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When investigative telejournalist Nick Pearson is sent to Darworth in Hertfordshire, he finds a community divided. A steady influx of foreign immigrants has led to racial tension and open hostility and violence. The African newcomers are particularly targeted, regular victims of vandalism and even fire-bombing.The Africans seem unwilling to fight back, until the arrival of a mysterious, powerful man who many of them know - and fear. Nick begins to wonder if there might be some kind of connection between this newcomer and the desecration of a local cemetery - an event followed by the disappearance of a number of corpses and a series of bizarre, ritualistic murders. In each case, the victims bear the same marks on their bodies. Scars that Nick has seen before, five years earlier in Africa.Ancient religion and modern prejudice are about to collide, and when they do, there may be no survivors. At least not human ones...

Detective Dana Rohan has an excellent arrest and conviction rate. But even her partner doesn't know the real reason why.

All her life Dana has borne a Mark of unknown origin that she's kept secret. A Mark that allows her to walk into alternate pasts and futures. A Mark that allows her to go back and see any crime as it's being committed. But the life she's carefully built around this secret ability begins to crumble when she's assaulted by a ragged old man. He babbles an incoherent warning that "the Shadows are coming," right before he is killed by an armored monstrosity out of another century. The armored attacker vanishes, leaving the old man to die in Dana's arms, and she realizes that he bears the same Mark she does.

Soon Dana finds herself hunted by Shadows coming from out of Chaos. She must flee through a host of alternate worlds as she finds out the true meaning of the Mark on her skin, and why someone wants to kill her for it.

When Mage Alex Verus ends up with a position on the Light Council, no one is happy, least of all him. But Alex is starting to realize that if he wants to protect his friends, he'll need to become a power player himself. His first order of business is to track down dangerous magical items unleashed into the world by Dark Mages.

But when the Council decides they need his help in negotiating with the perpetrators, Alex will have to use all his cunning and magic to strike a deal -- and stop the rising tension between the Council, the Dark Mages, and the adept community from turning into a bloodbath.

The bracelet sits in his pocket, patiently waiting to be slipped around Gaia's wrist. Leon needs to see her again. He finds out that Gaia is delivering a baby in the village, and he makes the trip to visit the sixteen-year-old midwife-only to find that the birth is not going too well. The bracelet-and what it means to the both of them-will have to wait. This short story takes place during the time between the second book in the Birthmarked trilogy (Prized) and the final book (Promised) and offers a rare glimpse into the mind and heart of Leon Grey.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

We invite you to enjoy this short story from Caragh M. O'Brien: Tortured. It is available for free download wherever ebooks are sold. Taking place between her novels Birthmarked and Prized, Tortured answers an important question:

"But what about Leon?" Caragh M. O'Brien answers her readers' most common question with a tale of suffering and determination from Leon's perspective. Be warned.

(SPOILER WARNING: The following spoils the ending of Birthmarked.)

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

IN THE ENCLAVE, YOUR SCARS SET YOU APART, and the newly born will change the future.

Sixteen-year-old Gaia Stone and her mother faithfully deliver their quota of three infants every month. But when Gaia's mother is brutally taken away by the very people she serves, Gaia must question whether the Enclave deserves such loyalty. A stunning adventure brought to life by a memorable heroine, this dystopian debut will have readers racing all the way to the dramatic finish.

Striking out into the wasteland with nothing but her baby sister, a handful of supplies, and a rumor to guide her, sixteen-year-old midwife Gaia Stone survives only to be captured by the people of Sylum, a dystopian society where women rule the men who drastically outnumber them, and a kiss is a crime. In order to see her sister again, Gaia must submit to their strict social code, but how can she deny her sense of justice, her curiosity, and everything in her heart that makes her whole?

After defying the ruthless Enclave, surviving the wasteland, and upending the rigid matriarchy of Sylum, Gaia Stone now faces her biggest challenge ever. She must lead the people of Sylum back to the Enclave and persuade the Protectorat to grant them refuge from the wasteland. In Gaia's absence, the Enclave has grown more cruel, more desperate to experiment on mothers from outside the wall, and now the stakes of cooperating or rebelling have never been higher. Is Gaia ready, as a leader, to sacrifice what--or whom--she loves most?

A vampire's grudges don't stay dead long...

Merit is one of Chicago's most skilled vampire warriors; these days, she doesn't scare easily. But she and Master vampire Ethan have made a new and powerful enemy, and he won't give up until he owns the Windy City.

With his last plan thwarted, he's more determined than ever to watch Cadogan burn. Ethan has put the House's vampires on high alert, but their enemy will stop at nothing, including pitting vampire against vampire.

In this deadly game of cat-and-mouse, the stakes are life or death - and winning might mean sacrificing everything...

Ileni could change the world.

She could do what she has always been trained to do: destroy the Empire. Her people want her to. The assassin she loves--who is now deadlier than ever--wants her to. But now that she knows her entire life was built on a lie, Ileni needs to see the truth for herself. Is the Empire truly as evil as she has always believed?

The answers lie in the Imperial Academy of Sorcery, a place where danger and temptation sit side by side. If her true purpose is discovered, she won't escape alive. But once she discovers what the imperial sorcerers can offer her, she may not want to leave. Ileni has found the one thing she never expected--a place where she belongs.

Except, this place has its secrets, too.

The truth is never purely evil or purely good. And Ileni no longer knows whose side she is on.

Graff isn't quite human. His people move through the galaxy collecting memories and experiences, recording their lives and passing them on. Then, one day, he breaks: he discovers a chunk of his memory is missing. This should be impossible - he's never forgotten a moment in his life. Now, he has to learn to forget, and to remember, and this has consequences for all his people, his culture, and his whole world.

Originally published on 11 January 2023, read it for free at Tor.com

The shadows have risen, and the line is law.

All Bree wanted was to uncover the truth behind her mother's death. So she infiltrated the Legendborn Order, a secret society descended from King Arthur's knights--only to discover her own ancestral power. Now, Bree has become someone new:

A Medium. A Bloodcrafter. A Scion.

But the ancient war between demons and the Order is rising to a deadly peak. And Nick, the Legendborn boy Bree fell in love with, has been kidnapped.

Bree wants to fight, but the Regents who rule the Order won't let her. To them, she is an unknown girl with unheard-of power, and as the living anchor for the spell that preserves the Legendborn cycle, she must be protected.

When the Regents reveal they will do whatever it takes to hide the war, Bree and her friends must go on the run to rescue Nick themselves. But enemies are everywhere, Bree's powers are unpredictable and dangerous, and she can't escape her growing attraction to Selwyn, the mage sworn to protect Nick until death.

If Bree has any hope of saving herself and the people she loves, she must learn to control her powers from the ancestors who wielded them first--without losing herself in the process.

Sin City--Las Vegas--is home to humans and Infernals of all sorts: the good, the bad, and the ugly. If you ask Evangeline Hollis, "good" is in short supply, "ugly" might be amusing, but "bad" is most definitely her business. Eve is a Mark, a heavenly bounty hunter, and Las Vegas is her territory.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

Years ago, Evangeline Hollis spent a blistering night with a darkly seductive man she can't forget. But that evening of addictive pleasure has become a disaster of biblical proportions: She's been branded with the Mark of Cain.

Thrust into a world where sinners are marked and drafted to kill demons, Eve's former one-night stand, Cain, is now her mentor--and his equally sexy brother Abel is her new boss.

Now Eve has become the latest point of contention in the oldest case of sibling rivalry in history...

Cursed by God, hunted by demons, desired by Cain and Abel... All in a day's work.

For Evangeline Hollis, a scorching one-night stand has led to a divine punishment--the Mark of Cain.

Now reunited, Eve and Cain are working on transitioning their insatiable desire into a tentative new relationship even as she struggles to become a full-fledged Mark--one of thousands of sinners forced to hunt demons as penance. When her training class goes on a field trip to an abandoned military base, things take a dark turn: There's a demon hidden among them, killing off Eve's classmates one by one.

To make a bad situation more dangerous, Eve's body is still adapting to the Mark and the new abilities and challenges that came with it--such as uncontrollable bloodlust... which seems to be inciting another kind of lust altogether.

With Cain out on assignment, Eve's simmering attraction to his equally sexy brother Abel grows--and Abel is more than willing to take the heat...

When Evangeline Hollis spent a night of passion with the darkly seductive Alec Cain, she had no idea that she'd be punished for it years later. Branded with the Mark of Cain, Eve was thrust into a life of hunting demons as penance.

Living with the Mark--and the two sexy brothers who come with it--was trouble enough. But then Eve ran over Satan's hellhound during training. Now Satan, incensed at the loss of his pet, has put a bounty on Eve's head, and every demon in the country wants to be the one to deliver her.

Meanwhile, Eve's formerly insatiable one-night stand is acting distant. Cain says he still wants Eve, and she believes him, but scorching hot sex isn't enough. Not after knowing what it was like to have more.

As Cain's role in Eve's life becomes more and more uncertain, Abel doesn't hesitate to step in.

Being a different breed of shapeshifter-a walker-Mercy Thompson can see ghosts, but the spirit of her long-gone father has never visited her. Until now, on her honeymoon with the Alpha werewolf Adam. An evil is stirring in the depths of the Columbia River-and innocent people are dying. As other walkers make their presence known to Mercy, she must reconnect with her heritage to exorcise the world of the legend known as the river devil...

Trouble started early for the free-trader Solar Queen the moment cargo-master Dane Thorson collected a package for transit from Xecho to Trewsworld. What was in the package Dane did not learn until after he had been kidnapped, knocked out, and a dead man bearing his credentials had been substituted for him aboard the ship.

For centuries, the Others and humans have lived side by side in uneasy peace. But when humankind oversteps its bounds, the Others will have to decide how much humanity they're willing to tolerate--both within themselves and within their community...

Since the Others allied themselves with the cassandra sangue, the fragile yet powerful human blood prophets who were being exploited by their own kind, the delicate dynamic between humans and Others changed. Some, like Simon Wolfgard, wolf shifter and leader of the Lakeside Courtyard, and blood prophet Meg Corbyn, see the new, closer companionship as beneficial--both personally and practically.

But not everyone is convinced. A group of radical humans is seeking to usurp land through a series of violent attacks on the Others. What they don't realize is that there are older and more dangerous forces than shifters and vampires protecting the land that belongs to the Others--and those forces are willing to do whatever is necessary to protect what is theirs...

Hannah Davis and her group of heroes race to expose the Card Sharks, an evil conspiracy whose ultimate goal is the wholesale destruction of those afflicted with the Wild Cards virus.