoveries, delivering one of the most hotly anticipated novels of the season.

Magic in the Shadows

Allie Beckstrom: Book 3

Devon Monk

Allison Beckstrom?s magic has taken its toll on her, physically marking her and erasing her memories?including those of the man she supposedly loves. But lost memories aren?t the only things preying on Allie?s thoughts.

Her late father, the prominent businessman?and sorcerer?Daniel Beckstrom, has somehow channeled himself into her very mind. With the help of The Authority, a secret organization of magic users, she hopes to gain better control over her own abilities?and find a way to deal with her father?

Shadows of Aggar

Amazons of Aggar: Book 1

Chris Anne Wolfe

Shadows of Aggar - Book 1 - Amazons of Aggar Diana n'Athena is an Amazon working for the Terran empire on the medieval planet of Aggar. Her mission is to rescue a downed pilot/spy from Aggar's wilds. But when the Council of Aggar demands Diana be bonded to a Shadow in order to be allowed to make the journey, things get interesting. Shadows are exceptional guides and fighters, but Elana is something more -- she has the gift of the Blue Sight.

As the two women race against time to prevent an all-out intergalactic war, they become erotically entangled, complicating both their lives and putting their mission in danger.

Binding the Shadows

Arcadia Bell: Book 3

Jenn Bennett

Renegade mage and bartender Cady Bell has had a rough year, but now the door to her already unstable world is coming completely unhinged. When a citywide crime wave erupts, Cady's demon-friendly tiki bar is robbed by Earthbounds wielding surreal demonic abilities that shouldn't exist. With the help of her devilishly delicious boyfriend, Lon Butler, Cady sets out to find the people who wronged her. But the criminals aren't the only ones experiencing unnatural metamorphoses--Cady's own Moonchild abilities are evolving beyond her control. Can Cady track down the monsters responsible before the monster inside destroys everything--and everyone--she loves?

Shadow of Pnath

Arkham Horror: Book 9

Josh Reynolds

An expert thief outwits foes old and new to defeat a sinister summoning, in this hair-raising noir-thriller from the bestselling world of Arkham Horror...

Adventuress Countess Alessandra Zorzi has a new vocation: reacquiring the occult artifacts she stole to put into the safer hands of Miskatonic University. With her new apprentice, Pepper Kelly, Zorzi tracks the infamous Zanthu Tablets to Paris. But the city is rife with spies and the countess has many enemies. When Pepper is kidnapped, it becomes clear that someone is out for revenge. Zorzi must rescue her apprentice, find the tablets, and prevent an old enemy from summoning an army of vengeful ghouls from the depths of the catacombs. Stealing relics is a lot harder the second time around...

Shadows of Glass

Ashes of Twilight: Book 2

Kassy Tayler

Wren's world has changed. The thing that she fought for, escaping the dome has come to fruition, but it's not the paradise she thought it would be. Most of the shiners have died, and according to James, she is to blame for many of the deaths, a burden which sits heavy on her shoulders. Still some have survived and Wren is determined to keep them safe as they fight to establish a home outside while hiding from the rovers who have weapons that can kill from far away. But as long as she has Pace she knows everything will be fine. Still Wren wonders, as she sees the smoke that continually pours forth from the dome, how did her friends inside fare? Will they ever find out if Lucy, David, Jill and Harry, along with Pace's mother survive the explosions?

Meanwhile, someone else has also seen the smoke. A band of explorers from across the sea arrive in an airship, curious about the dome, and offering help to those who survive. When Wren meets the handsome Levi Addison, she suddenly questions her love for Pace as Levi offers to show her the world from his airship. Does she really love Pace? Or was it just the circumstances that made her think she did? Meanwhile, word arrives from inside via Pip, and Wren is forced to go back inside the dome, a thing that terrifies her more than anything else, to save her friends. Once she's back inside will she be able to escape again?

Babylon 5: Book 5

Neal Barrett, Jr.

Babylon 5, designed to be a place of peace in a troubled universe, has erupted into rioting as visiting cultures clash and passions explode. Security chief Garibaldi must use all his skills to quell the violence between races. But the troubles escalate as terrifying nightmares plague everyone on board from Captain Sheridan to Vorlon Ambassador Kosh. It seems as if some "force" is touching them all...

The Shadow Within

Babylon 5: Book 7

Jeanne Cavelos

Anna Sheridan has two passions -- her husband, John, and the mystery surrounding some intriguing artifacts found during a mission to a distant planet called Z'Ha'dum. Now she gets orders to become the science officer on the follow-up mission scheduled for the spaceship Icarus.

Happy, young, beloved, and brilliant, never has a woman had so much to live for. Or so much to lose. While John, recently promoted to the rank of captain, struggles with his new command on the Agamemnon, Anna begins to assemble her science crew... and makes a first mistake. She signs on Dr. Morden, a highly credentialed translator whose heart hides a weakness that can cost Anna her life or her soul. Her second mistake is to underestimate the danger of Z'Ha'dum. What is awaiting the Icarus near the rim of known destiny... and a dark future that can crush her husband's dreams and a terror that can come back to haunt us all.

Casting Shadows

Babylon 5: The Passing of the Techno-Mages: Book 1

Jeanne Cavelos

As Elric and his student Galen watch with taut anticipation, dragons, angels, and shooting stars rain from the sky, heralding the arrival of the techno-mages on the planet Soom. It's the first time Elric -- a member of the ruling Circle -- has hosted such a gathering, and if all goes well, Galen and the other apprentices will emerge triumphant from the grueling initiation rites, ready to embrace their roles as full mages among the most powerful beings in the known universe.

But rumors fly of approaching danger, and Galen and his young lover, Isabelle, are chosen to investigate the dark tidings. An ancient race has awakened after a thousand years, thirsty for war, slaughter, and annihilation. Will the techno-mages be the deciding factor in the war ahead? Or the first casualties?

Phoenix in Shadow

Balanced Sword: Book 2

Ryk E. Spoor

When Kyri Vantage, Phoenix Justiciar of Myrionar, with the help of her companions Tobimar Silverun of Skysand and the unexpectedly dangerous little Toad, Poplock Duckweed, defeated monstrous killer Thornfalcon and unmasked a conspiracy of treacherous False Justiciars, she knew the job was only partly done. A dark power stirs on the far side of the terrifying Rivendream Pass. Now, as the world shudders at the arrival of the Black City, of the King of All Hells, Kyri, Tobimar, and Poplock must venture beyond Rivendream Pass and into Moonshade Hollowa place from which none have ever returned. What they find there will challenge everything they believe in and conceals a menace they cannot imagine.

The Charwoman's Shadow

Ballantine Adult Fantasy: Book 55

Lord Dunsany

An old woman who spends her days scrubbing the floors might be an unlikely damsel in distress, but Lord Dunsany proves once again his mastery of the fantastical. The Charwoman's Shadow is a beautiful tale of a sorcerer's apprentice who discovers his master's nefarious usage of stolen shadows, and vows to save the charwoman from her slavery.

Shadows of War: Twilight of the Clans Vol. VI

Battletech: Book 40

Thomas Gressman

Learning of a heavily guarded secret route to the homeworld of Clan Smoke Jaguar, the Lords of the Successor States have managed to put aside their differences and create Operation Serpent, a mighty invasion force that launches an all-out assault on the Jaguar Clan. After brutal fighting with heavy losses on both sides, victory for the Defense Force is close at hand, but when a few Clan warriors escape to spread the alarm, the Successor States find themselves in the fight of their lives!.

Knight of Ghosts and Shadows

Bedlam Bard: Book 1

Mercedes Lackey
Ellen Guon

Eric Banyon, musician, is out playing the blues on his flute one day, but he couldn't have known that the desperate sadness of his music would free a young elven noble from the magical prison he has been languishing in for centuries--nor does he believe it!

Shadow of the Wolf

Berserker: Book 1

Chris Carlsen

Blood Lust!

When Odin's curse fell upon him, Haralk Swiftaxe, the young Norse warrior, lusty in love and battle, was fully human no longer. He was incensed with the animal rage of the god's devotees, the Berserkers. The snarling ferocious savagery of the bear possessed him. Immune to fire and steel, frenzied by the smell of blood and the sight of torn human flesh, he was driven to the worst of human deeds.... The stench of fear was meat and drink to him, and cowering women learned of his cruel, insatiable lust.

The bear screeched its ecstasy--yet at times the man dimly understood the horror. Could the demon god be killed, the spell lifted...? I fthere was a way, the price of failure would be high, greater than death itself....

Shadows of Annihilation

Black Chamber: Book 3

Port of Shadows: A Chronicle of the Black Company

The third novel in a World War I alternate history series where America's greatest weapon against Germany is Black Chamber secret agent Luz O'Malley and technical genius Ciara Whelan. Only they can protect America's best hope of winning the war.

The Great War is at a stalemate, and the only thing stopping Germany from striking America is the threat of the United States using their own Annihilation Gas against them. But America's supply is quickly decaying and the Central Powers know it.

A plant is under construction in the remote highlands of Mexico so that America can make their own supply. President Teddy Roosevelt assigns crack agent Luz O'Malley and her technical genius Ciara Whelan to watch over the plant operating under cover identities.

But German agent Horst von Duckler has escaped from the POW camp in El Paso, and he's heading in the same direction--bent on revenge against Luz, and sabotage that will deprive America of its deterrent and kill tens of thousands.

Black Company: Tales of the Black Company: Book 5

The soldiers of the Black Company don't ask questions, they get paid. But being "The Lady's favored" is attracting the wrong kind of attention and has put a target on their backs--and the Company's historian, Croaker, has the biggest target of all.

The one person who was taken into The Lady's Tower and returned unchanged has earned the special interest of the court of sorcerers known as The Ten Who Were Taken. Now, he and the company are being asked to seek the aid of their newest member, Mischievous Rain, to break a rebel army. However, Croaker doesn't trust any of the Taken, especially not ones that look so much like The Lady and her sister...

Shadows Linger

Black Company: The Book of the North: Book 2

Mercenary soldiers in the service of the Lady, the Black Company stands against the rebels of the White Rose. They are tough men, proud of honoring their contracts. The Lady is evil, but so, too, are those who falsely profess to follow the White Rose, reincarnation of a centuries-dead heroine. Yet now some of the Company have discovered that the mute girl they rescued and sheltered is truly the White Rose reborn. Now there may be a path to the light, even for such as they. If they can survive it.

Shadow Games

Black Company: The Book of the South: Book 1

In the Shadow of the Gods

After the devastating battle at the Tower of Charm, Croaker leads the greatly diminished Black Company south, in search of the lost Annals. The Annals will be returned to Khatovar, eight thousand miles away, a city that may exist only in legend... the origin of the first Free Companies.

Every step of the way the Company is hounded by shadowy figured and carrion-eating crows. As they march every southward, through bug infested jungle, rivers dense with bloodthirsty pirates, and cities, dead and living, haunted by the passage of the Company north, their numbers grow until they are thousands strong.

But always they are watched--by the Shadowmasters--a deadly new enemy: twisted creature that deal in darkness and death: powerful, shadowy creatures bent on smothering the world in their foul embrace. This is the first round in a deadly game, a game that the Black Company cannot ea hope to win.

Heir to the Shadows

Black Jewels: Book 2

Anne Bishop

Ambitions unfurl as the realm's dreams of a liberator have finally been made flesh: Jaenelle, singled out by prophecy as the living embodiment of magic, is haunted by the cruel battles the Blood have fought over her - for not all of them await her as their Savior.

The Shadow Queen

Black Jewels: Book 7

Anne Bishop

Now, only 100 Warlord Princes stand - without a leader and without hope. Theran Grayhaven is the last of his line, desperate to find the key that reveals a treasure great enough to restore Dena Nehele. But first he needs to find a Queen who remembers the Blood's code of honor and lives by the Old Ways. The woman chosen to rule Dena Nehele, Lady Cassidy, is not beautiful and believes she is not strong. But she may be the only one able to convince bitter men to serve once again.

The Valley of Shadows

Black Tide Rising: Book 5

Mike Massa
John Ringo

From his corner office on the forty-fourth floor of the Bank of the Americas tower on Wall Street, Tom Smith, global managing director for security, could see the Statue of Liberty, Battery Park--and a ravening zombie horde.

Officially, Smith was paid to preserve the lives and fortunes of employees, billionaires, and other clients. And with an implacable virus that turned the infected into ravenous zombies tearing through the city, the country, and the world, his job just got a lot harder.

Good thing Smith, late of the Australian special forces, isn't a man to give up easily. But saving civilization is going to take more than the traditional banking toolbox of lawyers, guns, and money. Smith needs infected human spinal tissue to formulate a vaccine--and he needs it by the truckload. To get it, he will have to forge a shady alliance with both the politicians of the City of New York and some of its less savory entrepreneurs.

But all of his back-alley dealing may amount to nothing if he can't stave off the fast-moving disease as it sweeps across the planet, leaving billions dead in its wake. And if he fails, his only fallback is an incomplete plan to move enough personnel to safe havens and prepare to restart civilization.

What's more, there are others who have similar plans--and believe it or not, they're even less charitable than a Wall Street investment banker. Sooner or later Smith will have to deal with them.

But first he has to survive the Fall.

Bound Gods: Book 1

Rachel Dunne

A breathtaking talent makes her debut with this first book in a dark epic fantasy trilogy, in which a mismatched band of mortals led by a violent, secretive man must stand against a pair of resentful gods to save their world.

Eons ago, a pair of gods known as the Twins grew powerful in the world of Fiatera, until the Divine Mother and Almighty Father exiled them, binding them deep in the earth. But the price of keeping the fire lands safe is steep. To prevent these young gods from rising again, all twins in the land must be killed at birth, a safeguard that has worked until now.

Trapped for centuries, the Twins are gathering their latent powers to break free and destroy the Parents for their tyranny--to set off a fight between two generations of gods for control of the world and the mortals who dwell in it.

When the gods make war, only one side can be victorious. Joros, a mysterious and cunning priest, has devised a dangerous plan to win. Over eight years, he gathers a team of disparate fighters--Scal, a lost and damaged swordsman from the North; Vatri, a scarred priestess who claims to see the future in her fires; Anddyr, a drug-addled mage wandering between sanity and madness; and Rora and Aro, a pair of twins who have secretly survived beyond the reach of the law.

These warriors must learn to stand together against the unfathomable power of vengeful gods, to stop them from tearing down the sun... and plunging their world into darkness.

The Shadow Lamp

Bright Empires: Book 4

Stephen R. Lawhead

The quest for answers hinges on finding the cosmic link between the Shadow Lamp, the Skin Map, and the Spirit Well.

The search for the map of blue symbols started in a rainy alley in London, but has since expanded through both space and time.

Mina, Kit, Gianni, Cass, Haven, and Giles have gathered in Mina's 16th-century coffee house and are determined to find a path back to the Spirit Well. Yet with their shadow lamps destroyed and key pieces of the map still missing, the journey will be far costlier than they imagine. And when one of their own disappears with the coveted green book, they no longer know who to trust.

At the same time, the Zetetic Society is on the verge of a most disturbing discovery. The expansion of the universe is slowing and soon will begin to reverse. And when it does, the effect will be far more than a setback. It will be the systematic annihilation of all that exists . . . the end of everything.

The quest for answers is no longer limited to treasure. Now everything depends on cracking the code.

The Shadow of Albion

Carolus Rex: Book 1

Andre Norton
Rosemary Edghill

Thrust into a volatile world where King Henry IX rules over the English Empire, America never revolted, and Napoleon Bonaparte marches unchecked across Europe, is young Sarah Cunningham, ripped from our history by magic and the machinations of the dying Duchess of Roxbury.Magically coerced into believing she is Roxbury, Sarah finds herself caught up with the Duke of Wessex, the King's most trusted spy. A perilous adventure takes them into the black heart of Imperial France to rescue a missing princess before the last chance for peace dissolves and the world is left at the mercy of Napoleon.

Shadow's Blade

Case Files of Justis Fearsson: Book 3

David B. Coe

Book #3 in The Case Files of Justis Fearsson, the critically acclaimed contemporary fantasy series from fantasy all-star David B. Coe. A hardboiled, magic-using private detective fights dark sorcerers in Phoenix, Arizona.

Justis Fearsson is a weremyste and a private detective. He wields potent magic, but every month, on the full moon, he loses his mind. His battles with insanity have already cost him his job as a cop; he can't afford to let them interfere with his latest case.

Phoenix has become ground zero in a magical war, and an army of werecreatures, blood sorcerers, and necromancers has made Jay its number one target. When he is hired to track down a woman who has gone missing with her two young children, he has a hunch that the dark ones are to blame. But then he's also brought in by the police to help with a murder investigation, and all the evidence implicates this same woman. Soon he is caught up in a deadly race to find not only the young family, but also an ancient weapon that could prove decisive in the looming conflict. Can he keep himself alive long enough to reach the woman and her kids before his enemies do? And can he claim the weapon before the people he loves, and the world he knows, are lost in a storm of flame, blood, and darkest sorcery?

Claimed By Shadow

Cassandra Palmer: Book 2

Karen Chance

Clairvoyant Cassie Plamer has inherited new magical powers-including the ability to travel through time. But it's a whole lot of responsibility she'd rather not have. Now she's the most popular girl in town, as an assortment of vamps, fey, and mages try to convince, force, or seduce her-and her magic-over to their side. But one particular master vampire didn't ask what Cassie wanted before putting a claim on her. He had a spell cast that binds her to him, and now she doesn't know if what she feels for him is real-or imagined...

The Shadow of the Wind

Cemetery of Forgotten Books: Book 1

Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Barcelona, 1945: A city slowly heals in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, and Daniel, an antiquarian book dealer's son who mourns the loss of his mother, finds solace in a mysterious book entitled The Shadow of the Wind, by one Julián Carax. But when he sets out to find the author's other works, he makes a shocking discovery: someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book Carax has written. In fact, Daniel may have the last of Carax's books in existence. Soon Daniel's seemingly innocent quest opens a door into one of Barcelona's darkest secrets--an epic story of murder, madness, and doomed love.

Stone Shadow

Chaingang: Book 3

Rex Miller

The victim of a psychotic serial killer escapes and lives to tell police of the murderer's disturbing boast--he had killed and concealed the bodies of hundreds of people--and now detective Jack Eichord must follow the killer's bloody trail before more people disappear.

Spirits That Walk in Shadow

Chapel Hollow: Book 3

Nina Kiriki Hoffman

A compelling, funny, magical thriller.

Kim and Jaimie are freshman roommates-but their college experience is anything but typical. This is Jaimie's first time in the "real world," away from her large family and their magical traditions. It's Kim's chance to escape her high school reputation. But Jaimie quickly sees that Kim can't-she's being stalked by something that feeds on depression. And, just like that, reality reshapes itself, as the two girls-along with Jaimie's cousins and a Presence named Rugee-try to capture and rout the viri, or emotional vampire, who is tracking Kim.

A Song of Shadows

Charlie Parker: Book 13

John Connolly

Grievously wounded, private detective Charlie Parker investigates a case that has its origins in a Nazi concentration camp during the Second World War.

Broken, but undeterred, private detective Charlie Parker faces the darkest of dark forces in a case with its roots in the second world war, and a concentration camp unlike any other...

Recovering from a near-fatal shooting and tormented by memories of a world beyond this one, Parker has retreated to the small Maine town of Boreas to recover. There he befriends a widow named Ruth Winter and her young daughter, Amanda. But Ruth has her secrets. She is hiding from the past, and the forces that threaten her have their origins in the Second World War, in a town called Lubko and a concentration camp unlike any other. Old atrocities are about to be unearthed, and old sinners will kill to hide their sins. Now Parker is about to risk his life to defend a woman he barely knows, one who fears him almost as much as she fears those who are coming for her.

His enemies believe him to be vulnerable. Fearful. Solitary.

But they are wrong. Parker is far from afraid, and far from alone.

For something is emerging from the shadows...

Shadowed Steel

Chicagoland Vampires: Heirs of Chicagoland: Book 3

Chloe Neill

Elisa Sullivan is the only vampire ever born, and she bears a heavy legacy. After a sojourn with the North American Central Pack of shifters in the wilderness--where she turned a young woman into a vampire to save her life--Elisa returns to Chicago.

But no good deed goes unpunished. The ruling body of vampires, the Assembly of American Masters, is furious that Elisa turned someone without their permission, and they want her punished. When an AAM vampire is found dead, Elisa is the prime suspect. Someone else is stalking Chicago--and Elisa. She'll need to keep a clear head, and a sharp blade, to survive all the supernatural strife.

Cast In Shadow

Chronicles of Elantra: Book 1

Michelle Sagara

Seven years ago, Kaylin fled the crime-riddled streets of Nightshade, knowing that something was after her. Children were being murdered— and all had the same odd markings that mysteriously appeared on her own skin….

Since then, she's learned to read, she's learned to fight and she's become one of the vaunted Hawks who patrol and police the City of Elantra. Alongside the winged Aerians and the immortal Barrani, she's made a place for herself, far from the mean streets of her birth.

But children are once again dying, and a dark and familiar pattern is emerging. Kaylin is ordered back into Nightshade with a partner she knows she can't trust, a Dragon lord for a companion and a device to contain her powers—powers that no other human has. Her task is simple—find the killer, stop the murders… and survive the attentions of those who claim to be her allies!

Circle of Shadows

Circle of Shadows: Book 1

Evelyn Skye

Sora can move as silently as a ghost and hurl throwing stars with lethal accuracy. Her gemina, Daemon, can win any physical fight blindfolded and with an arm tied around his back. They are apprentice warriors of the Society of Taigas - marked by the gods to be trained in magic and the fighting arts to protect the kingdom of Kichona.

As their graduation approaches, Sora and Daemon look forward to proving themselves worthy of belonging in the elite group - but in a kingdom free of violence since the Blood Rift Rebellion many years ago, it's been difficult to make their mark.

So when Sora and Daemon encounter a strange camp of mysterious soldiers while on a standard scouting mission, they decide the only thing to do to help their kingdom is to infiltrate the group. Taking this risk will change Sora's life forever - and lead her on a mission of deception that may fool everyone she's ever loved.

Cloak of Night

Circle of Shadows: Book 2

Evelyn Skye

After the devastating Ceremony of Two Hundred Hearts, Sora, Daemon, Fairy, and Broomstick are truly alone in the fight to save their kingdom. Empress Aki is missing, and everyone else who could help them is a prisoner to Prince Gin's mind control.

At least Sora understands what they're up against. Or so she believes, until she overhears Gin bargaining with the god of war for immortality and learns that ryuu magic may be a more insidious danger than she realized.

Suddenly, the stakes are higher and even more personal for Sora--not only must she stop a seemingly indestructible Prince Gin, but she must also unravel the secrets of ryuu magic before it is too late for nearly everyone she loves.

Sora Daemon, Fairy, and Broomstick face dangerous obstacles at every turn, but the greatest challenge may be discovering who they truly are and what, if anything, they are capable of.

The fate of a kingdom rests in their hands.

Girl in the Shadows

Cirque American: Book 2

Gwenda Bond

Eighteen-year-old Moira Mitchell grew up in the shadows of Vegas's stage lights while her father's career as a magician soared. More than anything, Moira wants to be a magician too, but her father is dead set against her pursuing magic.

When an invitation to join the Cirque American mistakenly falls into Moira's possession, she takes action. Instead of giving the highly coveted invitation to its intended recipient, Raleigh, her father's handsome and worldly former apprentice, Moira takes off to join the Cirque. If she can perform alongside its world-famous acts, she knows she'll be able to convince her dad that magic is her future.

But when Moira arrives, things take on an intensity she can't control as her stage magic suddenly feels like... real magic. To further distract her, Raleigh shows up none too pleased at Moira's presence, all while the Cirque's cocky and intriguing knife thrower, Dez, seems to have it out for her. As tensions mount and Moira's abilities come into question, she must decide what's real and what's an illusion. If she doesn't sort it out in time, she may forever remain a girl in the shadows.

City of Light & Shadow

City of a Hundred Rows: Book 3

Ian Whates

The monstrous Rust Warriors are back!

In a land struggling to cope with the onset of the fatal bone flu, street-nick Tom and Kat - the leader of the Tattooed Men - must find a way to despatch both threats. Meanwhile, the Soul Thief is still at large, and still killing...

Crown of Shadows

Coldfire Trilogy: Book 3

C. S. Friedman

Unlikely allies Damien and Tarrant are faced with an enemy who may prove invulnerable-a demon who has declared war on mankind. Called Calesta, he is a master of illusion and devourer of pain, and he plans to remake the human species until it exists only to sate his unquenchable thirst for suffering. The war against Calesta will take Damien and Tarrant from the depths of Hell to the birthplace of demons and beyond-in a battle that could cost them not only their lives, but the very soul of mankind.

Talon of the Silver Hawk

Conclave of the Shadows: Book 1

Evil has come to a distant land high among the snow-capped mountains of Midkemia, as an exterminating army wearing the colors of the Duke of Olasko razes village after village, slaughtering men, women, and children without mercy. And when the carnage is done, only one survivor remains: a young boy named Kieli. A youth no longer, there is now but one road for him to travel: the path of vengeance. And he will not be alone. Under the tutelage of the rescuers who discovered him, Kieli will be molded into a sure and pitiless weapon. And he will accept the destiny that has been chosen for him ... as Talon of the Silver Hawk.

But the prey he so earnestly stalks is hunting him as well. And Talon must swear allegiance to a shadowy cause that already binds his mysterious benefactors -- or his mission, his honor, and his life will be lost forever.

King of Foxes

Conclave of the Shadows: Book 2

In the mountains of Midkemia, a boy came brutally of age in blood and in terror. And now he lives for one purpose alone ... revenge!

An exceptionally skilled swordsman, young Tal Hawkins was the only survivor of the massacre of his village -- rescued, recruited, and trained by the mysterious order of magicians and spies, the Conclave of Shadows. Now one of the secret society's most valuable agents, he gains entrance into the court of Duke Olasko, the bloodthirsty and powerful despot whose armies put Tal's village to the sword, by posing as a nobleman from the distant Kingdom of the Isles. But the enemy is cunning and well protected -- in league with the foul necromancer Leso Varen, dark master of death-magic -- and to gain the Duke's trust and confidence, Tal Hawkins must first sell his soul.

Exiles Return

Conclave of the Shadows: Book 3

Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell

Saved by a mage's intervention from certain death, Kaspar, the evil Duke of Olasko, is lord no more -- reduced to an exile's existence and forced to wander the harshest realms of the world he once enslaved.

Merciless deserts, forbidding mountains, and vast oceans now separate the once powerful despot from his former seat of power -- his dark dreams of vengeance overwhelmed by the daily struggle for survival. But there is a larger drama that will entangle the broken dictator. An evil devastating and deadly seeks entrance to the land -- the mystical tool of a dark empire hungry for conquest and destruction -- and Kaspar has inadvertently discovered the key.

Suddenly, Midkemia's last hope is a disgraced and exiled duke whose history is written in blood, and who now must wield his sword as her champion . . . if he so chooses..

A Flush of Shadows

Constance and Charlie

Kate Wilhelm

Over the years, Constance Leidl and Charlie Meiklejohn have investigated a wide variety of murder and arson cases. This collection assembles for the first time the shorter cases of the detecting duo, including: "With Thimbles, with Forks, and Hope," their first case ever; the harrowing account of an arsonist out for revenge, "Torch Song," which has never been published before; and "All for One," also published first in this volume - a bittersweet tale of murderous family relations. Together with "Sister Alice" and "The Gorgon Field," these stories comprise a full house of fantastic fiction.

Table of Contents:

Introduction - essay by Robin Scott Wilson
With Thimbles, with Forks, and Hope - (1981) - novella
Sister Angel - (1983) - novelette
All for One - novella
The Gorgon Field - (1985) - novella
Torch Song - novella

The Conqueror's Shadow

Corvis Rebaine: Book 1

Ari Marmell

They called him the Terror of the East. Hidden beneath a suit of enchanted black armor and wielding a demon-forged axe, Corvis Rebaine carved a bloody path through Imphallion, compelled by a desire to see the land governed with some degree of honesty. Yet just when victory was in his grasp, Rebaine faltered, then vanished, taking a single hostage—a young noblewoman named Tyannon—to guarantee his escape.

Seventeen years later, Rebaine and Tyannon are married and raising their children. Rebaine has given up his dreams of conquest. Not even news of the upstart warlord Audriss can stir the retired warrior to action—until his daughter is assaulted by Audriss’s goons. Now, to rescue the country he once tried to conquer, Rebaine once more dons the armor of the Terror of the East. But does he dare reawaken the part of him that gloried in destruction? With the safety of his family at stake, can he dare not to?

Shadows of Self

Cosmere: Mistborn: Wax and Wayne: Book 2

Brandon Sanderson

The Mistborn trilogy's heroes are now figures of myth and legend, even objects of religious veneration. They are succeeded by wonderful new characters, chief among them Waxillium Ladrian, known as Wax, hereditary Lord of House Ladrian but also, until recently, a lawman in the ungoverned frontier region known as the Roughs. There he worked with his eccentric but effective buddy, Wayne. They are "twinborn," meaning they are able to use both Allomantic and Feruchemical magic.

Shadows of Self shows Mistborn's society evolving as technology and magic mix, the economy grows, democracy contends with corruption, and religion becomes a growing cultural force, with four faiths competing for converts.

This bustling, optimistic, but still shaky society now faces its first instance of terrorism, crimes intended to stir up labor strife and religious conflict. Wax and Wayne, assisted by the lovely, brilliant Marasi, must unravel the conspiracy before civil strife stops Scadrial's progress in its tracks.

Cosmere: Threnody

Brandon Sanderson

When the familiar and seemingly safe turns lethal, therein danger lies. Amid a forest where the shades of the dead linger all around, every homesteader knows to follow the Simple Rules: "Don't kindle flame, don't shed the blood of another, don't run at night. These things draw shades." Silence Montane has broken all three rules on more than one occasion. And to protect her family from a murderous gang with high bounties on their heads, Silence will break every rule again, at the risk of becoming a shade herself.

This novella was originally published in the Georgre R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois anthology Dangerous Women (2013). It is also included in Paula Guran's The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2014.

Burning Shadows

Count of Saint-Germain: Book 23

Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

Two decades strong, the Saint-Germain cycle is one of the most compelling works of dark fantasy and horror of our age. Historically accurate, these deeply emotional novels have a devoted readership.

In Burning Shadows, Yarbro looks at the legendary Huns from the perspective of the people who faced the brunt of their attacks. The vampire Saint-Germain seeks sanctuary at an isolated monastery, unwilling to abandon the hundreds of terrified villagers he has led in flight from the Huns. A few Roman soldiers and some village Watchmen are the monastery's defense force—and they are undermined by the religious fervor of some of the monks, who argue that since everyone's fate is in God's hands, it is foolish to defend themselves. In the hothouse atmosphere of the high-walled monastery, Saint-Germain must take special care when slaking his vampire thirst, for discovery of his True Nature will result in his True Death.

Play of Shadows

Court of Shadows: Book 1

Sebastien de Castell

Damelas Chademantaigne picked a poor night to flee a judicial duel.

He has precious little hope of escaping the wrath of the Vixen, the most feared duellist in the entire city, until he stumbles through the stage doors of the magnificent Operato Belleza and tricks his way into the company of actors. An archaic law provides a temporary respite from his troubles - until one night a ghostly voice in his head causes Damelas to fumble his lines, inadvertently blurting out a dreadful truth: the city's most legendary hero may actually be a traitor and a brutal murderer.

With only the help of his boisterous and lusty friend Bereto, a beautiful assassin whose target may well be Damelas himself, and a company of misfit actors who'd just as soon see him dead, this failed grandson of two Greatcoats must somehow find within himself the courage to dig up long-buried truths before a ruthless band of bravos known as the Iron Orchids come for his head.

Oh, and there's still that matter of the Vixen waiting to duel him...

House of Flame and Shadow

Crescent City: Book 3

Sarah J. Maas

Bryce Quinlan never expected to see a world other than Midgard, but now that she has, all she wants is to get back. Everything she loves is in Midgard: her family, her friends, her mate. Stranded in a strange new world, she's going to need all her wits about her to get home again. And that's no easy feat when she has no idea who to trust.

Hunt Athalar has found himself in some deep holes in his life, but this one might be the deepest of all. After a few brief months with everything he ever wanted, he's in the Asteri's dungeons again, stripped of his freedom and without a clue as to Bryce's fate. He's desperate to help her, but until he can escape the Asteri's leash, his hands are quite literally tied.

Shadow Gate

Crossroads: Book 2

Kate Elliott

The captivating, bestselling Spirit Gate swept readers into the turbulent world of the Hundred, where the peace and order of life under the protection of the immortal Guardians has given way to chaos and violence. In the face of a vast horde of marauders led by a rogue Guardian, the bravery and resourcefulness of a lone eagle-reeve and others who risk their lives for the common good have prevented death and destruction from overwhelming the Hundred.

Now in Shadow Gate, the enthralling sequel, the source of corruption of the Guardians is still a mystery to the mortals who fight to withstand the forces that have turned against them. And when three new Guardians emerge, a struggle begins among the immortals, with nothing less at stake than the future of the land and its gods.

With all the color, excitement, and narrative power that have made Kate Elliott an enormously popular writer, Shadow Gate weaves a powerful spell of action, romance, and magic that will entrance legions of readers.

The Shadow Revolution

Crown & Key: Book 1

Clay Griffith
Susan Griffith

A thrilling new Victorian-era urban fantasy for fans of Kevin Hearne's Iron Druid Chronicles, the Showtime series Penny Dreadful, and the Sherlock Holmes movies featuring Robert Downey, Jr.

They are the realm's last, best defense against supernatural evil. But they're going to need a lot more silver.

As fog descends, obscuring the gas lamps of Victorian London, werewolves prowl the shadows of back alleys. But they have infiltrated the inner circles of upper-crust society as well. Only a handful of specially gifted practitioners are equipped to battle the beasts. Among them are the roguish Simon Archer, who conceals his powers as a spell-casting scribe behind the smooth veneer of a dashing playboy; his layabout mentor, Nick Barker, who prefers a good pub to thrilling heroics; and the self-possessed alchemist Kate Anstruther, who is equally at home in a ballroom as she is on a battlefield.

After a lycanthrope targets Kate's vulnerable younger sister, the three join forces with fierce Scottish monster-hunter Malcolm MacFarlane--but quickly discover they're dealing with a threat far greater than anything they ever imagined.

Shadows in the Sun

Crown Classics of SF: Book 9

Chad Oliver

Anthropologist Paul Ellery discovers that the small Texas town of Jefferson Springs is actually an imitation of small-town America created by the aliens who now offer him a chance to explore the universe.

Wings of Shadow

Crown of Feathers: Book 3

Nicki Pau Preto

I had a sister, once...

Veronyka is no longer an orphaned stable boy or a nameless Phoenix Rider apprentice: she is the daughter of Pheronia Ashfire, the last queen of the Golden Empire... and the niece of Avalkyra Ashfire, the resurrected rebel queen who tore the empire apart.

We shone brightly, burned fiercely.

Now that the secret is out, everyone at the Eyrie treats Veronyka differently, and with Tristan still a hostage of the scheming Lord Rolan--and Sev with him as a spy--Veronyka feels very much alone. Except for her beloved phoenix, Xephyra, of course, and her new friend, Kade, who has his own reasons for wanting to save Tristan.

Was it always going to come down to this? Sister against sister? Darkness against light?

Veronyka is determined to do whatever it takes to get Tristan back, even if that means revealing her identity to the world and inheriting a throne she's not sure she wants. But when she discovers that Avalkyra has bonded with a strix--a legendary creature of darkness that feeds off the life force of others--Veronyka realizes she has more to deal with than an encroaching war with the empire. Val is willing to destroy everything to get her revenge on a world that rejected her, and if Veronyka wants to bring peace to the empire and Pyra alike, she must face down her sister once and for all.

The world began with Ashfire queens... perhaps they will also be its destruction.

The Shadow Out of Time

Cthulhu Mythos

H. P. Lovecraft

Like At the Mountains of Madness, The Shadow Out of Time is one of Lovecraft's longest and most involved novellas. Moreover, The Shadow Out of Time was also turned into a graphic novel by Culbard in 2013. After a protracted coma which saw him become a topic of fascination for psychologists and psychiatrists around the world, the former Miskatonic Professor Nathaniel Peaslee embarks on a journey through the Australian outback in order to discover the lost civilization of the Yithians, a race of brilliant extraterrestrials who can travel through both space and time. Like other great minds from different epochs, Peaslee once had his mind switched with that of a Yithian in order for the alien to learn as much as possible about human civilization during the early 20th century. A profoundly pessimistic tale, The Shadow Out of Time was published nine months before Lovecraft died of cancer in his hometown of Providence, Rhode Island. He was 46.

This Novella was originally published June 1936 issue of Astounding Stories. It has been anthologized many times, including the anthology Baker's Dozen: 13 Short Horror Novels, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Charles G. Waugh, and has also been included in a myriad of collections, including the collections The Dunwich Horror and Others also Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales of H.P. Lovecraft.

The novella "The Shadow Out of Time" is available free on the Internet.

The Shadow Over Innsmouth

Cthulhu Mythos

H. P. Lovecraft

As with "The Dunwich Horror," this short story is set in the fictional Massachusetts seaport of Innsmouth, yet another "strange, little town" in the history of American horror. As the narrator, an amateur genealogist named Robert Olmstead, goes deeper and deeper into town, he uncovers the unholy marriage between Innsmouth, the Marsh family and the weird creatures that live just out past the coastal waters. "The Shadow over Innsmouth" is a good example of another one of Lovecraft's favorite tropes: guilt inherited by tainted blood. As such, "The Shadow over Innsmouth" takes fears of miscegenation to the extreme.

This novella was originally published by Visionary Press as a limited run chapbook in 1937. The first major stand alone publication was in the January 1942 issue of Weird Tales. It has been anthologized many times, including the anthology H. P. Lovecraft and Others: Shadows Over Innsmouth, edited by Stephen Jones, and has also been included in a myriad of collections, including the collections The Dunwich Horror and Others and The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories.

The novella "The Shadow over Innsmouth" is available free on the Internet.

Shadowfane

Cycle of Fire: Book 3

Darkness, Mist and Shadow: Volume 1: The Collected Macabre Tales Of Basil Copper

The concluding novel in the "Cycle of Fire" fantasy trilogy, which began with "Stormwarden" and "Keeper of the Keys". Jaric inherits his father's powers, and as he struggles to successfully assume them, mankind's enemies are growing strong.

Shadowborn

Darkborn: Book 3

Alison Sinclair

Magic dies with the mage, or so the Darkborn believe. That's why Lady Telmaine Hearne has been condemned to death for sorcery. She's escaped but is now bound with her mageborn allies for the Borders and war. Meanwhile, her husband, Balthasar, has learned of his family connection to the Shadowborn-and is fighting for survival and sanity as magic turns him against everything he holds dear.

Darkness, Mist and Shadow: Book 1

Basil Copper

Collected together for the first time in two handsomely produced volumes from PS Publishing are all the supernatural and macabre short stories and novellas of legendary British writer Basil Copper. Drawn from numerous collections, anthologies and magazines as varied as the legendary Pan Book of Horror Stories series, rare and collectible compilations edited by Peter Haining and Richard Dalby, and the author's own highly-prized books from Arkham House, these two extensive collections contain more than four decades' worth of weird fiction from one of the genre's most renowned practitioners. In this initial volume you will find such classics of the macabre as the author's first professionally published short story, 'The Spider', along with memorable tales like 'Camera Obscura' (adapted by Rod Serling for the TV series Night Gallery), 'The Academy of Pain', 'Amber Print', 'The Recompensing of Albano Pizar' (dramatised by BBC Radio 4) and the author's terrifying Cthulhu Mythos novella, 'Shaft Number 247'.

With an historical Introduction by editor Stephen Jones, volume one of Darkness, Mist and Shadow: The Collected Macabre Tales of Basil Copper also contains original illustrations by Dave Carson, Les Edwards, Bob Eggleton, Gary Gianni and Allen Koszowski, along with a stunning cover painting by Stephen E. Fabian.

Darkness, Mist and Shadow: Volume 2: The Collected Macabre Tales Of Basil Copper

Darkness, Mist and Shadow: Book 2

Basil Copper

Shadowfall

Deathlands: Book 26

James Axler

The nuclear conflagration that consumed the world generations ago stripped away most of its bounty, throwing survivors back to more savage ways of existence. Amid the ruins, Ryan Cawdor leads the daring few who wage a grim battle in a quest for a better future.

As elsewhere in the Deathlands, what remains of the Sunshine State is rules by tooth and claw and unbridled instinct. It's an alien, inhospitable terrain of sulfur pits and lethal geysers, inhabited by mutated life-forms. Here Ryan finds that survival demands hard and fast choices, and unexpected alliances. To hold his band of warrior survivalists together, he comes to an agonizing crossroads, torn by a debt to the past and loyalty to the present.

Hope died in the Deathlands, but the will to live goes on.

Shadow World

Deathlands: Book 49

James Axler

The hellscape of postnuclear America has a bloodlust for the good, the innocent and the helpless. Survival in Deathlands demands a will to endure that is as raw and savage as this brutal frontier. For Deathlands is the future's last and only hope for both its inheritors and strange invaders to whom this perdition promises a paradise.

Ryan Cawdor is a true warrior of Deathlands, fighting for survival in a bizarre, freakish world. But now, beyond the unseen perils, a new threat emerges: invaders arrive from a parallel earth where the nukecaust never happened. Ryan is abducted through a time corridor to the twin earth, where he dixcovers a nightmare that makes Deathlands look tame by comparison and a new plot for its grotesque destruction...

In the Deathlands the future is undertain, but it's all that remains.

Shadow Fortress

Deathlands: Book 55

James Axler

Book #3 of the Skydark Chronicles of Deathlands

A planet ravaged by the apocalyptic blast of 2001 gave birth to a new world of savagery -- and a new breed of hero. In a land where violence rules with absolute authority, Ryan Cawdor and his wayfarer survivalists roam the strange, nascent twenty-second century, living by their own creed of honor as they continue their search for a sanctuary they can call home.

In what was once the nuclear testing ground of the predark world, the Marshall Islands are now the kingdom of the grotesque Lord Baron Kinnison. Here in this world of slavery and brutality the companions have fought a fierce war for survival, on land and sea -- yet the crafty baron still conspires to destroy these interlopers. Activating a twentieth-century hot air balloon left untouched by the blast, they escape to the neighboring pirate-ruled Forbidden Island, with the baron's sec men in hot pursuit -- and become trapped in a war for total supremacy of this water world.

Not even Deathlands can deny the human will to survive.

Delia's Shadow

Delia Martin: Book 1

Jaime Lee Moyer

It is the dawn of a new century in San Francisco and Delia Martin is a wealthy young woman whose life appears ideal. But a dark secret colors her life, for Delia's most loyal companions are ghosts, as she has been gifted (or some would say cursed) with an ability to peer across to the other side.

Since the great quake rocked her city in 1906, Delia has been haunted by an avalanche of the dead clamoring for her help. Delia flees to the other side of the continent, hoping to gain some peace. After several years in New York, Delia believes she is free... until one determined specter appears and she realizes that she must return to the City by the Bay in order to put this tortured soul to rest.

It will not be easy, as the ghost is only one of the many victims of a serial killer who was never caught. A killer who after thirty years is killing again.

And who is now aware of Delia's existence.

The Shadow Pavilion

Detective Inspector Chen: Book 4

Liz Williams

Detective Inspector Chen is back!

The Snake Agent returns in The Shadow Pavilion, the fourth Detective Inspector Chen novel from Liz Williams. When Chen's partner, the demon Seneschal Zhu Irzh, disappears, along with Chen's wife and Inari's guardian badger, Chen must enlist all of his allies and assets in order to locate them!

From the strange streets of Singapore Three to the rough and tumble world of Bollywood, where money flows fast and emotions flare even faster; from the realms of the Celestial to the haunts of the Infernal and all the spaces in-between, The Shadow Pavilion delivers the thrills, excitement, and near-future occult action fans have come to expect.

The Shadow Isle

Deverry Cycle Act 4: The Silver Wyrm: Book 3

Katharine Kerr

The wild Northlands hold many secrets, among them the mysterious island of Haen Marn, the mountain settlements of Dwarveholt, and the fortified city of Cerr Cawnen. All three communities-and the alliance of humans, elves, and dwarves-are threatened by the religious fanaticism of the Horsekin. Only the magic of Dallandra and Valandario and the might of the powerful dragons, Arzosah and Rori, can save the Northlands from conquest.

Whisper of Shadows

Diamond City Magic: Book 3

Diana Pharaoh Francis

War is coming...

When the FBI uses an anti-magic law to arrest and torture Riley's boyfriend, they have no idea what hell they are about to unleash. If Riley can't rescue Clay before he breaks, the result will be a disaster of epic proportions.

With time running out, Riley and her family must rely on two people more likely to stab them in the back than actually help. And, even if Riley manages the rescue, she's still got to deal with two kidnappings and the return of her dad from the dead--the same dad who'd been willing to see her dead to protect his secrets.

What's a girl to do? Kick ass, take names, and protect those she cares about at all costs.

The Shadow of Weng-Chiang

Doctor Who Virgin Missing Adventures: Book 25

David A. McIntee

"They say a journey of a thousand miles begins with but a single step. If I'm right, then a journey of a thousand miles will take but a single step."

The search for the fourth segment of the Key to Time brings the TARDIS to 1930s Shanghai: a dark and shadowy world, riven by conflict and threatened by the expansion of the Japanese Empire. Meanwhile, the savage Tongs pursue their own mysterious agenda in the city's illegal clubs and opium dens.

Manipulated by an elusive foe, the Fourth Doctor is obliged to follow the Dragon Path -- the side-effect of a disastrous experiment in the far future.

But would two segments of the Key be on the same planet? Is the Black Guardian behind the dark schemes of the beautiful Hsien-Ko? And who is the small child who always accompanies her?

Shadow's Bane

Dorina Basarab, Dhampir: Book 4

Karen Chance

Half-human, half-vampire Dorina Basarab is back--and facing her biggest challenge yet in the next urban fantasy in the New York Times bestselling series.

Dorina Basarab is a dhampir--half-human, half-vampire. As one of the Vampire Senate's newest members, Dory already has a lot on her plate. But then a relative of one of Dory's fey friends goes missing. They fear he's been sold to a slaver who arranges fights--sometimes to the death--between different types of fey.

As Dory investigates, she and her friends learn the slavers are into something much bigger than a fight club. With the Vampire Senate gearing up for war with Faerie, it'll take everything she has to defeat the slavers--and deal with the entirely too attractive master vampire Louis-Cesare....

In Winter's Shadow

Down the Long Wind: Book 3

Gillian Bradshaw

Vows broken... Friendships betrayed... The fate of heroes finally revealed...

As powerful enemies attack the throne from inside the kingdom, Arthur, his queen, and his greatest warrior Gwalchmai will be put to the ultimate test. Never faltering in her loyalty to the king, Gwynhwyfar has stood at Arthur's side through rebellion and war. But one desperate decision could cost her all they've built. With the kingdom crumbling around them, following the Queen's heart could be the greatest threat of all...

Creep, Shadow!

Dr. Lowell: Book 2

A. Merritt

This Two Thousand Year-Old Sorceress Had the Power to Turn People into Shadows!

Here is A. Merritt's masterwork, our publisher's pick for the best of all his classic fantasies. Creep, Shadow! Is based on legends of Ys and an old Breton song:

Fisher, fisher, have you seen
White Dahut, the Shadow Queen
Riding on her stallion black
At her heels her shadow pack?

Had the last King and Princess of wicked Ys, returned after three thousand years? Why were they creating an exact replica of Stonehenge on their New Jersey estate? What was the Mael Bennique, the Breaker of Chests? And what was the dread Gatherer in the Cairn? And can men and women really be turned into shadows and made the helpless slaves of the one who transformed them?

Ethnologist Alan Caranac (who may just be the reincarnation of the Alain de Carnac who brought about the destruction of sinful Ys and its evil rulers) has to find out the answer, for one of his best friends has been killed, and perhaps transformed into a shadow, while his fiancee Helen, her brother, Bill, and the famed Dr. Lowell have already been marked for death or worse!

But first Alan will have to enter the tower of the Demoiselle Dahut de Ys in New York and journey through it thousands of years into the past to her tower in the legendary city from which she draws her name. And then return, if he can!

In this stunning sequel to his classics Burn, Witch, Burn!, the great A. Merritt, an authority on ancient magic and civilizations, captured the feeling of sorcery and the supernatural as never before! Discover why the New York Times raved that Merritt's writings spin "a shimmering, glittering web of imagination" whose "fertility never seems to lessen"; andwhy Analog magazine called his stories "crammed with fascinating people and creatures." Here is a classic by the author the Science Fiction Encyclopedia crowned "the supreme fantasy genius."

Tanis, the Shadow Years

Dragonlance: Preludes II: Book 3

Barbara Siegel
Scott Siegel

The tale is told that Tanis Half-Elven once disappeared in the mountains near Solace. He returned changed, ennobled - and with a secret. No one knew what happened to him in those mist-shrouded peaks... until now.

The adventure began with a dying wizard who needed Tanis's help. It would not end until Tanis became a traveler in the old mage's memory, journeying into the past to fight an impossible battle against time itself.

Tanis, the Shadow Years is one of the long-awaited stories set before the best-selling DRAGONLANCE Chronicles Trilogy. Barbara and Scott Siegel are the authors of over thirty-seven books and contributed short stories to all three DRAGONLANCE Tales volumes.

Shadow of the Flame

Dragonlance: Taladas Chronicles: Book 3

Chris Pierson

Explore the far-off continent of Taladas in the exciting conclusion to The Taladas Chronicles!

As war and devastation spread across the continent of Taladas, a small band of heroes has just suffered a devastating loss in a fight to determine the world's fate. Barreth Forlo, their leader, has been possessed by the spirit of Maladar the Faceless, a sorcerer-king who seeks to return to power, by whatever means necessary. Now Shedara and Hult, Forlo's companions, must push on without him, bound for the safety of the distant Rainward Isles. Pitted against their friend, they must find a way to stop Maladar from raising his ancient empire from the ashes of history - and the answer may well lie in Forlo's own son, who carries a secret even he doesn't understand.

A Shadow of All Night Falling

Dread Empire Main Sequence: Book 1

A Fortress in Shadow: A Chronicle of the Dread Empire

Across the mountains called Dragon's Teeth, beyond the chill reach of the Werewind and the fires of the world's beginning, above the walls of the castle Fangdred, stands Windtower. From this lonely keep the Star Rider calls forth the war that even wizards dread, fought for a woman's hundred-lifetime love. A woman called Nepanthe, princess to the Stormkings...

Dread Empire: Omnibus volumes

Whispers of Shadow and Flame

This is an omnibus edition of The Fire in His Hands and With Mercy Toward None.

Once a mighty kingdom reigned, but now all is chaos. In the vast reaches of the desert, a young heretic escapes certain death and embarks on a mission of madness and glory. He is El Murid - the Disciple - who vows to bring order, prosperity and righteousness to the desert people of Hammad al Nakir. El Murid incites rebellion against the godless kingdoms and tribes as he plots to execute the justice of the desert. After four long centuries, El Murid is the savior who is destined to build a new empire from the blood his enemies. Or so it seems. El Murid has victory in his grasp, the desert tribes of Hammad al Nakir are rallying around him, and the last remaining thread of the royal lineage wanders the desert with only Heathens to help him. But all is not as it seems, and the sinister forces pulling the strings of empire come into the light. Who and what lies behind El Murid's vision of a desert empire?

The Shadowed Sun

Dreamblood: Book 2

N. K. Jemisin

Gujaareh, the city of dreams, suffers under the imperial rule of the Kisuati Protectorate. A city where the only law was peace now knows violence and oppression. And nightmares: a mysterious and deadly plague haunts the citizens of Gujaareh, dooming the infected to die screaming in their sleep. Trapped between dark dreams and cruel overlords, the people yearn to rise up -- but Gujaareh has known peace for too long.

Someone must show them the way.

Hope lies with two outcasts: the first woman ever allowed to join the dream goddess' priesthood and an exiled prince who longs to reclaim his birthright. Together, they must resist the Kisuati occupation and uncover the source of the killing dreams... before Gujaareh is lost forever.

Dreams and Shadows

Dreams and Shadows: Book 1

C. Robert Cargill

Something is missing from Ewan and Colby's lives. Residing in the corners of their memories is their time in Limestone Kingdom, a realm filled with magic and mystery, a world where only some may travel amongst the menagerie of mystical souls and sinister demons.

Cargill offers well-crafted characters and an absorbing, intricate plot that will appeal to fans of Neil Gaiman and Lev Grossman. Dreams and Shadows pulls you into an extraordinary universe of darkness that exposes the magic and monsters in our world, and in ourselves.

Screenwriter and acclaimed film critic C. Robert Cargill makes his fiction debut with Dreams and Shadows, taking beloved fantasy tropes, giving them a twist, and turning out a wonderful, witty, and wry take on clash between the fairy world and our own.

Queen of the Dark Things

Dreams and Shadows: Book 2

C. Robert Cargill

Screenwriter and noted film critic C. Robert Cargill continues the story begun in his acclaimed debut Dreams and Shadows in this bold and brilliantly crafted tale involving fairies and humans, magic and monsters--a vivid phantasmagoria that combines the imaginative wonders of Neil Gaiman, the visual inventiveness of Guillermo Del Toro, and the shocking miasma of William S. Burroughs.

Six months have passed since the wizard Colby lost his best friend to an army of fairies from the Limestone Kingdom, a realm of mystery and darkness beyond our own. But in vanquishing these creatures and banning them from Austin, Colby sacrificed the anonymity that protected him. Now, word of his deeds has spread, and powerful enemies from the past--including one Colby considered a friend--have resurfaced to exact their revenge.

As darkness gathers around the city, Colby sifts through his memories desperate to find answers that might save him. With time running out, and few of his old allies and enemies willing to help, he is forced to turn for aid to forces even darker than those he once battled.

Following such masters as Lev Grossman, Erin Morgenstern, Richard Kadrey, and Kim Harrison, C. Robert Cargill takes us deeper into an extraordinary universe of darkness and wonder, despair and hope to reveal the magic and monsters around us... and inside us.

Hero in the Shadows

Drenai Saga: Book 9

David Gemmell

The ruined city of Kuan Hador reeks of dark mystery. Shunned by brigands and merchants alike, it is home to fearsome wild things and legends that freeze the blood--tales that speak of slavering white beasts, locked behind a powerful wall of spells, who possess an insatiable appetite for death. Millennia have passed since they were bound, and the spell of imprisonment has begun to fade. Soon the foul minions will be free to wreak a horrible vengeance against all that lives.

But no army waits to oppose them, only a ragtag group of unlikely heroes. Leading them is the mysterious Gray Man, an enigmatic figure with a blood-drenched past who has killed for principle and for payment--a man of destiny known throughout the lands of the Drenai as Waylander the Slayer . . .

Earthsinger Chronicles: Book 2

Leslye Penelope

The Mantle that separates the kingdoms of Elsira and Lagrimar is about to fall. And life will drastically change for both kingdoms.

Born with a deadly magic she cannot control, Kyara is forced to become an assassin. Known as the Poison Flame in the kingdom of Lagrimar, she is notorious and lethal, but secretly seeks freedom from both her untamed power and the blood spell that commands her. She is tasked with capturing the legendary rebel called the Shadowfox, but everything changes when she learns her target's true identity.

Darvyn ol-Tahlyro may be the most powerful Earthsinger in generations, but guilt over those he couldn't save tortures him daily. He isn't sure he can trust the mysterious young woman who claims to need his help, but when he discovers Kyara can unlock the secrets of his past, he can't stay away.

Kyara and Darvyn grapple with betrayal, old promises, and older prophecies--all while trying to stop a war. And when a new threat emerges, they must beat the odds to save both kingdoms.

Daughter of Gods and Shadows

Eden Reid: Book 1

Jayde Brooks

Eden Reid is not interested in prophesy. The problem is that a doozy of a prophesy is bearing down on her. Such is the case when you're a twenty-four-year-old from Brooklyn, New York who is about to discover she is an ancient god. A truly powerful one. And with power comes problems. A truly formidable demon is gunning for her; a zombie-like pandemic is spreading across the country, creating creatures who are hungry for flesh, fast on their feet and clever; and there is the mysterious, handsome stranger with powers of his own who claims to have been her lover from a time and a life that Eden cannot remember. He promises to help awaken her powers for the upcoming war. A war where there is only one prize: survival... in Daughter of Gods and Shadows from debut author Jayde Brooks.

The Shadows of Avalon

Eighth Doctor Adventures: Book 31

Paul Cornell

The Brigadier, mourning the loss of his wife Doris, is called to help find a nuclear weapon that's gone missing over the Wiltshire Downs. The Doctor is on his way there too, to pick up his companion Compassion, after her holiday on Earth. But when the Doctor's TARDIS explodes, he, the Brigadier, Compassion and Fitz are thrown into the other-dimensional world of Avalon. Magic faces down science, dragons duel with jet fighters.

The Serpent's Shadow

Elemental Masters: Book 1

Mercedes Lackey

Beauty Meets Beast in San Francisco

Accepting employment as a governess after hard times hit her family, medieval scholar Rosalind Hawkins is surprised when she learns that her mysterious employer has no children, no wife, and she is not to meet with him face to face. Instead, her duties are to read to him, through a speaking tube, from ancient manuscripts in obscure, nearly forgotten dialects.

A requirement for the job was skill in translating medieval French, and she now understands the reason for that requirement, and assumes her unseen employer's interest in the descriptions of medieval spells and sorcery is that of an eccentric antiquary. What she does not realize is that his interest is anything but academic. He has a terrible secret and is desperately searching for something that can reverse the effects of the misfired spell which created his predicament.

Long Shadows

Elizabeth Cage: Book 3

Jodi Taylor

I don't know who I am. I don't know what I am.

The identity of Elizabeth Cage has always been a mystery. Even she doesn't know who, or what, she is. But she's learned to live with it.

Until now, when what should have been a peaceful holiday turns into anything but, and Elizabeth is forced to recognise that she isn't what she seems.

But neither is anyone else. Has her whole life been a lie?

Someone very badly wants to know the truth about Elizabeth Cage. And they'll do anything to find out. But who will live to regret it?

In Solitude's Shadow

Empire of Ruin: Book 1

David Green

The Banished have returned, and they have set their eyes on the walls of Solitude.

Zanna Alpenwood, a powerful mage, and two hundred aged and forgotten Sparkers are all that stand between the Banished and the nation of Haltveldt. With time running out and the world at stake, Zanna is forced to reach out to her estranged daughter, Calene, and set her on an impossible quest.

Calene quickly learns that enemies make unlikely allies as she teams up with both friend and foe on her journey to save her mother and Haltveldt. Forging their way over land and sea, uncovering dark plots and secret societies, Calene is forced to decide between her masters and her own conscience.

Will they arrive in time to save the fortress of Solitude from destruction? Only one thing is certain; Ruin is assured if Solitude falls.

Ender's Shadow

Ender's Universe: Ender's Shadow: Book 1

Orson Scott Card brings us back to the very beginning of his brilliant Ender Quartet, with a novel that allows us to reenter that world anew.

With all the power of his original creation, Card has created a parallel volume to Ender's Game, a book that expands and compliments the first, enhancing its power, illuminating its events and its powerful conclusion.

The human race is at War with the "Buggers", an insect-like alien race. The first battles went badly, and now as Earth prepares to defend itself against the imminent threat of total destruction at the hands of an inscrutable alien enemy, all focus is on the development and training of military geniuses who can fight such a war, and win.

The long distances of interstellar space have given hope to the defenders of Earth--they have time to train these future commanders up from childhood, forging then into an irresisible force in the high orbital facility called the Battle School.

Andrew "Ender" Wiggin was not the only child in the Battle School he was just the best of the best. In this new book, card tells the story of another of those precocious generals, the one they called Bean--the one who became Ender's right hand, part of his team, in the final battle against the Buggers.

Bean's past was a battle just to survive. He first appeared on the streets of Rotterdam, a tiny child with a mind leagues beyond anyone else's. He knew he could not survive through strength he used his tactical genius to gain acceptance into a children's gang, and then to help make that gang a template for success for all the others. He civilized them, and lived to grow older.

Bean's desperate struggle to live, and his success, brought him to the attention of the Battle School's recruiters, those people scouring the planet for leaders, tacticians, and generals to save Earth from the threat of alien invasion. Bean was sent into orbit, to the Battle School. And there he met Ender....

Shadow of the Hegemon

Ender's Universe: Ender's Shadow: Book 2

The War is over, won by Ender Wiggin and his team of brilliant child-warriors. The enemy is destroyed, the human race is saved. Ender himself refuses to return to the planet, but his crew has gone home to their families, scattered across the globe. The battle school is no more.

But with the external threat gone, the Earth has become a battlefield once more. The children of the Battle School are more than heros they are potential weapons that can bring power to the countries that control them. One by one, all of Ender's Dragon Army are kidnapped. Only Bean escapes and he turns for help to Ender's brother Peter.

Peter Wiggin, Ender's older brother, has already been manipulating the politics of Earth from behind the scenes. With Bean's help, he will eventually rule the world.

Shadow Puppets

Ender's Universe: Ender's Shadow: Book 3

Bestselling author Orson Scott Card brings to life a new chapter in the saga of Ender's Earth.

Earth and its society has been changed irrevocably in the aftermath of Ender Wiggin's victory over the Formics--the unity enforced upon the warring nations by an alien enemy has shattered. Nations are rising again, seeking territory and influence, and most of all, seeking to control the skills and loyalty of the children from the Battle School.

But one person has a better idea. Peter Wiggin, Ender's older, more ruthless, brother, sees that any hope for the future of Earth lies in restoring a sense of unity and purpose. And he has an irresistible call on the loyalty of Earth's young warriors. With Bean at his side, the two will reshape our future.

Here is the continuing story of Bean and Petra, and the rest of Ender's Dragon Army, as they take their places in the new government of Earth.

Shadow of the Giant

Ender's Universe: Ender's Shadow: Book 4

Bean's past was a battle just to survive. He first appeared on the streets of Rotterdam, a tiny child with a mind leagues beyond anyone else. He knew he could not survive through strength; he used his tactical genius to gain acceptance into a children's gang, and then to help make that gang a template for success for all the others. He civilized them, and lived to grow older. Then he was discovered by the recruiters for the Battle School.

For Earth was at war -- a terrible war with an inscrutable alien enemy. A war that humanity was near to losing. But the long distances of interstellar space has given hope to the defenders of Earth -- they had time to train military geniuses up from childhood, forging them into an irresistible force in the high-orbital facility called the Battle School. That story is told in two books, the beloved classic Ender's Game, and its parallel, Ender's Shadow.

Bean was the smallest student at the Battle School, but he became Ender Wiggins' right hand. Since then he has grown to be a power on Earth. He served the Hegemon as strategist and general in the terrible wars that followed Ender's defeat of the alien empire attacking Earth. Now he and his wife Petra yearn for a safe place to build a family -- something he has never known -- but there is nowhere on Earth that does not harbor his enemies -- old enemies from the days in Ender's Jeesh, new enemies from the wars on Earth. To find security, Bean and Petra must once again follow in Ender's footsteps. They must leave Earth behind, in the control of the Hegemon, and look to the stars.

Shadows in Flight

Ender's Universe: Ender's Shadow: Book 5

Ender’s Shadow explores the stars in this all-new novel...

At the end of Shadow of the Giant, Bean flees to the stars with three of his children--the three who share the engineered genes that gave him both hyper-intelligence and a short, cruel physical life. The time dilation granted by the speed of their travel gives Earth’s scientists generations to seek a cure, to no avail. In time, they are forgotten--a fading ansible signal speaking of events lost to Earth’s history. But the Delphikis are about to make a discovery that will let them save themselves, and perhaps all of humanity in days to come.

For there in space before them lies a derelict Formic colony ship. Aboard it, they will find both death and wonders--the life support that is failing on their own ship, room to grow, and labs in which to explore their own genetic anomaly and the mysterious disease that killed the ship’s colony.

The Last Shadow

Ender's Universe: Ender's Shadow: Book 6

Shirley Meier
Karen Wehrstein
S. M. Stirling

One planet.

Three sapient species living peacefully together.

And one deadly virus that could wipe out every world in the Starways Congress, killing billions.

Is the only answer another great Xenocide?

Blade in Shadow

Fallen Blade

Kelly McCullough

There was a time when the Blades of Namara wielded justice with the swing of a sword. Servants of Namara, the goddess of justice herself, they were the best assassins in the world-and with his living shadow familiar Triss by his side, Aral Kingslayer was perhaps the greatest among them.

Then they murdered his goddess. They burned her temple to the ground. They outlawed his order and sentenced them to death. And Aral Kingslayer became both a drunk and a shadow jack-a fixer operating on the wrong side of the law.

But once forged, a Blade is forever.Blade in Shadow collects the first three books in Kelly McCullough's thrilling Fallen Blade saga:

BROKEN BLADE: Aral Kingslayer is a wanted man, haunted by the loss of all he held dear. When a mysterious woman hires him to deliver a secret message, is it a roadmap to redemption?

BARED BLADE: A good deed for two women in need sets Aral and Triss on the trail for an artifact that could stop a war-and countless deadly enemies out to get it too.

CROSSED BLADES: Aral has lived as a shadow jack for six years. The last thing he expects is for a fellow Blade to come to him for help-and for that Blade to be the woman he once loved.....

Falls the Shadow

Falls the Shadow: Book 1

Stefanie Gaither

When Cate Benson was a kid, her sister, Violet, died. Two hours after the funeral, Cate's family picked up Violet's replacement. Like nothing had happened. Because Cate's parents are among those who decided to give their children a sort of immortality--by cloning them at birth--which means this new Violet has the same smile. The same perfect face. Thanks to advancements in mind-uploading technology, she even has all of the same memories as the girl she replaced.

She also might have murdered the most popular girl in school.

At least, that's what the paparazzi and the anti-cloning protestors want everyone to think: that clones are violent, unpredictable monsters. Cate is used to hearing all that. She's used to defending her sister, too. But Violet has vanished, and when Cate sets out to find her, she ends up in the line of fire instead. Because Cate is getting dangerously close to secrets that will rock the foundation of everything she thought was true.

Into the Abyss

Falls the Shadow: Book 2

Stefanie Gaither

Violet Benson used to know who she was: a dead girl's clone, with a dead girl's memories. But after Huxley's attempt to take over the government left her memories and personality wiped, all she has left is a mission: help the CCA fight back against the rest of Huxley's deadly clones that are still at large.

But when a group of clones infiltrate CCA headquarters, Violet is blamed. Already unsure of where her loyalties should lie, Violet finds herself running away with an unlikely ally: Seth, Jaxon's unpredictable foster brother. With Seth at her side, Violet begins to learn about a whole new side of her city's history--and her own.

But when she learns the shocking truth about cloning, Violet will have to make a choice--and it may be one that takes her away from everyone she ever loved.

Shadowfever

Fever: Book 5

Karen Marie Moning

"Evil is a completely different creature, Mac. Evil is bad that believes it's good."

MacKayla Lane was just a child when she and her sister, Alina, were given up for adoption and banished from Ireland forever.

Twenty years later, Alina is dead and Mac has returned to the country that expelled them to hunt her sister's murderer. But after discovering that she descends from a bloodline both gifted and cursed, Mac is plunged into a secret history: an ancient conflict between humans and immortals who have lived concealed among us for thousands of years.

What follows is a shocking chain of events with devastating consequences, and now Mac struggles to cope with grief while continuing her mission to acquire and control the Sinsar Dubh--a book of dark, forbidden magic scribed by the mythical Unseelie King, containing the power to create and destroy worlds.

In an epic battle between humans and Fae, the hunter becomes the hunted when the Sinsar Dubh turns on Mac and begins mowing a deadly path through those she loves.

Who can she turn to? Who can she trust? Who is the woman haunting her dreams? More important, who is Mac herself and what is the destiny she glimpses in the black and crimson designs of an ancient tarot card?

From the luxury of the Lord Master's penthouse to the sordid depths of an Unseelie nightclub, from the erotic bed of her lover to the terrifying bed of the Unseelie King, Mac's journey will force her to face the truth of her exile, and to make a choice that will either save the world... or destroy it.

Shadow's Son

Fifth Millenium: Book 4

After learning that her kidnapped son has at last been traced to Arko, currently under siege by the multinational forces of brilliant young general Chevenga Lion's Heart, Megan Thane becomes a mercenary in Chevenga's motley army. It's only a matter of time before Chevenga's army defeats the Arkans.

Shadow's Daughter

Fifth Millenium: Book 5

Shirley Meier

After Megan's father's entanglement in court politics leaves her family penniless, they are forced to move into literally the lowest section of the city. It takes backbone the strength of steel to find triumph in adversity, and in F'talezon it takes more--it takes magic. But Megan learns to survive--and becomes a hero in the process.

The Shadow Stone

Forgotten Realms

Richard Baker

Experience New York Times best-selling author Richard Baker's classic novel set in the high fantasy world of the Forgotten Realms.

Accosted by bullies on a forest trail, Aeron had no way of knowing that the confrontation would change his life forever. Accused of a crime for which he bears no blame, he is pursued deep into the forests of the Maerchwood. First rescued, and then tutored, by the mysterious Storm Walker, he discovers a previously undreamed-of talent for magic, and his life is swept up in the study of the arcane arts, until the very principles of magic, and indeed the future of Faerûn, come under attack from the unspeakably evil influences of the Shadow Stone.

Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn

Forgotten Realms: Baldur's Gate: Book 2

Philip Athans

Bhaal is dead!

But his disciples want to bring him back. The blood of the god of murder runs through his children, and bad blood attracts bad people.

Shadow thieves, vampires, ninjas, and rockworms run rampant on the Sword Coast in the action-packed novelization of the Baldur's Gate II computer game from BioWare and Interplay.

Shadow's Witness

Forgotten Realms: Sembia: Book 2

Geno Salvatore
R. A. Salvatore

Erevis Cale, loyal servant to the Uskevren family, can't keep his secret any longer.

From the nobles in their towers to the gangs in the streets, in the city of Selgaunt power belongs to the bold and no one's position is certain. When a thieves' guild attempts to eradicate a rival organization, something unspeakable breaks free - and it's hungry.

With Selgaunt in chaos, Erevis Cale must return to the shadowy life he left behind, to protect the family that has made him one of their own from the horrors of the Abyss.

Enter the greatest fantasy setting of our generation - enter the Realms.

Daughter of the Drow

Forgotten Realms: Starlight and Shadows: Book 1

Elaine Cunningham

As beautiful as she is deadly, Liriel Baenre flits through the shadows of Menzoberranzan, city of the dark elves. Amid the treachery and murder that are the drow's daily fare, she feels something calling to her... something beyond this dusky world far removed from the sun. Yet as she ventures toward the surface and the lands of light, enemies pursue her unceasingly.

And one of those enemies may offer the only hope of salvation.

Tangled Webs

Forgotten Realms: Starlight and Shadows: Book 2

Elaine Cunningham

Exiled from her home, the beautiful dark elf Liriel Baenre wanders to the surface world with her companion Fyodor. But even far from the dark haunts of Menzoberranzan, she is not safe from the vengeance of her arch-enemy. Even as she and her friend sail the dangerous seas of the Sword Coast, a drow priestess plots a terrible fate for them.

And in the depths of the earth, the spider queen Lolth weaves her own webs of terror and treachery.

Windwalker

Forgotten Realms: Starlight and Shadows: Book 3

Elaine Cunningham

Crossing the wide realms of the Faerûn in search of adventure, the dark elf princess Liriel Baenre and her companion Fyodor find themselves in the barbarian's homeland of Rashemen. In a land ruled by witches, Liriel must disguise herself lest she spark the people's hatred of dark elves.

Yet from the deep tunnels of the Underdark, eyes glittering with malice are watching her every move, preparing for vengeance.

The Shadowmask

Forgotten Realms: Stone of Tymora: Book 2

Cross swords with a blue-skinned pirate and unravel the mystery of the masked spellcaster in this second book of the Stone of Tymora trilogy!

Though robbed by a masked spellcaster and left for dead by a demon, twelve-year-old Maimun refuses to give up the magic that rightfully belongs to him. After reuniting with dark elf Drizzt Do'Urden and Captain Deudermont's crew, Maimun sets off on a sea-faring chase that will test both the strength of his spirit and of his friendships. As perilous storms rock Sea Sprite and vicious pirates bombard its decks, a mysterious force gathers in the Moonshaes, determined to bring Deudermont's ship - and Maimun's quest - crashing to an end on its shores.

In this second book of the Stone of Tymora trilogy, R.A. Salvatore and his son Geno continue their gripping tale of coming-of-age in a world filled with magic, featuring a cameo of R.A. Salvatore's signature character Drizzt Do'Urden.

In Sylvan Shadows

Forgotten Realms: The Cleric Quintet: Book 2

Enter the Forest of Shadows...

In Sylvan Shadows follows Cadderly the scholar-priest, as he leaves his home to combat the evil unleashed by the Chaos Curse. To counter Castle Trinity's plans for conquest, the cleric and his friends enter the beautiful forest of Shilmista. But among the trees and glades of the forest, Cadderly must battle a monstrous evil.

Shadows of Doom

Forgotten Realms: The Shadow of the Avatar Trilogy: Book 1

Elminster's Doom

It was the eve of the Time of Troubles. The chaos of spilled blood, lawless strife, monsters unleashed, and avatars roaming Faerûn was still to come. Unbeknownst to mortals, the gods had been summoned together, and among them was Mystra, grown proud and willful in the passing eons. With the others, she was about to be stripped of her godhood.

The secret of her power gave her an idea. She made certain preparations, looking always for one who would be her successor... But until that person's ascension, her power must be preserved.

A lone mortal must carry the greater share of her divine energy until the power could be reclaimed, and it was the fate of this mortal to risk being destroyed or driven wild, involuntarily and without warning.

This was the occaision of Elminster's Doom.

Cloak of Shadows

Forgotten Realms: The Shadow of the Avatar Trilogy: Book 2

The Shadow Over Faerûn

The Time of Troubles had arrived. The chaos of spilled blood, lawless strife, monsters unleashed, and avatars roaming Faerûn had come.

But wrathful and warring gods were not Faerûn's only problem.

The dreaded and insidious Shadowmasters had seized the opportunity to increase their influence and power while Mystra and her minions were otherwise engaged. The Shadowmasters had woven a mgical cloak of spells that would render the wearer invisible to their rival's magic.

The shadow over Faerûn spreads.

All Shadows Fled

Forgotten Realms: The Shadow of the Avatar Trilogy: Book 3

The Shadow Spreads

The Time of Troubles had almost passed. The chaos of spilled blood, lawless strife, monsters unleashed, and avatars roaming Faerûn was reaching an end.

However, not so Those Who Walk in Shadow.

The dreaded and insidious Shadowmasters realize that they have one last chance to seize control while chaos wrecks havoc on all of the Realms, and in doing so seal the fate of not just their archenemy Elminster, but all of Mystra's minions as well.

Darkness threatens to envelop all Faerûn.

The shadows loom.

Shadowbred

Forgotten Realms: The Twilight War Trilogy: Book 1

The Lady has spoken to me.

It has already begun.

Shadows move out of the shrinking desert, south to the rich and arrogant cities of Sembia.

"Be brave, little man," says the shadowman, and the boy thinks his voice is surprisingly soft. "Stay with your mother. This will be over soon."

The shadows swallow him and he is gone.

On the edge of a war that will change the face of Faerûn, the world will find that not all shadows serve Shade.

Shadowstorm

Forgotten Realms: The Twilight War Trilogy: Book 2

The invasion of the arch-wizards is on!

The archwizards of Shade Enclave have come out of the desert with a message of peace, and an act of war. Split by petty disputes and causeless feuds, the merchant realm of Sembia is wide open for invasion, and with no shortage of Sembians more than happy to sell out to the Shadovar, can only one man--even if that man is Erevis Cale--do anything to stop it?

Shadowrealm

Forgotten Realms: The Twilight War Trilogy: Book 3

The stunning conclusion to the Twilight War!

One of the Forgotten Realms world's most compelling villains--the Archwizards of Shade--have come down from their flying city with their sights set on the merchant realm of Sembia. They come in the guise of allies, but have invasion and empire as their ultimate aim.

The fate of Sembia may be sealed, but Erevis Cale still has a shocking destiny that will end in his destruction--if he's lucky. This trilogy brings about major changes to the Forgotten Realms setting.

Downshadow

Forgotten Realms: Waterdeep: Book 3

Erik Scott de Bie

The Dark Knight Must Choose: Justice or Vengeance

Watchman by day, vigilante by night, Shadowbane's world is turned upside down when he runs across a powerful wizard--in the form of a confused, hunted girl who finds herself at the heart of a fell plot. When his friends start dying and the girl is kidnapped, Shadowbane must choose between the darkness and the light in his heart: to avenge the deaths of his friends, or to let the villain live to face--and possibly escape--justice.

Downshadow is thrilling tale of vigilante justice set in the classic City of Splendors and presented by Forgotten Realms campaign setting creator and celebrated author Ed Greenwood. You don't want to miss out on this exciting glimpse into what the latest edition of the Realms has to offer.

The Shadow Dancers

G.O.D. Inc.: Book 2

Jack L. Chalker

It was the ultimate case: to stop the ultimate drug...

I'm Horowitz. Brandy Horowitz. My husband, Sam, and I are private eyes who take cases for G.O.D., Inc. - the outfit that runs the Labyrinth to infinite alternate Earths filled with crime, danger... and murder.

Power-mad fanatics are running a narcotic V.D. that spreads like a bug, works like a drug, and one touch hooks you for good. You don't become a junkie... you become a zombie. 'Cause this monkey's not just on your back, but in your brain - it's got a mind, and if you kick it, it kicks back with madness and death.

So this beautiful black PI and wonderful Jewish sleuth have to smash the source before the drug-bug reaches our client's Home World. But the opposition's got fake Sams and Brandys set up in headquarters on the two worlds that hold any possible leads: one that never heard of civil rights... and one ruled by Nazis.

Dread Brass Shadows

Garrett, P.I.: Book 5

Girls of Storm and Shadow

Everyone wants to find it... a treasure so rich it makes even a hard-boiled detective like Garrett nervous. It's the legendary Book of Shadows, made of brass and holding secrets no mortal was ever meant to master and Garrett must make sure no one ever has the chance to work its spells on an unsuspecting and unprotected world.

Man Without a Shadow

Gerard Sorme: Book 2

Colin Wilson

Gerard Sorme thinks the key to a more meaningful life lies in an expansion of human consciousness, and he believes that one way to expand it is through sexual experiences. He sets out to record in diary form his sexual encounters with various women: the middle-aged Gertrude, her teenage niece Caroline, and Diana, the wife of a mad composer determined to adapt Varney the Vampire into an opera. But Sorme finds his beliefs and ideas challenged when he meets the fascinating and dangerous Caradoc Cunningham, who seems to possess occult powers and who has developed his own ways of expanding consciousness through drugs, orgies, and black magic. And when Cunningham is targeted by his enemies, fellow black magicians who he believes are directing the powers of evil spirits at him, Sorme will find himself caught up in Cunningham's peril, culminating in his participation in a bizarre occult ritual....

Girls of Paper and Fire: Book 2

Natasha Ngan

Lei, the naive country girl who became a royal courtesan, is now known as the Moonchosen, the commoner who managed to do what no one else could. But slaying the cruel Demon King wasn't the end of the plan---it's just the beginning. Now Lei and her warrior love Wren must travel the kingdom to gain support from the far-flung rebel clans. The journey is made even more treacherous thanks to a heavy bounty on Lei's head, as well as insidious doubts that threaten to tear Lei and Wren apart from within.

Meanwhile, an evil plot to eliminate the rebel uprising is taking shape, fueled by dark magic and vengeance. Will Lei succeed in her quest to overthrow the monarchy and protect her love for Wren, or will she fall victim to the sinister magic that seeks to destroy her?

In the Shadow of Lightning

Glass Immortals: Book 1

Brian McClellan

Demir Grappo is an outcast--he fled a life of wealth and power, abandoning his responsibilities as a general, a governor, and a son. Now he will live out his days as a grifter, rootless, and alone. But when his mother is brutally murdered, Demir must return from exile to claim his seat at the head of the family and uncover the truth that got her killed: the very power that keeps civilization turning, godglass, is running out.

Now, Demir must find allies, old friends and rivals alike, confront the powerful guild-families who are only interested in making the most of the scraps left at the table and uncover the invisible hand that threatens the Empire. A war is coming, a war unlike any other. And Demir and his ragtag group of outcasts are the only thing that stands in the way of the end of life as the world knows it.

Knight's Shadow

Greatcoats: Book 2

Sebastien de Castell

Tristia is a nation overcome by intrigue and corruption. The idealistic young King Paelis is dead and the Greatcoats - legendary travelling magistrates who brought justice to the Kingdom - have been branded as traitors. But just before his head was impaled on a spike, the King swore each of his hundred and forty-four Greatcoats to a different mission.

Falcio Val Mond, First Cantor, with the help of fellow Greatcoats Kest and Brasti, has completed his King's final task: he has found his Charoites - well, one at least, and she was not quite what they expected. Now they must protect the girl from the many who would see her dead, and place her on the throne of a lawless kingdom. That would be simple enough, if it weren't for the Daishini, an equally legendary band of assassins, getting in their way, not to forget the Dukes who are determined to hold on to their fractured Kingdoms, or the fact that the heir to the throne is only thirteen years old. Oh, and the poison that is slowly killing Falcio.

That's not even mentioning the Greatcoat's Lament...

In the Shadow of the Fall

Guardians of the Gods: Book 1

Tobi Ogundiran

Ashâke is an acolyte in the temple of Ifa, yearning for the day she is made a priest and sent out into the world to serve the orisha. But of all the acolytes, she is the only one the orisha refuse to speak to. For years she has watched from the sidelines as peer after peer passes her by and ascends to full priesthood.

Desperate, Ashâke attempts to summon and trap an orisha -- any orisha. Instead, she experiences a vision so terrible it draws the attention of a powerful enemy sect and thrusts Ashâke into the center of a centuries-old war that will shatter the very foundations of her world.

Archangel's Shadows

Guild Hunter: Book 7

Nalini Singh

In the wake of a brutal war, the archangel Raphael and his hunter consort, Elena, are dealing with the treacherously shifting tides of archangelic politics and the people of a battered but not broken city. The last thing their city needs is more death, especially a death that bears the eerie signature of an insane enemy archangel who cannot--should not--be walking the streets.

This hunt must be undertaken with stealth and without alerting their people. It must be handled by those who can become shadows themselves...

Ash is a gifted tracker and a woman cursed with the ability to sense the secrets of anyone she touches. But there's one man she knows all too well without a single instant of skin contact: Janvier, the dangerously sexy Cajun vampire who has fascinated and infuriated her for years. Now, as they track down a merciless killer, their cat-and-mouse game of flirtation and provocation has turned into a profound one of the heart. And this time, it is Ash's secret, dark and terrible, that threatens to destroy them both.

Dragonshadow

Heartstone: Book 2

Elle Katharine White

The Greater Lindworm is dead, its monstrous armies have fled, and the Battle of North Fields is over--or at least that's what Aliza Bentaine, now a Daired, fervently wants to believe.

With memories of the blood-soaked fields behind them, she and Alastair are happy to escape the aftermath within the walls of the Daireds' family fortress, safe from the Tekari bent on destroying them. There, gods willing, they can begin to enjoy their well-earned happily ever after.

Unfortunately, the gods have other plans. Rumors are spreading of a new monster creeping across Arle, something leaving the mutilated bodies of both humans and Oldkind creatures in its wake. When the plea for aid arrives from the remote Castle Selwyn on the northern border of the kingdom, Alastair and his dragon, Akarra, prepare once more for the hunt.

And if Aliza has anything to say about it, they won't be hunting alone.

Torn between the world she was born to and the high calling of the Riders, Aliza refuses to stay at House Pendragon, determined to do her part to protect those she loves. But their journey through the Old Wilds proves more perilous than she can imagine, for she is not the only one following her husband north. Shadowing the Daireds is an ancient evil, a harbinger of a dark danger of which the Worm was only a foretaste, and all too soon Aliza realizes the terrible truth.

The Battle of North Fields may be over, but the real war is just beginning.

Heaven's Shadow

Heaven's Shadow: Book 1

Michael Cassutt
David S. Goyer

The science fiction epic of our time has arrived.

Three years ago, an object one hundred miles across was spotted on a trajectory for Earth's sun. Now, its journey is almost over. As it approaches, two competing manned vehicles race through almost half a million kilometers of space to reach it first. But when they both arrive on the entity, they learn that it has been sent toward Earth for a reason. An intelligent race is desperately attempting to communicate with our primitive species. And the message is: Help us.

Heaven's War

Heaven's Shadow: Book 2

Michael Cassutt
David S. Goyer

The competing teams of astronauts sent to explore the asteroid Keanu discovered it was, in fact, a giant spacecraft with an alien crew carrying a plea for help. A brave new frontier beckons. But it will come at a price. Without warning, the aliens transport small groups of humans to the vast interior habitats of Keanu.

Their first challenge is to survive. Their second: discover why The Architects--the unseen aliens controlling the asteroid--brought them there. The third: find a way to take control of Keanu. Because the ship is moving again.

The Architects are going home...

Heaven's Fall

Heaven's Shadow: Book 3

Michael Cassutt
David S. Goyer

Mankind's first contact with extraterrestrial life led to an incredible revelation. Their last may lead them to extinction.

Twenty years have passed since the mysterious Near-Earth Object nicknamed Keanu appeared in the night sky and transported humans from all over Earth into its interior. There they discovered that Keanu was a long-range spaceship--and they were not alone. They joined forces with the aliens called the Architects, who had come from a distant galaxy to seek help in fighting the vicious Reivers. And they defeated them.

Or so they thought.

For when Keanu reestablished contact with Earth, they learned that the Reivers have taken over the planet, placing most of the population under their dominion. But mankind's last hope may yet be hidden inside the NEO. And if the men and women still in Keanu cannot find it, humanity will be finished. And the galaxy will be next.

The Shadow of the Lion

Heirs of Alexandria: Book 1

Eric Flint
Mercedes Lackey
Dave Freer

It is the year 1537. The great winged Lion stares over a Venice where magic thrives. The rich Venetian Republic is a bastion of independence and tolerance. Perhaps for that reason, it is also corrupt, and rotten with intrigue.

But for the young brothers Marco and Benito Valdosta, vagabond and thief, Venice is simply-home. They have no idea that they stand at the center of the city's coming struggle for its very life. They know nothing of the powerful forces moving in the background. They have barely heard of Chernobog, demonlord of the North, who is shifting his pawns to attack Venice in order to cut into the underbelly of the Holy Roman Empire. All Marco and Benito know is that they're hungry and in dangerous company: Katerina the smuggler, Caesare the sell-sword, Montagnard assassins, church inquisitors, militant Knights of the Holy Trinity, Dottore Marina the Strega mage . . . and Maria. Maria might be an honest canaler, but she had the hottest temper a boy could find.

Yet among the dark waters of the canals lurk far worse dangers than a hot-tempered girl. Chernobog has set a monster loose to wreak havoc on the city. Magic, murder and evil are all at work to pull Venice down. Fanatical monks seek to root out true witchcraft with fire and sword. Steel-clad Teutonic knights, wealth traders, church dignitaries and great Princes fight and plot for control of the jewel of the Mediterranean.
And somehow all of these, from thieves to mages to princes, must gather around Marco and his brother Benito, under the shadow of the great winged lion of Venice.

The Shadow Men

Hidden Cities: Book 4

Tim Lebbon
Christopher Golden

From Beacon Hill to Southie, historic Boston is a town of vibrant neighborhoods knit into a seamless whole. But as Jim Banks and Trix Newcomb learn in a terrifying instant, it is also a city divided--split into three separate versions of itself by a mad magician once tasked with its protection.

Jim is happily married to Jenny, with whom he has a young daughter, Holly. Trix is Jenny's best friend, practically a member of the family--although she has secretly been in love with Jenny for years. Then Jenny and Holly inexplicably disappear--and leave behind a Boston in which they never existed. Only Jim and Trix remember them. Only Jim and Trix can bring them back.

With the help of Boston's Oracle, an elderly woman with magical powers, Jim and Trix travel between the fractured cities, for that is where Jenny and Holly have gone. But more is at stake than one family's happiness. If Jim and Trix should fail, the spell holding the separate Bostons apart will fail too, and the cities will reintegrate in a cataclysmic implosion. Someone, it seems, wants just that. Someone with deadly shadow men at their disposal.

Shadow of Obsession

Highlander: Book 7

Rebecca Neason

One of the age-old race of Immortals, Duncan MacLeod has tried to turn his back on tradition & live his life as a mortal. But as the time of the gathering draws near, when the last Immortals will fight to the last, he finds himself being drawn to battle.

Once Darius was a man of war, laying siege to Rome. Centuries later, as a man of God, Darius touched the life of Duncan MacLeod. Now a spurned lover from Darius' warrior days returns for revenge against all he called friend.

Shadow City

Horngate Witches: Book 3

Diana Pharaoh Francis

The world is falling apart. The magical apocalypse has come. Now is the time to guard the covenstead against both raiders and refugees. But Max has been stolen by a powerful demi-god who is determined to force her to find a way to use a magical power she never knew she had -- even if it kills her. Meanwhile, back in Horngate, a Fury is birthing. When the creature breaks free of the fragile bonds that enclose her, her rage will scour the covenstead from the earth.

Max finds herself in the Shadow City, a place of mysteries and magic, where she must battle for her freedom or become a slave to creatures of dreadful greed and power. Back in Horngate, Alexander must swallow his anger and pride if he hopes to defeat the Fury, a creature that no one has ever successfully fought before.

In the end, it will be courage, friendship, faith and loyalty that win the day. Or else so one will live to see tomorrow.

Shadows of the Short Days

Hrimland: Book 1

Alexander Dan Vilhjalmsson

Sæmundur the Mad, addict and sorcerer, has been expelled from the magical university, Svartiskóli, and can no longer study galdur, an esoteric source of magic. Obsessed with proving his peers wrong, he will stop at nothing to gain absolute power and knowledge, especially of that which is long forbidden.

Garún is an outcast: half-human, half-huldufólk, her very existence is a violation of dimensional boundaries, the ultimate taboo. A militant revolutionary and graffiti artist, recklessly dismissive of the status quo, she will do anything to achieve a just society, including spark a revolution. Even if she has to do it alone.

This is a tale of revolution set in a twisted version of Reykjavik fuelled by industrialised magic and populated by humans, interdimensional exiles, otherworldly creatures, psychoactive graffiti and demonic familiars.

Shadowsword

Imperial Guard: Book 15

Guy Haley

No-holds-barred tank warfare set amid the pitiless battlefields of the Warhammer 40,000 galaxy.

Arriving in the Geratomro warzone, Honoured Lieutenant Bannick and the crew of the Baneblade Cortein's Honour are assigned as close support to a company of Shadowsword Titan hunters and find themselves thrust into a deadly battle for the fate of three star systems. New and deadly allies throw into doubt all that Bannick has been told of the Imperium, threatening not only his life, but also his soul...

Shadows of Doom

Iron Tower Trilogy: Book 2

Dennis L. McKiernan

Through the mists of the Shadowlight, Modru's plan takes its sinister shape.

The second volume of Dennis L. McKiernan's Iron Tower Trilogy, Shadows of Doom, takes the reader once again to the magical land of Elves, demons, Dwarves, wizards, and Warrows as the perilous adventures of Tuck, Danner, and Patrel continue.

Modru's nefarious Dimmendark cloaks Challerain Keep in what promises to be eternal twilight. Prince Igon has been wounded and Princess Laurelin is a captive of the Evil One - and King Galen, with faithful Tuck at his side, must decide whether to ride north and attempt the rescue of his beloved, or south to muster the Host to battle Modru's ravaging hordes...

In the Shadow of a Valiant Moon

It Takes Death To Reach a Star: Book 2

Stu Jones
Gareth Worthington

DESTINY HAS NO ALLEGIANCE.

Four years have passed since the lillipads fell and Etyom slipped into darkness.

The New Black Death has mutated again, spreading to near epidemic proportions. What little order existed in Earth's last city has disintegrated into chaos. Rippers roam the Vapid, robbing and leaving their victims butchered. The Robusts have spilled out of their broken enclaves and hide in any dark corner that will conceal them. Meanwhile, the elite Graciles, fallen from their pristine towers in the sky, have all mysteriously disappeared.

Demitri is a prisoner in his own mind. His demon, Vedmak--now known as the Vardøger--is manipulating Demitri's body and knowledge to execute a secret plan far more disastrous than even the Gracile Leader dared.

Mila, her status among the fractured resistance elevated to that of Paladyn--a protector of the people--leads the fight against zealots intent on destroying what little remains of Etyom. It is a responsibility she never wanted, a calling that prevents her from doing what she truly desires.

Yet, Mila should be careful for what she longs. Caught between annihilation and loyalties that refuse to die, she must reconcile a single immutable truth: following your heart comes at a price.

Shadowman

Jack Martin

Dennis Etchison

Shadowman, a sequel to the World Fantasy Award-winning story "The Dark Country," follows Jack Martin into an even deeper darkness in Shadow Bay, where the surf echoes against the shore, wild dogs howl and children tell ghost stories by firelight. Lissa Shelby works with disturbed children, and they are all afraid of the Man With No Face. The adults call him a fantasy -- until the hills collapse under a torrent of rain and buried bodies pour forth. Only one thing is certain: no one is safe...

Shadow Rites

Jane Yellowrock: Book 10

Faith Hunter

Slaying vampires is child's play for skinwalker Jane Yellowrock. But handling the complicated politics of New Orleans' supernatural players is another story...

Jane is keeping the peace between visiting groups of witches and vamps in the city, but then trouble comes knocking on her doorstep. When her house is magically attacked, the wild chase to find her assailants unearths a mystery that has literally been buried deep.

A missing master vampire, presumed long deceased, is found chained in a pit... undead, raving mad, and in the company of two human bodies. Now it's up to Jane to find out who kept the vampire hidden for so long and why, because the incident could tip already high supernatural tensions to an all-out arcane war.

Black God's Shadow

Jirel of Joiry

C. L. Moore

Jirel returns to the terrifying dark land beneath Joiry to undo a wrong she committed in Black God's Kiss.

The Jirel of Joiry series is not numbered but this is the second published story of such.

This novelette is included in the collection "Jirel of Joiry".

It first appeared in the December, 1934 Issue of Weird Tales, available free on Internet Archives.

Wolf in Shadow

Jon Shannow: Book 1

David Gemmell

John Shannow, The Jerusalem Man, lived in a world that had toppled on its axis. Civilization had been replaced by ruthlessness and savagery. Relentless in his quest for peace, Shannow followed a path that led only to bloodshed and sorrow.

Abaddon, the Lord of the Pit, sought to plunge mankind into a new Satanic era. His Hellborn army spewed forth from the Plague Lands with an unholy force stemming from human sacrifice. For it was the blood of innocents that fueled the corrupted Sipstrassi Stones of Power--the source of Abaddon's might.

But the Hellborn made a fatal mistake--they took the woman who had stolen Shannow's heart. He would move Heaven and Earth to save her or he would die trying.

Feast of the King's Shadow

Kingdom of Outremer: Book 4

Chaz Brenchley

Enemies of long standing are united under the fiercely charismatic Hasan-and Outremer may be defeated before the first battle has even been fought. But one woman could make a difference...

Swords Against the Shadowland

Lankhmar / Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser: Book 8

Robin Wayne Bailey

Years ago, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser turned their backs on the city of Lankhmar and the painful memories it held. But now, a deadly plague, spawned from a sorcerer's curse, sweeps through the streets of Lankhmar, eating its victims from the inside and laying waste to the once-vibrant city. The two reluctant heroes are called forth once again to face Lankhmar's winding alleys - and the old ghosts who lurk in them!

Shadowheart

Legends of the Raven: Book 2

James Barclay

The second of James Barclay's Legends of The Raven trilogy sees Barclay up the ante yet again and throw Balaia into a full blown war. Barclay has never been afraid of killing off favourite characters, but now in the latest of his blisteringly paced, all-action heroic fantasies he puts The Raven through a trial that all of them will be hard pressed to survive.

Barclay has proved himself to be the most successful fantasy writer of his generation. With 200,000 copies in print, Chronicles and Legends of the Raven are building into landmark fantasy.

The Figure in the Shadows

Lewis Barnavelt: Book 2

John Bellairs

Settled into his new life, Lewis seems content living with his magical Uncle Jonathan and neighbor Mrs Zimmermann. He even has a new best friend, Rose Rita, who loves to play sports, build Roman ship models and play with magic--all the things Lewis loves to do too! After discovering Grandpa Barnavelt's 1859 lucky coin, Lewis is certain that it is magical, so he puts it to the test--he recites one of Mrs Zimmermann's spells to awaken its magic. Only Lewis hasn't awakened a good sort of magic.

As he wears the coin around his neck, sinister things start to happen. Strange letters addressed to Lewis arrive at midnight, a dark shadowy figure begins to follow him in town and something seems to be inside his body controlling his actions. As the figure in the shadows appears more and more, Lewis is possessed by its power, unable to free himself. Has Lewis awakened a force beyond his control? And can Uncle Jonathan, Mrs. Zimmermann and Rose Rita make it in time to rescue Lewis?

Cast a Bright Shadow

Lionwolf: Book 1

Tanith Lee

Son of both god and mortal, his destiny must be death or power everlasting.

The setting is a world of eternal winter, where once thrived hit climates and exquisite luxury. Saphay, neglected daughter of a sub-king in the civilised west, is sent off to marry a leader of the barbaric Jafn...not realizing that her own father has arranged for her to be betrayed and abducted on his perilous journey.

Escaping her pursuers, then dragged into the depths of an arctic sea, Saphay is miraculously discovered by her Jafn betrothed. She is still alive, though entombed in an ice pyramid, and their marriage proceeds as intended. However, when it becomes evident that Saphay is not only carrying a child already but is also the focus of a sorcerous and preternatural force, dark suspicions are aroused about the infant's true origin... Driven out into the icy wilderness to face certain death, Saphay somehow manages to reach unwelcome shelter. There her son can grow up safely in exile, while displaying all the skills of a future hero... and a future god.

Crown of Shadows

Locke & Key: Book 3

Gabriel Rodriguez
Joe Hill

The dead plot against the living, the darkness closes in on Keyhouse, and a woman is shattered beyond repair, in the third storyline of the Eisner-winning series. Dodge continues his relentless quest to find the key to the black door, and raises an army of shadows to wipe out anyone who might get in his way. Surrounded and outnumbered, the Locke children find themselves fighting a desperate battle, all alone, in a world where the night itself has become their enemy.

The Creeping Shadow

Lockwood & Co.: Book 4

Jonathan Stroud

After leaving Lockwood & Co. at the end of The Hollow Boy, Lucy is a freelance operative, hiring herself out to agencies that value her ever-improving skills.

One day she is pleasantly surprised by a visit from Lockwood, who tells her he needs a good Listener for a tough assignment. Penelope Fittes, the leader of the giant Fittes Agency wants them--and only them--to locate and remove the Source for the legendary Brixton Cannibal.

They succeed in their very dangerous task, but tensions remain high between Lucy and the other agents. Even the skull in the jar talks to her like a jilted lover.

What will it take to reunite the team? Black marketeers, an informant ghost, a Spirit Cape that transports the wearer, and mysteries involving Steve Rotwell and Penelope Fittes just may do the trick. But, in a shocking cliffhanger ending, the team learns that someone has been manipulating them all along....

H. P. Lovecraft and Others: Shadows Over Innsmouth

Lovecraft and Others: Book 1

H. P. Lovecraft and Others: Weird Shadows Over Innsmouth

Inspired by H. P. Lovecraft's classic, today's masters of horror take up their pens and turn once more to that decayed, forsaken New England fishing village with its sparkling treasure, loathsome denizens, and unspeakable evil. This anthology features seventeen chilling stories by authors such as Neil Gaiman, Ramsey Campbell and Kim Newman, as well as the original masterpiece of horror.

Contents:

ix - Introduction: Spawn of the Deep Ones (Shadows Over Innsmouth) - essay by Stephen Jones
1 - The Shadow Over Innsmouth - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1936) - novelette by H. P. Lovecraft
51 - Beyond the Reef - novella by Basil Copper
101 - The Big Fish - [The Diogenes Club] - novelette by Kim Newman [as by Jack Yeovil ]
127 - Return to Innsmouth - (1992) - shortstory by Guy N. Smith
132 - The Crossing - shortstory by Adrian Cole
146 - Down to the Boots - (1989) - shortstory by D. F. Lewis
149 - The Church in High Street - (1962) - shortstory by Ramsey Campbell
161 - Innsmouth Gold - shortstory by David Sutton
173 - Daoine Domhain - (1992) - novelette by Peter Tremayne
191 - A Quarter to Three - (1988) - shortstory by Kim Newman
195 - The Tomb of Priscus - novelette by Brian Mooney
221 - The Innsmouth Heritage - (1992) - shortstory by Brian Stableford
237 - The Homecoming - shortstory by Nicholas Royle
255 - Deepnet - shortstory by David Langford
260 - To See the Sea - novelette by Michael Marshall Smith
285 - Dagon's Bell - (1988) - novelette by Brian Lumley
316 - Only the End of the World Again - shortstory by Neil Gaiman
330 - Afterwords: Contributors' Notes (Shadows Over Innsmouth) - essay by uncredited

Lovecraft and Others: Book 2

H. P. Lovecraft and Others: Weirder Shadows Over Innsmouth

For decades, H. P. Lovecraft's masterpiece of terror has inspired writers with its gripping account of a village whose inhabitants have surrendered to an ancient and hideous evil. In this companion to the acclaimed anthology Shadows Over Innsmouth, World Fantasy Award winning editor Stephen Jones has assembled eleven of today's most prominent and well-respected horror authors - the finest of the Lovecraftian acolytes.. Included is Lovecraft's own unpublished draft of The Shadow Over Innsmouth.

Contents:

1 - Introduction: Weird Shadows... - essay by Stephen Jones
6 - Discarded Draft of "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" - (1931) - shortstory by H. P. Lovecraft
13 - The Quest for Y'ha-nthlei - novelette by John S. Glasby [as by John Glasby ]
34 - Brackish Waters - novelette by Richard A. Lupoff
62 - Voices in the Water - shortstory by Basil Copper
81 - Another Fish Story - [The Diogenes Club] - novelette by Kim Newman
115 - Take Me to the River - novelette by Paul J. McAuley [as by Paul McAuley ]
142 - The Coming - (1997) - shortstory by Hugh B. Cave
156 - Eggs - (2000) - shortstory by Steve Rasnic Tem
169 - From Cabinet 34, Drawer 6 - novelette by Caitlín R. Kiernan
196 - Raised by the Moon - (2001) - novelette by Ramsey Campbell
211 - Fair Exchange - shortstory by Michael Marshall Smith
228 - The Taint - novella by Brian Lumley
281 - Afterwords: Contributors' Notes - essay by uncredited

Lovecraft and Others: Book 3

Jaida Jones
Danielle Bennett

Respected horror anthologist Stephen Jones edits this collection of 17 stories inspired by the 20th century's master of horror, H.P. Lovecraft's "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," in which a young man goes to an isolated, desolate fishing village in Massachusetts, and finds that the entire village has interbred with strange creatures that live beneath the sea, and worship ancient gods.

Contents:

xiii - Introduction: Weirder Shadows... - essay by Stephen Jones
1 - The Port - [Fungi from Yuggoth - 8] - (1930) - poem by H. P. Lovecraft
2 - Innsmouth Bane - (2005) - shortstory by John S. Glasby [as by John Glasby ]
17 - Richard Riddle, Boy Detective in "The Case of the French Spy" - [The Diogenes Club] - (2005) - novelette by Kim Newman
46 - Innsmouth Clay - (1971) - shortstory by H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth
58 - The Archbishop's Well - novelette by Reggie Oliver
83 - You Don't Want To Know - novelette by Adrian Cole
108 - Fish Bride - (2009) - shortstory by Caitlín R. Kiernan
119 - The Hag Stone - novelette by Conrad Williams
153 - On the Reef - (2011) - shortfiction by Caitlín R. Kiernan
162 - The Song of Sighs - shortstory by Angela Slatter
179 - The Same Deep Waters as You - novelette by Brian Hodge
218 - The Winner - (2005) - shortstory by Ramsey Campbell
232 - The Transition of Elizabeth Haskings - shortstory by Caitlín R. Kiernan
237 - The Chain - shortstory by Michael Marshall Smith
258 - Into the Water - shortstory by Simon Kurt Unsworth
275 - Rising, Not Dreaming - (2011) - shortstory by Angela Slatter
279 - The Long Last Night - (2012) - novelette by Brian Lumley
314 - Afterwords: Contributors' Notes - essay by Stephen Jones

Shadow Magic

Lyra: Book 1

Patricia C. Wrede

A princess fights a faceless enemy in a forest filled with magic in this tale of "high-style fantasy and adventure" from the author of Dealing with Dragons (The New York Times).

Trouble is brewing in Alkyra. While the kingdom's noblemen squabble, on their borders an ancient enemy, the Lithmern, raises an army. As the head of the Noble House of Brenn attempts to organize an alliance, the princess Alethia celebrates her twentieth birthday. She is a remarkable woman: quick-witted, beautiful, and handy with a throwing knife. But on the next night, she passes through a dark corridor on her way to the banquet hall, and never emerges from the shadows. The Lithmern have kidnapped the princess.

When Alethia regains consciousness, an evil Lithmern with a face made of shadows is carrying her through the forest. These are magic woods, home to fabled creatures whose existence she has always doubted. To find her way home, Alethia will have to learn to trust in the old tales, whose legends of magic and daring hold the only hope of saving her kingdom.

Shadows Bite

Magistrale: Book 2

Stephen Dedman

Hungry L.A. Women

Something is amiss in Los Angeles. A body vanishes from the morgue. The errant son of L.A.'s most notorious necromancer has unleashed demons that not even his father can control. Women hungry for more than love are suddenly appearing among the vampire wannabes at the Crypt, a local goth cafe. And a yakuza boss has put a contract out on stuntman Charlie Takumo's friend Michelangelo "Mage" Magistrale, seeking vengeance--and a magical "key" that unlocks enormous power.

The two friends' plight deepens when they're thrust into the middle of a series of mysterious nocturnal deaths that suddenly plague the City of Angels. Caught between professional assassins and ancient terrors that are undead and stalking the L.A. nightlife, they'll need all of Takumo's fighting skills--and Mage's magic--if they want to survive to see the dawn, because...

Minions of the Shadow

Mark Nevin Saga: Book 4

William Gray Beyer

Nevin and Omega return to the Twentieth Century to investigate a murder before it even occurs.

The Walking Shadow

Masters of Science Fiction: Book 9

Brian Stableford

Where Paul Heisenberg had stood there was now a silver statue, dressed in the same white tunic, but reflecting from the surface that had, once been bare flesh all the light which had been carefully directed to compose the glowing nimbus.

The glow was even brighter now, and in the stillness which followed the interruption of the beautiful voice, there was a profundity which seemed terrible ...'

In front of 80,000 people Heisenberg, the new Messiah, the darling of the media, had gone into a trance of immeasurable depth. His body had gone into limbo, awaiting some future awakening, and it wasn't long before others had similarly gone into stasis and followed him.

Soon there were thousands fleeing through the aeons, congregating at meeting points hundreds of years ahead and then leaping off ever further into the future until finally they reached the very end of time.

But then where would they go? And where were the people they'd left behind?

The King of Shadows

Matthew Corbett: Book 8

Robert R. McCammon

It's January of 1704, and Matthew Corbett continues his mission to Italy, accompanied by Hudson Greathouse and former enemy Professor Fell. They seek Brazio Valeriani and information about the mirror created by his father, the sorcerer Ciro. Legend claims the mirror can be used to summon demons from beyond.

But fate has other plans for Matthew as their ship is disabled by a pod of whales, and they seek refuge on a secluded island. The islanders welcome them with a massive feast, but all is not what it seems. As the island pulls them deeper into its influence, the castaways struggle to maintain their grip on reality, even their very identity. Matthew must keep his wits about him and solve the mystery enshrouding the other side of the island, where an active volcano looms and a secretive creature lurks.

A Kiss of Shadows

Meredith Gentry: Book 1

Laurell K. Hamilton

"All it would take was my true name being mentioned after dark, and it would float back to my aunt. She was the Queen of Air and Darkness, and that meant that anything said in the dark was hers to hear, eventually.

"The fact that spotting the missing Elven American Princess had become more popular than spotting Elvis helped. Her magic was always chasing blind leads: Princess Meredith skiing in Utah. Princess Meredith dancing in Paris. Princess Meredith gambling in Vegas. After three years, I was still a front-page story for the tabloids, though the latest headlines had been speculating that I was as dead as the King of Rock and Roll."

In fact, Meredith has been posing as a human in Los Angeles, living as a private investigator specializing in supernatural crime. But now Doyle, the Queen's chief bodyguard and assassin, has been dispatched to fetch her back - whether she likes it or not. And suddenly Meredith finds herself a pawn in her dreaded aunt's plans...plans that affect the future of the entire UnSeelie Court.

The requirements of the job: to enjoy the constant company of the most beautiful - and immortal - men in the world. The reward: the crown - and the opportunity to continue to live. The penalty: death.

Shadow Magic

Metal Dragons: Book 2

Led to victory by its magic-fueled Dragon Corps, Volstov has sent a delegation to its conquered neighbors to work out the long-awaited terms of peace. Among those in the party are the decorated war hero General Alcibiades and the formerly exiled magician Caius Greylace. But even this mismatched pair can’t help but notice that their defeated enemies aren’t being very cooperative. The hidden truth is that the new emperor is harboring a treacherous secret—and once it is revealed, Alcibiades and Caius may be powerless to stop it.

With their only ally an exiled prince now fleeing his brother’s assassins, the countryside rife with terror, and Alcibiades and Caius all but prisoners, it will take the most powerful kind of magic to heal the rift between two strife-worn lands and unite two peoples against a common enemy: shadow magic.

The Office of Shadow

Midwinter: Book 2

Matthew Sturges

Midwinter has gone, but that cold season has been replaced by a cold war in the world of Faerie, and this new kind of war requires a new kind of warrior.

Seelie forces drove back Empress Mab at the Battle of Sylvan, but hostilities could resume at any moment. Mab has developed a devastating new weapon capable of destroying an entire city, and the Seelie have no defense against it. If war comes, they will almost certainly be defeated.

In response, the Seelie reconstitutes a secret division of the Foreign Ministry, unofficially dubbed the "Office of Shadow," imbuing it with powers and discretion once considered unthinkable. They are a group of covert operatives given the tasks that can't be done in the light of day: secretly stealing the plans for Mab's new weapon, creating unrest in the Unseelie Empire, and doing whatever is necessary to prevent an unwinnable war.

The new leader of the "Shadows" is Silverdun. He's the nobleman who fought alongside Mauritane at Sylvan and who helped complete a critical mission for the Seelie Queen Titania. His operatives include a beautiful but naïve sorceress who possesses awesome powers that she must restrain in order to survive and a soldier turned scholar whose research into new ways of magic could save the world, or end it.

They'll do whatever is required to prevent a total war: make a dangerous foray into a hostile land to retrieve the plans for Mab's weapon; blackmail a king into revolting against the Unseelie Empire; journey into the space between space to uncover a closely guarded secret with the power to destroy worlds.

The Shadow of Tyr

Mirage Makers: Book 2

Glenda Larke

Ligea Gayed has been lied to once too often. Now she has turned against her former employer, the secretive Brotherhood of the Tyrans Empire, and must evade Favonius and his Jackals while also recruiting others to fight with her.

Yet, despite her best efforts, a rebellion is hard to come by. Except within her own family, of course. Ligea's son, Arrant, is prey to feelings of inadequacy, and is angry about his mother's relationship with a man who is not his father. Unable to accept what is happening to him, he becomes susceptible to the blandishments of his mother's enemies. Worse still, in the middle of a war he is a Magoroth unable to control or use his power in a constructive way.

In seeking to punish Ligea for her relationship with Brand, Arrant and those around him might well lose everything.

The Conclave of Shadow

Missy Masters: Book 2

Alyc Helms

The line between enemy and ally is thinner than a shadow's edge.

Ever since she saved the spirit guardians of China by selling out to her worst enemy, Missy Masters -- a.k.a. the pulp hero Mr. Mystic -- has been laying low. But when knights serving the Conclave of Shadow steal secret technology from a museum exhibit on the Argent Aces, everyone looks to Mr. Mystic for help. If Missy doesn't want her masquerade blown, she'd better track down the thieves, and fast.

But stolen tech turns out to be the least of her problems. Recent events have upset the balance of power in the Shadow Realms, removing the barriers that once held the ravenous Voidlands in check. Their spread threatens destruction in the mortal realm as well... and only the Conclave stands ready to push them back.

In a world of shadow, telling friends from enemies is easier said than done. But if she wants to save San Francisco, Missy will have to decide who to trust. Including her own instincts, which tell her that something is stalking her with murder in mind...

MJ-12: Shadows

MJ-12: Majestic-12: Book 2

Michael J. Martinez

It's 1949, and the Cold War is heating up across the world. For the United States, the key to winning might be Variants -- once ordinary US citizens, now imbued with strange paranormal abilities and corralled into covert service by the government's top secret MAJESTIC-12 program.

Some Variants are testing the murky international waters in Syria, while others are back at home, fighting to stay ahead of a political power struggle in Washington. And back at Area 51, the operation's headquarters, the next wave of recruits is anxiously awaiting their first mission. All the while, dangerous figures flit among the shadows and it's unclear whether they are threatening to expose the Variants for what they are... or to completely destroy them. Are they working for the Soviet Union, or something far worse?

Shadow Walker

Neteru Academy: Book 1

L. A. Banks

Sarah Rivera has a lot going on in her life right now. It's bad enough that she's being shipped off to Temt Tchaas Academy also known as Neteru Academy, a high school for future Guardians of the Light who have special powers - but she has to go there with her cocky twin brother and the rest of her compound brothers and sisters. To make matters worse, everyone has ridiculous expectations of her all because her parents are like supernatural rock stars for saving the planet sixteen years ago. But what nobody, not even her best girlfriend Tami seems to be getting is the fact that, she's not special, doesn't want to be a demon-hunting hero, and is even afraid of the dark!

So what that her mother was a warrior angel and her Dad used to be a Council level Vampire? Opposites attract. Go figure. As far as Sarah is concerned, all she got from the combination was a pair of fangs that lengthen at inappropriate times to embarrass her in front of her secret crush; whereas her brother, Alejandro, got the good looks and cool wings. However, what her parents' status has created is drama in her life, by ensuring that the mean girls at school will make her life a living nightmare. Sarah knows her family's renowned slayer reputation will also ensure that everyone at school will assume she had it easy and should be able to do everything her famous rebel parents can do, when she can't. Not by a long shot.

Once at the hidden boarding school, things go from bad to worse as Sarah tries to fit in. Her nightmares increase and it isn't just anxiety - her second sight is suddenly developing at a record pace. Layers of secrets are held by the building, held by her parents, and nothing is as it seems. There is something really bad going on at the school, worse than bad - deadly. Only, faculty and administrators don't know where to begin to look for the cause as students start to disappear. Sarah must then make a choice to stand on the sidelines or to help use her gifts to save someone dear. But to do that means facing all of her greatest fears, along with a demon or two.

Shadow Singer

Ni-Lach: Book 2

Marcia J. Bennett

Humans had long shared the planet Ver-draak with the Ni-lach people -- until, in fear of the unusual Ni-lach powers, they turned on the natives. The Ni-lach who survived the massacres went into hiding. Decades passed. Pursued by bounty hunters, Dhalvad the Ni-lach and Poco the half-breed fled into the wilds. Though Poco didn't know it, she had a special Ni-lach talent, similar to Dhal's abilities to Heal and to transport himself through space and time. But somehow she had to learn to use her gift -- for the fate of all the Ni-lach people hung in the balance.

A Play of Shadow

Night's Edge: Book 2

Julie E. Czerneda

What would you risk for family?

In the second installment of Night's Edge, Bannan Larmensu, the truthseer who won Jenn Nalynn's heart, learns his brother-in-law was sent as a peace envoy to Channen, capitol of the mysterious domain of Mellynne, and has disappeared. When Bannan's young nephews arrive in Marrowdell, he fears the worst, that his sister, the fiery Lila, has gone in search of her husband, leaving her sons in his care.

The law forbids Bannan from leaving Marrowdell and travelling to Mellynne to help his sister. In this world. As a turn-born, Jenn Nalynn has the power to cross into the magical realm of the Verge, and take Bannan with her. Once there, they could find a way into Mellynne.

If they survive. The Verge is wild and deadly, alive with strange magic. Dragons roar and kruar wait in ambush, and the powerful turn-born who care for their world do not care for Jenn Nalynn.

She's willing to try. Wisp and Scourge -- and the house toads -- offer their help.

But what none of them know is that magic is rife in Channen, magic that flows from the Verge itself. And not even a turn-born will be safe there.

Luck in the Shadows

Nightrunners: Book 1

Lynn Flewelling

A showman, spy, thief—Seregil gathers intelligence information for the Queen about the threat of war by Plenimar. During one of his missions, he discovers an orphan lad and takes him on as an apprentice. When a mission goes awry, leaving Seregil in a coma, it falls to Alec to get his mentor to safety in order to avert a sinister plot of epic proportios.

Shadows Return

Nightrunners: Book 4

Lynn Flewelling

With their most treacherous mission yet behind them, heroes Seregil and Alec resume their double life as dissolute nobles and master spies. But in a world of rivals and charmers, fate has a different plan.…

After their victory in Aurënen, Alec and Seregil have returned home to Rhíminee. But with most of their allies dead or exiled, it is difficult for them to settle in. Hoping for diversion, they accept an assignment that will take them back to Seregil's homeland. En route, however, they are ambushed and separated, and both are sold into slavery. Clinging to life, Seregil is sustained only by the hope that Alec is alive.

But it is not Alec's life his strange master wants—it is his blood. For his unique lineage is capable of producing a rare treasure, but only through a harrowing process that will test him body and soul and unwittingly entangle him and Seregil in the realm of alchemists and madmen—and an enigmatic creature that may hold their very destiny in its inhuman hands…. But will it prove to be savior or monster?

The Watcher in the Shadows

NYPD Inquisitor: Book 2

Chris Moriarty

At the turn of the twentieth century, New York's Bowery District becomes the scene of a terrible murder when the Klezmer King gets fried to a crisp by his Electric Tuxedo--on stage! The Inquisitor's apprentice, thirteen-year-old Sacha Kessler, tries to help find the killer, but the closer he gets to solving the crime, the more it sounds as if the creature that haunted him in his first adventure is back. Worse still, his own Jewish family is in danger. Sacha has avoided learning magic until now, but as his world falls apart around him, he changes his mind.

A Man of Shadows

Nyquist Mysteries: Book 1

Jeff Noon

Below the neon skies of Dayzone--where the lights never go out, and night has been banished--lowly private eye John Nyquist takes on a teenage runaway case. His quest takes him from Dayzone into the permanent dark of Nocturna.

As the vicious, seemingly invisible serial killer known only as Quicksilver haunts the streets, Nyquist starts to suspect that the runaway girl holds within her the key to the city's fate. In the end, there's only one place left to search: the shadow-choked zone known as Dusk.

The Outstretched Shadow

Obsidian Trilogy: Book 1

Mercedes Lackey
James Mallory

Kellen Tavadon, son of the Arch-Mage Lycaelon, thought he knew the way the world worked. His father, leading the wise and benevolent Council of Mages, protected and guided the citizens of the Golden City of the Bells. Young Mages in training-all men, for women were unfit to practice magic-memorized the intricate details of High Magic and aspired to seats on the council.

Then he found the forbidden Books of Wild Magic-or did they find him? Their Magic felt like a living thing, guided by the hearts and minds of those who practiced it and benefited from it.
Questioning everything he has known, Kellen discovers too many of the City's dark secrets. Banished, with the Outlaw Hunt on his heels, Kellen invokes Wild Magic-and finds himself running for his life with a unicorn at his side.

Rescued by a unicorn, healed by a female Wild Mage who knows more about Kellen than anyone outside the City should, meeting Elven royalty and Elven warriors, and plunged into a world full of magical beings-Kellen both revels in and fears his new freedom.

The one thing all the Mages of the City agreed on was that practicing Wild Magic corrupted a Mage. Turned him into a Demon. Would that be Kellen's fate?

Deep in Obsidian Mountain, the Demons are waiting. Since their defeat in the last great War, they've been biding their time, sowing the seeds of distrust and discontent between their human and Elven enemies. Very soon now, when the Demons rise to make war, there will be no alliance between High and Wild Magic to stand against them. And then all the world will belong to the Endarkened.

Army of Shadows

Orcs: Bad Blood: Book 2

Stan Nicholls

A sojourn in their idyllic homeworld has left Stryke and the Wolverines lacking purpose. So when an opportunity for bloodletting appears, Stryke seizes it. Utilizing mysterious artifacts, the Wolverines are transported to Acurial, a world where the indigenous orc population is cruelly subjugated by human invaders.

Upon their arrival, Stryke's band joins with Acurial's emerging resistance movement. As the revolution gathers pace, the Wolverines are forced to embark on a quest that will see Stryke and his comrades pursued by both their most ruthless enemy and a mysterious troop hell-bent on their destruction.

The Sorcerer's Shadow

Oron: Book 2

David C. Smith

Akram, the wanderer, battles an ageless curse. He must slay the immortal sorceress, Nidyis, or be destroyed by her love.

He was Akram, The Wanderer

He spoke with a gutteural accent. He was tall, strongly built, rough-hewn-not a civilized man. His naked chest and dark face were grown thick with swarming balck hair; his teely black eyes burned with a sombre glare. His mouth was a hard line, matching his brow. His large hands were bruised and calloused-the hands of a fighter, a swordsman. His tattered breeches were of touch northern make, but his sword was noticeably the finist of the Neriam metal-smiths. He was a wanderer-nomore Neriam than he was Khomi.

She was Nidyis, The Sorceress

And she was beautiful. Her long and foamy hair letloose about her in teeming curls and glossy waves, down her round shoulders and long back, glistening darkly in the torchlight and starlight. Her lustrous dark eyes were shaded with kohl, and her full lips stained a shimmering wet crimson. About her naked throat was loosely draped a golden chain with ruby pendents. She wore a skirt of gossamor, falling languidly aorund her ripe hips. her voice was as husky and soft as a voice betraying whispered secrets.

Their Love Was Timeless --- Their Destinies to Destory Each Other...

City of Golden Shadow

Otherland: Book 1

The first volume in this mesmerizing story takes readers to the near-future, when a global conspiracy threatens to sacrifice the Earth for the promise of a far more exclusive place--Otherland, a universe where any fantasy can be made real.

The Shadow of Alpha

Parric: Book 1

Justin Richards
Stephen Cole

Introducing Parric: an ordinary civil servant being ground up in a mill of paperwork, who is given a chance to work on an experimental government project -- to live secretly in a town entirely populated by androids -- whose very existence, if it were known, would disrupt society -- something the repressive society does not want.

But Parric is happy in his secret village, protected by a force-field from outsiders, in contact with only a few others in similar positions in other secret villages. Protected, until war breaks out and civilization outside calls in the horrifying Plaguewind. Then the experimental androids, affected by the plague in strange ways, become killers! Parric must escape his village, then trek across the desolated countryside, in danger from the surviving mobs of plague victims, to the control center of the secret android project, in an attempt to join other men in starting a new civilization.

The Shadow in the Glass

Past Doctor Adventures: Book 41

In Anterctica, nearly fifty years after the end of World War 2, Nazi Initiates inhibit a secret base; around them move the shadows and reflections of strange, Imp-like figures...The village of Turelhampton in Dorset is still a restricted military zone, cordoned off from the outside world. When a rogue film-crew breaks in, welrd damons, invisible to the naked eye, appear on camers...

And in a remote country-house in Cornwall, a freelance investigative journalist is horrified to discover neo-Nazis performing an occult ritual involving a functional, accurate, crystal ball - the Scrying Glass. And in the background, the figure of Hilter watching, exactly as he appears in the last pictures of him alive...What really did happen in the Berlin bunker in 1945, when Hitler and Eva Braun supposedly committed joint suicide? And what connection does this have with the uncanny imps that can be seen only in reflections and shadows? Why is it so imperative that no-one discover the secret of Turelhampton? It is up to the Doctor and the faithful Brigadier to find out.

The Shadow People

Patel & Pardoe: Book 3

Graham Masterton

A BURNING PYRE
The smell of roasting meat alerts police to squatters in an abandoned London factory. But when they arrive, the place is empty... except for a gruesome pile of scorched human heads.

AN ANCIENT RITUAL
DS Jamila Patel and DC Jerry Pardoe have solved bizarre crimes before, but nothing as spooky as this. Arcane markings on the factory wall lead them to a terrifying cult in thrall to a Neolithic god. A god who demands the ultimate sacrifice from his followers.

A CULT OF CANNIBALS
Now Londoners are being abducted off the city streets, to be mutilated, roasted and eaten. Can Patel and Pardoe save the next victim from this hideous fate? Or will they themselves become a human sacrifice?

Out of the Shadows: A Structuralist Approach to Understanding the Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft

Pendulum Trilogy: Book 2

Will Elliott

When Eric Albright opened a battered red wooden door in an old railway arch he found Levaal, a world populated by mages, stoneflesh giants, pit devils, tunnel-dwelling groundmen, and much else besides. Levaal is a world divided: behind the ancient great Wall at World's End lie the mysteries of the unknown southern realm. But the Wall has been destroyed, and now Levaal stands naked before its twin world. War is looming: Tormentors roam the land and dragons strain against their prisons in the sky. The Arch Mage seeks to unseat Vous, the insane Lord, before he joins the gods. And one of the dragons is rumoured to have escaped. A Dark Age has dawned and all over Levaal, loyalties are fractured, while in the south an alien force is rising. Its name is Shadow. "

Shadow People

Peter Warlock: Book 2

James Swain

During a séance Peter is confronted by a group of evil spirits called shadow people, beings who have the power to kidnap a person's soul. Peter is taken to another plane, where he confronts a serial killer about to claim his next victim. It's a harrowing encounter that Peter only barely manages to survive.

Peter soon realizes that the shadow people are connected to the serial killer, and that he is a member of the Order of Astrum, a group of evil psychics who murdered his parents years ago. He must find the serial killer in real time before he claims his next victim. To save many lives, Peter may have to tap into a legacy that he has always dreaded... and a power that may consume him.

Shadow of the Swan

Phoenix Legacy: Book 2

M. K. Wren

After forfeiting his identity as heir to the House of DeKoven Woolf, Lord Alexand morphs into Alex Ransom, leader of the Society of the Phoenix and sworn to bring about the evolution of the Concord in order to prevent its threatened collapse.

But his birthright isn't all Alex lost when Lord Alexand died; he gave up the extraordinary Lady Adrien Eliseer, and it was like tearing out his own heart. He ultimately realizes that as desperate as he is to bring peace to the Concord, he is equally desperate to be reunited with Adrien, especially when he learns that she is about to pay a terrible price for Lord Alexand's death.

Popular Writers of Today: Book 75

James Arthur Anderson

James Arthur Anderson takes a structuralist approach to dissecting the horror fiction of H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937). This book offers both scholars and fans alike new insight into the work of the best-known American horror writer of the first half of the 20th century.

As S. T. Joshi states: "Anderson's thorough familiarity with Lovecraft's texts (essays and letters, as well as stories), and with the best scholarship on Lovecraft, is evident on every page; and the fluidity with which he weaves together critical approaches into a unified commentary is enviable." Complete with chronology, bibliography, and index.

The Snow Queen's Shadow

Princess Series: Book 4

Jim C. Hines

When a spell gone wrong shatters Snow White's enchanted mirror, a demon escapes into the world. The demon's magic distorts the vision of all it touches, showing them only ugliness and hate. It is a power that turns even friends and lovers into mortal foes, one that will threaten humans and fairies alike.

City of Crystal Shadow

Questioner Trilogy: Book 2

Dennis Schmidt

Having survived the deadly training ground, Labyrinth, Seeker joins the elite ranks of the Questioners....The intergalactic peacekeeping force of the future. This is his first mission. It may be his last.

Two races inhabit the world of the Crystal City. But only one the winged Vyinnlyirr enjoy the pleasures of the galaxy's most plundered ruins of an entire planet. The Others live outside, in a smoking wasteland. The Vyinnlyirr have everything. The Others have nothing except an ancient rage and passion to destroy the winged invaders...

Before the Others murder him in his Vyinnlyirr hostbody, Seeker must somehow resolve this genocidal conflict between beauty and justice...

Raven's Shadow

Raven: Book 1

Patricia Briggs

Seraph is a Raven mage who left behind her responsibilities for the love of the ex-soldier Tier. But when Tier disappears, Seraph must use her magic--and fulfill her ancestors' oath to protect humanity from destruction.

Blood Song

Raven's Shadow: Book 1

Anthony Ryan

"The Sixth Order wields the sword of justice and smites the enemies of the Faith and the Realm."

Vaelin Al Sorna was only a child of ten when his father left him at the iron gate of the Sixth Order--a caste devoted to battle. Vaelin will be trained and hardened to the austere, celibate and dangerous life of a warrior of the Faith. He has no family now save the Order.

Vaelin's father was Battle Lord to King Janus, ruler of the Unified Realm--and Vaelin's rage at being deprived of his birthright knows no bounds. Even his cherished memories of his mother are soon challenged by what he learns within the Order.

But one truth overpowers all the rest: Vaelin Al Sorna is destined for a future he has yet to comprehend. A future that will alter not only the Realm, but the world.

Tower Lord

Raven's Shadow: Book 2

Anthony Ryan

In Blood Song, Anthony Ryan introduced readers to "a fascinating world of conflicting religions and the wars fought in the name of those faiths" (Library Journal). Now Ryan's epic tale continues as Vaelin Al Sorna discovers that there is no escape from the call of destiny...

"The blood-song rose with an unexpected tune, a warm hum mingling recognition with an impression of safety. He had a sense it was welcoming him home."

Vaelin Al Sorna, warrior of the Sixth Order, called Darkblade, called Hope Killer. The greatest warrior of his day, and witness to the greatest defeat of his nation: King Janus's vision of a Greater Unified Realm drowned in the blood of brave men fighting for a cause Vaelin alone knows was forged from a lie. Sick at heart, he comes home, determined to kill no more. Named Tower Lord of the Northern Reaches by King Janus's grateful heir, he can perhaps find peace in a colder, more remote land far from the intrigues of a troubled Realm.

But those gifted with the blood-song are never destined to live a quiet life. Many died in King Janus's wars, but many survived, and Vaelin is a target, not just for those seeking revenge but for those who know what he can do. The Faith has been sundered, and many have no doubt who their leader should be. The new King is weak, but his sister is strong. The blood-song is powerful, rich in warning and guidance in times of trouble, but is only a fraction of the power available to others who understand more of its mysteries. Something moves against the Realm, something that commands mighty forces, and Vaelin will find to his great regret that when faced with annihilation, even the most reluctant hand must eventually draw a sword.

Queen of Fire

Raven's Shadow: Book 3

Anthony Ryan

In the thrilling conclusion to the "deftly and originally executed" (Booklist) New York Times bestselling trilogy, Vaelin Al Sorna must help his Queen reclaim her Realm. Only his enemy has a dangerous new collaborator, one with powers darker than Vaelin has ever encountered...

"The Ally is there, but only ever as a shadow, unexplained catastrophe or murder committed at the behest of a dark vengeful spirit. Sorting truth from myth is often a fruitless task."

After fighting back from the brink of death, Queen Lyrna is determined to repel the invading Volarian army and regain the independence of the Unified Realm. Except, to accomplish her goals, she must do more than rally her loyal supporters. She must align herself with forces she once found repugnant--those who possess the strange and varied gifts of the Dark--and take the war to her enemy's doorstep.

Victory rests on the shoulders of Vaelin Al Sorna, now named Battle Lord of the Realm. However, his path is riddled with difficulties. For the Volarian enemy has a new weapon on their side, one that Vaelin must destroy if the Realm is to prevail--a mysterious Ally with the ability to grant unnaturally long life to her servants. And defeating one who cannot be killed is a nearly impossible feat, especially when Vaelin's blood-song, the mystical power which has made him the epic fighter he is, has gone ominously silent...

To Clear Away the Shadows

RCN Series: Book 13

David Drake

ADVENTURES BEYOND THE EDGE OF THE KNOWN UNIVERSE

The truce between Cinnabar and the Alliance is holding, and the Republic of Cinnabar Navy is able to explore regions of the galaxy without the explorers being swept up in great power conflict.

The Far Traveller is probing sponge space to open routes for Cinnabar traders--and for RCN warships if war breaks out again. But besides astrogation, the Far Traveller is to survey and catalog life forms on the worlds it touches.

Harry Harper has just been posted to the Traveller. He's an RCN officer by convention, a scientist by training--and a member of one of leading aristocratic families on Cinnabar by birth.

Lieutenant Rick Grenville would rather serve on a warship in the heart of battle, but peace and the whim of the Navy Board have put him on an exploration vessel instead. He finds that the dangers on the fringes of civilization are just as great as those from missiles and gunfire that he expected to face.

As internal struggles cause the Alliance to relax its iron grip, regional forces are attempting to increase their own power--and they're not fussy about the means they use.

Besides the biological answers that officials on Cinnabar expect the Far Traveller to find, the ship's Director of Science, Doctor Veil, has her own agenda: to learn more about the Archaic Spacefarers who roamed the universe tens of thousands of years before humans reached the stars.

The crew of the Far Traveller is poised to clear more of the shadows away from the deep past than ever before in human history--if they survive.

Longshadow

Regency Faerie Tales: Book 3

Olivia Atwater

The marriageable young ladies of London are dying mysteriously, and Abigail Wilder intends to discover why. Abigail's father, the Lord Sorcier of England, believes that a dark lord of faerie is involved. But while Abigail is willing to match her magic against Lord Longshadow, neither her father nor high society believes that she is capable of doing so.

Thankfully, Abigail is not the only one investigating the terrible events. Mercy, a street rat and self-taught magician, insists on joining Abigail in unraveling the mystery. Mercy is unpredictable, and her magic is strange and foreboding--but the greatest danger she poses may well be to Abigail's heart.

Shadow Captain

Revenger: Book 2

Alastair Reynolds

Adrana and Fura Ness have finally been reunited, but both have changed beyond recognition. Once desperate for adventure, now Adrana is haunted by her enslavement on the feared pirate Bosa Sennen's ship. And rumors of Bosa Sennen's hidden cache of treasure have ensnared her sister, Fura, into single-minded obsession.

Neither is safe; because the galaxy wants Bosa Sennen dead and they don't care if she's already been killed. They'll happily take whoever is flying her ship.

Shadow & Flame

Rime Chronicles: Book 2

Mindee Arnett

They call her the Wilder Queen. It's a title given to Kate Brighton for her role in the war between the wilder rebellion and the Rimish empire. It's a title that was hard earned: Kate may have saved her people, but many were lost in the conflict, immortalized in the tattoos of fire that grace her arms.

And it's a title that Kate never wanted. The rebellion may have made a home for themselves in a country that wants to cast them out, but the peace will never be safe while Edwin, the illegitimate king of Rime, sits upon its throne. And for that, the Wilder Queen must keep hers.

Now war is brewing once again. Kate and her allies receive word of a threat to their ambassador in the Rimish capital; meanwhile, across the channel in Seva, an army is being assembled to conquer Rime--and a prisoner slave named Clash may hold the key to ending the conflict once and for all.

As enemies close in on Kate and Clash from all sides, they must choose where their loyalties lie--with their people, with their loved ones, or with themselves.

Reign of Shadows

Ruby Throne: Book 1

Deborah Chester

Caelan E'Non, son of the land's most powerful healer, is naturally expected to follow in his father's footsteps. Except Caelan has no interest in healing. Instead, he feels a burning desire for something more glorious and possesses a magic he does not understand.

Elandra Albain has been raised as a servant in her father's house. Her sister, Lady Bixia, has been pampered and spoiled, and is thought to be destined for greatness. But Elandra has a destiny all her own.

For as long as Caelan or Elandra can recall, Emperor Kostimon has ruled the land. For nine centuries his life has been sustained. But this wondrous immortality stems from a bargain with the very source of evil itself -- the dark lord Beloth. Now, as Kostimon's tenth and final lifetime begins, the shadow god is growing restless.

Shadow War

Ruby Throne: Book 2

Deborah Chester

For nine centuries the Emperor Kostimon has ruled the land. But this wondrous immortality stems from a bargain with the very source of evil itself -- the Dark lord Beloth. Notit; as Kostimon's tenth and final lifetime begins, the shadow god is growing restless.

As the aging emperor awaits the crowning of his empress, Elandra Albain, forces of evil conspire to destroy the kingdom of Imperia. Whispers of treason come from those closest to the emperor, including his own son. Pure of spirit, Elandra remains untouched by the shadow god, but she senses his return. With darkness descending, Elandra finds her destiny joined with another's.

Possessing the magic of a healer and a warrior's might, Caelan E'non has risen from lowly slave to champion gladiator. And when the dark lord and his minions overtake the castle, he will find Elandra's life -- and the future of the empire -- in his hands.

Island in a Sea of Stars

Saga of Shadows

The Dark Between the Stars

An adventure from Kevin J. Anderson's The Saga of Shadows: The Dark Between the Stars

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

Saga of Shadows: Book 1

Twenty years after the elemental conflict that nearly tore apart the cosmos in The Saga of Seven Suns, a new threat emerges from the darkness. The human race must set aside its own inner conflicts to rebuild their alliance with the Ildiran Empire for the survival of the galaxy.

In Kevin J. Anderson's The Dark Between the Stars, galactic empires clash, elemental beings devastate whole planetary systems, and factions of humanity are pitted against each other. Heroes rise and enemies make their last stands in the climax of an epic tale seven years in the making.

Blood of the Cosmos

Saga of Shadows: Book 2

An epic space opera of the titanic conflict of several galactic civilizations against a life-destroying force of shadows, a dark cosmic force that has swept through the undercurrents of the human interstellar empire.

The intertwined plots, overflowing with colorful ideas, a large cast of characters, and complex storylines, span dozens of solar systems, alien races, and strange creatures.

As the second book of the trilogy opens, the humans and Ildirans, having narrowly escaped annihilation at the hands of the Shana Rei and their robot allies in Book One, are desperate to find a way to combat the black cloud of antimatter of the Shana Rei. The mysterious alien Gardeners, who had helped them previously, turn out to be a disaster in disguise and because of them, the world tree forests are again in danger. The allies believing they have found a way to stop their dreaded enemies, a new weapon is tested, but it's a horrible failure, throwing the human race and its allies to the brink of extinction.

Eternity's Mind

Saga of Shadows: Book 3

Eternity's Mind, the climactic final volume in Kevin J. Anderson's Hugo-nominated Saga of Shadows trilogy.

The desperate war with the Shana Rei seems lost. All across the transportal network, space is tearing apart, the links between the gateways are breaking down, the fabric of space unraveling, and entire sections of the Spiral Arm are becoming galactic dead zones.

The Shana Rei have infiltrated the transportal network, and desperate populations have to cut themselves off, shutting down their portals, often their only connection with the rest of the Spiral Arm.

In desperation, humans and Ildirans turn to the most unlikely allies, the unpredictable faeros.

The Shadow of Saganami

Saganami Island: Book 1

The Star Kingdom of Manticore is once again at war with the Republic of Haven after a stunning sneak attack. The graduating class from Saganami Island, the Royal Manticoran Navy's academy, are going straight from the classroom to the blazing reality of all-out war.

Except for the midshipmen assigned to the heavy cruiser HMS Hexapuma, that is. They're being assigned to the Talbott Cluster, an out of the way backwater, far from the battle front. The most they can look forward to is the capture of the occasional pirate cruiser and the boring duty of supporting the Cluster's peaceful integration with the Star Kingdom at the freely expressed will of eighty percent of the Cluster's citizens. With a captain who may have seen too much of war and a station commander who isn't precisely noted for his brilliant and insightful command style, it isn't exactly what the students of Honor Harrington, the "Salamander," expected.

But things aren't as simple — or tranquil — as they appear. The "pirates" they encounter aren't what they seem, and the "peaceful integration" they expected turns into something very different. A powerful alliance of corrupt Solarian League bureaucrats and ruthless interstellar corporations is determined to prevent the Cluster's annexation by the Star Kingdom . . . by any means necessary. Pirates, terrorists, genetic slavers, smuggled weapons, long-standing personal hatreds, and a vicious alliance of corporate greed, bureaucratic arrogance, and a corrupt local star nation with a powerful fleet, are all coming together, and only Hexapuma, her war-weary captain, and Honor Harrington's students stand in the path.

They have only one thing to support and guide them: the tradition of Saganami. The tradition that sometimes a Queen's officer's duty is to face impossible odds . . . and die fighting.

Storm from the Shadows

Saganami Island: Book 2

The Solarian League Navy has been the premier navy of the galaxy for centuries. Indeed, no one can remember a time when it hasn't been acknowledged as the most powerful fleet in existence.

Until now, that is.

A conference to end the terrible war between the Peeps of Haven and the Manticorean Star Kingdom is slated. Peace is finally within reach.

Yeah, right.

Not with the slaver conspiracy that calls itself Manpower, Inc. pulling intergalactic strings. The plan To plunge the Star Kingdom into a two-front war with Peeps and Sollies—a process calculated to blast Honor Harrington's home system to smoking ruin!

Assassination's afoot. And out on the galactic frontier known as the Verge, big trouble boils over as Solarian League arrogance butts up against the steely resolve of Harrington protégé Michelle Henke, aka Admiral Gold Peak.

Too bad for the Sollies. For Harrington's officers have a habit of coming through in the clutch and finding a way to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. But most of all—whatever the odds—they never, ever give up the fight!

Shadow of Freedom

Saganami Island: Book 3

Wrong number? There are two sides to any quarrel . . . unless there are more.

Queen Elizabeth of Manticore's first cousin and Honor Harrington's best friend, Michelle Henke, has just handed the ""invincible"" Solarian League Navy the most humiliating, one sided defeat in its entire almost thousand year history in defense of the people of the Star Empire's Talbott Quadrant. But the League is the most powerful star nation in the history of humanity. Its navy is going to be back—and this time with thousands of superdreadnoughts.

Yet she also knows scores of other star systems—some independent, some controlled by puppet regimes, and some simply conquered outright by the Solarian Office of Frontier Security—lie in the League's grip along its frontier with the Talbott Quadrant. As combat spreads from the initial confrontation,the entire frontier has begun to seethe with unrest, and Michelle sympathizes with the oppressed populations wanting only to be free of their hated masters.

And that puts her in something of a quandary when a messenger from Mobius arrives, because someone's obviously gotten a wrong number. According to him, the Mobians' uprising has been carefully planned to coordinate with a powerful outside ally: the Star Empire of Manticore. Only Manticore—and Mike Henke—have never even heard of the Mobius Liberation Front.

It's a set up . . . and Michelle knows who's behind it. The shadowy Mesan Alignment has launched a bold move to destroy Manticore's reputation as the champion of freedom. And when the RMN doesn't arrive, when the MLF is brutally and bloodily crushed, no independent star system will ever trust Manticore again.

Mike Henke knows she has no orders from her government to assist any rebellions or liberation movements, that she has only so many ships, which can be in only so many places at a time . . . and that she can't possibly justify diverting any of her limited, outnumbered strength to missions of liberation the Star Empire never signed on for. She knows that . . . and she doesn't care.

No one is going to send thousands of patriots to their deaths, trusting in Manticoran help that will never come.

Not on Mike Henke's watch.

Shadow of Victory

Saganami Island: Book 4

The Mesan Alignment is revealed, and, for Honor Harrington and the Manticoran Star Kingdom, this means war!

Unintended Consequences

Sometimes things don't work out exactly as planned.

The Mesan Alignment has a plan--one it's been working on for centuries. A plan to remake the galaxy and genetically improve the human race--its way.

Until recently, things have gone pretty much as scheduled, but then the Alignment hit a minor bump in the road called the Star Empire of Manticore. So the Alignment engineered a war between the Solarian League, the biggest and most formidable interstellar power in human history. To help push things along, the Alignment launched a devastating sneak attack which destroyed the Royal Manticoran Navy's industrial infrastructure.

And in order to undercut Manticore's galaxy-wide reputation as a star nation of its word, it launched Operation Janus--a false-flag covert operation to encourage rebellions it knows will fail by promising Manticoran support. The twin purposes are to harden Solarian determination to destroy the Star Empire once and for all, and to devastate the Star Empire's reputation with the rest of the galaxy.

But even the best laid plans can have unintended consequences, and one of those consequences in this case may just be a new dawn of freedom for oppressed star nations everywhere.

Scavenger Trilogy: Book 1

K. J. Parker

A man wakes in the wilderness, amid scattered corpses and inquisitive crows. He has no memory of who he is or how he came to be there. The only clues to his former existence lie in his apparent skill with a sword and the fragmented dreams that permeate his sleep.

Lord of the Shadows

Second Sons: Book 3

Jennifer Fallon

Darkness threatens Ranadon again in the form of an eclipse. The Goddess wants to give the people of Ranadon a sign - and only Dirk Provin can interpret it. To do so, Dirk has systematically betrayed his one-time allies to join his most hated enemies. Now, with neither side trusting him, Dirk sets his own devious plot in motion.

Senet's Crippled Prince, Misha, has found unexpected and tenuous sanctuary among the Baenlanders of Mil. To secure their trust, he offers them the one thing they cannot refuse. Meanwhile, Alenor, Queen of Dhevyn, betrayed by her husband, Kirsh, and Tia Veran, deceived by Dirk, set out for revenge and to finally free their people at any cost. As the second sons and the rest of their generation pursue different paths to survival and freedom, they discover that the will of the Goddess - and of men - works in mysterious ways. And as Dirk's old enemies join with new ones, his attempt to save Ranadon may cost him his friends, his love...and his life.

Chasing the Shadows

Sentinels of the Galaxy: Book 2

Maria V. Snyder

Year 2522. Lyra Daniels is dead.

Okay, so I only died for sixty-six seconds. But when I came back to life, I got a brand new name and a snazzy new uniform. Go me! Seriously, though, it's very important that Lyra Daniels stays dead, at least as far as my ex-friend Jarren, the murdering looter, knows.

While dying is the scariest thing that's happened to me, it morphed my worming skills. I can manipulate the Q-net like never before. But Jarren has blocked us from communicating with the rest of the galaxy and now they believe we've gone silent, like Planet Xinji (where silent really means dead).

A Protector Class spaceship is coming to our rescue, but we still have to survive almost two years until they arrive -- if they arrive at all. Until then, we have to figure out how to stop an unstoppable alien threat. And it's only a matter of time before Jarren learns I'm not dead and returns to finish what he started.

There's no way I'm going to let Jarren win. Instead I'll do whatever it takes to save the people I love. But even I'm running out of ideas...

Shadowborn

Seraphim Trilogy: Book 3

Shadow of the Seventh Moon

The epic conclusion to USA Today bestseller David Dalglish's Seraphim Series.

What started as a small rebellion has grown to all-out war, with the four minor islands uniting under the call for independence. But Kael Skyborn no longer trusts the mysterious leader of their rebellion, nor his disciples. Neither side seems willing to reveal the truth of the elemental prisms the Seraphim wield in battle, or the blood that keeps the islands from crashing down to the ocean below.

Bree Skyborn is the Phoenix of Weshern and the face of the rebellion. But when Kael is captured and brought to Center for execution, Bree no longer cares about the war or the call for independence. All that matters is rescuing her brother and putting a stop to the violence for once and for all.

Both sides hold secrets that could be their undoing.

Shadow Scale

Seraphina: Book 2

Rachel Hartman

The kingdom of Goredd: a world where humans and dragons share life with an uneasy balance, and those few who are both human and dragon must hide the truth. Seraphina is one of these, part girl, part dragon, who is reluctantly drawn into the politics of her world. When war breaks out between the dragons and humans, she must travel the lands to find those like herself--for she has an inexplicable connection to all of them, and together they will be able to fight the dragons in powerful, magical ways.

As Seraphina gathers this motley crew, she is pursued by humans who want to stop her. But the most terrifying is another half dragon, who can creep into people's minds and take them over. Until now, Seraphina has kept her mind safe from intruders, but that also means she's held back her own gift. It is time to make a choice: Cling to the safety of her old life, or embrace a powerful new destiny?

Seventh Moon: Book 1

Nancy Varian Berberick

Warriors and wisdom-bearers, the race of Dwarfs once peopled the earth. Then came Man, and his new god: time for Wotan to harvest the souls of the Firstborn. The Dwarfs fells in battle, and no more children were born.

Now only song-maker Garroc lives. Gifted with three lifetimes andburdened with the need to preserve the Firstborn tale, he lifts his voice to a human woman... and entrusts to her the last true history of his mighty race.

Son of the Shadows

Sevenwaters: Book 2

Beautiful Sorcha is the courageous young woman who risked all to save her family from a wicked curse and whose love shattered generations of hate and bridged two cultures. It is from her sacrifice that Sorcha's brothers were brought home to their ancestral fortress Sevenwaters, and her life has known much joy. But not all the brothers were able to fully escape the spell that transformed them into swans, and it is left to Sorcha's daughter, Liadan, to help fulfill the destiny of the Sevenwaters clan. Beloved child and dutiful daughter, Liadan embarks on a journey that shows her just how hard-won was the peace that she has known all her life.

Liadan will need all of her courage to help save her family, for there are dark forces and ancient powers conspiring to destroy this family's peace - and their world. And she will need all of her strength to stand up to those she loves best, for in the finding of her own true love, Liadan's course may doom them all...or be their salvation.

The Shadow Cabinet

Shades of London: Book 3

Maureen Johnson

Rory and her friends are reeling from a series of sudden and tragic events. While racked with grief, Rory tries to determine if she acted in time to save a member of the squad. If she did, how do you find a ghost? Also, Rory's classmate Charlotte has been kidnapped by Jane and her nefarious organization. Evidence is uncovered of a forty-year-old cult, ten missing teenagers, and a likely mass murder. Everything indicates that Charlotte's in danger, and it seems that something much bigger and much more terrible is coming.

Time is running out as Rory fights to find her friends and the ghost squad struggles to stop Jane from unleashing her spectral nightmare on the entire city. In the process, they'll discover the existence of an organization that underpins London itself--and Rory will learn that someone she trusts has been keeping a tremendous secret.

Shadowplay

Shadith's Quest: Book 1

Spacenapped when she stumbled on a kidnapping in progress, Shadith - captive for centuries in the alien artifact known as the Diadem, now once again living in a human form - finds herself the prisoner of Ginbiryol Seyirshi, a being who has instigated devastating wars on world after world purely to film and sell Limited Editions of the resulting violence, destruction, and death.

Along with two fellow humanoid prisoners, Shadith has been chosen to play a key role in Seyirshi's newest "production", serving as a demigod around whom the rebel forces will rally only to face a terrible doom. But prisoner though she it, Shadith has some unique resources of her own, and with these Diadem-mastered powers, she will do all she can to rewrite Seyirshi's script so that the people of this troubled planet as well as she and her fellow captives can win their freedom and put an end to Seyirshi's interstellar reign of terror...

Shadowspeer

Shadith's Quest: Book 2

The price of a world's death was extremely high, but Ginbiryol Seyirshi would give any buyer his money's worth. Creator of Limited Editions, "productions" in which entire populations became unwilling actors in planet-devastating wars, Seyirshi had once held Shadith captive. But now she and her comrades were free from Seyirshi's control, and they had sworn to track down the monster and put an end to his evil works.

But Seyirshi had made many enemies in his long career and had long ago learned how to protect himself from those in search of vengeance. To stop the world-wrecker, Shadith would first have to find him. And now she and her comrades had found the perfect bait, Wargun, one of Seyirshi's devoted "customers". But before they could carry out their real mission, they had to capture Wargun. And even with Shadith's unique talents, this first challenge would prove almost as impossible as catching Seyirshi himself...

Shadowkill

Shadith's Quest: Book 3

Mindwiping or death would be the fate for Shadith if she could not find a way to escape the Institute ship and her captors. So she creates a controlled, temporary mindwipe, hiding her identity so thoroughly that even she herself no longer knew who she is.

Shadow: Book 1

Anne Logston

Shadow, a light-hearted (and light-fingered) elven thief, returns to her homeland after several centuries' absence only to find that a great human trade city has grown up next to the forest in which she was born.

Now the elves and the humans maintain an uneasy alliance, but when Shadow steals a magical bracelet, she finds herself caught in the middle of a plot that may tear the city--and the alliance--apart forever.

Shadow Hunt

Shadow: Book 2

Anne Logston

She's a master thief as elusive as her name whose dagger is as sharp as her eyes and wits. Where there's a rich merchant to rob, good food and wine to be had, or a lusty fellow to kiss... there's Shadow.

What do the Guild of Thieves, the deadliest assassin in Allanmere, a long-vanished mage, a treacherous swamp, and a gem missing from a temple have in common? Shadow, of course. When Shadow is accused of a theft of guild-wrecking proportions, she forms an unlikely alliance with the strange immortal creature known only as Blade to find out who has framed her and the Guild of Thieves for the theft--and why.

Deadly Companion

When Shadow has to recover a stolen jewel from the wizard Baloran, her journey is as perilous as her destination. For only Blade can guide Shadow to the sorcerer's lair ... and Blade is an assassin who takes a life as easily as she takes a breath.

Shadow's score with Baloran can end only in destruction. But in the final battle, will Blade be at Shadow's side--or in her way?

Shadow Dance

Shadow: Book 3

Anne Logston

A deadly plague is sweeping through Allanmere, brought by a stranger whose race vanished long before the humans of Allanmere, or the elves of the forest, came to the land.

Now Shadow must lead that stranger and her best friend Donya into the deadly swamp known as the Dim Reaches in search of a cure for the plague hidden among the traces of a race long gone.

Three Kinds of Lucky

Shadow Age: Book 1

Kim Harrison

Petra Grady has known since adolescence that she has no talent for magic - and that's never going to change. But as a sweeper first-class, she's parlayed her rare ability to handle dross - the damaging, magical waste generated by her more talented kin's spellwork - into a decent life working at the mages' university.

Except Grady's relatively predictable life is about to be upended. When the oblivious, sexy, and oh-so-out-of-reach Benedict Strom needs someone with her abilities for a research project studying dross and how to render it harmless, she's stuck working on his team - whether she wants to or not.

Only Benedict doesn't understand the characteristics of dross like Grady does. After an unthinkable accident, she and Benedict are forced to go on the run to seek out the one person who might be able to help: an outcast exiled ten years ago for the crime of using dross to cast spells. Now Grady must decide whether to stick with the magical status quo or embrace her own hidden talents... and risk shattering their entire world.

Forsaken

Shadow Cove Saga: Book 1

J. D. Barker

When horror author Thad McAlister began his latest novel, a tale rooted in the witch trials of centuries past, the words flowed effortlessly. The story poured forth, filling page after page with the most frightening character ever to crawl from his imagination. It was his greatest work, one that would guarantee him a position among the legends of the craft.

But was it really fiction?

He inadvertently opened a door, one that would soon jeopardize the lives of his family.

She wants to come back.

At home, his wife struggles to keep their family alive. Secretly wondering if she caused it all... a deal she made long ago. A deal with the Forsaken.

Legacies

Shadow Grail: Book 1

Who--or what--is stalking the students at Oakhurst Academy?

In the wake of the accident that killed her family, Spirit White is spirited away to Oakhurst Academy, a combination school and orphanage in the middle of Montana. There she learns she is a legacy--not only to the school, which her parents also attended, but to magic.

All the students at Oakhurst have magical powers, and although Spirit's hasn't manifested itself yet, the administrators insist she has one. Spirit isn't sure she cares. Devastated by the loss of her family, she finds comfort with a group of friends: Burke Hallows, Lachlann Spears, Muirin Shae, and Adelaide Lake.

But something strange is going on at Oakhurst. Students start disappearing under mysterious circumstances, and the school seems to be trying to cover it up. Spirit and her friends must find out what's happening--before one of them becomes the next victim...

Conspiracies

Shadow Grail: Book 2

The second book in the Shadow Grail series by the New York Times, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly bestselling authors Mercedes Lackey and Rosemary Edghill

Spirit and her friends Burke, Loch, Muirin, and Addie have managed to defeat the evil force that has been killing students at Oakhurst Academy for the past forty years--or so they think. When a series of magical attacks disrupts the school, Doctor Ambrosius calls upon alumnus Mark Rider to secure the campus--and start training the students for war. The only student without magic, Spirit doesn't trust Mark or his methods. She knows that Oakhurst isn't safe. And if Spirit and her friends want to live long enough to graduate, they have to find out what is really going on--before it's too late.

Sacrifices

Shadow Grail: Book 3

The third book in the Shadow Grail series by the New York Times and USA Today bestselling authors Mercedes Lackey and Rosemary Edghill

The students of Oakhurst Academy believe they have triumphed over the Shadow Knights. But Spirit, Burke, Muirin, Loch, and Addie know better. Under the guise of a company called Breakthrough Adventure Systems, the Shadow Knights have actually taken over the campus. The new regime is brutal, designed to turn the students into soldiers wielding both weapons and magic. Anyone who protests disappears.

Desperate, the group decides that Muirin should go undercover to spy on Breakthrough. But Muirin's act is a little too good, and Spirit begins to fear that her friend's loyalties might have truly changed. Surrounded by enemies and friends who suddenly seem like strangers, Spirit has decide who can--and cannot--be trusted.

Victories

Shadow Grail: Book 4

Spirit White and her friends Burke, Loch, and Addie have escaped from Oakhurst Academy. But their freedom has come at a terrible cost--a dear friend sacrificed her own life to save theirs. In the wake of Muirin's death, they are also forced to deal with the terrifying truth behind the facade of Oakhurst Academy: all of the legends are true.

Queen Guinevere, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table really had existed. With the magic of Merlin, they were able to imprison their greatest foe, Mordred, before he could plunge the world back into the Dark Ages. But Mordred is now free, in charge of Oakhurst Academy, and determined to finish what he started so long ago.

Pursued by Shadow Knights, the reincarnated remnants of Mordred's original army, Spirit's small band undertakes a quest to recover the Four Hallows, objects of immeasurable power. Memories of a past life have begun to surface, one in which Spirit wields a legendary sword. She comes to realize that these memories are the true key to Mordred's defeat. Can Spirit and her friends manage to recapture the magic of Camelot in time to save their fellow students and prevent the end of the world?

Shadow Grail #4: Victories is he fourth and final book in the Shadow Grail series by the New York Times and USA Today bestselling authors Mercedes Lackey and Rosemary Edghill.

Shadow of Ashland

Shadow of Ashland: Book 1

Terence M. Green

I have a memory of her outline in the darkened room, of the sway of the mattress, of the cool sheets wrapped about us, and of the tastes of her mouth as the lightning flashed finally in the skies, I remember the feel of her fingers as they trailed along my shoulder, and how much I needed that touch.

"Things have to be settled, or they never go away."

Only weeks before she dies in March, 1984, Leo Nolan's mother shows her son a rose she says was just given to her by her brother, Jack, who disappeared 50 years earlier. After her death, letters from Jack begin to arrive at the family home. They are postmarked 1934. The final one is from Ashland, Kentucky.

Leo heads to Ashland, to track down the source of the letters... And to find out why they are arriving now, after 50 years.

Time shifts. Time runs underground, then surfaces. It is 1934, and Leo experiences the Great Depression and the ghosts of the past as no one has in 50 years, in Ashland, where dreams die and are born again.

A Witness to Life

Shadow of Ashland: Book 2

Terence M. Green

In the acclaimed Shadow of Ashland, Terence M. Green introduced us to the poignant beauty and rich history of his own family. Publishers Weekly called Shadow of Ashland "wonderfully imagined and poetically told.... With Leo's narration as evocative as the pages of a newly discovered family album, this proves a remarkably affecting literary work that the publisher rightly compares to Jack Finney's Time and Again."

Now in A Witness to Life, with his spare but powerful style, Green examines the meaning of life, family, death--the connections that bind us all. The story begins at the moment of Martin Radley's death. His soul, free to drift back over his life, searches for meaning in a welter of change and occasional tragedy. He bears silent witness to his defining moments and the enigmatic patterns of his life.

As Martin grows in a young man in Canada, he meets Maggie Curtis. Soon they are married, have a daughter and son, and are enjoying life. But Maggie dies suddenly, leaving Martin ill-equipped to be the single parent of two teenagers. He does a bad enough job that he loses their respect and the warmth of their affection that he desperately desires. Lost in a muddle, he falls passionately in love with Gertrude McNulty, twenty years younger. He marries her and they have a child. A new wife, a new daughter, new pieces for the puzzle, but as he tries to pull together a new life, his old one slips away. His son, Jack, leaves for the promise of work in the U.S. and disappears. His older daughter marries, withdrawing into her new family, and in a few years Gertrude dies, and Martin once again is left alone to raise a child. Martin is a good man who has failed at something important to him, and now all his love and attention are devoted to his young daughter, for decades. When death finally takes him, Martin is still looking for answers. Now, he has come full circle and has found only a few answers but, perhaps, redemption.

St. Patrick's Bed

Shadow of Ashland: Book 3

Terence M. Green

"There's a line drawn across your life. You cross the line forever."

When Leo Nolan's father dies in 1995, his stepson, Adam, now twenty-one, finally asks the question that he has never asked, the question he could never ask. He asks it simply. "Is my father alive?"

St. Patrick's Bed, the sequel to the highly acclaimed, World Fantasy Award finalists Shadow of Ashland and A Witness to Life, revisits Leo's family, eleven years after the momentous visit to Ashland, Kentucky.

Thus begins this new odyssey to Dayton, Ohio, to the past, accompanied by family ghosts and the hard truths of the present. Leo's quest is both simple and complex: the need in the human heart for redemption, resolution and homecoming.

Shadow of the Fox

Shadow of the Fox: Book 1

Julie Kagawa

One thousand years ago, the great Kami Dragon was summoned to grant a single, terrible wish--and the Empire of Iwagoto was thrown into an age of darkness and chaos. Now, for whoever holds the Scroll of a Thousand Prayers, a new wish will be granted. A new age is about to dawn.

Raised by monks in the isolated Silent Winds temple, Yumeko has trained all her life to hide her true nature. Half kitsune, half human, Yumeko has a skill with illusion that is matched only by her penchant for mischief. Until the day her home is burned to the ground, her adoptive family is brutally slain and she is forced to flee with the temple's greatest treasure--one part of the ancient scroll.

Mysterious samurai Kage Tatsumi of the Shadow Clan is under orders to retrieve the scroll at any cost. When chance brings them together, an uneasy alliance is formed, offering Yumeko her best hope for survival. Knowing he seeks what she has hidden away, Yumeko begins the deception of a lifetime. With an army of demons at her heels, and the unlikeliest of allies at her side, Yumeko knows that her secrets are more than a matter of life or death. They are the key to the fate of the world itself.

Soul of the Sword

Shadow of the Fox: Book 2

Julie Kagawa

Kitsune shapeshifter Yumeko has one task: to take her piece of the ancient and powerful Scroll of a Thousand Prayers to the Steel Feather temple in order to prevent the summoning of the Harbinger of Change, the great Kami Dragon who will grant one wish to whomever holds the scroll. But she has a new enemy now, more dangerous than any she has yet faced. The demon Hakaimono is free at last, and he has possessed the very person Yumeko trusted to protect her from the evil at her heels, Kage Tatsumi of the Shadow Clan.

Hakaimono has only one goal: to break the curse of the sword and set himself free to rain chaos and destruction over the land forevermore. To do so, he will need the scroll. And Yumeko is the only one standing in his way.

The Tainted Cup

Shadow of the Leviathan: Book 1

Robert Jackson Bennett

An eccentric detective and her long-suffering assistant untangle a web of magic, deceit, and murder in this sparkling fantasy reimagining of the classic crime novel...

In Daretana's greatest mansion, a high Imperial officer lies dead--killed, to all appearances, when a tree spontaneously erupted from his body. Even here at the Empire's borders, where contagions abound and the blood of the Leviathans works strange magical changes, it's a death both terrifying and impossible.

Assigned to investigate is Ana Dolabra, a detective whose reputation for brilliance is matched only by her eccentricities. Rumor has it that she wears a blindfold at all times--and that she can solve impossible cases without even stepping outside the walls of her home.

At her side is her new assistant, Dinios Kol. Din is an engraver, magically altered in ways that make him the perfect aide to Ana's brilliance.

Din finds himself at turns scandalized, perplexed, and utterly infuriated by his new superior--but as the case unfolds and Ana's mind leaps from one startling deduction to the next, he must grudgingly admit that she is, indeed, the Empire's greatest detective.

As the two close in on a mastermind and uncover a scheme that threatens the safety of the Empire itself, Din realizes he's barely begun to assemble the puzzle that is Ana Dolabra--and wonders how long he'll be able to keep his own secrets safe from her piercing intellect.

Featuring an unforgettable Holmes-and-Watson style pairing, a gloriously labyrinthine plot, and a haunting and wholly original fantasy world, The Tainted Cup brilliantly reinvents the classic mystery tale.

Control Point

Shadow Ops: Book 1

Army Officer. Fugitive. Sorcerer.

Across the country and in every nation, people are waking up with magical talents. Untrained and panicked, they summon storms, raise the dead, and set everything they touch ablaze. Army officer Oscar Britton sees the worst of it. A lieutenant attached to the military's Supernatural Operations Corps, his mission is to bring order to a world gone mad. Then he abruptly manifests a rare and prohibited magical power, transforming him overnight from government agent to public enemy number one.

The SOC knows how to handle this kind of situation: hunt him down--and take him out. Driven into an underground shadow world, Britton is about to learn that magic has changed all the rules he's ever known, and that his life isn't the only thing he's fighting for.

Fortress Frontier

Shadow Ops: Book 2

The Great Reawakening did not come quietly. Across the country and in every nation, people began to develop terrifying powers-summoning storms, raising the dead, and setting everything they touch ablaze. Overnight the rules changed... but not for everyone.

Colonel Alan Bookbinder is an army bureaucrat whose worst war wound is a paper-cut. But after he develops magical powers, he is torn from everything he knows and thrown onto the front-lines.

Drafted into the Supernatural Operations Corps in a new and dangerous world, Bookbinder finds himself in command of Forward Operating Base Frontier-cut off, surrounded by monsters, and on the brink of being overrun.

Now, he must find the will to lead the people of FOB Frontier out of hell, even if the one hope of salvation lies in teaming up with the man whose own magical powers put the base in such grave danger in the first place-Oscar Britton, public enemy number one...

Breach Zone

Shadow Ops: Book 3

The Great Reawakening did not come quietly. Across the country and in every nation, people began "coming up Latent," developing terrifying powers-summoning storms, raising the dead, and setting everything they touch ablaze. Those who Manifest must choose: become a sheepdog who protects the flock or a wolf who devours it...

In the wake of a bloody battle at Forward Operating Base Frontier and a scandalous presidential impeachment, Lieutenant Colonel Jan Thorsson, call sign "Harlequin," becomes a national hero and a pariah to the military that is the only family he's ever known.

In the fight for Latent equality, Oscar Britton is positioned to lead a rebellion in exile, but a powerful rival beats him to the punch: Scylla, a walking weapon who will stop at nothing to end the human-sanctioned apartheid against her kind.

When Scylla's inhuman forces invade New York City, the Supernatural Operations Corps are the only soldiers equipped to prevent a massacre. In order to redeem himself with the military, Harlequin will be forced to face off with this havoc-wreaking woman from his past, warped by her power into something evil...

Gemini Cell

Shadow Ops: Book 4

US Navy SEAL Jim Schweitzer is a fierce warrior and consummate professional. When he sees something he shouldn't on a covert mission gone wrong, he finds himself - and his family - in the crosshairs.

The enemy bring the battle straight to Jim's front door, taking him down together with his wife and son. It should be the end for Jim, but his story is just beginning...

Raised from the dead and left to wrestle with new powers he doesn't understand, Jim is called to duty as the ultimate warrior for top-secret unit known as the Gemini Cell. But he will soon realise his new superiors are determined to keep him in the dark on everything - including about the true fate of his wife and son...

Javelin Rain

Shadow Ops: Book 5

The fast-paced, adrenaline-filled sequel to Gemini Cell, set in the same magical and militaristic world of the acclaimed Shadow Ops series.

Javelin: A code denoting the loss of a national security asset with strategic impact.

Rain: A code indicating a crisis of existential proportions.

Javelin Rain incidents must be resolved immediately, by any and all means necessary, no matter what the cost...

Being a US Navy SEAL was Jim Schweitzer's life right up until the day he was killed. Now, his escape from the government who raised him from the dead has been coded "Javelin Rain." Schweitzer and his family are on the run from his former unit, the Gemini Cell, and while he may be immortal, his wife and son are not.

Jim must use all of his strength to keep his family safe, while convincing his wife he's still the same man she once loved. But what his former allies have planned to bring him down could mean disaster not only for Jim and his family, but for the entire nation...

Siege Line

Shadow Ops: Book 6

On This Unworthy Scaffold

In Myke Cole's latest high-octane, action-packed military fantasy, the fate of undead Navy SEAL James Schweitzer will be decided--one way or another...

The Gemini Cell took everything from Jim Schweitzer: his family, his career as a Navy SEAL, even his life. Hounded across the country, Schweitzer knows the only way he can ever stop running, the only way his son can ever be safe, is to take the fight to the enemy and annihilate the Cell once and for all.

But the Cell won't be easily destroyed. Out of control and fighting a secret war with the government it once served, it has dispatched its shadowy Director to the far reaches of the subarctic in search of a secret magic that could tip the balance of power in its favor. Schweitzer must join with the elite warriors of both America and Canada in a desperate bid to get there first--and avert a disaster that could put the Cell in control.

For a Muse of Fire

Shadow Players: Book 1

Heidi Heilig

Jetta's family is famed as the most talented troupe of shadow players in the land. With Jetta behind the scrim, their puppets seem to move without string or stick--a trade secret, they say. In truth, Jetta can see the souls of the recently departed and bind them to the puppets with her blood. But ever since the colonizing army conquered their country, the old ways are forbidden. Jetta must never show, never tell. Her skill and fame are her family's way to earn a spot aboard the royal ship to Aquitan, where shadow plays are the latest rage, and where rumor has it the Mad King has a spring that cures his ills. Because seeing spirits is not the only thing that plagues Jetta. But as rebellion seethes and as Jetta meets a young smuggler, she will face truths and decisions that she never imagined--and safety will never seem so far away.

A Kingdom for a Stage

Shadow Players: Book 2

Heidi Heilig

Jetta is a wanted criminal. The army wants her for treason against the crown, for the sabotage of Hell's Court temple, and for the murder of General Legarde. They also want her for the power in her blood?the magic that captures wandering spirits to give life to puppets, to rocks, to paper... to weapons. They're willing to trade the elixir that treats Jetta's madness for the use of her blood. The rebels want her, too, to help them reclaim their country. Jetta may be the one who can tip the scales in this war.

But Jetta fears using her power will make her too much like Le Trépas, the terrifying and tyrannical necromancer who once held all Chakrana under his thumb?and who is Jetta's biological father. She's already raised her brother from the dead, after all. And scared off Leo, the only person who saw her as she truly is. With Le Trépas at large and a clash between the army and the rebels becoming inevitable, Jetta will have to decide if saving her country is worth sacrificing her soul.

Shadow Players: Book 3

Heidi Heilig

Jetta's home is spiraling into civil war. Le Trépas--the deadly necromancer--has used his blood magic to wrest control of the country, and Jetta has been without treatment for her malheur for weeks. Meanwhile, Jetta's love interest, brother, and friend are intent on infiltrating the palace to stop the Boy King and find Le Trépas to put an end to the unleashed chaos.

The sweeping conclusion to Heidi Heilig's ambitious trilogy takes us to new continents, introduces us to new gods, flings us into the middle of palace riots and political intrigue, and asks searching questions about power and corruption.

Shadow's Son

Shadow Series: Book 1

Jon Sprunk

In the holy city of Othir, treachery and corruption lurk at the end of every street, just the place for a freelance assassin with no loyalties and few scruples.

Caim makes his living on the edge of a blade, but when a routine job goes south, he is thrust into the middle of an insidious plot. Pitted against crooked lawmen, rival killers, and sorcery from the Other Side, his only allies are Josephine, the socialite daughter of his last victim, and Kit, a guardian spirit no one else can see. But in this fight for his life, Caim only trusts his knives and his instincts, but they won't be enough when his quest for justice leads him from Othir's hazardous back alleys to its shining corridors of power. To unmask a conspiracy at the heart of the empire, he must claim his birthright as the Shadow's Son . . .

Shadow's Lure

Shadow Series: Book 2

Jon Sprunk

The unforgiving Northlands . . .

In Othir, he was at the top of the food chain-an assassin beyond compare, a dark shadow in the night. But Caim left that life behind when he helped an empress claim her throne. And now his past has come calling again.

Searching for the truth behind the murder and disappearance of his parents, Caim discovers a land in thrall to the Shadow. Haunted by temptations from the Other Side, he becomes mired in a war he does not want to fight.

But there are some things a son of the Shadow cannot ignore, and some fights from which he can't run. In this battle, all of Caim's strength and skill won't be enough.

For none can resist the Shadow's Lure.

Shadow's Master

Shadow Series: Book 3

Jon Sprunk

The northern wastes. . . .

A land of death and shadow where only the strongest survive. Yet that is where Caim must go to follow the mystery at the heart of his life. Armed only with his knives and his companions, he plunges into a world of eternal night where the sun is never seen and every hand is turned against him.

Caim has buried his father’s sword and found some measure of peace, but deep in the north an unfathomable power lays waiting. To succeed on this mission, Caim will have to more than just survive. He must face the Shadow’s Master.

Destiny of The Light

Shadow Through Time: Book 1

Louise Cusack

Ennae is a parallel world joined to our own world by the Sacred Pool, a portal that can only be opened by one with the Guardian blood running through their veins. It is through this watery gateway that Khatrene leaves her modern-day life behind forever, drawn into a quest that will take her into the depths of the unknown.

Khatrene must fulfil her destiny as The Light, the woman whose child will unite the four elemental worlds. At each turn are real and imagined enemies who will do everything in their power to prevent her from fulfilling the prophecy, including the ethereal and erotic shadow woman, the enigmatic tattooed man, even her beloved brother Mihale.

Talis, her appointed Guardian, must help her through the dangerous terrain of Ennae, sacrificing everything to ensure her safety in a land where magic prevails and nothing is as it seems.

From an exciting new voice in Australian fantasy fiction comes the first book in the Shadow Through Time trilogy. Beautifully crafted and written, Destiny of the Light combines intrigue, magic and horror to create a reality that is out of this world.

Daughter of The Dark

Shadow Through Time: Book 2

Louise Cusack

The child of The Light, Glimmer, is taken from her mother's arms and forced into exile on Magoria, the Waterworld. Her only connection with her native land is Pagan, her Champion and Guardian, who must use his wits and powers to protect Glimmer from detection and hide the evidence of her true destiny.

Meanwhile on Atheyre (the Airworld), Princess Khatrene and her lover Talis watch on helplessly, unable to protect Glimmer from the dangerous and bloody power play that is taking place. Kraal, the evil God of Haddash, and Djahr, the Lord of the Dark, are plotting the violent death of baby Glimmer so that they can gain total control of the four elemental worlds.

But the universe is rebelling. Ever so slowly the Maelstrom is building momentum, threatening to obliterate the four worlds and all who inhabit them. Glimmer must return to the land of her birth and fight the fiercest battle of her young life to right the terrible wrongs of the past, defeat the enemies who threaten to destroy her and restore peace.

Once again, Louise Cusack weaves an intricate web of intrigue, magic, erotica and horror to create a tale of pure fantasy.

Glimmer in the Maelstrom

Shadow Through Time: Book 3

Louise Cusack

The Maelstrom is building - inexorable, relentless, causing destruction and death on an unprecedented scale, pouring elements from one realm into another - and the only hope for humanity, the young Glimmer, has strayed far from her destiny to unite the Four Worlds. An accidental touch of the Plainsman Memory Stone infects her with emotions and she abducts the coldest of the nobles, Kert Sh'hale, taking him to the Fireworld of Haddash where her clumsy seduction allows the Serpent of Death to escape.

On our world, Pagan's son Vandal has grown into a young man, bitter at his father for abandoning him to return to Ennae. When tragedy steals Vandal's future, his bitterness becomes deadly and he follows his father through the Sacred Pool, intent on destroying the one thing Pagan loves most.

While Glimmer must give up everything she holds dear to fight the Serpent and secure a future from the remnants of mankind; Vandal hunts his father's betrothed, Lae; and the Maelstrom draws closer...

The final instalment of the Shadow Through Time trilogy is pure magic. A sumptuous conclusion to a feast of fantasy.

The Wind After Time

Shadow Warrior: Book 1

Chris Bunch

Ten years has passed since the Great War - and mankind was victorious against the Al'ar, their loathsome alien foes.

But Joshua Wolfe, hero of the war, knows it's not over. He knows the Al'ar and their ways. He knows what their plans are.

And he knows they'll be back.

Long ago, the Al'ar gave him a name: Shadow Warrior. The time has come to fulfill its lethal promise.

Hunt the Heavens

Shadow Warrior: Book 2

Chris Bunch

Bounty hunter. Federation intelligence agent. Former prisoner of the terrifying Al'ar. Joshua Wolfe had been all those things. Now he's on the hunt for secrets amid the ruble of the Great War.

The Federation want the secrets to stay hidden, as does the Chitet cult, who have their own interests in the Al'ar. Wolfe will have to fight them all as he travels from a mothballed fleet of starships to a lethal world of robot protectors... and finally, face to face with an enemy more terrible than any mankind has faced.

The future lies in the hands of the Shadow Warrior.

The Darkness of God

Shadow Warrior: Book 3

Chris Bunch

Joshua Wolfe has four sworn enemies: the Chitet cult, a power-mad baron, the Federation government, and the alien "virus" that is slowly invading the known universe.

And he has one hope: the Ur-Lumina, the legendary power-enhancing crystal of the vanished race, the Al'ar.

But the Ur-Lumina is in the hands of a ruthless gangster. And Wolfe isn't on her good list at the moment...

Night Terrors

Shadow Watch: Book 1

Tim Waggoner

When you dream, you visit the Maelstrom. Dream long enough and hard enough, and your dreams can break through into the living world.

So can your nightmares.

And who's there to catch the dreams and nightmares as they fall into reality?

Meet the Shadow Watch. Pray you never need them...

Dream Stalkers

Shadow Watch: Book 2

Tim Waggoner

A new drug - Shut-Eye - has been developed in the dreamland, and smuggled into our world. It's addictive, and dangerous, and Shadow Watch agents Audra and Mr Jinx are on the case, preparing new recruits to deal with the problem.

Meanwhile, a wave of ancient, bodiless Incubi are entering the dreams of humans in an attempt to possess them and live new lives. Only the criminally insane would ever risk a confrontation with them.

Thank goodness, then, for Mr Jinx: clown, Shadow Watch agent, psychopath.

Ghostlight

Shadow's Gate: Book 1

Thorne Blackburn claimed to have magickal powers, to be able to tap into ancient wisdom. Others claimed he was a fake, cheating his many followers out of their money and destroying their free well.

The truth may never be known... one dark, climactic night thirty years ago, Blackburn's most powerful ritual went horribly awry, leaving his flock shattered and one woman dead. Blackburn himself vanished.

Now the scattered remains of Blackburn's followers have rallied around a new leader, the charismatic Justin Pilgrim. Hearing this, Thorne Blackburn's daughter, Truth, returns to the site of her mother's death and father's disappearance.

Truth has many unanswered questions. Where are her long-lost half-siblings? Was her mother's death an accident or murder? Is Pilgrim a charlatan, or are his claimed powers real? If he completes Thorne's ritual, will someone else die?

The answers will lead Truth to a deeply powerful truth of her own, one that will change her life forever.

Witchlight

Shadow's Gate: Book 2

Winter Musgrave's past is largely blank, her memories missing or tissue-thin. She seem to be possessed--objects shatter when she passes, the corpses of animal appear on her doorstep. And she has the terrible feeling that something horrible happened in her empty past--results of which are now haunting her with unbridled fury.

Seeking help, Winter turns to Truth Jourdemayne and learns that the key to unlocking her lost memories lies within herself--and in the magickal circle of friends in college. But the circle was broken long ago. Winter must reconstruct it is she is to save her life.

Gravelight

Shadow's Gate: Book 3

Wycherly Musgrave doesn't have good luck with cars and alcohol. Trying to outrun the memory of a young woman he may have killed in a drunk-driving accident, Wych sends his expensive sports car sailing off the road... and, with his usual impossible luck, survives the crash with no more than a few bumps and bruises. the car is totaled, stranding Wycherly in the tiny mountain town of Morton's Fork. Making the best of a bad situation, Wych decides to try to dry out.

Wycherly isn't Morton's Fork's only unusual guest this summer: A movie star has taken up residence in a converted schoolhouse. Sinah Dellon left Morton's Fork as an infant foundling. Now she's come home to learn who her people were - and why she has the ability to read minds. But Sinah's psychic powers do not help her with the townsfolk, who turn from her in fear and hatred.

Equally untrustworthy, according to the residents of Morton's Fork, are the RV-load of researchers from the Bidney Institute, come to investigate centuries of reported hauntings, vanishings, poltergeists, and other phenomena. They too are poking around in things better left unexplored. Before long, Truth Blackburn, heroine of Bradley's novel Ghostlight, discovers that the source of the psychic storm is a renegade Gate - and one with a connection to Truth's own tangled past. But she cannot close the Gate alone, and the true Keeper is nowhere to be found.

In despair, Wycherly Musgrave has made a pact with evil. In fear, Sinah Dellon feels her soul slipping away under attack from a vengeful spirit. In dread, Truth Blackburn must make a great sacrifice to save all the people of Morton's Fork, and the man she loves, from the power of the Gate.

Heartlight

Shadow's Gate: Book 4

Heartlight is the story of Bradley's greatest champion of good, Colin MacLaren, as he carries the banner of Light through the second half of the twentieth century. Ghostbuster, exorcist, student and teacher of the mystic arts, Colin meets Claire Moffat, who becomes his dearest friend, when he rescues her from a cult bent on human sacrifice.

The leader of that cult, Toller Hasloch, becomes one of Colin's greatest enemies. Working behind the scenes for the next thirty years, Hasloch subtly manipulates politics and the economy to turn America away from the Light. Colin, busy saving lives and teaching the next generation of psychic warriors, realizes almost too late how Hasloch has warped America's promise.

Now, Colin MacLaren is the only one who can face Hasloch and the hellhounds the younger man has unleashed. He must fight on, while the fate of America, and perhaps all mankind, hangs in the balance.

Shadowbridge

Shadowbridge: Book 1

Gregory Frost

Sprung from a timeless dream, Shadowbridge is a world of linked spans arching high above glittering seas. It is a world of parading ghosts, inscrutable gods, and dangerous magic. Most of all, it is a world of stories.

No one knows those stories better than Leodora, a young shadow-puppeteer who travels Shadowbridge collecting the intertwining tales and myths of each place she passes through, then retells them in performances whose genius has begun to attract fame... and less welcome attention.

For Leodora is fleeing a violent past, as are her two companions: her manager, Soter, an elderly drunkard who also served Ledora's father, the legendary puppeteer Bardsham; and Diverus, her musical accompanist, a young man who has been blessed, and perhaps cursed, by the touch of a nameless god.

Now, as the strands of a destiny she did not choose begin to tighten around her, Leodora is about to cross the most perilous bridge of all-the one leading from the past to the future.

Shadowbridge is the first novel in a two-book adventure.

Lord Tophet

Shadowbridge: Book 2

Gregory Frost

Daughter of the legendary shadow-puppeteer Bardsham, Leodora has inherited her father's skills... and his enemies. Together with her manager-Soter, keeper of her father's darkest secrets, and a gifted young musician named Diverus, Leodora has traveled from span to span, her masked performances given under the stage name Jax, winning fame and fortune.

But Jax's success may be Leodora's undoing. Years ago, following a performance by Bardsham, the vengeful god known as Lord Tophet visited a horrific punishment upon the span of Colemaigne and its citizens, a reprisal inflicted without warning or explanation. And as the genius of Jax gives rise to rumors that Bardsham has returned, Lord Tophet takes notice and dispatches a quintet of deadly killers to learn the truth behind the mask.

Now, upon the cursed span of Colemaigne, where her father achieved his greatest triumph and suffered his bitterest tragedy, Leodora is about to perform the most shocking story of all.

A Dance of Cloaks

Shadowdance: Book 1

The Underworld rules the city of Veldaren. Thieves, smugglers, assassins...they fear only one man.

In book #1 of the Shadowdance series, Thren Felhorn is the greatest assassin of his time. All the thieves' guilds of the city are under his unflinching control. If he has his way, death will soon spill out from the shadows and into the streets.

Aaron is Thren's son, trained to be heir to his father's criminal empire. He's cold, ruthless -- everything an assassin should be. But when Aaron risks his life to protect a priest's daughter from his own guild, he glimpses a world beyond piston, daggers, and the iron rule of his father.

Assassin or protector; every choice has its consequences.

Fantasy author David Dalglish spins a tale of retribution and darkness, and an underworld reaching for ultimate power.

A Dance of Blades

Shadowdance: Book 2

It's been five long years since the city learned to fear...

In book #2 of the Shadowdance series, the war between the thief guilds and the powerful allegiance known as the Trifect has slowly dwindled. Now only the mysterious Haern is left to wage his private battle against the guilds in the guise of the Watcher -- a vicious killer who knows no limits. But when the son of Alyssa Gemcroft, one of the three leaders of the Trifect, is believed murdered, the slaughter begins anew. Mercenaries flood the streets with one goal in mind: find and kill the Watcher.

Peace or destruction; every war must have its end.

A Dance of Mirrors

Shadowdance: Book 3

One has conquered a city. The other covets an entire nation.

In book #3 of the Shadowdance series, Haern is the King's Watcher, protector against thieves and nobles who would fill the night with blood. Yet hundreds of miles away, an assassin known as the Wraith has begun slaughtering those in power, leaving the symbol of the Watcher in mockery. When Haern travels south to confront this copycat, he finds a city ruled by the corrupt, the greedy and the dangerous. Rioters fill the streets, and the threat of war hangs over everything. To forge peace, Haern must confront the deadly Wraith, a killer who would shape the kingdom's future with the blade of his sword.

Man or God; what happens when the lines are blurred?

A Dance of Shadows

Shadowdance: Book 4

"Prove that you can stand against the darkness and live."

In book #4 of the Shadowdance series, Haern is the King's Watcher, born an assassin only to become the city of Veldaren's protector against the thief guilds.

When Lord Victor Kane attacks the city, determined to stamp out all corruption, foreign gangs pour in amidst the chaos in an attempt to overthrow the current lords of the underworld.

And when a mysterious killer known as the Widow begins mutilating thieves, paranoia engulfs the city. Haern knows someone is behind the turmoil, pulling strings. If he doesn't find out who -- and soon -- his beloved city will burn.

Light or darkness: where will the line be drawn?

A Dance of Ghosts

Shadowdance: Book 5

The underworld trempbles at the rise of the sun...

In book #5 of the Shadowdance series...a night of fire and blood heralds Muzien the Darkhand's arrival to Veldaren. With him comes the might of the Sun Guild, eager to spread their criminal empire.

Left blind after being attacked by the Widow, Alyssa Gemcroft struggles to hold together the remnants of the Trifect as the Sun Guild's arrival threatens to shatter whatever future her son might have left.

Veldaren's only hope is in the Watcher, but Haern is no longer there. With his father, Thren Felhorn, he is traveling to the Stronghold, an ancient bastion of the dark paladins of Karak. Will they find the answers they seek? Or will the Stronghold be their final destination?

Killer or savior; the line can no longer remain blurred.

A Dance of Chaos

Shadowdance: Book 6

Fear comes from the hands of prophets...

The final installment of the Shadowdance series finds Haern the Watcher returning to his beloved city of Veldaren, only to find it has collapsed into chaos. The Sun Guild has conquered the former thief guilds, destroying the peace Haern fought so hard to obtain. The Trifect is their next target, and Alyssa Gemcroft must reach out to whatever allies she can obtain, even if it means casting aside longtime friends. As the chaos grows, so does the power of the dark god Karak who lays siege to Veldaren. If the city falls, the world will suffer greatly.

The legendary Thren Felhorn, broken, guileless, and rejected by his own son, holds the fate of the entire city in his hands. Unless Haern can stop his father, Thren will at last have the legacy of fire and destruction he has always desired.

Father or son; some choices must be made in blood.

Shadowfell

Shadowfell: Book 1

Sixteen-year-old Neryn is alone in the land of Alban, where the oppressive king has ordered anyone with magical strengths captured and brought before him. Eager to hide her own canny skill--a uniquely powerful ability to communicate with the fairy-like Good Folk--Neryn sets out for the legendary Shadowfell, a home and training ground for a secret rebel group determined to overthrow the evil King Keldec.

During her dangerous journey, she receives aid from the Good Folk, who tell her she must pass a series of tests in order to recognize her full potential. She also finds help from a handsome young man, Flint, who rescues her from certain death--but whose motives in doing so remain unclear. Neryn struggles to trust her only allies. They both hint that she alone may be the key to Alban's release from Keldec's rule. Homeless, unsure of who to trust, and trapped in an empire determined to crush her, Neryn must make it to Shadowfell not only to save herself, but to save Alban.

Raven Flight

Shadowfell: Book 2

Neryn has finally found the rebel group at Shadowfell, and now her task is to seek out the elusive Guardians, vital to her training as a Caller. These four powerful beings have been increasingly at odds with human kind, and Neryn must prove her worth to them. She desperately needs their help to use her gift without compromising herself or the cause of overthrowing the evil King Keldec.

Neryn must journey with the tough and steadfast Tali, who looks on Neryn's love for the double agent Flint as a needless vulnerability. And perhaps it is. What Flint learns from the king will change the battlefield entirely—but in whose favor, no one knows.

The Caller

Shadowfell: Book 3

Just one year ago, Neryn had nothing but a canny skill she barely understood and a faint dream that the legendary rebel base of Shadowfell might be real. Now she is the rebels' secret weapon, and their greatest hope for survival in the fast-approaching ambush of King Keldec at Summerfort.

The fate of Alban itself is in her hands. But confidence is stretching thinner by the day when word of another Caller reaches the rebels: a Caller at Keldec's side with all of Neryn's power and none of her benevolence or hard-earned control. As the days before the battle drop quickly away, Neryn must find a way to uncover--and exploit--her opponent's weaknesses. At stake lies freedom for the people of Alban, a life free from hiding for the Good Folk--and a chance for Flint and Neryn to finally be together.

The Bane Chronicles

Shadowhunter Anthologies: Book 1

Tales From the Shadowhunter Academy

This collection of eleven short stories illuminates the life of the enigmatic Magnus Bane, whose alluring personality, flamboyant style, and sharp wit populate the pages of the #1 New York Times bestselling series, The Mortal Instruments and The Infernal Devices.

Originally released one-by-one as e-only short stories by Cassandra Clare, Maureen Johnson, and Sarah Rees Brennan, this compilation presents all ten together in print and includes a special eleventh tale, as well as eleven comic illustrations.

Contents:

What Really Happened in Peru - novelette by Sarah Rees Brennan and Cassandra Clare
The Runaway Queen -novelette by Cassandra Clare and Maureen Johnson
Vampires, Scones, and Edmund Herondale - novelette by Sarah Rees Brennan and Cassandra Clare
The Midnight Heir - novelette by Sarah Rees Brennan and Cassandra Clare
The Rise of the Hotel Dumort - novelette by Cassandra Clare and Maureen Johnson
Saving Raphael Santiago - novelette by Sarah Rees Brennan and Cassandra Clare
The Fall of the Hotel Dumort - novelette by Cassandra Clare and Maureen Johnson
What to Buy the Shadowhunter Who Has Everything (And Who You Are Not Officially Dating Anyway) - novella by Cassandra Clare
The Last Stand of the New York Institute -novelette by Sarah Rees Brennan and Cassandra Clare and Maureen Johnson
The Course of True Love (And First Dates) - novelette by Cassandra Clare
The Voicemail of Magnus Bane - novella by Cassandra Clare

Shadowhunter Anthologies: Book 2

Ghosts of the Shadow Market

Simon Lewis has been a human and a vampire, and now he is becoming a Shadowhunter. The events of City of Heavenly Fire left him stripped of his memories, and Simon isn't sure who he is anymore. So when the Shadowhunter Academy reopens, Simon throws himself into this new world of demon-hunting, determined to find himself again. Whomever this new Simon might be.

But the Academy is a Shadowhunter institution, which means it has some problems. Like the fact that non-Shadowhunter students have to live in the basement. At least Simon's trained in weaponry - even if it's only from hours of playing D&D.

Join Simon on his journey to become a Shadowhunter, and learn about the Academy's illustrious history along the way, through guest lecturers such as Jace Herondale, Tessa Gray, and Magnus Bane. Written by Cassandra Clare, Sarah Rees Brennan, Maureen Johnson, and Robin Wasserman, these moving and hilarious short stories are perfect for the fan who just can't get enough of the Shadowhunters.

Contents:

Welcome to Shadowhunter Academy - novella by Sarah Rees Brennan and Cassandra Clare
The Lost Herondale - novelette by Cassandra Clare and Robin Wasserman
The Whitechapel Fiend - novelette by Cassandra Clare and Maureen Johnson
Nothing but Shadows - novella by Sarah Rees Brennan and Cassandra Clare
The Evil We Love - novella by Cassandra Clare and Robin Wasserman
Pale Kings and Princes - novelette by Cassandra Clare and Robin Wasserman
Bitter of Tongue - novelette by Sarah Rees Brennan and Cassandra Clare
The Fiery Trial - novelette by Cassandra Clare and Maureen Johnson
Born to Endless Night - novella by Sarah Rees Brennan and Cassandra Clare
Angels Twice Descending - novelette by Cassandra Clare and Robin Wasserman

Shadowhunter Anthologies: Book 3

The Shadow Market is a meeting point for faeries, werewolves, warlocks, and vampires. There, the Downworlders buy and sell magical objects, make dark bargains, and whisper secrets they do not want the Shadowhunters to know. Through two centuries, however, there has been a frequent visitor to the Shadow Market from the very heart of the Shadowhunters' world. Jem Carstairs is searching through the Shadow Market, in many different cities over long years, for a relic from his past.

Follow Jem and see - against the backdrop of the Shadow Market's dark dealings and spectacle - Anna Lightwood's doomed romance, Matthew Fairchild's great sin, and Tessa Gray as she is plunged into a world war. Valentine Morgenstern buys a soul at the Market and a young Jace Wayland's soul finds safe harbor. In the Market is hidden a lost heir and a beloved ghost, and no one can save you once you have traded away your heart. Not even Jem.

Contents:

Cast Long Shadows - novelette by Sarah Rees Brennan and Cassandra Clare
Every Exquisite Thing - novella by Cassandra Clare and Maureen Johnson
Learn About Loss - novelette by Cassandra Clare and Kelly Link
A Deeper Love - novelette by Cassandra Clare and Maureen Johnson
The Wicked Ones - novella by Cassandra Clare and Robin Wasserman
Son of the Dawn - novelette by Sarah Rees Brennan and Cassandra Clare
The Land I Lost - novella by Sarah Rees Brennan and Cassandra Clare
Through Blood, Through Fire - novelette by Cassandra Clare and Robin Wasserman
The Lost World - novelette by Cassandra Clare and Kelly Link
Forever Fallen - novella by Sarah Rees Brennan and Cassandra Clare

Hidden Sun

Shadowlands: Book 1

Jaine Fenn

Rhia Harlyn is a noble in Shen, one of the dozens of shadowlands which separate the bright, alien skyland. She has a missing brother, an unwanted marriage proposal and an interest in science considered unbecoming in her gender. Her brother's disappearance coincided with a violent unsolved murder, and Rhia impulsively joins the search party headed into the skyland - a place whose dangers and wonders have long fascinated her. The dangerous journey brings her into conflict with a young rebel stuck between the worlds of shadow and light, and a charismatic cult leader who believes he can defeat death itself.

Broken Shadow

Shadowlands: Book 2

Jaine Fenn

The sky is falling, and only one dilettante scientist can save the world, in the startling finale of the Shadowlands duology.

Rhia Harlyn risks death for science. Accused of heresy for promoting an unorthodox cosmology, she must defend herself, her work and her House alone. If only she could rely on her feckless brother Etyan, transformed through the combination of an occult scientist's experiments and the harsh rays of the skyland sun. But she knows she cannot.

When Dej, Etyan's half-alien lover, finally uncovers Etyan's dark secret she runs off into the perilous skyland. She is looking for peace in a world that has rejected her; what she discovers instead will change everyone's lives.

Meanwhile, overhead, the very stars themselves are shifting. Rhia is about to find herself proved disastrously right...

Shadowmarch

Shadowmarch: Book 1

Shadowmarch: Volume 1 introduces a world conquered by humans, who have driven the Qar, or fairy folk, into the far north. There, the Qar hide behind the "Shadowline," a mysterious veil of perpetual mist, which drives mad any human who dares enter it. Bordering that mist and named for it is Shadowmarch, the northernmost human kingdom.

Shadowmarch has lately fallen on hard times. Its king has been captured by a rival kingdom, the regent has been mysteriously slain, and the new regents are callow fifteen-year-olds. Moody, crippled Prince Barrick is uninterested in their responsibilities and haunted by eerie dreams. His twin, Princess Briony, takes their new duties seriously, but is hot-tempered and headstrong. How can they defeat the greatest threats in Shadowmarch history? Their nobles plot to overthrow them--and the plotters may include their pregnant stepmother, seeking the throne for her own child. The expanding empire of Xis has sent its agents into Shadowmarch. And, for the first time since it appeared centuries ago, the Shadowline has starting moving. As the maddening mist spreads south over Shadowmarch, it does not quite hide the powerful, uncanny, and vengeful Qar army of invasion...

Shadowplay

Shadowmarch: Book 2

With their father and brother taken from them, the royal Eddon twins Barrick and Briony have done their best to hold the kingdom together. But now Barrick has been captured in a failed war against the immortal Twilight People and Briony has been forced to flee the castle. Old magics are stirring beneath the ancient castle and behind the Shadowline, and the machinations of gods, fairies, and mortals threaten to spread devastation across the entire world.

Shadowrise

Shadowmarch: Book 3

With King Olin imprisoned and Prince Kendrick slain, the royal twins Barrick and Briony have been forced to flee their homeland. But both families and nations can hide dark and terrible secrets. Even if Barrick and Briony survive learning the astonishing truths at the heart of their own family and of Southmarch itself, they must find a way to reclaim their kingdom and rescue their home-from traitors, tyrants, a god-king, and even the angry gods themselves.

Shadowheart

Shadowmarch: Book 4

Shadowrun: Into the Shadows

The long-awaited concluding novel in Tad Williams's thrilling epic Shadowmarch series.

Southmarch Castle is about to be caught between two implacable enemies, the ancient, immortal Qar and the insane god-king, the Autarch of Xis. Meanwhile, its two young defenders, Princess Briony and Prince Barrick, are both trapped far away from home and fighting for their lives.

And now, something is awakening underneath Southmarch Castle, something powerful and terrible that the world has not seen for thousands of years. Can Barrick and Briony, along with a tiny handful of allies, ordinary and extraordinary, find a way to save their world and prevent the rise of a terrible new age-an age of unending darkness?

Shadowrun: Book 7

Jordan K. Weisman

As supercorporations rule the world, engaging in corporate wars, power games, and espionage missions, the shadowrunners, beings who deliver goods for the leaders, survive by their wits and their greed.

Never Deal with a Dragon

Shadowrun: Secrets of Power: Book 1

Robert Charrette

The year is 2050. The power of magic and the creatures it brings have returned to the earth, and many of the ancient races have re-emerged. Elves, Orks, Mages, and lethal Dragons find a home in a world where mana, technology, and human flesh have melded into deadly urban predators. And the multinational mega-corporations that run the world hoard the only thing of real value--information.

For Sam Verner, living in the womb of the Renraku conglomerate was easy, until his sister disappeared and the façade of the corporate reality began to disintegrate. Now he wants out, but to "extract" himself he has to slide like a whisper through the deadly shadows the corporations cast, into a completely different world where his first wrong move may be his last... the world of Shadowrun.

Choose Your Enemies Carefully

Shadowrun: Secrets of Power: Book 2

Robert Charrette

When Magic returns to the Earth, its power calls Sam Verner. As he searches for his sister through the slick and scary world of 2050, his quest leads him across the ocean to England, where druids rule the streets... and the throne. But all is not what it seems, and Sam and his new shadow friends are plunged into a maze of madness on the trail of destruction.

Only when Sam accepts his destiny as a shaman can he embrace the power he needs. But what waits for him in the final confrontation of technology and human flesh is a secret much darker than anything he knew lay waiting in the shadows...

Find Your Own Truth

Shadowrun: Secrets of Power: Book 3

Robert Charrette

DESPERATE TIMES...

He was only a "beginner" shaman, but Sam Verner had to find a cure to ward off the curse on his sister. Only something of great magic would do the trick. His quest took him to a mystical citadel in Australia, where, with the aid of his shadowrunner friends, he recovered a strange artifact he hoped would prove helpful.

DESPERATE MEASURES...

But instead of anything that even remotely resembled help, an unexpected and ancient terror was released--a terror that erupted into a shadow war for dominion over an awakened earth. And while the evil kept growing, inexorably drawing him into battle, the curse's power over his sister was also growing, bringing her closer and closer to death.

Soon, a truly desperate Sam realized that the last and only hope for saving his sister was to find the greatest shaman of the Sixth World, former leader of the Great Ghost Dance--a man who may no longer exist...

Born to Run

Shadowrun: WizKids: Book 1

Stephen Kenson

Kellan Colt, a shadowrunner, professionals of the underworld who will do anything for money, fights for survival as organized crime gangs attempt to carve out their own empires amidst the new world superpowers.

Poison Agendas

Shadowrun: Wizkids: Book 2

Stephen Kenson

Shadowrunner Kellan Colt stumbles upon the job of a lifetime, a cache of secret weapons abandoned by the U.S. military that could make her very rich, but when she descends into the heart of the Awakened wilderness to extract the weapons, she is faced with a rival faction and supernaturnal forces.

Fallen Angels

Shadowrun: Wizkids: Book 3

Stephen Kenson

Determined to learn the truth about her shadowrunner mother and a mysterious amulet, Kellan Colt, plagued by disturbing dreams, must first discover whom she can trust in the shadows while trying to escape from the paranoiac elven colony of Tir Tairngire.

The Best of Shadows

Table of Contents:

Introduction - essay by Charles L. Grant
Naples - (1978) - short story by Avram Davidson
The Gorgon - (1982) - novelette by Tanith Lee
Moving Night - (1986) - short story by Nancy Holder
Jamie's Grave - (1987) - short story by Lisa Tuttle
Sneakers - (1983) - short story by Marc Laidlaw
The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands - (1981) - short story by Stephen King
At the Bureau - (1980) - short story by Steve Rasnic Tem
Mackintosh Willy - (1979) - short story by Ramsey Campbell
Following the Way - (1982) - short story by Alan Ryan
The Storm - (1984) - short story by David Morrell
The Silent Cradle - (1983) - short story by Leigh Kennedy
Wish - (1985) - short story by Al Sarrantonio
The Spider Glass - (1981) - novelette by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

Shadows: Book 1

Table of Contents:

Introduction - Charles L. Grant
Naples - Avram Davidson
The Little Voice - Ramsey Campbell
Butcher's Thumb - William Jon Watkins
Where All the Songs are Sad - Thomas F. Monteleone
Splinters - R.A. Lafferty
Picture - Robert Bloch
The Nighthawk - Dennis Etchison
Dead Letters - Ramsey Campbell
A Certain Slant of Light - Raylyn Moore
Deathlove - Bill Pronzini
Mory - Michael Bishop
Where Spirits Gat Them Home - John Crowley
Nona - Stephen King

Shadows 2

Shadows: Book 2

Table of Contents:

Introduction - (1979) - essay by Charles L. Grant
Saturday's Shadow - (1979) - novelette by William F. Nolan
Night Visions - short story by Jack Dann
The Spring - (1979) - short story by Manly Wade Wellman
Valentine - (1979) - short story by Janet Fox
Mackintosh Willy - (1979) - short story by Ramsey Campbell
Dragon Sunday - (1979) - short fiction by Ruth Berman
The White King's Dream - short story by Elizabeth A. Lynn
The Chair - (1979) - short story by Alan Dean Foster and Jane Cozart
Clocks - (1979) - short story by Barry N. Malzberg and Bill Pronzini
Holly, Don't Tell - (1979) - short story by Juleen Brantingham
The Old Man's Will - (1979) - short story by Lee Wells
The Closing Off of Old Doors - (1979) - short story by Peter D. Pautz
Dead End - (1979) - short story by Richard Christian Matheson
Seasons of Belief - short story by Michael Bishop
Petey - (1979) - novella by T. E. D. Klein

Shadows 3

Shadows: Book 3

Table of Contents:

Introduction - essay by Charles L. Grant
The Brown Recluse - (1980) - novelette by Davis Grubb
To See You With, My Dear - (1980) - short story by Bruce Francis
Avenging Angel - (1980) - short story by Ray Russell
The Ghost Who Limped - (1975) - short story by R. Chetwynd-Hayes
Janey's Smile - (1980) - short story by Juleen Brantingham
Opening a Vein - (1980) - short story by Barry N. Malzberg and Bill Pronzini
The Partnership - (1980) - short story by William F. Nolan
Wish Hound - (1980) - short story by Pat Murphy
Ant - (1980) - short story by Peter D. Pautz
Tell Mommy What Happened - (1980) - short story by Alan Ryan
At the Bureau - (1980) - short story by Steve Rasnic Tem
Cabin 33 - (1980) - novella by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

Shadows 4

Shadows: Book 4

Table of Contents:

Introduction - (1981) - essay by Charles L. Grant
The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands - (1981) - short story by Stephen King
Yours, -Guy - (1981) - short story by Robert F. Young
The Belonging Kind - (1981) - short story by John Shirley and William Gibson
Calling Collect - (1981) - short story by Barry N. Malzberg and Arthur L. Samuels
Hearing Is Believing - (1981) - short story by Ramsey Campbell
Threshold - (1981) - short story by Deirdre L. Kugelmeyer
A Visit to Brighton - (1981) - short story by Alan Ryan
Echoes From a Darkened Shore - (1981) - short story by Cherie Wilkerson
The Blue Chair - (1981) - short story by Tabitha King
Meow - (1981) - short story by Tanith Lee
The Giveaway - (1981) - short story by Steve Rasnic Tem
Need - (1981) - short story by Lisa Tuttle
Waiting for the Knight - (1981) - short story by Beverly Evans
Under My Bed - (1981) - short story by Al Sarrantonio
The Hour of Silhouette - (1981) - short story by Juleen Brantingham
Snow, Cobwebs, and Dust - (1981) - short story by John Keefauver
The Spider Glass - (1981) - novelette by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

Shadows 5

Shadows: Book 5

Table of Contents:

Introduction (1982) - essay by Charles L. Grant
The Gorgon - (1982) - novelette by Tanith Lee
Stone Head - (1982) - short story by Steve Rasnic Tem
Pieta - (1982) - short story by Alan Ryan
Boxes - (1982) - short story by Al Sarrantonio
And I'll Be With You By and By - (1982) - short story by Avon Swofford
Dark Wings - (1982) - short story by Phyllis Eisenstein
Estrella - (1982) - short story by Terry L. Parkinson
Singles - (1982) - short story by Marta Randall
The Piano Man - (1982) - short story by Beverly Evans
Following the Way - (1982) - short story by Alan Ryan
Renewal - (1982) - novella by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

Shadows 6

Shadows: Book 6

Table of Contents:

Introduction - (1983) - essay by Charles L. Grant
We Share - (1983) - short story by Lori Allen
The Appearances of Georgio - (1983) - short story by Leslie Alan Horvitz
The Touch - (1983) - short story by Wayne Wightman
Sneakers - (1983) - short story by Marc Laidlaw
Reunion - (1983) - short story by Jack Dann
By the Hair of the Head - (1983) - short story by Joe R. Lansdale
Dreams - (1983) - short story by Elisabeth Erica Burden
Crutches - (1983) - short story by Steve Rasnic Tem
Eenie, Meenie, Ipsateenie - (1983) - short story by Pat Cadigan
Cold Heart - (1983) - short story by Peter D. Pautz
Peppermint Kisses - (1983) - short story by Jesse Osburn
A Last Testament for Nick and the Trooper - (1983) - short story by J. Michael Straczynski
Mariana - (1983) - short story by Melissa Mia Hall
The Man with Legs - (1983) - short story by Al Sarrantonio
The Silent Cradle - (1983) - short story by Leigh Kennedy
But at My Back I Always Hear - (1983) - short story by David Morrell

Shadows 7

Shadows: Book 7

Table of Contents:

Introduction - (1984) - essay by Charles L. Grant
Mrs. Clendon's Place - (1984) - short story by Joseph Payne Brennan
Stillwater, 1896 - (1984) - short story by Michael Cassutt
The Haunting - (1984) - short story by Susan Casper
Daddy - (1984) - short story by Earl Godwin
Seeing the World - (1984) - short story by Ramsey Campbell
Three Days - (1984) - novelette by Tanith Lee
Still Frame - (1984) - short story by Jack C. Haldeman, II
Talking in the Dark - (1984) - short story by Dennis Etchison
A Matter of Taste - (1984) - short story by Parke Godwin
Do Not Forsake Me, O My Darlin' - (1984) - short story by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
Decoys - (1984) - short story by Jere Cunningham
Rapture - (1984) - short story by Melissa Mia Hall
The Storm - (1984) - short story by David Morrell
I Shall Not Leave England Now - (1984) - novelette by Alan Ryan

Shadows 8

Shadows: Book 8

Table of Contents:

Introduction - (1985) - essay by Charles L. Grant
Everything's Going to Be All Right - (1985) - short story by Gene DeWeese
Cycles - (1985) - short story by Kim Antieau
The Tuckahoe - (1985) - short story by Nancy Etchemendy
Between the Windows of the Sea - (1985) - short story by Jack Dann
The Battering - (1985) - short story by Steve Rasnic Tem
The Shadow of a Hawk - (1985) - short story by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
Toy - (1985) - short story by Bill Pronzini
The Man Who Loved Water - (1985) - short story by Craig Shaw Gardner
The Pooka - (1985) - short story by Peter Tremayne
Sand - (1985) - short story by Alan Ryan
Blood Gothic - (1985) - short story by Nancy Holder
The Blue Man - (1985) - short story by Terry L. Parkinson
A Demon in Rosewood - (1985) - short story by Sharon Webb
Wish - (1985) - short story by Al Sarrantonio
The Blind Man - (1985) - short story by Jessica Amanda Salmonson
A Night at the Head of a Grave - (1985) - short story by Thomas Sullivan
Do I Dare to Eat a Peach? - (1985) - novelette by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

Shadows 9

Shadows: Book 9

Table of Contents:

Introduction - (1986) - essay by Charles L. Grant
The Jigsaw Girl - (1986) - short story by Stephen Gallagher
The Lesson - (1986) - short story by Christopher Browne
On the Turn - (1986) - short story by Leanne Frahm
Moving Night - (1986) - short story by Nancy Holder
Sanctuary - (1986) - short story by Kim Antieau
Now You See Me - (1986) - short story by Sheri Lee Morton
The Fishing Village of Roebush - (1986) - short story by Leslie Alan Horvitz
Icarus - (1986) - short story by Galad Elflandsson
Ants - (1986) - short story by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
Nor Disreguard the Humblest Voice - (1986) - short story by Ardath Mayhar
The Skins You Love to Touch - (1986) - short story by Janet Fox
Walk Home Alone - (1986) - short story by Craig Shaw Gardner
The Father Figure - (1986) - short story by Terry L. Parkinson
An Ordinary Brick House - (1986) - short story by Joseph Payne Brennan
Overnight - (1986) - short story by Lou Fisher
The Last Time I Saw Harris - (1986) - short story by Galad Elflandsson
Tavesher - (1986) - short story by Peter Tremayne
Bloodwolf - (1986) - novelette by Steve Rasnic Tem

Shadows 10

Shadows: Book 10

Table of Contents:

Introduction - (1987) - essay by Charles L. Grant
Jamie's Grave - (1987) - short story by Lisa Tuttle
Apples - (1987) - short story by Nina Downey Higgins
A World Without Toys - (1986) - short story by T. M. Wright
Law of Averages - (1987) - short story by Wendy Webb
The Fence - (1987) - short story by Thomas Sullivan
Moonflower - (1987) - short story by Melissa Mia Hall
Come Where My Love Lies Dreaming - (1987) - short story by Bob Leman
The Finder-Keeper - (1987) - short story by Ken Wisman
Just a Little Souvenir - (1987) - short story by Cheryl Fuller Nelson
Like Shadows in the Dark - (1987) - short story by Stephen Gallagher
Office Hours - (1987) - short story by Douglas E. Winter
We Have Always Lived in the Forest - (1987) - short story by Nancy Holder
Just Like Their Masters - (1987) - short story by Mona A. Clee
Pigs - (1987) - short story by Al Sarrantonio

Final Shadows

Shadows: Book 11

In the stunning final volume of the World Fantasy Award-winning anthology, editor Charles Grant closes a decade of award-winning fantasy with a last spectacular anthology of more than 450 pages of richly satisfying reading. Includes works by Tanith Lee, David Morrell, Michael Bishop, and other masters of the genre.

Table of Contents:

Introduction - essay by Charles L. Grant
The Boarder - short story by Wendy Webb
Magpie - short story by Stephen Gallagher
Fastening - short story by Julie R. Good
Past Tense - short story by Brian Hodge
Under the Boardwalk - short story by Lori Allen
The Picnickers - novelette by Brian Lumley
Fry Day - short story by Melanie Tem
Out Behind the Shed - short story by Bill Pronzini
Fear a' Ghorta - short story by Peter Tremayne
The Sweetest Rain - short story by Nancy Holder
Wrong Side of the Road - short story by Norman Partridge
Island of the Seals - (1977) - short story by Samantha Lee
Thirteen Lies About Hummingbirds - short story by Michael Bishop
The Stone Face - short story by Colin Greenland
Medusa's Child - short story by Kim Antieau
The Tape - short story by Jessica Palmer
The Dark Places in Between - short story by Karen Haber
I'll See You on Saturday Night - short story by Guy N. Smith
Beijing Craps - novelette by Graham Masterton
Samhain - short story by Bernard Taylor
The Mermaid - short story by Tanith Lee
Rescheduled - short story by Mike Chinn
Going Away - short story by Craig Shaw Gardner
A Father's Dream - short story by Chet Williamson
The Magic House - short story by Lynn S. Hightower
When They Gave Us Memory - short story by Dennis Etchison
A Sailor's Pay - short story by Jack Cady
Something About Camilla - short story by Juleen Brantingham
Parallax - short story by Nicholas Royle
The Door - short story by Sharon Webb
Photo-Call - short story by David Sutton
Against the Skin - short story by Mark Morris
Of Natural Causes - short story by Ashley McConnell
Mulberry's Crystal - short story by Brian Mooney and Stephen Jones
Together - short story by David Garnett
The Beautiful Uncut Hair of Graves - novelette by David Morrell

Empire in Black and Gold

Shadows of the Apt: Book 1

The city states of the Lowlands have lived in peace for decades, bastions of civilization, prosperity and sophistication, protected by treaties, trade and a belief in the reasonable nature of their neighbors.

But meanwhile, in far-off corners, the Wasp Empire has been devouring city after city with its highly trained armies, its machines, it killing Art . . . And now its hunger for conquest and war has become insatiable.

Only the aging Stenwold Maker, spymaster, artificer and statesman, can see that the long days of peace are over. It falls upon his shoulders to open the eyes of his people, before a black-and-gold tide sweeps down over the Lowlands and burns away everything in its path.

But first he must stop himself from becoming the Empire's latest victim.

Dragonfly Falling

Shadows of the Apt: Book 2

Two young companions, Totho and Salma, arrive at Tark to spy on the menacing Wasp army, but are there mistakenly apprehended as enemy agents. By the time they are freed, the city is already under siege. Over in the imperial capital the young emperor, Alvdan, is becoming captivated by a remarkable slave, the vampiric Uctebri, who claims he knows of magic that can grant eternal life.

In Collegium, meanwhile, Stenwold is still trying to persuade the city magnates to take seriously the Wasp Empire's imminent threat to their survival. In a colorful drama involving mass warfare and personal combat, a small group of heroes must stand up against what seems like an unstoppable force.

This volume continues the story that so brilliantly unfolded in Empire in Black and Gold - and the action is still non-stop.

Blood of the Mantis

Shadows of the Apt: Book 3

Driven by the ghosts of the Darakyon, Achaeos has tracked the stolen Shadow Box to the marsh-town of Jerez, but he has only days before the magical box is lost to him forever. Meanwhile, the forces of the Empire are mustering over winter for their great offensive, gathering their soldiers and perfecting their new weapons.

Stenwold and his followers have only a short time to gather what allies they can before the Wasp armies march again, conquering everything in their path. If they cannot throw back the Wasps this spring then the imperial black-and-gold flag will fly over every city in the Lowlands before the year's end.

In Jerez begins a fierce struggle over the Shadow Box, as lake creatures, secret police and renegade magicians compete to take possession. If it falls into the hands of the Wasp Emperor, however, then no amount of fighting will suffice to save the world from his relentless ambition.

Salute the Dark

Shadows of the Apt: Book 4

The vampiric sorcerer Uctebri has at last got his hands on the Shadow Box and can finally begin his dark ritual--a ritual that the Wasp-kinden Emperor believes will grant him immortality--but Uctebri has his own plans for both the Emperor and the Empire.

The massed Wasp armies are on the march, and the spymaster Stenwold must see which of his allies will stand now that the war has finally arrived. This time the Empire will not stop until a black and gold flag waves over Stenwold's own home city of Collegium.

Tisamon the Weaponsmaster is faced with a terrible choice: a path that could lead him to abandon his friends and his daughter, to face degradation and loss, that might possibly bring him before the Wasp Emperor with a blade in his hand--but is he being driven by Mantis-kinden honor, or manipulated by something more sinister?

The Scarab Path

Shadows of the Apt: Book 5

The war with the Wasp Empire has ended in a bitter stalemate, and Collegium has nothing to show for it but wounded veterans. Cheerwell Maker finds herself crippled in ways no doctor can mend, haunted by ghosts of the past that she cannot appease, seeking for meaning in a city that no longer seems like home. The Empress Seda is regaining control over those imperial cities who refused to bow the knee to her, but she draws her power from something more sinister than mere armies and war machines. Only her consort, the former spymaster Thalric, knows the truth, and now the assassins are coming and he finds his life and his loyalties under threat yet again. Out past the desert of the Nem the ancient city of Khanaphes awaits them both, with a terrible secret entombed beneath its stones...

The Sea Watch

Shadows of the Apt: Book 6

A shadow is falling over Collegium. Despite the tenuous peace, Stenwold Maker knows that the Empire will return for his city. Even as he tries to prepare for the resurgence of the black and gold, a hidden threat is steadily working against his people. Ships that sail from Collegium's harbour are being attacked, sunk by pirates. Some just go missing . . . Lulled by the spread of lies and false promises Stenwold’s allies are falling away from him. He faces betrayal on every side, and the Empire is just waiting for the first sign of weakness to strike. But the Empire is not the only power that has its eyes on Collegium. And even the Wasp-kinden may be powerful enough to stave off the forces massing in the darkness and turning hungry eyes towards Stenwold's city.

Heirs of the Blade

Shadows of the Apt: Book 7

She remembered how it felt to lose Salma, first to the wiles of the Butterfly-kinden girl, then to hear the news of his death, abandoned and alone in the midst of the enemy. She remembered how it felt to see her father hacked to death before her eyes. But of her murder of Achaeos, of the bite of her blade into his unsuspecting flesh, the wound that had sapped him and ruined him until he died, she remembered nothing, felt nothing. In such a vacuum, how could she possibly atone? Tynisa is running, but she cannot escape the demons of her own mind. Amidst the fragmenting provinces of the Dragonfly Commonweal her past will at last catch up with her. Her father's ghost is hunting her down. At the same time, the Wasp Empress, Seda, is on the move, her eyes on the city of Khanaphes, the fallen jewel of the ancient world. Whilst her soldiers seek only conquest, she sees herself as the heir to all the old powers of history, and has her eyes on a far greater prize.

The Air War

Shadows of the Apt: Book 8

All is in turmoil as the world moves towards war. In Solarno, the spies watch each other and ready their knives, while Myna sees the troops muster at its border and emotions run high as it vows never to be enslaved again. In Collegium, the students argue

War Master's Gate

Shadows of the Apt: Book 9

Relentlessly advancing towards Collegium, the Empire is again seeking to break down its walls. The mighty imperial armies have learnt from their failures, and Empress Seda will brook no weakness in her soldiers. However, Stenwold Maker has earned his title, and the War Master has strategies to save his city. His aviators rule the skies – but the Wasp Kinden Empire has developed a terrifying new aerial weapon.

Yet the campaign may be decided far from marching armies and the noise of battle. In an ancient forest, where Mantis clans pursue their own civil war, the Empress Seda is seeking lost magic. Some dangerous shadow of old night is locked up among these trees and she is wants its power.

Cheerwell Maker must stop her, at any cost, but will their rivalry awaken something far deadlier? Something that could make even their clash of nations pale into insignificance . . .

Seal of the Worm

Shadows of the Apt: Book 10

For all the fans who loved the long-running series of Robert Jordan and his Wheel of Time series, comes the concluding novel in Adrian Tchaikovsky's ten book epic fantasy series Shadows of the Apt.

The Empire stands victorious over its enemies at last.

With her chief rival cast into the abyss, Empress Seda now faces the truth of what she has cost the world in order to win the war. The Seal has been shattered, and the Worm stirs towards the light for the first time in a thousand years. Already it is striking at the surface, voraciously consuming everything its questing tendrils touch.

Faced with this threat, Seda knows that only the most extreme of solutions can lock the Worm back in the dark once again. But if she will go to such appalling lengths to save the world from the Worm, then who will save the world from her?

The last book in the epic, critically acclaimed Shadows of the Apt series.

The Darkest Bloom

Shadowscent: Book 1

P. M. Freestone

In the empire of Aramtesh, scent has power.

Seventeen-year-old Rahil has a great talent for fragrances, but her scentlore skills aren't enough to heal her dying father; a plague is spreading across the land. She leaves her desert village for the city of Aphara in a desperate attempt to save him. Instead, she finds herself indentured to the head priestess at the temple, who holds many secrets - cryptic, ancient tales as well as buried truths from Rahil's past.

Royal bodyguard Ash is sworn to protect First Prince Nisai, and the imperial prince protects him in turn, by keeping Ash's true identity hidden.

One fateful night, the temple's precious scented flowers are set ablaze, and Prince Nisai is found poisoned. Caught in the smoke, Rahil realizes that she is the prime suspect - and that she holds the only clue to finding an antidote. And any chance for a cure is a risk that Ash is willing to take, even if it means disobeying orders, partnering with a fugitive, and going on the run.

Before the poison takes hold, the unlikely pair must race across the empire to save the prince, themselves, and everything they hold dear.

Crown of Smoke

Shadowscent: Book 2

P. M. Freestone

The exciting conclusion to the Shadowscent duology! Rakel travels outside the borders of the empire, seeking answers to new questions about the past. Meanwhile, Ash must find a way to warn the others of dangers to come. All this as the empire itself hurtles towards a civil war that's been brewing since the gods last walked the land. Prince or servant, everyone must take a stand.

Fire in the Sky

Shadowsong: Book 1

Emerging from her centuries-long imprisonment inside an alien artifact, Shadith learns that she has developed an empathic musical skill, and is called upon to delegate a mission with a musically communicating alien race.

The Burning Ground

Shadowsong: Book 2

Freed from ages of imprisonment in the Diadem, an alien artifact, Shadith discovers that she has the power to transfer her consciousness into any living creature, a talent that she uses to try to destroy a syndicate that creates civil wars as a tourist attraction.

Crystal Heat

Shadowsong: Book 3

Hired to return an innocent creature to people who only wish to destroy it, psychic detective Shadith cannot bring herself to fulfill her mission and is forced to betray her strongest supporter while outwitting a smuggler.

A Taint in the Blood

Shadowspawn: Book 1

Eons ago, the powerful Homo Nocturnis ruled the earth. While their numbers have been greatly reduced, they still exist-though not as purebreds. Adrian Breze is one such being. Wealthy and reclusive, he is more Shadowspawn than human. But he rebelled against his kind, choosing to live as an ordinary man. Now, to save humanity, he must battle the dark forces of the world-including those in his own blood...

The Council of Shadows

Shadowspawn: Book 2

Adrian Breze has long defied his pure-bred Shadowspawn heritage as part of an ancient race of shapeshifters who once reigned supreme. But when his ruthless sister Adrienne kidnapped his human lover Ellen, he emerged from seclusion to rescue her.

Before her defeat, Adrienne revealed that the Council of Shadows was marshalling its strength to rule the world once again. To stop them, Adrian and Ellen must ally with the Brotherhood, a resistance group dedicated to breaking the Council's hold on humankind.

In the coming confrontation, Adrian must fight not only the members of the Council but also his own nature...and, he will come to suspect, traitors within the Brotherhood itself...

Shadows of Falling Night

Shadowspawn: Book 3

Sherlock Holmes and the Shadwell Shadows

She's back....

Near-purebred Homo nocturnus Adrian Brézé and his human mate, Ellen, thought they had dealt with his twin sister, Adrienne. In fact, they thought she was dead.

But she survived and now leads a faction of the Shadowspawn--the ancient, shape-shifting, blood-drinking breed who secretly control the world--that wants to leave just enough of the human race alive to satisfy their hunger and serve their needs. She has nothing but hatred and contempt for her brother, who remains on the side of humanity, fighting with the Brotherhood against the Shadowspawn.

To defeat him, she has suborned his mentor--the greatest warrior of the Brotherhood. The man thinks he's bringing a weapon to the Council of Shadows that will wipe out the Shadowspawn's leaders. In truth, his actions will make Adrienne demon-goddess of the world...unless Adrian and Ellen can turn him back in time.

Shadowcaster

Shattered Realms: Book 2

Cinda Williams Chima

From New York Times bestselling author Cinda Williams Chima, this is a thrilling story of the unfathomable costs of war, the allure of dark magic, and two principled and conflicted characters drawn together despite everything they stand to lose.

Alyssa ana'Raisa, the reluctant princess heir to the Gray Wolf throne of the Fells, feels more comfortable striking with a sword than maneuvering at court. After a brush with death, Lyss goes on the offensive, meaning to end the war that has raged her whole life. If her gamble doesn't pay off, she could lose her queendom before she even ascends to the throne. Across enemy lines in Arden, young rising star Captain Halston Matelon is being sent on ever more dangerous assignments. Between the terrifying rumors of witches and wolfish warriors to the north and his cruel king at home, Hal is caught in an impossible game of life and death.

Lyss and Hal's intricately linked fates become inseparable when they fall under the shadow of a new enemy--a force that threatens to extinguish the last rays of hope in the Shattered Realms.

Sherlock Holmes: The Cthulhu Casebooks: Book 1

James Lovegrove

It is the autumn of 1880, and Dr John Watson has just returned from Afghanistan. Badly injured and desperate to forget a nightmarish expedition that left him doubting his sanity, Watson is close to destitution when he meets the extraordinary Sherlock Holmes, who is investigating a series of deaths in the Shadwell district of London. Several bodies have been found, the victims appearing to have starved to death over the course of several weeks, and yet they were reported alive and well mere days before. Moreover, there are disturbing reports of creeping shadows that inspire dread in any who stray too close. Holmes deduces a connection between the deaths and a sinister drug lord who is seeking to expand his criminal empire. Yet both he and Watson are soon forced to accept that there are forces at work far more powerful than they could ever have imagined. Forces that can be summoned, if one is brave - or mad - enough to dare...

Vezendi's Shadow

Slayers: Book 6

Hajime Kanzaka

After receiving the message, "Come to Vezendi, or someone will die," Lina and the gang set off for Vezendi. And it's no easy trip--everywhere they go, a trap is awaiting them. Who could be behind the chaos? It's Lina's old "friend" Zuuma, who will stop at nothing to enact his revenge on Lina and Gourry. When the group finally decides to finish off Zuuma once and for all, will their efforts be enough?

Shadowblack

Spellslinger: Book 2

Sebastien de Castell

Forced to live as an outlaw, Kellen relies on his wits and his allies to survive the unforgiving borderlands.

When he meets a young woman cursed with a deadly plague, he feels compelled to help. But her secrets draw powerful enemies and it's not long before Kellen is entangled in a conspiracy of blackmail, magic, and murder. As the bodies begin to pile up, Kellen fears he's next.

The Shadow Sorceress

Spellsong Cycle: Book 4

L. E. Modesitt, Jr.

L.E. Modesitt, Jr. has developed a wide readership with his popular fantasy novels set in the universe of Recluce. With more than a million copies in print, he continues to build a substantial audience with each new volume. He widened that audience with the first three-volume Spellsong Cycle set in a compelling and imaginative world where music is the vehicle for the creation and wielding of magic. He now returns to that universe for a new cycle of tales starring a new heroine who must face a series of deadly political and military threats.

The Shadow Sorceress continues the story begun in the first Spellsong Cycle but focuses on the challenges facing Secca, now a young Sorceress. She is thrust into a position of power and responsibility when her mentor, Anna, the legendary Sorceress Protector of Defalk and the heroine of the original trilogy, dies unexpectedly before Secca's training as a master magic wielder is anywhere near complete.

Despite her reservations concerning the skills and strength of her ruler, Secca must immediately take command of all her magical resources to help suppress internal dissension in a neighboring province. Then she must rally potential allies to lift the naval siege laid on Nordwei by the Sea Priests, who bring with them a new kind of drumming magic that threatens the balance of power in the world, portending danger and destruction not imagined for decades.

Secca learns to fight battles effectively using sorcerous skills she has never used before, all while leading an army for the first time. She must master diplomacy in order to save her ruler and his kingdom, form alliances with unfriendly potential allies and mediate power struggles among ambitious and disparate societies. At the same time, she discovers the unexpected potential for love and companionship in a world where few men are wise enough to value women as anything more than wives, mistresses or mothers.

Coping with it all, Secca proves herself more than just a quick study, but a woman with a limitless capacity for courage, personal growth and fearless commitment to survival and fighting the good fight.

The Shadow Sorceress is the first book of the second Spellsong cycle and the fourth book set in Erde, the world of musical magic.

Shadowsinger

Spellsong Cycle: Book 5

L. E. Modesitt, Jr.

The Climax of The Spellsong Cycle

Secca, foster daughter of the Soprano Sorceress, and now her successor as Sorceress Protector of Defalk, must deal carefully with her willful master and wield her power to save his kingdom from the armies, fleets and master sorcerers of the Maitre of Sturinn. Faced with seemingly insurmountable odds, she is forced to test her own powers over and over again, while teaching her new husband and her inexperienced apprentice the skills they will need to aid her in creating spells powerful enough to shake the foundations of the world.

Shards and Shadows

Star Trek: Crossovers: Mirror Universe: Book 3

Margaret Clark
Marco Palmieri

Fractured history. Broken lives. Splintered souls. Since the alternate universe was first glimpsed in the classic episode "Mirror, Mirror," something about Star Trek's dark side has beckoned us, called to us, tempted us -- like forbidden fruit on the Tree of Knowledge. To taste it is to lose oneself in a world of startling familiarity and terrifying contradictions, where everything and everyone we knew is somehow disturbingly different, and where shocking secrets await their revelation.

What began in 2007 with Glass Empires and Obsidian Alliances -- the first truly in-depth foray into the turbulent history of this other continuum -- now continues in twelve new short tales that revisit and expand upon that so-called "Mirror Universe," spanning all five of the core incarnations of Star Trek, as well as their literary offshoots, across more than two hundred years of divergent history, as chronicled by...

Contents:

1 - Nobunaga - [Star Trek: Mirror Universe] - novelette by Dave Stern [as by David Stern]
33 - Ill Winds - [Star Trek: Mirror Universe] - novelette by Dayton Ward and Kevin Dilmore
71 - The Greater Good - [Star Trek: Mirror Universe] - novelette by Margaret Wander Bonanno
105 - The Black Flag - [Star Trek: Mirror Universe] - novelette by James Swallow
145 - The Traitor - [Star Trek: Mirror Universe] - novelette by Michael Jan Friedman
179 - The Sacred Chalice - [Star Trek: Mirror Universe] - novelette by Rudy Josephs
215 - Bitter Fruit - [Star Trek: Mirror Universe] - novelette by Susan Wright
247 - Family Matters - [Star Trek: Mirror Universe] - novelette by Keith R. A. DeCandido
271 - Homecoming - [Star Trek: Mirror Universe] - novelette by Peter David
311 - A Terrible Beauty - [Star Trek: Mirror Universe] - novelette by Jim Johnson
359 - Empathy - [Star Trek: Mirror Universe] - novelette by Christopher L. Bennett
393 - For Want of a Nail - [Star Trek: Mirror Universe] - novelette by David Mack

Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Dean Wesley Smith

Star Trek: Crossovers: Section 31: Book 2

They are the self-appointed protectors of the Federation. Amoral, shrouded in secrecy, answerable to no one, Section 31 is the mysterious covert operations division of Starfleet, a rogue shadow group committed to safeguarding the Federation at any cost.

Someone or something is trying to kill Seven of Nine. As the crew races against time to save millions of refugees from an imminent stellar cataclysm, the former Borg becomes the target of several seemingly random but potentially lethal "accidents." The investigation reveals a truth more terrifying than anyone ever imagined, as Captain Kathryn Janeway and the crew of the Starship Voyager fight for their lives against the most unexpected enemy of all.

NO LAW. NO CONSCIENCE. NO STOPPING THEM.

The Crimson Shadow

Star Trek: Crossovers: The Fall: Book 2

Una McCormack

Cardassia Prime is home to a prideful people who, for centuries, forged alliances with those they believed would strengthen them and their place in the Alpha Quadrant, and expanded their empire at great cost to other worlds. For generations, dissenting voices were silenced by either fear or an early grave. When their wartime ally, the Dominion, suddenly turned on them, seeking to transform Cardassia into a tomb for every last member of their race, their old adversary--the United Federation of Planets-- put an end to the carnage, and even now works to help rebuild Cardassia Prime.

To celebrate this alliance, the Castellan of the Cardassian Union is to welcome the Federation president to Cardassia Prime. As a symbol of this deepening friendship, the U.S.S. Enterprise-E is tasked to carry the Cardassian ambassador to the Federation back home. For his part, Ambassador Elim Garak is working with Captain Jean-Luc Picard to oversee the diplomatic reception that will commemorate the last of Starfleet's personnel finally leaving the homeworld. However, there are malevolent forces at work, who even now strive to "restore Cardassia to its proper place and glory," and are willing to do anything to achieve their goal....

Cast No Shadow

Star Trek: The Original Series

James Swallow

Seven years have passed since a catastrophic explosion on the Klingon moon Praxis touched off a chain of events that would result in the assassination of the reformist High Chancellor Gorkon, and the eventual creation of the historic Khitomer Accords. Now, as part of the ongoing efforts to undo the disastrous fallout from the destruction of Praxis and with the help of aid supplies from the United Federation of Planets, reconstruction is in progress, and after years of slow going hindered by political pressures and old prejudices, headway is at last being made. But the peace process begun by the Khitomer Accords is still fragile just as the deadly plans of what is believed to be a hard-line Klingon isolationist group violently come to fruition.

Yet the group thought responsible for the deadly attack has been dormant for decades, and its known modus operandi doesn't match up to the manner of the strike. And further investigation leads to an unexpected revelation connected to the Gorkon conspiracy of 2293, and in particular one disgraced and very familiar Starfleet lieutenant....

From History's Shadow

Star Trek: The Original Series

Dayton Ward

2268: Following the encounter with the mysterious Gary Seven in the twentieth century, the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise is startled by two intruders who have transported through space and time from Earth circa 1968. Incredibly, one of the infiltrators is a Vulcan, who asserts that he's lived among Earth's population for over a decade. The other represents a little-known race, and reveals to Captain James T. Kirk that she has spent the last twenty years working to bring about humanity's destruction. It is then that Gary Seven's young protégée, Roberta Lincoln, arrives seeking Kirk's help....

1947: In the wake of the infamous "Roswell Incident" involving a crashed alien craft and beings from another world, Captain James Wainwright finds himself recruited as one of the first members of Majestic 12, a secret organization with two goals: Collect evidence of extraterrestrial activity on Earth, and develop strategies to combat alien invaders. And it is this very mission that will consume Wainwright's life for the next two decades, driven by the knowledge that the danger is as real as the aliens living among us....

Shadow Lord

Star Trek: The Original Series: Book 22

Laurence Yep

Angira is a primitive, violent planet -- and young Prince Vikram returns from Earth filled with new ideas. When Sulu and Spock accompany Vikram home, they walk into a bloodbath: reactionary forces, afraid of any modernization, have seized Vikram's rightful throne. Suddenly the men from the Enterprise are on an underground journey with a Prince who is coming of age. The future of Angira is at stake, and each man's survival depends on his skill -- and daring -- with a sword!

Mindshadow

Star Trek: The Original Series: Book 27

J. M. Dillard

The tranquil planet of Aritani has suddenly come under attack by a vivious and unknown enemy. The USS Enterprise rallies to the scene, only to plunge into a deadly nightmare: Spock is found mysteriously injured, his mental powers crippled and weak, and Kirk uncovers an evil Romulan plot - with a cunning double agent in the middle.

As Spock begins to regain his memory, Kirk strives to expose the agent. But only Spock's knowledge can stop the Romulans... from controlling the universe!

Provenance of Shadow

Star Trek: The Original Series: Crucible: Book 1

David R. George III

David R. George's Crucible Trilogy explores the legacy of one pivotal, crucial moment in the lives of the men at the heart of Star Trek - what led them to it, and to each other, and how their destinies were intertwined.

For Doctor Leonard McCoy, life takes two paradoxically divergent paths. In one, displaced in time, he saves a woman from dying in a traffice accident, and in doing so alters Earth's history. Stranded in the past, he struggles to find a way back to his own century. But living an existence he was not meant to, he will eventually have to move on, and ultimately face the shadows born of his lost life. In the other, he is prevented from saving the woman's life, allowing Earth's history to remain unchanged. Returning to the present, he is nonetheless haunted by the echoes of an existence he never lived, and by fears which will bring him full circle to the shadows he never faced.

Shadows on the Sun

Star Trek: The Original Series: Giant Novels: Book 9

Michael Jan Friedman

As a young doctor with a beautiful family and a promising medical career, Dr. Leonard McCoy thought he had it all. But when the woman he loved betrayed him, McCoy fled to Starfleet, hoping to lose his pain in the depths of space. Now, more than forty years later, the Enterprise and her crew are ordered to transport a group of mediators to the planet Ssan, a world where assassination is a time-honored tradition, and McCoy is surprised to learn that his ex-wife, now remarried, is one of the mediators. And before he can come to terms with his conflicted feelings for his former love, she and Captain Kirk are trapped on Susan, and McCoy is caught in an explosive civil war, the only one with the power to save the woman who once nearly destroyed him.

Shadow of Heaven

Star Trek: Voyager: Book 21

Christie Golden

An imbalance of dark matter has placed two realities in jeopardy, causing the separate universes to merge and threatening the stability of both realms. To preserve reality as it is known, the crew of the U.S.S. Voyager must defy a cosmic conspiracy and wrestle with shadows of the darkest degree!

"Rescued" by strangers who may prove to be more dangerous than his original captors, Chakotay struggles to convince his new hosts of the danger posed by the mutated dark matter -- and the killer, or killers, still hunting the villages where Tom Paris has been left behind. In their own reality, as Harry Kim loses his heart to an enigmatic visitor from the shadow universe, Captain Janeway and the rest of her crew continue their search for the hidden dark matter that could cause the entire cosmos to contract in a fatal convulsion. But whose side are the Romulans really on? And what from Voyager's past holds the ultimate key to the fate of both universes?

Shadow Games

Michael Reaves
Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

SOME GAMES ARE PLAYED FOR LIFE OR DEATH.

Javul Charn is the most famous pop star in the galaxy--and the runaway bride of a violent lieutenant in Black Sun, the crime syndicate commanded by Prince Xizor. Or so Javul says. Soon after Dash Rendar, broke and desperate, agrees to be Javul's bodyguard, he realizes that openness is not her strong suit--and that murder is stalking her tour. Between the discovery of dead bodies in a cargo hold and an attack by an unidentified warship, Dash and co-pilot Eaden Vrill desperately try to understand who is terrorizing Javul's tour and why. When Han Solo suddenly joins Javul's road show, the stakes are raised even higher. Now Dash, who has a history with Han and an even worse history with Prince Xizor, follows his instincts, his discoveries, and Javul herself--straight into a world that may be too dangerous to survive.

Shadow of the Sith

Adam Christopher

Luke Skywalker and Lando Calrissian return in this essential novel set between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens.

The Empire is dead. Nearly two decades after the Battle of Endor, the tattered remnants of Palpatine's forces have fled to the farthest reaches of the galaxy. But for the heroes of the New Republic, danger and loss are ever-present companions, even in this newly forged era of peace.

Jedi Master Luke Skywalker is haunted by visions of the dark side, foretelling an ominous secret growing somewhere in the depths of space, on a dead world called Exegol. The disturbance in the Force is undeniable . . . and Luke's worst fears are confirmed when his old friend Lando Calrissian comes to him with reports of a new Sith menace.

After Lando's daughter was stolen from his arms, he searched the stars for any trace of his lost child. But every new rumor leads only to dead ends and fading hopes--until he crosses paths with Ochi of Bestoon, a Sith assassin tasked with kidnapping a young girl.

Ochi's true motives remain shrouded to Luke and Lando. For on a junkyard moon, a mysterious envoy of the Sith Eternal has bequeathed a sacred blade to the assassin, promising that it will answer the questions that have haunted him since the Empire fell. In exchange, he must complete a final mission: Return to Exegol with the key to the Sith's glorious rebirth--Rey, the granddaughter of Darth Sidious himself.

As Ochi hunts Rey and her parents to the edge of the galaxy, Luke and Lando race into the mystery of the Sith's lingering shadow and aid a young family running for their lives.

Shadows of the Empire

Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor

Steve Perry

Darth Vader joins forces with Xizor, an ambitious and ruthless Underlord of a criminal organization called Black Sun, to target the young Jedi knight Luke Skywalker, while Princess Leia launches a desperate campaign to free Han Solo, frozen in a carbonite slab.

Kevin J. Anderson
Rebecca Moesta

Matthew Stover

Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader are dead. The Empire has been toppled by the triumphant Rebel Alliance, and the New Republic is ascendant. But the struggle against the dark side and the Sith Order is not over. Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Han Solo, Lando Calrissian, and their faithful comrades have had little time to savor victory before being called on to defend the newly liberated galaxy.

Powerful remnants of the vanquished Empire, hungry for retaliation, are still at large, committing acts of piracy, terrorism, and wholesale slaughter against the worlds of the fledgling New Republic. The most deadly of these, a ruthless legion of black-armored Stormtroopers, do the brutal bidding of the newly risen warlord Shadowspawn. Striking from a strategically advantageous base on the planet Mindor, they are waging a campaign of plunder and destruction, demolishing order and security across the galaxy -- and breeding fears of an Imperial resurgence. Another reign of darkness beneath the boot-heel of Sith despotism is something General Luke Skywalker cannot, and will not, risk.

Mobilizing the ace fighters of Rogue Squadron -- along with the trusty Chewbacca, See-Threepio, and Artoo-Detoo -- Luke, Han, and Leia set out to take the battle to the enemy and neutralize the threat before it's too late. But their imminent attack on Mindor will be playing directly into the hands of their cunning new adversary. Lord Shadowspawn is no freshly anointed Sith Chieftain but in fact a vicious former Imperial Intelligence officer -- and Prophet of the Dark Side. The Emperor's death has paved the way for Shadowspawn's return from exile in the Outer Rim, and mastery of ancient Sith knowledge and modern technology has given him the capability to mount the ultimate power play for galaxy wide dominion. Dark prophecy has foretold that only one obstacle stands in his way, and he is ready -- even eager -- for the confrontation.

All the classic heroes, all the explosive action and adventure, all the unparalleled excitement of Star Wars come breathlessly alive as the adventures of Luke Skywalker continue.

Shadow Fall

Star Wars: Alphabet Squadron: Book 2

Alexander Freed

Alphabet Squadron's hunt for the deadliest TIE fighters in the galaxy continues in this Star Wars adventure!

News of the New Republic's victory still reverberates through the galaxy. In its wake, the capital ships of the newly legitimized galactic government journey to the farthest stars, seeking out and crushing the remnants of imperial tyranny. But some old ghosts are harder to banish than others. And none are more dangerous than Shadow Wing.

Yrica Quell's ragtag Alphabet Squadron still leads the search for Shadow Wing, but they're no closer to their goal--and the pressure to find their quarry before it's too late has begun to shake them apart. Determined to finish the fight once and for all, Quell works with New Republic Intelligence's contentious Caern Adan and the legendary General Hera Syndulla to prepare the riskiest gambit of her starfighting career--a trap for Shadow Wing that could finish the chase once and for all.

But in the darkness, their enemy has evolved. Soran Keize, last of the Imperial aces, has stepped into the power vacuum at the head of Shadow Wing, reinvigorating the faltering unit in their hour of need. Once adrift in the aftershocks of the war, Keize has found meaning again, leading the lost soldiers of his unit through to safety. The only thing standing in his way? The most mismatched squadron in the New Republic Navy, led by his former mentee: the traitor Yrica Quell.

Street of Shadow

Star Wars: Coruscant Nights: Book 2

Michael Reaves

With the Jedi all but wiped out in the grim aftermath of Order 66, the Empire's power seems unchecked. But one lone Knight continues to fight the good fight--against all odds and when all else fails.

Deep in the bowels of Coruscant, Jedi Jax Pavan ekes out a living as a private investigator, a go-to, can-do guy for the downtrodden. Now a mysterious Zeltron knockout named Deejah approaches Jax with a case that needs to be cracked: to find out who killed her artist lover Volette, brutally murdered hours after his triumphant unveiling of a dazzling new light sculpture with obvious links to lightsaber pyrotechnics.

Finding Volette's killer won't be easy--too many secrets, too many suspects, and all kinds of motives. But with the droid I-5YQ's help, and ex-reporter Den Dhur's excellent snooping skills, the investigation is soon operating like a well-oiled machine.

Unfortunately, there's a far more efficient machine hunting Jax. It's a deadly game of cat-and-mouse as the clock starts ticking toward the final explosive showdown... to see who strikes first and who will die first.

Shadow Hunter

Star Wars: Darth Maul: Book 1

Michael Reaves

Contents:

Shadow Hunter - (2001) - novel by Michael Reaves
Darth Maul: Saboteur - novella by James Luceno

Not long before the events of THE PHANTOM MENACE, the Sith Lord, Darth Sidious, is meeting via hologram with the Neimoidian Viceroy, Nute Gunray, and his seconds in command. But something is wrong: Where there are three Neimoidians, there should be a fourth. Where is he? No one knows. Angry and suspicious, sure that the fourth Neimoidian, Hath Monchar, is out there blabbing Darth Sidious' secrets, Sidious sends his apprentice, Darth Maul, out to investigate. His mission: Find and kill Hath Monchar. Then figure out whom Monchar might have spoken with, and kill them, too. Lorn Pavan is an information broker, who makes his living finding information and selling it to the highest bidder. When the Neimoidian, Hath Monchar, shows up with a very interesting holocron with information about an actual, living - and evil-plotting - Sith Lord, Lorn knows he's got something really hot. So when Monchar is murdered, Lorn manages to get his hands on the holocron anyway. His motives are anything but noble. Darsha Assant is a Jedi Padawan. She and Lorn find themselves thrown together unexpectedly, and when they realize that it is a Sith Lord on their trail, they realize that they must somehow get the holocron to the Jedi Council. But Darth Maul is too good a tracker. What's more, he's never failed his Master, Darth Sidious, and he doesn't intend to this time, either...

Queen's Shadow

Star Wars: Padmé: Book 1

E. K. Johnston

When Padmé Naberrie, "Queen Amidala" of Naboo, steps down from her position, she is asked by the newly-elected queen to become Naboo's representative in the Galactic Senate. Padmé is unsure about taking on the new role, but cannot turn down the request to serve her people. Together with her most loyal handmaidens, Padmé must figure out how to navigate the treacherous waters of politics and forge a new identity beyond the queen's shadow.

Out of the Shadows

Star Wars: The High Republic - Series Two: Book 2

Justina Ireland

The darkest secrets are the hardest to bring to light....

Sylvestri Yarrow is on a streak of bad luck with no end of sight. She's been doing her best to keep the family cargo business going after her mom's death, but between mounting debt and increasing attacks by the Nihil on unsuspecting ships, Syl is in danger of losing all she has left of her mother. She heads to the galactic capital of Coruscant for help, but gets sidetracked when she's drawn into a squabble between two of the Republic's most powerful families over a patch of space on the frontier. Tangled up in familial politics is the last place Syl wants to be, but the promise of a big payoff is enough to keep her interested...

Meanwhile, Jedi Knight Vernestra Rwoh has been summoned to Coruscant, but with no idea of why or by whom. She and her Padawan Imri Cantaros arrive at the capital along with Jedi Master Cohmac Vitus and his Padawan, Reath Silas?and are asked to assist with the property dispute on the frontier. But why? What is so important about an empty patch of space? The answer will lead Vernestra to a new understanding of her abilities, and take Syl back to the past...and to truths that will finally come out of the shadows.

Shadow Academy

Star Wars: Young Jedi Knights: Book 2

Driven away from Luke Skywalker's Jedi academy for pursuing the Dark Side of the Force, former student Brakiss masters his dark powers, establishes the Shadow Academy for aspiring Dark Jedis, and plots to kidnap the Solo twins.

Shadow World

StarBridge: Book 3

A. C. Crispin
Jannean Elliott

WHAT PRICE WOULD A SPECIES PAY TO EXTEND THEIR LIFESPAN?

The golden-eyed Elspind live brief but fulfilling lives. Gaining membership into the Cooperative League of Systems could bring many benefits... including a drug that would greatly extend their lives, but some are opposed to such infringement--violently opposed. Can a soon-to-be StarBridge interrelator on the verge of dropping out unite the people of Elseemar?

Come along with Mark, Cara, and Eerin on an adventure filled with danger where a single misstep could mean disaster.

Shadow Sun Seven

Starfire (Ellsworth): Book 2

Spencer Ellsworth

Jaqi, Araskar and Z are on the run from everyone - the Resistance, the remnants of the Empire, the cyborg Suits, and right now from the Matakas - and the Matakas are the most pressing concern because the insectoid aliens have the drop on them. The Resistance has a big reward out for Araskar and the human children he and Jaqi are protecting.

But Araskar has something to offer the mercenary aliens. He knows how to get to a huge supply of pure oxygen cells, something in short supply in the formerly human Empire, and that might be enough to buy their freedom. Araskar knows where it is, and Jaqi can take them there. With the Matakas as troops, they break into Shadow Sun Seven, on the edge of the Dark Zone.

Shadowline

Starfishers Trilogy: Book 1

The vendetta in space had started centuries before "Mouse" Storm was born with his grandfather's raid on the planet Prefactlas, the blood bath that freed the human slaves from their Sangaree masters. But one Sangaree survived - the young Norborn heir, the man who swore vengeance on the Storm family and their soldiers, in a carefully mapped plot that would take generations to fulfill.

Now Mouse's father Gneaus must fight for an El Dorado of wealth on the burning half of the planet Blackworld. As the great private armies of all space clash on the narrow Shadowline that divides inferno from life-sheltering shade, Gneaus' half- brother Michael plays his traitorous games, and a man called Death pulls the deadly strings that threaten to entrap them all - as the Starfishers Trilogy begins.

Hunt the Stars

Starlight's Shadow: Book 1

Jessie Mihalik

Octavia Zarola would do anything to keep her tiny, close-knit bounty hunting crew together--even if it means accepting a job from Torran Fletcher, a ruthless former general and her sworn enemy. When Torran offers her enough credits to not only keep her crew afloat but also hire someone to fix her ship, Tavi knows that she can't refuse--no matter how much she'd like to.

With so much money on the line, Torran and his crew insist on joining the hunt. Tavi reluctantly agrees because while the handsome, stoic leader pushes all of her buttons--for both anger and desire--she's endured worse, and the massive bonus payment he's promised for a completed job is reason enough to shut up and deal.

But when they uncover a deeper plot that threatens the delicate peace between humans and Valoffs, Tavi suspects that Torran has been using her as the impetus for a new war. With the fate of her crew balanced on a knife's edge, Tavi must decide where her loyalties lie--with the quiet Valoff who's been lying to her, or with the human leaders who left her squad to die on the battlefield. And this time, she's put her heart on the line.

Eclipse the Moon

Starlight's Shadow: Book 2

Jessie Mihalik

Kee Ildez has been many things: hacker, soldier, bounty hunter. She never expected to be a hero, but when a shadowy group of traitors starts trying to goad the galaxy's two superpowers into instigating an interstellar war, Kee throws herself into the search to find out who is responsible--and stop them.

Digging up hidden information is her job, so hunting traitors should be a piece of cake, but the primary suspect spent years in the military, and someone powerful is still covering his tracks. Disrupting their plans will require the help of her entire team, including Varro Runkow, a Valovian weapons expert who makes her pulse race.

Quiet, grumpy, and incredibly handsome, Varro watches her with hot eyes but ignores all of her flirting, so Kee silently vows to keep her feelings strictly platonic. But that vow will be put to the test when she and Varro are forced to leave the safety of their ship and venture into enemy territory alone.

Cut off from the rest of their team, they must figure out how to work together--and fast--because a single misstep will cost thousands of lives.

Capture the Sun

Starlight's Shadow: Book 3

Jessie Mihalik

As a recovery specialist, Lexi Bowen's jobs typically require more trickery and thievery than honest work. Her former captain might not approve of her flexible morals, but stealing artifacts for rich assholes pays the bills, and Lexi's had enough of war and death. The FHP left her to die once; she doesn't plan to give them a chance to finish the job.

Unfortunately, her latest contract takes her to Valovia itself--and right back into the orbit of Nilo Shoren, a Valovian teleporter who already cost her one payday and nearly stole her heart.

Armored against his clever charm, Lexi plans to get in, get the job done, and get out. But when her former crew goes missing in Valovian space, Lexi will have to work with Nilo to figure out what happened--and stop it--before the galaxy's two superpowers can use the disappearance as an excuse to return to war.

Fortress of Shadows

Stonehaven League: Book 2

Carrie Summers

A giant telepathic parrot with a rather foul mouth, a horde of smelly goblins, and a tyrannical demon priestess...

Welcome to Devon Walker's "new normal."

During her first weeks in the deeply immersive VR game, Relic Online, she's hacked out a home from a choking jungle, gathered a tribe of loyal followers, and earned a wisp stalker who insists she's some kind of champion.

But Relic Online isn't some wussy kids' game, and there will be no easy-street cruising for Devon. Like a monk racking up combo points, the system opens a fresh offensive by crippling her most powerful ability. Following through, it strangles the village food supply, sends demons bursting through rifts in the earth, and delivers a final, devastating throat punch by exploiting Devon's worst fear.

The players have discovered Devon's home. Now everything changes.

The Shadow Roads

Swans' War: Book 3

Sean Russell

The savage war between two mighty families has ravaged the kingdom both wish to rule—spawning treachery within the ranks of the Renné and Wills, drawing the brave, the innocent, and the malevolent alike into the bloody conflict. But a far more terrible consequence has arisen from the carnage—for Death himself has been roused from his dread domain . . . and is preparing to walk the world again.

A Cavern of Black Ice

Sword of Shadows: Book 1

In Spire Vanis, an uncrowned ruler steals magic from tortured captives, while an innocent girl is haunted by nightmares of ice. On the frigid steppes, two brothers find their kinsmen slain by swords that draw no blood. At a remote homestead, a hardened warrior leaves his family to follow a raven's summons.

And in a deadly wilderness where nature and the gods have no mercy, two young fugitives will confront the unfolding of an apocalyptic prophecy.

A Fortress of Grey Ice

Sword of Shadows: Book 2

Ash March knew Raif Sevrance was special from the moment he helped rescue her from the tyranny of her foster father in the city of Spire Vanis. Like her, Raif was an outcast. Though from different worlds, he from the clanholds, she from the fortress city, their lives were somehow entwined by fate and by the need of the cold, dark north of their world. It has been a thousand years since the dreaded Endlords have tried to breach the boundary between the living and the dead, but now the forces that hold back the damned souls of the dead have weakened; new heroes must emerge to combat this terrible threat.

Raif, wrongly accused and cast out of his clan by the treachery of their new headsman. Ash, raised as a foundling, is a warrior sacred to the Sull, an ancient race who once ruled the north. But raised in isolation, she must learn and accept the power and responsibility of her heritage.

As Ash learns of the role she must fulfill, Raifs task looms dark and desperate: he must journey through the nightmare realm of the desolate Want, where even the Sull fear to tread. For deep within the Want is the Fortress of Grey Ice, and there he must heal the breach in the Blindwall that already threatens the world. Should he fail, not even Ash's powers can save them.

A Sword from Red Ice

Sword of Shadows: Book 3

The Long Night has begun. The Endlords and their dark army of Unmade prepare to unleash untold destruction upon the world. Every Sull warrior must step forward and fight, or risk the North falling into eternal darkness.

Key to mankind's survival is the sacred warrior Ash March. But for Ash to realise her true potential as a Reach, and become the Sull's greatest weapon, she must keep herself safe as the perils that surround her multiply. Raif Sevrance has an equally perilous task. The exile must travel to the barren wastes of the Red Glaciers and recover the legendary sword named Loss. For Sull legend decrees that he who wields the Sword from Red Ice will bring terror to their enemies.

But fulfilment of these goals may yet come too late. In the remote reaches of the Bitter Hills, the Endlords' minions have made a cataclysmic discovery: a crack in the Blindwall, an ancient and unguarded passage leading directly into the realms of men.

Watcher of the Dead

Sword of Shadows: Book 4

In the Palace of Shadow and Joy

In the frigid wasteland of the north, Raif Sevrance, Watcher of the Dead, has endured many trials to lay claim to the renowned sword known as Loss. But the price of wielding the legendary weapon is high, and Raif is unsure if he is willing to pay it. Ash Marsh, Daughter of the Sull, still struggles to come to terms with her heritage, and the knowledge that the Watcher, armed with Loss, could be the one who will save the Sull, or end them. Raina Blackhail, widow of a murdered ruler and wife of his brutal successor, has seen her clan disgraced and has, herself, taken up the mantle of chief. But there are enemies both beyond her gates and within. And in the murky swamps of the Stillwater, two children will learn the secrets of the Marsh clan. Secrets so old they threaten everything.

The Door into Shadow

Tale of the Five: Book 2

Diane Duane

Second of Diane Duane's "Middle Kingdoms" sequence, sequel to THE DOOR INTO FIRE. The quest of Freelorn Ferrant's son, exiled prince of Arlen, continues as he and his people push eastward across the Middle Kingdoms in pursuit of his lost throne. But his companion, the warrior and sorceress Segnbora, brings her own possibly deadly agenda to the search...

Tales of Indrajit and Fix: Book 1

D. J. Butler

Indrajit Twang is the 427th epic poet of his people, the only person alive to carry their entire epic history and mythology in his head. His people are dwindling in number, and if he can't find a successor in the great city of Kish, their story will disappear with them.

Fix grew up a foundling on the ancient streets of Kish and is making his living as a mercenary. The woman he loves married someone else, and Fix has turned to buying and selling risk on the black market - but is he trying to impress her, or prove something to himself?

Indrajit and Fix have been hired by a powerful risk-merchant to protect the life of opera star Ilsa without Peer for the duration of a risk contract he's taken on. When an attempt is made on Ilsa's life, Indrajit and Fix find themselves hunted by multiple mercenary squads and targeted by some of the most powerful men in Kish. Will they be able to save themselves, not to mention protect Ilsa, in the Palace of Shadow and Joy?

Mirror Sword and Shadow Prince

Tales of the Magatama: Book 2

Noriko Ogiwara

When the heir to the empire comes to Mino, the lives of young Oguna and Toko change forever. Oguna is drafted to become a shadow prince, a double trained to take the place of the hunted royal. But soon Oguna is given the Mirror Sword, and his power to wield it threatens the entire nation. Only Toko can stop him, but to do so she needs to gather four magatama, beads with magical powers that can be strung together to form the Misumaru of Death. Toko's journey is one of both adventure and self-discovery, and also brings her face to face with the tragic truth behind Oguna's transformation. A story of two parallel quests, of a pure love tried by the power of fate, the second volume of Tales of the Magatama is as thrilling as Dragon Sword and Wind Child.

Shadow Leader

Tales of the Wolves: Book 2

Tara K. Harper

Dion; her wolf, Gray Hishn; and their friends have just escaped from slavers and are trying to return home so that they can warn their people about the likelihood of impending war. Dion and her wolf share a telepathic bond. Together they are superior scouts of terrain, and her wolf amplifies Dion's healing abilities so that together they can heal people wholly. Nonetheless, they face many battles as they make their way.

There is much gritty fighting that needs doing, many frozen mountains that need to be traversed, and enemy agents scour the countryside for the group that includes them. Now Dion's abilities may make her stand out and bring harm to her friends.

A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows

Technic Civilization: Dominic Flandry: Book 7

Poul Anderson

Raconteur, bon vivant, troubleshooter for the decaying Terran Empire, Dominic Falndry doesn't crave further danger in the service of galactic unity.

But duty calls, so it's back to the spaceways for the most elegant Special Agent is a hundred star systems--straight into the well-laid plans of his lifelong enemy Aycharaych.

Win or lose, though, the long night of human civilization is coming and Flandry knows it. How many more battles can he stand to win in a losing cause? And how many planets will die meanwhile?

He Who Walks in Shadow

That Which Should Not Be

Brett J. Talley

The Incendium Maleficarum has been lost and Carter Weston presumed dead, but the story of That Which Should Not Be is only just beginning. Now Carter's only daughter, Rachel Jones, and his oldest friend, Henry Armitage, must embark on an epic journey that will take them from the hell-blasted Tunguska forest to the catacombs of Paris to the shores of the Scottish Isles.

They are in a race against time, for in France, strange murders and whispers of occult rituals herald the rise of an ancient evil bent on plunging the world into eternal darkness.

It is up to Rachel and Henry to learn Carter's fate, recover the Incendium Maleficarum, and perhaps even save the world.

As the Shadow Rises

The Age of Darkness (Pool): Book 2

Katy Rose Pool

The Last Prophet has been found, yet he sees destruction ahead.

In this sequel to the critically-acclaimed There Will Come a Darkness, kingdoms have begun to fall to a doomsday cult, the magical Graced are being persecuted, and an ancient power threatens to break free. But with the world hurtling toward its prophesized end, Anton's haunting vision reveals the dangerous beginnings of a plan to stop the Age of Darkness.

As Jude, Keeper of the Order of the Last Light, returns home in disgrace, his quest to aid the Prophet is complicated by his growing feelings for Anton. Meanwhile, the assassin known as the Pale Hand will stop at nothing to find her undead sister before she dies for good, even if it means letting the world burn. And in Nazirah, Hassan, the kingdom-less Prince, forms a risky pact to try to regain his throne. When the forces of light and darkness collide in the City of Mercy, old wounds are reopened, new alliances are tested, and the end of the world begins.

War of Shadows

The Ascendant Kingdoms Saga: Book 3

Gail Z. Martin

Amidst the shadows, chaos reigns.

Blaine "Mick" McFadden managed to partially restore Donderath's magic, but not without a cost. He and the magic are now bound together, and the power remains dangerous and erratic - draining the life from him with every use.

New threats are rising from the wreckage of the battered kingdoms, and warlords both mortal and undead vie for control. Now, Blaine and his unlikely band of convict heroes must find allies amidst a seas of enemies, and discover a way to rebind magic to the will of mortals before it destroys him. And time is running out...

Shadow and Flame

The Ascendant Kingdoms Saga: Book 4

Gail Z. Martin

From Gail Z. Martin, one of the most exciting writers of fantasy adventure, comes the fourth and final novel in the epic Ascendant Kingdoms Saga.

Blaine McFadden and his allies have brought magic back under mortal command and begun to restore order to the beleaguered kingdom of Donderath. Now, new perils and old enemies gather for a final reckoning. Foreign invaders, a legendary dark mage and vengeful immortals fight Blaine's battered forces for control of the continent, and Blaine's weary army is the only thing standing between a kingdom struggling to rise from the ashes and a descent into fury and darkness.

Shadow of Ullanor

The Beast Arises: Book 11

Rob Sanders

For mankind to survive, a last-ditch attempt to destroy the ork menace must succeed.

The Imperium's attempts to defeat the ork menace seem doomed to failure; it is only a matter of time before the greenskins triumph, and mankind is wiped from the face of galactic map. Yet there is some cause for hope--the Imperial Fists Chapter is reformed, and a few Sisters of Silence yet survive. Supported by the full military might and technology of the Adeptus Mechanicus, the Space Marines head to the orks' home world one final time. This time there will be no retreat, no surrender. They must succeed... or die in the attempt.

Shadow Climber

The Bifrost Guardians: Book 2

Mickey Zucker Reichert

His father wrongly executed when he was a child, Taziar Medakan had turned to stealing for his survival. He was the Shadow Climber, skilled at remaining one with the shadows, unseen in the midst of his enemies. And he stole not for profit, but for the challenge of it, donating most of his booty to those in need.

But though Taz could defeat any trap, he wasn't prepared for the treachery of Ilyrian, a cunning politician ready to sacrifice the Shadow Climber to gain power himself. So Taz found himself in the baron's dreaded dungeons from which even a master thief's only escape might be death! There he met Moonbear, a prince among barbarians, a swordsman beyond compare, and Taz's last hope for salvation.

Together the two sought their pathway to freedom. But it was a pathway that would set a whole kingdom on their trail in a pursuit led by Ilyrian and a Dragonrank sorcerer on his own mission of magical revenge.

Shadow's Realm

The Bifrost Guardians: Book 4

Mickey Zucker Reichert

When Shadow received a message that Shylar needed his aid, the master thief and his three companions, Allerum - now an elf swordsman but once a twentieth century American soldier - and the two Dragonmages, Silme and Astryd, immediately set out for Shadow's hometown of Cullinsberg. For Shylar, town madam and high in the thieves' underground, was all the family Shadow had.

But Cullinsberg was an armed trap waiting to close on the four adventurers. For they had slain the Chaos Dragon, and in so doing unleashed a force of pure Chaos, a force which then bonded with the single greatest surviving Dragonmage. Driven by Chaos-induced madness, this master of powers far beyond those of Silme and Astryd would now use anyone and any means to take his deadly revenge on those four warriors of Law.

The Shadow Saint

The Black Iron Legacy: Book 2

Gareth Hanrahan

Enter a city of spires and shadows...

The Gutter Miracle changed the landscape of Guerdon forever. Six months after it was conjured into being, the labyrinthine New City has become a haven for criminals and refugees.

Rumors have spread of a devastating new weapon buried beneath the streets - a weapon with the power to destroy a god. As Guerdon strives to remain neutral, two of the most powerful factions in the godswar send agents into the city to find it.

As tensions escalate and armies gather at the borders, how long will Guerdon be able to keep its enemies at bay?

The Shadow of the Gods

The Bloodsworn: Book 1

John Gwynne

THE GREATEST SAGAS ARE WRITTEN IN BLOOD.

A century has passed since the gods fought and drove themselves to extinction. Now only their bones remain, promising great power to those brave enough to seek them out.

As whispers of war echo across the land of Vigrid, fate follows in the footsteps of three warriors: a huntress on a dangerous quest, a noblewoman pursuing battle fame, and a thrall seeking vengeance among the mercenaries known as the Bloodsworn.

All three will shape the fate of the world as it once more falls under the shadow of the gods.

The Shadowglass

The Bone Witch: Book 3

Rin Chupeco

The dramatic finale to The Bone Witch series! Tea's dark magic eats away at her, but she must save the one she loves most, even while her life?and the kingdoms?are on the brink of destruction.

In the Eight Kingdoms, none have greater strength or influence than the asha, who hold elemental magic. But only a bone witch has the power to raise the dead. Tea has used this dark magic to breathe life into those she has loved and lost...and those who would join her army against the deceitful royals. But Tea's quest to conjure a shadowglass, to achieve immortality for the one person she loves most in the world, threatens to consume her.

Tea's heartsglass only grows darker with each new betrayal. Her work with the monstrous azi, her thirst for retribution, her desire to unmask the Faceless?they all feed the darkrot that is gradually consuming her heartsglass. She is haunted by blackouts and strange visions, and when she wakes with blood on her hands, Tea must answer to a power greater than the elder asha or even her conscience. Tea's life?and the fate of the kingdoms?hangs in the balance.

The Shadow of the Torturer

The Book of the New Sun: Book 1

Gene Wolfe

The Shadow of the Torturer is the tale of young Severian, an apprentice in the Guild of Torturers on the world called Urth, exiled for committing the ultimate sin of his profession -- showing mercy toward his victim.

Shadow Baron

The Burnished City: Book 2

Davinia Evans

Siyon Velo might be acknowledged as the Alchemist. He may have even stabilized the planes and stopped Bezim from ever shaking into the sea again. But that doesn't mean he has any idea what's he doing-and it won't be long before everyone knows it.

Then mythical creatures once confined to operas and myths are spotted around Bezim. A djinn invades one of Zagiri's garden parties, and whispers of a naga slithering through the Flower District are all Anahid hears at the card table.

Magic is waking up in the Mundane. It's up to Siyon to figure out a way to stop it, or everything he's worked hard to save will come crashing down.

The Alchemist in the Shadows

The Cardinal's Blades: Book 2

Pierre Pevel

Welcome to Paris, in 1633, where dragons menace the realm. Cardinal Richelieu, the most powerful and most feared man in France, is on his guard. He knows France is under threat, and that a secret society known as the Black Claw is conspiring against him from the heart of the greatest courts in Europe. They will strike from the shadows, and when they do the blow will be both terrible and deadly.

To counter the threat, Richelieu has put his most trusted men into play: the Cardinal's Blades, led by Captain la Fargue. Six men and a woman, all of exceptional abilities and all ready to risk their lives on his command. They have saved France before, and the Cardinal is relying on them to do it again.

So when la Fargue hears from a beautiful, infamous, deadly Italian spy claiming to have valuable information, he has to listen... and when La Donna demands Cardinal Richelieu's protection before she will talk, la Fargue is even prepared to consider it. Because La Donna can name their enemy. It's a man as elusive as he is manipulative, as subtle as Richelieu himself, an exceptionally dangerous adversary: the Alchemist in the shadows...

The River of Shadows

The Chathrand Voyage: Book 3

Robert V. S. Redick

The latest novel in Robert V.S Redick's stunning and original fantasy epic is a taut race against time that takes the Chathrand across the seas in a desperate bid to stop the sorcerer Arunis unleashing the Swarm of Night.

From the mysterious River of Shadows to the Infernal Forest, to the Island Wilderness Pazel and his companions face a phatasmogoric journey through altered relaities, a nightmare journey which offers glimpses of what might have been while taking them into the terror of what is to come. Will Arunis use the cursed Nilstone to end the world?

This is a rich fantasy of nightmares and unexpected beauty and is proof positie that Redick is one of the most exciting new talents in fantasy.

Knight of Shadows

The Chronicles of Amber: Book 9

Roger Zelazny

Confronting his deadliest enemy in a reincarnated Julia, his former lover, Merlin of Amber is forced to choose between the Patterns of Amber and Chaos while continuing his search for his father, Corwin.

Shadow Prowler

The Chronicles of Siala: Book 1

Alexey Pehov

After centuries of calm, the Nameless One is stirring.

An army is gathering; thousands of giants, ogres, and other creatures are joining forces from all across the Desolate Lands, united, for the first time in history, under one, black banner. By the spring, or perhaps sooner, the Nameless One and his forces will be at the walls of the great city of Avendoom.

Unless Shadow Harold, master thief, can find some way to stop them.

Epic fantasy at its best, Shadow Prowler is the first in a trilogy that follows Shadow Harold on his quest for a magic Horn that will restore peace to the Kingdom of Siala. Harold will be accompanied on his quest by an Elfin princess, Miralissa, her elfin escort, and ten Wild Hearts, the most experienced and dangerous fighters in their world...and by the king's court jester (who may be more than he seems... or less).

Reminiscent of Moorcock's Elric series, Shadow Prowler is the first work to be published in English by the bestselling Russian fantasy author Alexey Pehov. The book was translated by Andrew Bromfield, best known for his work on the highly successful Night Watch series.

Shadow Chaser

The Chronicles of Siala: Book 2

Alexey Pehov

Saddened because they have left one of their number in a grave in the wilderness, Harold and his companions continue their journey to the dreaded underground palace of Hrad Spein. There, knowing that armies of warriors and wizards before them have failed, they must fight legions of untold, mysterious powers before they can complete their quest for the magic horn that will save their beloved land from The Nameless One. But before they can even reach their goal, they must overcome all manner of obstacles, fight many battles... and evade the frightful enemies on their trail.

Shadow Chaser is a novel of intricate plots, surprising twists and finely drawn characters that will not leave you when you put the book down. Shadow Chaser is truly something different in the world of fantasy, something special; it is something truly Russian, a fantasy that is gripping and haunting, fascinating and imaginative.

Shadow Blizzard

The Chronicles of Siala: Book 3

Alexey Pehov

Shadow Blizzard is the third book by the international bestselling fantasy author Alexey Pehov. Like Shadow Prowler and Shadow Chaser, Shadow Blizzard is epic fantasy at its best; this is the third book in a trilogy that follows Shadow Harold, Siala's master thief, on his quest for the magic Horn that will restore peace to his world.

After the loss of friends and comrades, after betrayal and battle, after capture by fearsome orcs, Harold finally reaches the dreaded Hrad Spein. But before he can complete his quest by stealing the magic horn, he will have to brave the most fearsome obstacles yet-obstacles that have destroyed everyone before him... and Harold must do so alone.

Shadow of the Serpent

The Chronicles of Tenebrak: Book 4

Shannah Jay

When the members of the Kindred pass through a portal and are scattered across the twelve claims, they face the dark threat of being discovered by Those of the Serpent. As each group journeys towards the fateful rendezvous, it finds unexpected allies.

The depraved evil of the Serpent threatens to engulf them. Will their Quest against Discord be successful? Will their faith in the Brother save them?

The Sword of Bedwyr

The Crimson Shadow: Book 1

For twenty years, the once proud lands of Eriador have lain, conquered and suffering, under the despotic and demonic power of the evil Wizard-King Greensparrow and his legions of monstrous cyclops soldiers. The dwarves and Fairborn elves are slaves; humans fare little better.

Arena fighter Luthien Bedwyr, son of Eorl Garhis of Bedwydrin, is too young and privileged to understand Greensparrow's oppression. Then one night Luthien seeks justice for a friend's murder, only to become a fugitive from Greensparrow's thugs.

It is a flight that will turn a grand adventure when he befriends the egotistical, irrepressible "highway halfling" Oliver deBurrows... and a magical odyssey when the two are recruited by the ancient, exiled wizard Brind'Amour. For now their mission is to battle a dragon and obtain wondrous rewards: most especially a cape that renders its wearer invisible - but leaves behind an indelible scarlet silhouette.

Falling from lord's heir to common thief should be a pathetic fate for Luthien, but the masses are tormented by the excesses of Greensparrow's henchmen. Luthien, Oliver, and a beautiful elf slave discover that any blow against the establishment may forment revolution.

And that Eriador is desperately ready to rally behind a legend. Like the whispered rumors of a mysterious robber-assassin who strikes only evil-doers, distributing their spoils to the innocent. An unseen, unstoppable hero known as... THE CRIMSON SHADOW.

Luthien's Gamble

The Crimson Shadow: Book 2

In The Sword of Bedwyr, young Luthien Bedwyr rebelled against the crushing rule of King Greensparrow and his cruel wizard-lords. To save his once proud land of Eriador, Luthien was given a magical cape that renders its wearer invisible - but leaves behind an indelible scarlet silhouette.

In Luthien's Gamble, we see Luthien at a crossroads: in spite of the urgings of his comrades to avoid further conflict with Greensparrow, Luthien feels compelled to continue the battle for his beloved country Eriador. Realizing that nobody else will take charge, and with the support of both dwarves and elves, Luthien and his followers stage guerilla raids on town after town. Luthien and his forces defeat scores of enemies and win huge numbers of allies.

In the end, King Greensparrow sues for peace. Yet Luthien and Brind'Amour recognize that even in this time of celebration, Greensparrow cannot be trusted, and that the rumblings of a larger battle - for the freedom of the known world - loom in the not-too-distant future.

The Dragon King

The Crimson Shadow: Book 3

There is no peace for King Brind'Amour's newly liberated Eriador, as Avon's evil King Greensparrow breaks the truce with border massacres and demon sorcery. War is inevitable, but would be suicidal. Even when allied with DunDarrow dwarfs, Fairborn elves, and the Riders of Eradoch, the peasant armies led by Luthien Bedwyr and his friends are hopelessly outmatched by Avon's Cyclopian legions. Meanwhile, Brind'Amour's magic must face the fiends of Avon's sorcerous dukes...

Then suddenly, Luthien is captured by Huegoth raiders and gains some astonishing information about the fate of his lost brother. Lady Deanna Wellworh discovers that she is the rightful heir to Avon's throne. And the lord of wild, distant Baranduine begins a desperate campaign to free his land from Greensparrow.

Now battle will be joined on mountain, plain and swamp, on land, sea, and in the air - in a war of courage and dire wizardries. Yet in the end, all the valor of Eriador, and all the daring of Luthien's magical alter, ego, the Crimson Shadow, may not be enough to vanquish Greensparrow's ultimate weapon. For Greensparrow isn't merely allied with the hell-monster he plans to unleash: Greensparrow is the vast and terrible being that once withstood the combined might of the ancient Brotherhood of Wizards. And in centuries of plotting world conquest, the beast has murdered the sleeping mages. Except one. Heir to a dying magic, Brind'Amour must stand alone...

Lord of Shadows

The Dark Artifices: Book 2

Emma Carstairs has finally avenged her parents. She thought she'd be at peace. But she is anything but calm. Torn between her desire for her parabatai Julian and her desire to protect him from the brutal consequences of parabatai relationships, she has begun dating his brother, Mark. But Mark has spent the past five years trapped in Faerie; can he ever truly be a Shadowhunter again?

And the faerie courts are not silent. The Unseelie King is tired of the Cold Peace, and will no longer concede to the Shadowhunters' demands. Caught between the demands of faerie and the laws of the Clave, Emma, Julian, and Mark must find a way to come together to defend everything they hold dear--before it's too late.

The Shadow Matrix

The Darkover Series: Book 21

Margaret Weis
Robert Krammes

After spending her youth in the Terran Empire, Margaret Alton returns to Darkover, the planet of her birth. There she discovers she has the Alton Gift--forced rapport and compulsion--one of the strongest and most dangerous of the inherited "Laran" gifts of the telepathic Comyn--the ruling families of Darkover. And even as she struggles to control her newfound powers, Margaret finds herself falling in love with the Regent to the royal Elhalyn Domain, a man she has been forbidden to marry, for their alliance would irrevocably alter the power balance of their planet!

The Shadow Casket

The Darkwater Legacy: Book 2

Chris Wooding

A BAND OF REBELS.
A TRAITOR IN THEIR MIDST.
A REVOLUTION ABOUT TO BEGIN.

It's been three years since Aren seized the Ember Blade. Three years since they struck the spark they hoped would ignite the revolution. But the flame has failed to catch. The Krodans have crushed Ossia in an iron grip of terror. The revolution seems further away than ever.

Far in the north, the Dawnwardens seek to unite the fractious clans of the Fell Folk and create a stronghold from which to retake their land. But even if they can overcome the danger of treachery from within, they still have to contend with the dreadknights. Only the druidess Vika can resist these near-unstoppable foes, and there's only one of her.

But what if there was a weapon that could destroy the dreadknights? A weapon of such power it could turn the tide? A weapon that, if it fell into the wrong hands, might mean the end of all hope?

The Shadow Casket has returned from out of the past, and it will save or damn them all.

Shadow Speaker

The Desert Magician: Book 1

Nnedi Okorafor

Niger, West Africa, 2074

It is an era of tainted technology and mysterious mysticism. A great change has happened all over the planet, and the laws of physics aren't what they used to be.

Within all this, I introduce you to Ejii Ugabe, a child of the worst type of politician. Back when she was nine years old, she was there as her father met his end. Don't waste your tears on him: this girl's father would throw anyone under a bus to gain power. He was a cruel, cruel man, but even so, Ejii did not rejoice at his departure from the world. Children are still learning that some people don't deserve their love.

Now 15 years old and manifesting the abilities given to her by the strange Earth, Ejii decides to go after the killer of her father. Is it for revenge or something else?

The Shadow of the Soul

The Dog-Faced Gods: Book 2

Sarah Pinborough

DI Cass Jones is still dealing with the fallout of uncovering a major conspiracy within his own police station when a terrorist attack rocks London and he finds himself called on to help with the investigation. At the same time he has his own investigation to worry about: young people are dying, apparently committing suicide - and they're all linked by the phrase Chaos in the Darkness, scrawled or sent as their last message to the world. Then he's given a note from his dead brother Christian, written before his murder: the three words - 'They took Luke' - opens up a whole new can of worms, because Cass knows immediately who They are: Mr Bright and the shadowy Network. His dead brother has set him a task from beyond the grave - to find the baby, his nephew, stolen at birth. And as Cass tries to divide his time between all three investigations, it's not long before he discovers links, where there should not be. The mysterious Mr Bright is once again pulling his strings, and there's nothing DI Cass Jones hate more.

Greatshadow

The Dragon Apocalypse: Book 1

James Maxey

Greatshadow is the primal dragon of fire, an elemental evil whose malign intelligence spies upon mankind through every candle flame, waiting to devour any careless victim he can claim.

The Church of the Book has assembled a team of twelve battle-hardened adventurers to slay the dragon once and for all. But tensions run high between the leaders of the team who view the mission as a holy duty and the super-powered mercenaries who add power to their ranks, who view the mission primarily as a chance to claim Greatshadow's vast treasure trove. If the warriors fail to slay the beast, will they doom mankind to death by fire?

Shadow Raiders

The Dragon Brigade: Book 1

The known world floats upon the Breath of God, a thick gas similar to Earth's oceans, with land masses accessible by airship. The largest of these land masses are ruled by the rival empires of Freya and Rosia. Magic is intrinsic to the functioning of these societies, and is even incorporated into their technological devices. But now a crucial scientific discovery has occurred that could destroy the balance of power--and change the empires forever.

Siege of Shadows

The Effigies: Book 2

Sarah Raughley

There's nowhere to hide.

Not when you're an Effigy. No matter where they go, Maia and the other Effigies can't escape the eyes of the press--especially not after failing to capture Saul, whose power to control the monstrous Phantoms has left the world in a state of panic. It's been two months since Saul's disappearance, and there's still no sign of him, leaving the public to wonder whether the Sect--and the Effigies--are capable of protecting anyone.

When Saul suddenly surfaces in the middle of the Sahara desert, the Sect sends Maia and her friends out after him. But instead of Saul, they discover a dying soldier engineered with Effigy-like abilities. Even worse, there may be more soldiers like him out there, and it looks like the Effigies are their prime targets.

Yet the looming danger of Saul and this mysterious new army doesn't overshadow Maia's fear of the Sect, who ordered the death of the previous Fire Effigy, Natalya. With enemies on all sides and the world turning against them, the Effigies have to put their trust in each other--easier said than done when secrets threaten to tear them apart.

The Shadow World

The Eidolon Chronicles: Book 2

Jane Johnson

The Dodman has begun his reign of terror in Eidolon. Amassing an army of trolls & giants, ghost-dogs, & goblins, he is determined to lay waste to the magical Secret Country and destroy its Queen forever. Now Isadora must return to her world, leaving her family behind, to lead her people against the evil Dodman.

Shadow's End

The Elder Races: Book 9

Thea Harrison

For Beluviel, consort to the Elven High Lord, and Graydon, gryphon and First Sentinel of the Wyr, even the slightest desire for each other is forbidden. But two hundred years ago, after a desperate play to save Beluviel's stepson left them indebted to the cruel Djinn Malphas, they found their fates inexorably linked together--and the hunger between them growing too strong to ignore...

Two centuries later, with their debt to Malphas coming due, Beluviel and Graydon realize that, if they are to stand any chance of saving their souls, they must once again work together--this time more closely than ever before. But every moment they spend with each other brings them nearer to losing something even more vital--their hearts...

Shadow Moon

The Elora Danan Saga: Book 2

Chris Claremont

In Shadow Moon, war and chaos have gripped the land of Tir Asleen. An ancient prophecy reveals one hope: a savior princess who will ascend to the throne when the time is right. But first, a Nelwyn wanderer must face forces of unimaginable malevolence and dangerous, forbidden rites of necromancy that could bring back a powerful warrior from soulless sleep.

Shadow Dawn

The Elora Danan Saga: Book 3

Chris Claremont

The momentous Ascension of Princess Elora Danan should have brought peace to the Thirteen Realms. Instead, an intense Shadow War rages, spearheaded by the evil Mohdri. He has dispatched his dread Black Rose commando assassins to capture Elora and her sworn protector, Thorn Drumheller. But Mohdri himself is just a facade for a more dangerous entity: the Deceiver. But who--or what--is the Deceiver? And how can Elora, Thorn, and their ragtag band defeat this unspeakable force? The answer lies in a perilous journey to a land undisturbed since the dawn of time. A journey that will end at the unbreachable citadel of the dragon, where a chilling betrayal will change the fate of Elora, Thorn, and the Thirteen Realms forever.

Shadow Star

The Elora Danan Saga: Book 4

Chris Claremont

Elora Danan has done the unthinkable. She has slain the dragons that were the embodiment of the soul of Creation. It was a desperate act--the only way to save the dragons from the Deceiver, who would have used them to rule the Realms. Yet in Elora's possession are two last dragon eggs. To protect them, Elora spellbinds herself to her faithful companions Thorn Drumheller, the Nelwyn sorcerer and her sworn guardian, and Khory Bannefin, the long-dead woman warrior whose body is inhabited by a demon's offspring. It is a dire spell that ensures none of them will betray their cause... even at the cost of their lives. And if one of them dies, the magic of the eggs is lost forever.

Pursued through a land of shadow predators by the dreaded Black Rose, the Deceiver's commando assassins, Elora and her allies must reach the free city-state of Sandeni. There they will be reunited with old friends: the brownies Franjean and Rool, the eagles Anele and Bastian, and the young warrior-scribe Luc-Jon. But Sandeni is besieged by mighty armies fueled by the Deceiver's sorcery, warrior wizards, and engines of evil magic. With defeat all but certain, Elora must convince the Sandeni people to continue the fight. What she doesn't tell them is that the greatest enemy lies within her. For the Deceiver is her own dark twin from a potential future of unimaginable evil...an evil that lies dormant in Elora's soul. And the only way Elora can stop the future is to befriend an enemy whose insatiable appetite for destruction could destroy all of Creation. Or is that, too, part of the Deceiver's plan?

The Eminence in Shadow, Vol. 1

The Eminence in Shadow: Book 1

The Eminence in Shadow, Vol. 2

ONE BIG FAT LIE AND A FEW TWISTED TRUTHS

Even in his past life, Cid's dream wasn't to become a protagonist or a final boss. He'd rather lie low as a minor character until it's prime time to reveal he's a mastermind... or at least, do the next best thing-pretend to be one! And now that he's been reborn into another world, he's ready to set the perfect conditions to live out his dreams to the fullest. Armed with his overactive imagination, Cid jokingly recruits members to his organization and makes up a whole backstory about an evil cult that they need to take down. Well, as luck would have it, these imaginary adversaries turn out to be the real deal-and everyone knows the truth but him!

The Eminence in Shadow: Book 2

The Eminence in Shadow, Vol. 3

NOTHING COULD BE FURTHER FROM THE TRUTH

Cid pays a visit to the Sacred Land, where he finds himself getting roped into the Goddess's Trial. It's a ritual event that summons warriors from the past to engage with only the most worthy from the present. When Cid squares off against the witch who brought devastation to the world, the door to the Sanctuary creaks open, granting the Shadow Garden valuable insight into the possessed and the Cult of Diablos. That is until Cid, blissfully ignorant of the conspiracies playing out behind the scenes, runs amok!

The Eminence in Shadow: Book 3

The Eminence in Shadow, Vol. 4

THE RED MOON HANGS LOW IN THE NIGHT--AN OMEN OF WHAT'S TO COME

Deep within the Lawless City lies the Blood Queen, a Progenitor Vampire, slumbering in her coffin for many moons. An expert at landing himself in trouble, Cid should know better than to go after her... but he's dying to get a piece of the action. It's time he shed his daytime persona to take on the role of Shadow! It seems, however, that he's not the only one with this idea. Soon enough, he finds the three rulers of the Lawless City--Juggernaut the Tyrant, Yukime the Spirit Fox, and Crimson the vampire--are all on his tail. To complicate things even further, the Shadow Garden descends on the scene as the hour of the Blood Queen's awakening looms closer and closer...

The Eminence in Shadow: Book 4

J. R. R. Tolkien
Christopher Tolkien

THE DOOR OF DARKNESS IS CAST OPEN--THE WORLD ADVANCES TO A NEW FIELD

The specter of war hangs thick in the air of the Oriana Kingdom, where Princess Rose is expected to wed Duke Perv. This supposed marriage cannot and will not stand, though, as it would throw a major wrench in a certain shadowbroker's plans. Not one to miss an opportunity for sleuthing, Cid makes his way to the royal capital to put a stop to the ceremony, but are there even bigger schemes at work behind this unholy matrimony?

Bane and Shadow

The Empire of Storms: Book 2

Jon Skovron

A killer adventure fantasy follow-up to HOPE AND RED, set in a fracturing empire spread across savage seas, where two young people from different cultures find common purpose.

Red is being trained as a cold-blooded assassin by the biomancers. As he becomes increasingly embroiled in palace politics, he learns that even life among the nobility can be deadly.

While terrorizing imperial ships as the pirate Dire Bane, Hope stumbles onto a biomancer plot of such horrifying scope that it makes even the massacre of her childhood village seem small in comparison.

With the biomancers tightening their grip of fear over the empire, Hope and Red struggle to fill their new roles and responsibilities, but the cost will be greater than any of them realize.

Shadowfall

The Godslayer Chronicles: Book 1

James Clemens

Four millennia have passed since the gods came to Myrillia, creating the nine lands of peace as a haven from the nightmarish, accursed Hinterlands. In all this time nothing has disturbed the harmony of the nine lands.

But now the goddess of the Summering Isles has been murdered. The only witness is Tylar de Noche, a crippled and disgraced former Shadowknight. As he holds the dying goddess, her last breath bestows a powerful blessing on him-a mark that heals his broken body. A mark that many see as proof that he killed a god. A mark that unleashes a powerful force of darkness within him.

Chased across Myrillia by enemies both human and ethereal, Tylar must uncover and face down a being powerful enough to kill an immortal-the true godslayer. For if he fails, all of Myrillia will fall into shadow.

Shadow and Bone

The Grisha Universe: The Grisha: Book 1

Leigh Bardugo

Surrounded by enemies, the once-great nation of Ravka has been torn in two by the Shadow Fold, a swath of near impenetrable darkness crawling with monsters who feast on human flesh. Now its fate may rest on the shoulders of one lonely refugee.

Alina Starkov has never been good at anything. But when her regiment is attacked on the Fold and her best friend is brutally injured, Alina reveals a dormant power that saves his life - a power that could be the key to setting her war-ravaged country free. Wrenched from everything she knows, Alina is whisked away to the royal court to be trained as a member of the Grisha, the magical elite led by the mysterious Darkling.

Yet nothing in this lavish world is what it seems. With darkness looming and an entire kingdom depending on her untamed power, Alina will have to confront the secrets of the Grisha, and the secrets of her heart.

Stands a Shadow

The Heart of the World: Book 2

Col Buchanan

Still grieving the death of her son, the Holy Matriarch of Mann has ordered her troops to embark on a mission to the Mercian Free Ports. Riding at the head of her army she plans to finally conquer the city of Bar-Khos, whose walls have kept them at bay for ten long years.

Ash has other plans for her. The old Roshun warrior is determined that he will have vengeance for the crimes she has committed. But such a course of retribution is in direct opposition to everything he has lived for – this isn't a Roshun vendetta – it's personal.

While Ash battles with his conscience, Ché, the Matriarch's personal Diplomat and assassin, is questioning his own path. Watching as the Mannian army slaughters their way across the world, he wonders whether he believes any of the doctrine he has been taught to follow.

As the battle for Bar-Khos intensifies, more and more lives are affected: Bahn who leaves all he loves in the city to try to protect it from the ravening Mannian empire, Bull the murderer who senses a chance to make things right, and Curl, the young prostitute who is determined to seek her own retribution on the field of battle.

When the two armies clash – all looks set to be decided. But it's not sheer force that will win this battle. But the tormented determination of one man seeking redemption...

Scorched Shadows

The Hellequin Chronicles: Book 7

Steve McHugh

In the final chapter of the Hellequin Chronicles, secrets will be revealed, friendships tested, and destinies fulfilled.

Avalon is under siege. A shadowy cabal, headed by a mysterious figure known only as "My Liege," has launched a series of deadly attacks across the globe, catching innocent human bystanders in the crossfire.

Emerging from the debris of battle, Nate Garrett, the sixteen-hundred-year-old sorcerer also called Hellequin, and his friends must stop My Liege once and for all. But powerful forces stand in their way. To save Avalon, they will need to enlist the help of Mordred, once Nate's greatest nemesis, now his most formidable ally. But Mordred is grappling with a dark prophecy that could spell Nate's doom...

The fate of the world hangs in the balance. Even if Nate can halt the war, will there be anything left worth saving?

The Return of the Shadow

The History of Middle-Earth: Book 6

In this sixth volume of The History of Middle-earth the story reaches The Lord of the Rings. In The Return of the Shadow (an abandoned title for the first volume) Christopher Tolkien describes, with full citation of the earliest notes, outline plans, and narrative drafts, the intricate evolution of The Fellowship of the Ring and the gradual emergence of the conceptions that transformed what J.R.R. Tolkien for long believed would be a far shorter book, 'a sequel to The Hobbit'.

The enlargement of Bilbo's 'magic ring' into the supremely potent and dangerous Ruling Ring of the Dark Lord is traced and the precise moment is seen when, in an astonishing and unforeseen leap in the earliest narrative, a Black Rider first rode into the Shire, his significance still unknown. The character of the hobbit called Trotter (afterwards Strider or Aragorn) is developed while his indentity remains an absolute puzzle, and the suspicion only very slowly becomes certainty that he must after all be a Man. The hobbits, Frodo's companions, undergo intricate permutations of name and personality, and other major figures appear in strange modes: a sinister Treebeard, in league with the Enemy, a ferocious and malevolent Farmer Maggot.

The story in this book ends at the point where J.R.R. Tolkien halted in the story for a long time, as the Company of the Ring, still lacking Legolas and Gimli, stood before the tomb of Balin in the Mines of Moria. The Return of the Shadow is illustrated with reproductions of the first maps and notable pages from the earliest manuscripts.

Shadows of Treachery

The Horus Heresy: Book 22

Christian Dunn
Nick Kyme

From the battlefields of Phall and Isstvan, to the haunted shadows of Terra itself - the greatest war in the history of mankind rages on. While the traitor Legions continue their campaign of terror across the galaxy, preparations are made for the defence of the Imperial Palace and the final, inevitable reckoning that must yet come between Horus and the Emperor...

This anthology spans the entire Horus Heresy, with short stories from Dan Abnett, Graham McNeill and Gav Thorpe, as well as two brand new novella-length tales. Learn the fate of Rogal Dorn's fleet originally sent to Isstvan III in 'The Crimson Fist' by John French, and descend deeper into the darkness of the Night Lords Legion in 'Prince of Crows' by Aaron Dembski-Bowden.

Shadow of the Exile

The Infernal Guardian: Book 1

Mitchell Hogan

Outcast and exiled, the demon Tarrik Nal-Valim has long been forgotten by the world of humans. At least, so he thinks.

But when he is summoned as a last resort by a desperate sorcerer, it seems as though his past has caught up with him. The sorcerer is Serenity "Ren" Branwen, the daughter of Tarrik's former master--and friend. Though she seems cold, driven, and ruthless, Tarrik can tell that Ren has her back against a wall, and he is compelled by ferocious powers to obey her.

As their world sinks into a terrifying maelstrom of murder, intrigue, and insurrection, Tarrik is forced to serve Ren's arcane designs--plans that, if they were to succeed, would resurrect unimaginable power and could destroy Tarrik's entire race.

But as events unfurl, the lines between demon and master become blurred, and Tarrik realizes that Ren is not what she seems. To prevent utter devastation, Tarrik may have to surrender what he values most: a chance at redemption and an end to his exile.

Shades in Shadow: An Inheritance Triptych

The Inheritance Trilogy

N. K. Jemisin

Three brand new short stories by Hugo, Nebula & World Fantasy Award-nominated author N.K. Jemisin, set in the world of The Inheritance Trilogy.

From the shadows of the greater stories, away from the bright light of Sky and wending 'round the sagas of the Arameri, come three quieter tales: A newborn god with an old, old soul struggles to find a reason to live. A powerful demon searches for her father, and answers. And in a prequel to The Inheritance Trilogy, a newly-enslaved Nahadoth forges a dark alliance with a mortal, for survival... and revenge.

"The Wild Boy" is a prequel, set in the early days of Nahadoth's confinement, and tells a story of his relationship with a mortal determined to avenge himself against those who enslaved him.

In "The God without a Name," a new god born from the body used by Nahadoth during his enslavement searches for his nature and for a reason to continue living.

And in "The Third Why," Glee Oree, demon daughter of Itempas, seeks out her father in the hopes that through him she will find answers to questions she scarcely knows how to ask.

Return to the world of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms in these three interconnected short tales.

The Serpent's Shadow

The Kane Chronicles: Book 3

Rick Riordan

He's b-a-a-ack! Despite their best efforts, Carter and Sadie Kane can't seem to keep Apophis, the chaos snake, down.

Now Apophis is threatening to plunge the world into eternal darkness, and the Kanes are faced with the impossible task of having to destroy him once and for all.

Unfortunately, the magicians of the House of Life are on the brink of civil war, the gods are divided, and the young initiates of Brooklyn House stand almost alone against the forces of chaos.

The Kanes' only hope is an ancient spell that might turn the serpent's own shadow into a weapon, but the magic has been lost for a millennia. To find the answer they need, the Kanes must rely on the murderous ghost of a powerful magician who might be able to lead them to the serpent's shadow... or might lead them to their deaths in the depths of the underworld.

Nothing less than the mortal world is at stake when the Kane family fulfills its destiny in this thrilling conclusion to the Kane Chronicles.

The Shadow of What Was Lost

The Licanius Trilogy: Book 1

James Islington

It has been twenty years since the god-like Augurs were overthrown and killed. Now, those who once served them - the Gifted - are spared only because they have accepted the rebellion's Four Tenets, vastly limiting their own powers.

As a young Gifted, Davian suffers the consequences of a war lost before he was even born. He and his friends are despised beyond their school walls for the magical power they wield: a power that Davian, despite his best efforts, cannot seem to control. Worse, with his final test approaching and the consequences of failure severe, time to overcome his struggles is fast running out.

But when Davian discovers he wields the forbidden power of the Augurs, he unwittingly sets in motion a chain of events that will change his life - and shake the entire world.

A Shadow in Summer

The Long Price Quartet: Book 1

Daniel Abraham

The powerful city-state of Saraykeht is a bastion of peace and culture, a major center of commerce and trade. Its economy depends on the power of the captive spirit, Seedless, an andat bound to the poet-sorcerer Heshai for life. Enter the Galts, a juggernaut of an empire committed to laying waste to all lands with their ferocious army. Saraykeht, though, has always been too strong for the Galts to attack, but now they see an opportunity. If they can dispose of Heshai, Seedless's bonded poet-sorcerer, Seedless will perish and the entire city will fall. With secret forces inside the city, the Galts prepare to enact their terrible plan.

In the middle is Otah, a simple laborer with a complex past. Recruited to act as a bodyguard for his girlfriend's boss at a secret meeting, he inadvertently learns of the Galtish plot. Otah finds himself as the sole hope of Saraykeht, either he stops the Galts, or the whole city and everyone in it perishes forever.

The Masks of Aygrima: Book 2

E. C. Blake

In Masks, Mara Holdfast's life changed forever. As the daughter of the Autarch's Master Maskmaker, she had a clearly defined future: a quiet, ordered life in the capital, making Masks with her father and doing work important to the ruling Autarch.

But when her Mask, specially made by her own father, cracked and fell to pieces during her Masking ceremony, Mara was exiled from everything she once knew.

Now she has become part of an underground rebellion, rejecting the unjust rules of a Masked society. She must try to understand her unprecedented ability to use all types of magic--and to tear magic from the living bodies of those around her. But Mara has yet to discover just how horrifying her power can be....

Shadowlands

The Mirror Prince: Book 2

Violette Malan

The war in the Land of the Faerie has finally ended. Prince Cassandra dispatches Stormwolf, formerly a Hound but cured by his prince's magic and restored to the Rider he once was, to the Shadowlands to call home the People who remain refugees there. But Stormwolf finds the Hounds of the Wild Hunt now prey upon the souls of the humans, draining them of the magic which is the very lifeblood of the People. With the help of Valory Martin, a mortal psychic, Stormwolf must find the magic needed to defeat the Hunt before it's too late.

Voyage of the Shadowmoon

The Moonworlds Saga: Book 1

Sean McMullen

Sean McMullen, one of Australia's leading genre writers, took America by storm with his sweeping Greatwinter Trilogy, a post-apocalyptic science fiction tour de force that won over critics and readers alike.

Now McMullen delivers Voyage of the Shadowmoon, a fantasy epic of daunting skill and scope. The Shadowmoon is a small, unobtrusive wooden schooner whose passengers and crew are much more than they seem: Ferran, the Shadowmoon's lusty captain who dreams of power; Roval, the warrior-sorcerer; Velander and Terikel, priestesses of a nearly extinct sect; and the chivalrous vampire Laron, who has been trapped in a fourteen-year-old body for seven hundred years.

They sail the coast, gathering useful information, passing as simple traders. But when they witness the awful power of Silverdeath, an uncontrollable doomsday weapon of awesome destructiveness, they realize they must act. But every single king, emperor, and despot covets Silverdeath's power. It will take all of their wits and more than a little luck if they hope to prevent one of these power-hungry fools from destroying the world. Their only advantage? The Shadowmoon.

While it seems to be little more that a small trading vessel--too small for battle, too fat for speed--it is actually one of the most sophisticated vessels in the world, one that allows them to travel to places where no others would dare. They can only hope it will be enough to save them all before Silverdeath rains destruction across their entire world.

The Crowded Shadows

The Moorehawke Trilogy: Book 2

Celine Kiernan

Every tyrant who ever threatened the Kingdom is gathering to Alberon's table, and the forest is alive with spies, wolves, and bandits. Within these crowded shadows, Protector Lady Wynter Moorehawke travels alone and unprotected, determined that she shall find the rebel prince and heal the rift that has come between the King and his legitimate heir. But who is an ally and who is a foe?

In this, the second volume of The Moorehawke Trilogy, old friends and even older enemies ensure that Wynter is never certain of who she can trust.

Shadowmind

The New Doctor Who Adventures: Book 16

Christopher Bulis

Arden. A planet of hills and streams and forests. Peaceful. Friendly.

"There is no indigenous intelligent life there." "What is there then?" the Doctor said. "It's a new colony world, Doctor. We started developing it three years ago."

But there is something on Arden. Something that steals minds and memories. Something that is growing stronger. Something that can reach out to the regional stellar capital, Tairngaire -- where the newest exhibit in the sculpture park is a blue box surmounted by a flashing light.

Falls the Shadow

The New Doctor Who Adventures: Book 32

Daniel O'Mahony

"We are deranged. We are psychopaths, sociopaths, up the garden path," said Tanith. "We are mad, and you are trapped with us."

The TARDIS is imprisoned in a house called Shadowfell, where a man is ready to commence the next phase of an experiment that will remake the world.

A stranger dressed in grey watches from a hillside, searching for the sinister powers growing within the house. A killer appears from the surrounding forest, determined to carry out her deadly instructions. In the cellar, something lingers, observing and influencing events, waiting to take on flesh and emerge. And trapped in alien darkness, the last survivor of a doomed race mourns for the lost planet Earth.

The Way of Shadows

The Night Angel Trilogy: Book 1

Brent Weeks

The perfect killer has no friends. Only targets.

For Durzo Blint, assassination is an art. And he is the city’s most accomplished artist, his talents required from alleyway to courtly boudoir.

For Azoth, survival is precarious. Something you never take for granted. As a guild rat, he’s grown up in the slums, and learned the hard way to judge people quickly - and to take risks. Risks like apprenticing himself to Durzo Blint.

But to be accepted, Azoth must turn his back on his old life and embrace a new identity and name. As Kylar Stern, he must learn to navigate the assassins’ world of dangerous politics and strange magics - and cultivate a flair for death.

Shadow's Edge

The Night Angel Trilogy: Book 2

Brent Weeks

Kylar Stern has rejected the assassin’s life. The Godking’s successful coup has left Kylar’s master, Durzo, and his best friend, Logan, dead. He is starting over: new city, new friends, and new profession.

But when he learns that Logan might actually be alive and in hiding, Kylar is faced with an agonizing choice: will he give up the way of shadows forever and live in peace with his new family, or will he risk everything by taking on the ultimate hit?

Beyond the Shadows

The Night Angel Trilogy: Book 3

Brent Weeks

Logan Gyre is king of Cenaria, a country under siege, with a threadbare army and little hope. He has one chance - a desperate gamble, but one that could destroy his kingdom.

In the north, the new Godking has a plan. If it comes to fruition, no one will have the power to stop him.

Kylar Stern has no choice. To save his friends-and perhaps his enemies-he must accomplish the impossible: assassinate a goddess.

The Shadow of Ararat

The Oath of Empire: Book 1

Thomas Harlan

In what would be A.D. 600 in our history, the Empire still stands, supported by the Legions and Thaumaturges of Rome. Now the Emperor of the West, the Augustus Galen Atreus, will come to the aid of the Emperor of the East, the Augustus Heraclius, to lift the siege of Constantinople and carry a great war to the very doorstep of the Shahanshah of Persia. It is a war that will be fought with armies both conventional and magical, with bright swords and the darkest necromancy.

Against this richly detailed canvas of alternate history and military strategy, Thomas Harlan sets the intricate and moving stories of four people. Dwyrin MacDonald is a Hibernian student at a school for sorcerers in Upper Egypt, until he runs afoul of powerful political interests and is sent off half-trained to the Legions. His teacher, Ahmet,undertakes to follow Dwyrin and aid him, but Ahmet is drawn into service with the queen of Palmeyra. Thyatis is a young female warrior, extensively trained by her patron in the arts of covert warfare. And Maxian Atreus is Galens youngest brother, a physician and sorcerer. He has discovered that an enemy of Rome has placed a dreadful curse on the City, which must be broken before Rome can triumph. Woven with rich detail you'd expect from a first-rate historical novel, while through it runs yarns of magic and shimmering glamours that carry you deeply into your most fantastic dreams

An Ambush of Shadows

The Pelbar Cycle: Book 5

Paul O. Williams

An Ambush of Shadows is the fifth book in the classic series of postapocalyptic novels about the people of Pelbar. Despite the tentative peace established in the eleven hundred years since the destruction of the United States, the Tantal tribe remains ready for battle. After their disastrous defeat by the Pelbar tribes at Northwall, the slaveholding Tantal have kept their distance. But since the Pelbar forces began moving northward to colonize the shores of the Bitter Sea, the Tantal forces have been on the attack.

Then one day, a roving tribe of Tantal warriors kidnaps a young girl during a raid on Pelbar explorers. The child is Raydi, daughter of Stel Westrun, Pelbar master craftsman, reinventor of the steamboat, and son of the leader of the Pelbar city-state Pelbarigan. Stel vows to reclaim his daughter and seek revenge, becoming the single-minded foe of all things Tantal.

The Shadow's Heir

The Risen Sun: Book 1

K. J. Taylor

Laela Redguard was born with the black hair of the Northern kingdom and the blue eyes of the Southern people, forever marking her as a hated half-breed child of both. When her only family tie is severed, the fierce and strong-willed Laela decides to leave her adoptive father's home in the hopes of finding acceptance in the North, where the ruthless King Arenadd and the dark griffin Skandar rule.

While Laela's Northern features allow her to blend into the crowds of the King's seat at Malvern, she cannot avoid falling victim to a pair of common thugs. When a stranger saves her life and gives her a place to stay, Laela is shocked to learn he is Arenadd himself--a man said to be a murderer who sold his soul to the Night God--the King without a heart.

Arenadd is unsure what compels him to help this girl, but there is something about her that seems familiar, something he cannot remember--something that may rise up to banish the darkness forever...

The Shadowed Throne

The Risen Sun: Book 2

K. J. Taylor

Arenadd Taranisäii, infamous leader of the Northern people, has vanished. Only his half-breed daughter Laela knows what happened to him. Left to rule her father's Kingdom, Laela is all that stands in the way of the war her cousin Saeddryn wants to declare. But Laela faces a far more dangerous enemy: the Night God herself wants Laela dead.

Faced by enemies on all sides, Laela must learn to rule, and survive, with her griffin partner Oeka by her side. As allies come from unexpected places, someone new will enter Laela's life: the mysterious shapeshifter Kullervo.

But soon the Night God will send the most dangerous enemy of all--the deadly Shadow That Walks, an invincible murderer created to fulfill only one mission: kill Laela.

The Shadow's Heart

The Risen Sun: Book 3

K. J. Taylor

Half-breed Queen Laela Taranisäii is in more danger than ever before. Her subjects hate her, her closest allies, including her griffin, have fallen, and, most worryingly, the Night God's immortal assassin, The Shadow That Walks, is bent upon reaping vengeance. As her enemies close in on all sides, her methods of maintaining power increase in desperation--and violence.

Laela's half-brother, Kullervo, is supposed to be her strongest ally. But as he comes to terms with both who he is and what his sister's reign means to the land, he begins to doubt his once strong loyalties. With the conflict drawing to its bloody close, he must decide what he's truly prepared to fight for, a choice that could have dire consequences for all he once held dear.

Meanwhile, a new threat is lurking in the darkness, the Night God's final, deadly pawn. It is this shadow that will decide the outcome of the war--and its power that will seal the fates of all involved...

The Moon's Shadow

The Saga of the Skolian Empire: Book 8

Catherine Asaro

At the age of seventeen the young nobleman named Jaibriol Qox became ruler of a vast galactic empire - and lost everything he had ever valued.

Born of a clandestine liaison between a renegade daughter of the Skolian Imperialate and a scion of the genetically engineered Eubian Traders, Jai Qox grew up in exile, unaware of the powers that coursed through his noble blood. In the waning days of the bloody Radiance War, which ravaged the galaxy, Jai was captured, and returned to the Traders to play a role as a puppet Emperor in their scheme to consolidate their domination of space.

Now Jai must walk a razor's edge, to seize the power that is his by birthright, without succumbing to its dark seduction, in order to avert a conflagration which threatens to engulf a thousand worlds.

Elminster Must Die!

The Sage of Shadowdale: Book 1

Elminster Returns!

Elminster Must Die is the debut 4th edition appearance of one of the Forgotten Realms® world's most iconic characters, written by the creator of the original Forgotten Realms campaign setting. An instant classic, and a must-read for every Realms fan.

When the goddess of magic was murdered, Elminster's world shattered. Once the most powerful wizard in the world, immortal, beloved of the goddess of magic, and the bane of villainy, he is now a tired old man. He is powerful but mortal, and with all the enemies a man who makes a habit of saving the world tends to accumulate. To make matters worse, Elminster has needs--feeding powerful magic items to the Simbul, his lover, is the only thing that keeps her sane--but their increasingly risky collection leads his enemies right to him.

Bury Elminster Deep

The Sage of Shadowdale: Book 2

Elminster's archenemy, the vampiric Lord Manshoon, thinks he has destroyed Elminster at last. But Elminster survives in the form of magical ash, and with the help of his scion, a fop who is growing into a true nobleman, and his longtime companion Storm, he still has a chance to counter Manshoon's insidious plots.

Elminster Enraged

The Sage of Shadowdale: Book 3

Commanded by the vestige of Mystra to work together, Manshoon and Elminster engage instead in a ferocious battle that sends the Sage plummeting into the Underdark as a cloud of ashes. Elminster soon inhabits the body of a fallen dark elf, so that he can begin carrying out Mystra's orders to rally Cormyr's Wizards of War, seek blueflame items to mend immense rifts throughout the realms that are releasing deadly monsters, and prevent the ancient Primordials from rising and unleashing their rage. But his sworn archenemy, Manshoon, has plans as well: to conquer Cormyr and be the new Emperor, and hunt down the Sage's clones. The battles are fierce, the stakes have never been higher, and the fate of Cormyr is on the line. Meanwhile, War Wizards are being mysteriously assassinated...

Shadow of the Ancients

The Secret of Ji: Book 3

Pierre Grimbert

From Romine's Deep Tower to the Grand Temple in Ithare, from the Murky Mountains to the Warrior's Vale, the heirs continue their desperate quest--whose outcome will decide the fate of the Upper Kingdoms. Will they have to recklessly desecrate one of the gods' most jealously guarded secrets? Every discovery condemns them.

Armies gather, conspirators reveal themselves, schemes are unveiled. The heirs' time is short.

Unraveling the mysteries of Nol and the emissaries will bring the heirs behind the Curtain, deep into the Eastern Kingdoms. Only there, if they can survive the most dangerous of the guardians, will they find what really hides in the shadow of the ancients.

Hunting the Shadows

The Selected Stories of Tanith Lee: Book 2

Tanith Lee

Volume two of the magical short story collection by Nebula and World Fantasy Award winner Tanith Lee, author of The Silver Metal Lover and The Birthgrave. "Gothic poetess, comic young-adult author, robust adventure-fantasy novelist: Tanith Lee has more writing personas than Sybil. But in her short fiction, all these aspects come gloriously together. Such stories as 'Antonius Bequeathed' or 'The Persecution Machine,' with their death-defying mixture of prose poetry, genre trope reversals and ominous wit, could be written by no one else." - WEIRD TALES magazine Stories include: "The Woman in Scarlet," "One For Sorrow," "Unlocking the Golden Cage," "Antonius Bequeathed," "Doll Skulls," "Queens in Crimson," "Flower Water," "The Persecution Machine," "All the Birds of Hell," "Vermilia."

Table of Content

The Woman in Scarlet - (2000) - shortstory
Zelle's Thursday - (1989) - shortstory
Unlocking the Golden Cage - (1999) - shortstory
The Eye in the Heart - (2000) - shortstory
Vermilia - (1999) - shortstory
Flower Water - (1998) - shortstory
Doll Skulls - (1996) - novelette
Queens in Crimson - shortfiction
All the Birds of Hell - (1998) - novelette
The Persecution Machine - (1994) - shortstory
Antonius Bequeathed - (1993) - shortstory
One for Sorrow - (1994) - novelette

Shadow of a Dark Queen

The Serpentwar Saga: Book 1

A dread darkness is descending upon a great land called Midkemia -- a powerful and malevolent race of monsters that has slipped through a hole in the dimensions. And two unlikely young heroes -- a bastard heir denied his birthright and an irrepressible scoundrel with a penchant for thievery -- must take up arms in the struggle to protect their besieged world...two friends chosen by Destiny to stand at the fore of the battle that is to come against the gargantuan reptile army of the terrible Emerald Queen.

Wake of Vultures

The Shadow: Book 1

A rich, dark fantasy of destiny, death and the supernatural world hiding beneath the surface.

Nettie Lonesome lives in a land of hard people and hard ground dusted with sand. She's a half-breed who dresses like a boy, raised by folks who don't call her a slave but use her like one. She knows of nothing else. That is, until the day a stranger attacks her. When nothing, not even a sickle to the eye can stop him, Nettie stabs him through the heart with a chunk of wood and he turns to black sand.

And just like that, Nettie can see.

But her newfound sight is a blessing and a curse. Even if she doesn't understand what's under her own skin, she can sense what everyone else is hiding - at least physically. The world is full of evil, and now she knows the source of all the sand in the desert. Haunted by the spirits, Nettie has no choice but to set out on a quest that might lead her to find her true kin... if the monsters along the way don't kill her first.

Conspiracy of Ravens

The Shadow: Book 2

Nettie Lonesome made a leap -- not knowing what she'd become. But now her destiny as the Shadow is calling.

A powerful alchemist is leaving a trail of dead across the prairie. And Nettie must face the ultimate challenge: side with her friends and the badge on her chest or take off alone on a dangerous mission that is pulling her inexorably toward the fight of her life.

When it comes to monsters and men, the world isn't black and white. What good are two wings and a gun when your enemy can command a conspiracy of ravens?

Malice of Crows

The Shadow: Book 3

The Ranger known as Rhett has shut down a terrible enterprise running on the blood of magical folk, but failed to catch the dark alchemist behind it. And now the Shadow refuses to let him rest.

Rhett must make the ultimate transformation if he has any hope of stopping the alchemist or fulfilling his destiny; he must become the leader of a new Rangers outpost.

To save his friends, and the lives of countless others, he'll first have to lead them on a mission more dangerous than anything they've ever faced.

Treason of Hawks

The Shadow: Book 4

The conclusion to Lila Bowen's widely-acclaimed dark fantasy series, which New York Times bestselling author Kevin Hearne described as 'thrilling, delightfully written, and important.'

Rhett Walker is looking for peace, the memories of all he's lost haunting his dreams. And now the Shadow tugs him West, back to where his journey began.

With the lawless Rangers on his heels and monster attacks surging, Rhett is surrounded on all sides. This time it's not all about horses and land. This time, it feels personal. Because the newest monster on the horizon just may be wearing the face of someone from Rhett's past.

To save the Durango territory, Rhett must accept the Shadow's call and fulfill his destiny.

The Thousand Names

The Shadow Campaigns: Book 1

With this stunning series opener, Django Wexler leaps to the upper echelon of today's best fantasy authors. The Thousand Names opens his Shadow Campaigns series with a tale of bloody rebellion that will reshape an empire -- and a world. Captain Marcus d'Ivoire and Winter Ihernglass see their fortunes rise under the command of military genius Janus bet Vhalnich. But Janus' obsession with the supernatural portends a dire fate for the realm.

The Shadow Throne

The Shadow Campaigns: Book 2

Anyone can plot a coup or fire an assassin's bullet. But in a world of muskets and magic, it takes considerably more to seize the throne. The ailing King of the Vordan lies on his deathbed. When he dies, his daughter, Raesinia Orboan, will become the first Queen Regnant in centuries - and a ripe target for the ambitious men who seek to control her. The most dangerous of these is Duke Orlanko, Minister of Information and master of the secret police. Having meticulously silenced his adversaries through intimidation, imprisonment, and execution, Orlanko is the most feared man in the kingdom. And he knows an arcane secret that puts Raesinia completely at his mercy.

Exposure would mean ruin, but Raesinia is determined to find a way to break herself - and her country - out of Orlanko' s iron grip. She finds unlikely allies in the returning war hero Janus bet Vhalnich, fresh from a brilliant campaign in the colony of Khandar, and his loyal deputies, Captain Marcus d' Ivoire and Lieutenant Winter Ihernglass. As Marcus and Winter struggle to find their places in the home they never thought they would see again, they help Janus and Raesinia set in motion events that could free Vordan from Orlanko' s influence - at the price of throwing the nation into chaos. But with the people suffering under the Duke' s tyranny, they intend to protect the kingdom with every power they can command, earthly or otherwise.

The Price of Valor

The Shadow Campaigns: Book 3

In the wake of the King's death, war has come to Vordan.

The Deputies-General has precarious control of the city, but it is led by a zealot who sees traitors in every shadow. Executions have become a grim public spectacle. The new queen, Raesinia Orboan, finds herself nearly powerless as the government tightens its grip and assassins threaten her life. But she did not help free the country from one sort of tyranny to see it fall into another. Placing her trust with the steadfast soldier Marcus D'Ivoire, she sets out to turn the tide of history.

As the hidden hand of the Sworn Church brings all the powers of the continent to war against Vordan, the enigmatic and brilliant general Janus bet Vhalnich offers a path to victory. Winter Ihernglass, newly promoted to command a regiment, has reunited with her lover and her friends, only to face the prospect of leading them into bloody battle.

And the enemy is not just armed with muskets and cannon. Dark priests of an ancient order, wielding forbidden magic, have infiltrated Vordan to stop Janus by whatever means necessary...

The Guns of Empire

The Shadow Campaigns: Book 4

As the "audacious and subversive"* Shadow Campaigns novels continue, the weather is growing warmer, but the frosty threat of Vordan's enemies is only growing worse...

As the roar of the guns subsides and the smoke of battle clears, the country of Vordan is offered a fragile peace...

After their shattering defeats at the hands of brilliant General Janus bet Vhalnich, the opposing powers have called all sides to the negotiating table in hopes of securing an end to the war. Queen Raesinia of Vordan is anxious to see the return of peace, but Janus insists that any peace with the implacable Sworn Church of Elysium is doomed to fail. For their Priests of the Black, there can be no truce with heretics and demons they seek to destroy, and the war is to the death.

Soldiers Marcus d'Ivoire and Winter Ihernglass find themselves caught between their general and their queen. Now, each must decide which leader truly commands their loyalty--and what price they might pay for final victory.

And in the depths of Elysium, a malign force is rising--and defeating it might mean making sacrifices beyond anything they have ever imagined.

The Infernal Battalion

The Shadow Campaigns: Book 5

A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians

The Beast, the ancient demon imprisoned beneath the fortress-city of Elysium for a thousand years, has been loosed on the world. It absorbs mind after mind, spreading like a plague through the north. The fell army it has raised threatens the heart of Vordan, and it is under the command of the Beast's greatest prize: legendary general Janus bet Vhalnich.

As Queen Raesinia Orboan and soldiers Marcus D'Ivoire and Winter Ihernglass grapple with the aftermath of a hard-fought military campaign, they soon discover a betrayal they never could have foreseen. The news arrives like a thunderbolt: Janus has declared himself the rightful Emperor of Vordan. Chaos grips the city as officers and regiments are forced to declare for queen or emperor.

Raesinia must struggle to keep her country under control and risks becoming everything she fought against. Marcus must take the field against his old commander, a man who has seemed an unbeatable strategist. And as Winter recovers from her injuries and mourns her losses, she knows the demon she carries inside her might be the only thing standing between the Beast and the destruction of everything in its path....

The Shadow Histories: Book 1

H. G. Parry

A sweeping tale of revolution and wonder in a world not quite like our own, A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians is a genre-defying story of magic, war, and the struggle for freedom in the early modern world.

It is the Age of Enlightenment -- of new and magical political movements, from the necromancer Robespierre calling for revolution in France, to the weather mage Toussaint L'Ouverture leading the slaves of Haiti in their fight for freedom, to the bold new Prime Minister William Pitt weighing the legalization of magic amongst commoners in Britain and abolition throughout its colonies overseas.

But amidst all of the upheaval of the early modern world, there is an unknown force inciting all of human civilization into violent conflict. And it will require the combined efforts of revolutionaries, magicians, and abolitionists to unmask this hidden enemy before the whole world falls to darkness and chaos.

A Radical Act of Free Magic

The Shadow Histories: Book 2

H. G. Parry

A sweeping tale of revolution and wonder in a world not quite like our own, A Radical Act of Free Magic is the conclusion to this genre-defying series of magic, war, and the struggle for freedom in the early modern world.

The Concord has been broken, and a war of magic engulfs the world.

In France, the brilliant tactician Napoléon Bonaparte has risen to power, and under his command, the army of the dead has all but conquered Europe. Britain fights back, but Wilberforce's own battle to bring about free magic and abolition has met a dead end in the face of an increasingly repressive government. In Saint-Domingue, Fina aids Toussaint Louverture as he navigates these opposing forces to liberate the country.

But there is another, even darker war being fought beneath the surface: the first vampire war in hundreds of years. The enemy blood magician who orchestrated Robespierre's downfall is using the French Revolutionary Wars to bring about a return to dark magic. Across the world, only a few know of his existence, and the choices they make will shape the new age of magic.

The Shadow Master

The Shadow Master: Book 1

Craig Cormick

In a land riven with plague, in the infamous Walled City, two families vie for control - the Medicis with their genius inventor Leonardo; the Lorraines with Galileo, the most brilliant alchemist of his generation.

And when two star-crossed lovers, one from either house, threaten the status quo, a third, shadowy power - one that forever seems a step ahead of all of the familial warring - plots and schemes, and bides its time, ready for the moment to attack...

The Floating City

The Shadow Master: Book 2

Craig Cormick

In a land riven with plague, inside the infamous Walled City, two families vie for control: the Medicis with their genius inventor Leonardo; the Lorraines with Galileo, the most brilliant alchemist of his generation.

Assassination; ancient, impossible machines; torture and infamy - just another typical day in paradise.

Of Saints and Shadows

The Shadow Saga: Book 1

Angel Souls and Devil Hearts

A secret sect of the Catholic Church, armed with an ancient book of the undead called The Gospel of Shadows, has been slowly destroying vampires for centuries. Now the book has been stolen, and the sect races to retrieve it before their purpose is discovered: a final purge of all vampires. As the line between saints and shadows grows ominously faint, private eye Peter Octavian is drawn into the search. And he'll do anything to find the book... for Peter Octavian is also a vampire.

Ostracized by his kindred for refusing to take part in the 'blood song', he cannot stand by and watch while they are destroyed. In a deadly game with a driven, sadistic assassin, the trail leads to Venice at the time of carnival, where the Defiant Ones, as the vampires are known, are engaged in a savage battle for their lives. Filled with plot twists, mystery, sex and violent death, Of Saints and Shadows is a spine-tingling thriller which opens the door to the world of The Shadow Saga.

The Shadow Saga: Book 2

In the second book of The Shadow Saga the Shadows have been exposed as living amongst us and the ancient vampiric race now finds itself threatened by the most powerful demon of all: human prejudice. In a world where the good are no longer distinguishable from the bad and where Shadows are indeed the saints, a holy war is about to begin, pitting humans and vampires together against the dark forces of Hell.

And as they fight for their survival in the face of a betrayal by one of their own, the Shadows begin to discover at last the astonishing, long-hidden truth of what they are. What they will learn about their mysterious origins is more extraordinary -- and more explosive -- than they could possibly have imagined.

Of Masques and Martyrs

The Shadow Saga: Book 3

For the Shadows, nothing can ever be the same again. Their existence revealed to the world in Of Saints and Shadows, the truth of their divided heritage revealed to themselves in Angel Souls and Devil Hearts, they must now fight the hardest battle of all -- against others of their own kind. The fragile alliance of human and vampire was shattered forever by Hannibal, among the most ancient of Shadows, who turned on them both in their hour of greatest need. Driven by blood, he thirsts for dominion, and humankind to him will always be prey.

For those Shadows who walk a different path there is only one choice to be made. Hannibal must be destroyed before he destroys them all. But his followers are many, and those who oppose him are few...

The Gathering Dark

The Shadow Saga: Book 4

The Gospel of Shadows enabled the Catholic Church to control all manner of supernatural beings for centuries. When the book was destroyed -- and the ruling body of the Church with it -- it enabled the Shadows, the vampires of legend, to learn the hidden truth of their triple nature: part human, part demonic, part divine. But it also weakened the barriers that exist between the worlds, and now beings of pure evil are breaking through -- creatures from other dimensions for which Hell is just a name.

Peter Octavian, once a powerful Shadow, now restored to humanity, is the only man with sufficient knowledge to stop them. Aided by a earthwitch, a vampire and a priest, and calling on the magical forces of mother nature herself, Octavian stands between the Earth and apocalypse, as entire cities are plunged into the abyss...

Waking Nightmares

The Shadow Saga: Book 5

When chaos erupts in the small coastal town of Hawthorne, Massachusetts, former vampire-turned-mage Peter Octavian and earthwitch Keomany Shaw arrive to investigate. Years ago, Octavian helped expose the secret existence of vampires to the world, dismantling the Vatican's sorcery corps in order to save his fellow shadows from destruction.

But without the Vatican sorcerers, the magical barriers they spent centuries constructing to keep the forces of darkness out of our world are beginning to fail, and things are slipping through. Now an ancient god of chaos is awakening in Hawthorne, its influence spreading... and it's Octavian's fault. If he can't stop it, the blood of all human kind will be on his hands.

The Graves of Saints

The Shadow Saga: Book 6

For centuries, Vatican sorcerers kept demons and monsters out of our world with the magic found in a grimoire called The Gospel of Shadows. Years ago, to save his people from madmen, Peter Octavian defeated those sorcerers and the Gospel of Shadows itself was banished from the Earth. Ever since, the evils and monstrosities lurking in parallel worlds have been waking to the realization that our magical defences are down - the barriers keeping them out of our world are crumbling. With massive demonic incursions in locations around the world, Octavian should be focused on using his own sorcery to drive the evil out and rebuild our defences.

But a renegade vampire named Cortez has murdered the person Octavian loves the most and, even with his friends and allies around him, he is so lost in grief that he can think of nothing but revenge. There are others who can fight the darkness - mages and Shadows, witches and Reapers and vampire samurai - but only the warrior-mage, Peter Octavian, can defeat it. If he will answer the call.

King of Hell

The Shadow Saga: Book 7

Jacks and Queens at the Green Mill

Peter Octavian's powerful sorcery guards his world against evil. Now he must go on a perilous journey to save those condemned to a fate worse than death itself... When Octavian called upon Gaea to rid the Earth of demons, her magic banished not only the demons but also the Shadows - vampires who had foresworn evil and fought alongside him, some for many years.

Together with two unlikely companions - a wise-cracking goblin with the ability to walk the paths between worlds, and a demon changeling struggling to come to terms with what he is - Octavian sets out on what seems to be an impossible mission: to free his friends from Hell. There he finds some unexpected figures from his past - and an enemy of his own making, driven by an implacable hatred, whose power is equal to his own and whose quest for vengeance is personal...

The Shadow Society

Marie Rutkoski

Few know that the Great Chicago Fire was started deliberately, as a genocide of deadly creatures called Shades. Fewer still know that they didn't die, not quite... but one human will confront the truth when an ominous beauty makes him gamble for his life.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

The Shadow Society

Marie Rutkoski

Darcy Jones doesn't remember anything before the day she was abandoned as a child outside a Chicago firehouse. She has never really belonged anywhere--but she couldn't have guessed that she comes from an alternate world where the Great Chicago Fire didn't happen and deadly creatures called Shades terrorize the human population.

Memories begin to haunt Darcy when a new boy arrives at her high school, and he makes her feel both desire and desired in a way she hadn't thought possible. But Conn's interest in her is confusing. It doesn't line up with the way he first looked at her.

As if she were his enemy.

When Conn betrays Darcy, she realizes that she can't rely on anything--not herself, not the laws of nature, and certainly not him. Darcy decides to infiltrate the Shadow Society and uncover the Shades' latest terrorist plot. What she finds out will change her world forever...

In this smart, compulsively readable novel, master storyteller Marie Rutkoski has crafted an utterly original world, characters you won't soon forget, and a tale full of intrigue and suspense.

The Heart of Myrial

The Shadowleague: Book 1

Maggie Furey

The world of Myrial is racing toward apocalypse. For aeons, its mysterious Curtain Walls have functioned to separate realm from realm, and race from race, so that each cordoned area remains a sanctuary for its species. But now the miraculous walls that have provided order for so long are disintegrating with disastrous results.

Mingling climates are causing unrelenting rains or deadly droughts, while warlike races are preying mercilessly on the helpless and meek. And the carnage will only grow worse unless a seasoned woman-warrior, a brazen firedrake, and a venerable Dragon with amazing telepathic powers--all trusted members of the Shadowleague--succeed where everyone else has failed. For they must first locate the heart of Myrial, where the secret for undoing this disaster resides. In order to reach their goal, however, they must overcome treachery, intrigue, and evil--and a mysterious figure from the past whose actions threaten to tear the Shadowleague apart.

Spirit of the Stone

The Shadowleague: Book 2

Maggie Furey

On the world of Myrial, the mysterious Curtain Walls have begun to fall and the realms and races that have been carefully separated from the beginning of time are now confronting each other, with terrible consequences. Hideous winged creatures have attacked the city of Tiarond, turning its streets and public squares into a killing ground. As bewildered groups of survivors flee the city in all directions, others make the treacherous journey to the sacred Temple, where the ancient power that can save the world lies hidden.

Meanwhile, two women warriors and a brazen firedrake journey to the realm of the Shadowleague, taking with them a Dragon Seer's telepathic knowledge that might be used to repair the Curtain Walls. Yet not even that will be enough. For before the Shadowleague can act to save a rapidly unraveling reality, it must decide if it will trust a ruthless exile with a bloody past who can bring order to Myrial--or hasten its harrowing descent into annihilation.

Echo of Eternity

The Shadowleague: Book 3

Maggie Furey

The Curtain Walls have fallen--leaving the world of Myrial vulnerable to unknown enemies from other realms. A slaughter by brutal winged invaders has left the city of Tiarond reeling, and the laws governing reality itself no longer seem to hold. Under the rule of a renegade leader, the Shadowleague slowly gathers itself together from its tattered remnants and braces for a devastating attack meant to shatter it forever. Missing is a ring, the symbol of Myrial's divine power--and a reminder to its new ruler of the part he played in the collapse of the Curtain Walls. It must be found before his secret is discovered.

Missing also is the one man whose mind holds the Dragon Seer's knowledge of all tribal memories. Two warriors and a firedrake embark on an urgent mission to find him--before the Dragons do.

When all hope seems lost, a young boy points the way to an amazing discovery. Caverns beneath Tiarond hold ancient artifacts that just might be the key they're all searching for--but which they may be sorry they've found...

Shadowshaper

The Shadowshaper Cypher: Book 1

Daniel José Older

Paint a mural. Start a battle. Change the world.

Sierra Santiago planned an easy summer of making art and hanging out with her friends. But then a corpse crashes the first party of the season. Her stroke-ridden grandfather starts apologizing over and over. And when the murals in her neighborhood begin to weep real tears... Well, something more sinister than the usual Brooklyn ruckus is going on.

With the help of a fellow artist named Robbie, Sierra discovers shadowshaping, a thrilling magic that infuses ancestral spirits into paintings, music, and stories. But someone is killing the shadowshapers one by one -- and the killer believes Sierra is hiding their greatest secret. Now she must unravel her family's past, take down the killer in the present, and save the future of shadowshaping for generations to come.

Full of a joyful, defiant spirit and writing as luscious as a Brooklyn summer night, Shadowshaper introduces a heroine and magic unlike anything else in fantasy fiction, and marks the YA debut of a bold new voice.

Shadowhouse Fall

The Shadowshaper Cypher: Book 2

Daniel José Older

Sierra and her friends love their new lives as shadowshapers, making art and creating change with the spirits of Brooklyn. Then Sierra receives a strange card depicting a beast called the Hound of Light -- an image from the enigmatic, influential Deck of Worlds. The shadowshapers know their next battle has arrived.

Thrust into an ancient struggle with enemies old and new, Sierra and Shadowhouse are determined to win. Revolution is brewing in the real world as well, as the shadowshapers lead the fight against systems that oppress their community. To protect her family and friends in every sphere, Sierra must take down the Hound and master the Deck of Worlds... or risk losing them all.

Shadowshaper Legacy

The Shadowshaper Cypher: Book 3

Daniel José Older

A house divided

Sierra and the shadowshapers have been split apart. Juan, Anthony, and Izzy are in jail, anxiously waiting to find out what will become of them. Back in Brooklyn, the other shadowshapers have been getting threatening messages from whisper wraiths, catching strangely shaped figures stalking them, and fending off random spirits. A war is brewing among the houses, and the very magic of the shadowshapers is at stake.

The fate of the worlds

Sierra is determined to protect her own in the coming conflict, even if that means keeping secrets from them. But a deal with Death by one of Sierra's ancestors has far-reaching consequences in the battles of the present, and as old fates tangle with new powers, Sierra will have to harness the Deck of Worlds and confront her family's past if she has any hope of saving the future and everyone she loves. Only doing so will mean following the magic to places the shadowshapers have never gone before... and may never return from.

The Scent of Shadows

The Signs of the Zodiac: Book 1

Vicki Pettersson

When she was sixteen, Joanna Archer was brutally assaulted and left to die in the Nevada desert.

By rights, she should be dead.

Now a photographer by day, she prowls a different Las Vegas after sunset - a grim, secret Sin City where Light battles Shadow - seeking answers to whom or what she really is... and revenge for the horrors she was forced to endure.

But the nightmare is just beginning - for the demons are hunting Joanna, and the powerful Shadows want her for their own...

The Shadow of His Wings

The Six Kingdoms: Book 1

Bruce Fergusson

In The Shadow of His Wings, a miner's son, Lukan Barra, joins forces with the beautiful and unpredictable Rui Ravenstone, his brother's former lover, in an attempt to be the first to reach the lair of the Erseiyr, the god and monster whose great wings shadow the future of the land, and whose fate becomes linked with Lukan's in a strange and wonderful bonding.

The first book in the Six Kingdoms series, The Shadow of His Wings is set at the end of the first millennium in Myrcia. The novel opens with the estrangement of Lukan from his criminal brother, Vearus, who returns from exile with the secret of healing and transformation of the flesh that gains him power second only to Myrcia's despotic ruler, the Sanctor Grouin.

An invading army from Skarria is threatening the capitol city of Castlecliff and Lukan is press-ganged into military service, barely surviving the battle of Dawn Horse Hill which only temporarily halts the Skarrian onslaught.

Grouin declares the throne open to anyone who can secure the intervention of the fabled Erseiyr--the immortal winged creature worshipped and feared by Myrcians--who lives in a mountaintop cavern filled with tribute of ages past. Lukan, thrown unjustly into prison after the battle and then mysteriously released, resolves to claim the prize of the throne.

Donn's Shadow

The Soul Searchers Mysteries: Book 2

Caryn Larrinaga

Return to the most haunted town in America...

Mackenzie Clair finally has this whole ghost-hunting psychic thing figured out. The Soul Searchers are a hit, she's got pet-parenting down, and she even has a plan to banish the poltergeist running amok at a lakeside cabin. Best of all, Donn's Hill feels like home. But not everyone loves the town as much as Mac.

A world-famous paranormal debunker thinks the psychics in Donn's Hill are lying about their abilities. His determination to destroy the Soul Searchers threatens Mac's livelihood, and when a killer strikes, the sheriff's suspicions threaten her freedom.

Mac needs all the help she can get to find the real murderer and clear her name... even if that help comes from beyond the grave.

Shroud of Shadow

The Strands: Book 3

Gael Baudino

The lone elf survivor in the repressive age of The Inquisition, Natil encounters three things that keep her from departing this world--a young woman hearing voices, a vision of the future, and an Inquisitor.

Lord of Snow and Shadows

The Tears of Artamon: Book 1

Sarah Ash

Three kingdoms. One man.
A destiny written in blood.
An epic new fantasy series begins...

Seemingly always the outsider, Gavril Andar - an impoverished young painter - yearns to join the privileged circles of Muscobar polite society. However, unbeknownst to him, he does have royal blood in his veins: the dark and powerful blood of a father he never knew - the Drakhaon, ruler of the isolated northern kingdom of Azhkendir. And when the Drakhaon is brutally murdered, an unwilling Gavril is forced to take up the mantle of both his father's rule - and his power. For blood will out. And the Drakhaon's carries within it a taint that gives its bearer access to awesome, unimagined magics - but at a soul-shattering price.

Now trapped in this bleak, mist-shrouded land full of superstition and racked by bitter rivalries, Gavril faces an awesome task. He must find his father's killer and unite his fractured kingdom against those who see it as weak, defenceless and ripe for invasion before he pays the price of kinship and succumbs to the dread curse that uncoils within him...

Richly imagined, full of intrigue, magic and dark romance and boasting a cast of superbly-drawn players, LORD OF SNOW AND SHADOWS is the first book in a thrilling new trilogy and marks the triumphant return of one of fantasy's most original and exciting voices.

Sea of Shadow

The Twelve Kingdoms: Book 1

Fuyumi Ono

For high-schooler Yoko Nakajima, life has been fairly ordinary--that is until Keiki, a young man with golden hair, tells Yoko they must return to their kingdom. Once confronted by this mysterious being and whisked away to an unearthly realm, Yoko is left with only a magical sword; a gem; and a million questions about her destiny, the world she's trapped in, and the world she desperately wants to return to. More than just a fantasy story filled with horrific monsters, half-beasts, and magicians, The Twelve Kingdoms centers around a world reminiscent of Chinese mythology and rife with civil and political upheaval.

A Sleight of Shadows

The Unseen World: Book 2

Kat Howard

After taking down the source of the corruption of the Unseen World, Sydney is left with almost no magical ability. Feeling estranged from herself, she is determined to find a way back to her status as one of the world's most dangerous magicians. Unfortunately, she needs to do this quickly: the House of Shadows, the hell on earth that shaped her into who she was, the place she sacrificed everything to destroy, is rebuilding itself.

"The House of shadows sits on bones. All of the sacrifices, all of the magicians who died in Shadows, they're buried beneath the foundations. Bones hold magic."

The magic of the Unseen World is acting strangely, faltering, bleeding out from the edges. Determined to keep the House of Shadows from returning to power and to defeat the magicians who want nothing more than to have it back, Sydney turns to extremes in a desperate attempt to regain her sacrificed magic. She is forced to decide what she will give up and what she will lose and whether what must be destroyed is not only the House of Shadows, but the Unseen World itself.

World Fantasy Award finalist Kat Howard has written a sequel that asks how you have a happily ever in a world that doesn't want it, where the cost of that happiness may be too much to bear.

The Curse of the Mistwraith

The Wars of Light and Shadow Arc I: Book 1

The stunning first volume in Janny Wurts's epic tale of two half-brothers cursed to life-long enmity, now re-released with a striking new cover.

The world of Athera lives in eternal fog, its skies obscured by the malevolent Mistwraith. Only the combined powers of two half-brothers can challenge the Mistwraith's stranglehold: Arithon, Master of Shadow and Lysaer, Lord of Light.

Arithon and Lysaer will find that they are inescapably bound inside a pattern of events dictated by their own deepest convictions. Yet there is more at stake than one battle with the Mistwraith – as the sorcerers of the Fellowship of Seven know well. For between them the half-brothers hold the balance of the world, its harmony and its future, in their hands.

Ships of Merior

The Wars of Light and Shadow Arc II: Ships of Merior: Book 1

The half-brothers Arithon, Master of Shadow, and Lysaer, Lord of Light, have defeated the Mistwraith and dispersed the fogs that smothered Athera's skies. But their victory comes at a high price: the Mistwraith has set them at odds under a powerful curse of vengeance. The two princes are locked in deadly enmity, with the fates of nations and the balance of the world's mystical powers entangled in their feud. Arithon, forced out of hiding, finds himself hounded by Lysaer and his mighty army. He must take to his natural element - the seas - in order to evade pursuit and steal the initiative. However, his efforts are impeded by outside magical factions, not to mention a drunken prophet sent to safeguard his life, but who seems determined to wreck his cause by misadventure.

Warhost of Vastmark

The Wars of Light and Shadow Arc II: Ships of Merior: Book 2

Tricked once more by his wily half-brother, Lysaer, Lord of Light, arrives at the tiny harbor town of Merior to find that Arithon's ship yards have been abandoned and meticulously destroyed, and that the Master of Shadow has disappeared as if into thin air. Meanwhile Arithon and the Mad Prophet Dakar are traveling on foot through the treacherous Kelhorn Mountains towards the Vastmark clans, there to raise further support for his cause. But raising a warhost is a costly business. Is it mere coincidence that Princess Talith - Lysaer's beautiful, headstrong wife - is taken captive and held for a vast ransom by a master brigand? The forces of light and shadow circle and feint, drawing ever closer to a huge conflict. And in the background the Fellowship of Seven Sorcerers and the Koriani Enchantresses watch and plan, and wait.

Fugitive Prince

The Wars of Light and Shadow Arc III: Alliance of Light: Book 1

Half brothers Lysaer, the Prince of the Light, and Arithon, the Master of Shadow, engage in violent conflict in the wake of the Vastmark Warhost's destruction and the strategies of the Koriani Enchantresses.

Grand Conspiracy

The Wars of Light and Shadow Arc III: Alliance of Light: Book 2

Where there is light, there must always be shadow… The fifth volume in Janny Wurts's spectacular epic fantasy, now re-released with a striking new cover design along with the rest of the series.

The wars began when two half-brothers, gifted of light and shadow, stood shoulder to shoulder to defeat the Mistwraith. Their foe cast a lifelong curse of enmity between them that has so far woven three bitter conflicts and uncounted deadly intrigues.

It is a time of political upheavel, fanaticism and rampaging armies. Distrust of sorcery has set off a purge of the talented mageborn – none reviled more than Arithon, Master of Shadow. Through clever manipulation of events at the hands of his half-brother Lysaer, Lord of Light, Arithon's very name has become anathema. Now the volatile hatreds that spearheaded the campaign against Shadow have overtaken all reason.

Those that still stand in Arithon's desperate defence are downtrodden, in retreat and close to annihilation. The stage is set for the ultimate betrayal.

Peril's Gate

The Wars of Light and Shadow Arc III: Alliance of Light: Book 3

Where there is light, there must always be shadow… The fourth volume in Janny Wurts's spectacular epic fantasy, now re-released with a striking new cover design along with the rest of the series.

The curse that hangs over the Master of Shadow, Arithon, and Lord of Light, Lysaer, is drawing the two half-brothers ever closer towards direct conflict. For the Natural Balance to be maintained, the two must never fight. If they do, one is sure to perish and the Mistwraith will regain its evil power over their world.

Even now, Lysaer – convinced of his own godhead and aided by the treacherous Koriani Sisterhood – is tracking Arithon the Masterbard through the snows and wastes of the winter-locked mountains and the Barrens of Daon Ramon. Arithon is tortured by the knowledge that for the sake of future generations he must not be killed, no matter the cost of others' lives now. Fighting valiantly to prevent unnecessary suffering, he strikes out on his own; but he is injured and failing fast.

Meanwhile, the ancient Paravians are stirring, summoned by trespassers on their sacred domain; and the Fellowship of Seven are battling on many other fronts, as the Mistwraith's wards begin to break, and khadrim and free wraiths roam the land...

Traitor's Knot

The Wars of Light and Shadow Arc III: Alliance of Light: Book 4

The gripping penultimate instalment of the Alliance of Light.

When half brothers Lysaer and Arithon defeated the Mistwraith its revenge left them cursed to lifelong enmity.

Having conquered the maze and acheived self-redemption, Arithon, Master of Shadow, is now the guest of the formidable sorcerer, Davien the Betrayor. No one knows how his influence will affect Arithon's recovered mage power, or his newly awakened rogue talent for prescience.

Meanwhile Arithon's relentless enemies will stop at nothing to acheive his downfall. The Koriani enchantresses are determined to make him their captive and their pawn. And as the Alliance of Light fanatics regroup after their defeat, the core of their priesthood now stands corrupted by a dark cabal who plot to enslave their leader, Lysaer, and use the Mistwraith's curse as their own private weapon to break the world's order.

The sorcerers of the Fellowship compact are sorely beset and the clans are counting their ruinous losses. Arithon, who holds their last hope of survival, chooses the most dangerous course: heart and mind he dedicates himself to avoiding killing, though allies and enemies muster for war, single-mindedly blind to the consequences.

Stormed Fortress

The Wars of Light and Shadow Arc III: Alliance of Light: Book 5

The spellbinding final instalment of The Alliance of Light.

Though Athera may be free, the fight is far from over…

The heartstopping conclusion to the Alliance of Light series brings Lysaer's army of Light to besiege the great citadel of Alestron. Master of Shadow, Arithon, with barely a moment's recuperation from his victory over the necromancers, has discovered that young Jeynsa s'Valerient whom he has sworn to protect, has joined the ranks of his disowned allies within the threatened citadel. Worse, following a failed rescue attempt, his beloved Elaira, his double, Fionn Areth, and the spellbinder Dakar are also trapped within Alestron's walls. The chancy wiles of Davien the betrayer must spirit Arithon across the enemy lines to attempt a bold and perilous rescue mission.

Arithon must seek the heartcore of his talent, even while embroiled in a savage battle against those he has vowed to protect. But treachery strikes from deep within the duke's ranks. Lysaer's fanatics will be unleashed to claim their bloody revenge. With the Fellowship Sorcerers in mortal danger, and all under threat from a collapsing grimward, Davien the betrayer is unable to intercede to save his colleagues and so will be forced to invoke the dire terms of an ancient and most secretive bargain.

Arithon stands alone at the hour of reckoning as the true purpose of the Koriani enchantresses becomes, at long last fully, unveiled – with the covetous Prime Matriarch now poised to snatch a prize, a prize beyond that of merely integrity and life…

Initiate's Trial

The Wars of Light and Shadow Arc IV: Sword of the Canon: Book 1

The long-awaited beginning of the fourth story arc - Sword of the Canon - in the epic fantasy series, the Wars of Light and Shadow.

Betrayed and double-crossed, Arithon s'Ffalenn is held captive by the Order of the Koriathain. The desperate Fellowship Sorcerers have gambled the weal of Athera and forced through the perilous bargain that spared him, as the last Prince of Rathain, and their sole hope of unity. To suspend the Prime Matriarch's decree of execution, Arithon lives only to battle Marak's horde of free wraiths, unleashed one by one from the shielding grip of the star wards.

But on the day the last wraith is redeemed, the inflexible terms sealed by Dakar's oath of debt will be forfeit…

Against a backdrop in which the Religion of Light has undergone schism, the fanatical True Sect's high priesthood stands consumed by its thwarted ambition: to conquer Havish, the backbone of order that secures the terms of Paravian survival. Now Lord Mayor of Etarra, Lysaer s'Ilessid must fight the pull of the Mistwraith's curse, and battle for sanity to uphold his just ethic. Another young defender will stand at his side, newly sworn by the Sorcerer's auspices.

As Arithon's life once again becomes the fulcrum that shifts the game board, Elaira's choice might save or break the unstable future; while at large and answerable to no mortal law, Davien and the dragon that holds his service throw in the wild card no one predicts...

Destiny's Conflict

The Wars of Light and Shadow Arc IV: Sword of the Canon: Book 2

The long-awaited second book of the fourth story arc - Sword of the Canon - in the epic fantasy series, the Wars of Light and Shadow.

Lysaer's unstable integrity lies under threat of total downfall, and as his determined protector, Daliana will face the most frightening decision of her young life. Arithon, Master of Shadow, is marked for death and still hunted, when his critical quest to recover his obscured past entangles him in a web of deep intrigue and ancient perils beyond his imagining. Elaira's urgent pursuit of the Biedar Tribes' secret embroils her in the terrible directive of the Fellowship Sorcerers, while Dakar - the Mad Prophet - confronts the hard reckoning for the colossal mistake of his misspent past, and Tarens is steered by a destiny far from his crofter's origins.

The penultimate volume of The Wars of Light and Shadow will touch the grand depths of Athera's endowment, and deliver the thrilling finale of arc IV, the Sword of the Canon. War, blood, magic, mystery - and the most hidden powers of all - will stand or fall on their hour of unveiling.

Song of the Mysteries

The Wars of Light and Shadow Arc V: Book 1