Dark Mystery

The award-winning and critically-acclaimed master of horror returns with a pair of chilling tales - both never-before-published in print or audio - that examine the violence and depravity of the human condition. Bringing together his acclaimed novella The Sea Dreams It Is the Sky and an all-new short novel My Heart Struck Sorrow, John Hornor Jacobs turns his fertile imagination to the evil that breeds within the human soul.

A rogue master vampire hits town, and Anita gets caught in the middle of an undead turf war. Jean-Claude, the Master Vamp of the city, wants her for his own - but his enemies have other plans. And to make matters worse, Anita takes a hit to the heart when she meets a stunningly handsome junior high science teacher named Richard Zeeman. They're two humans caught in the crossfire - or so Anita thinks.

After a scandal forces DI Kelly Porter out of the Met, she returns home to the Lake District. Crimes in the Cumbrian constabulary tend to be minor, but Kelly begins work on a cold case that shocked the local community - the abduction and brutal murder of a 10-year-old girl.

FBI Agent Ella Dark, 29, is given her big chance to achieve her life’s dream: to join the Behavioral Crimes Unit. Ella has a hidden obsession: She has studied serial killers from the time she could read, devastated by the murder of her own sister. With her photographic memory, she has obtained an encyclopedic knowledge of every serial killer, every victim, and every case. Singled out for her brilliant mind, Ella is invited to join the big leagues.

Caitlyn's world changes when she learns that she was found as an abandoned baby and adopted by her American family. Now, her search for answers takes her to a tiny English village where a man has been murdered - and where a mysterious shop selling enchanted chocolates is home to the "local witch".... Soon Caitlyn finds herself fending off a toothless old vampire, rescuing an adorable kitten and meeting handsome aristocrat Lord James Fitzroy...not to mention discovering that she herself might have magical blood in her veins!

Terence Bailey is about to be released from prison for breaking and entering, though investigators have long suspected him in the murders of six women. As his release date approaches, Bailey gets a surprise visit from Maddison Logan, a hot, young influencer with a huge social media following. Hours later, Maddison disappears, and police suspect she’s been kidnapped—or worse. Is Maddison’s disappearance connected to her visit to Bailey? And why was she visiting him in the first place?

Paul Wood is a modern vagabond, a man who chooses to leave the comforts of San Francisco to spend months backpacking through some of the world's most challenging terrain: Cameroon, Indonesia, Nepal. While hiking in the Himalayas, Paul gets more of a rush than he bargained for when he finds the body of a murdered hiker, the victim mutilated in a way that Paul has witnessed once before, years ago and thousands of miles away. To quell a scandal, the police rule the death a suicide and close the case. But Paul can't let it go....

The Spear of Lugh, one of the four Kingly Hallows of Ireland is in Chicago. And everyone, everyone wants it, for it is said that he who carries the spear into battle cannot be defeated. Among those who seek it are an agent of the infamous Wild Hunt; a mobster who knows far more about these things than he should; and of course both the Seelie and Unseelie Courts - the last people PI Mick Oberon would want getting hold of the spear....

The gruesome double-murder at an Eastvale property developer’s luxury home should be an open and shut case for Superintendent Alan Banks and his team of detectives. There’s a clear link to the notoriously vicious Albanian mafia, men who left the country suspiciously soon after the murder. When Banks and his team find a cache of spy-cam videos hidden in the house, the investigation pivots to another violent crime that could cast the murders in an entirely different light.

For the first time in print comes a collection of five short stories in the Edgar award-winning Kate Burkholder series, PLUS one new, never-before-published story, from New York Times best-selling author Linda Castillo.

Stone Barrington hasn’t heard from his cousin, Dick Stone, in years. Then, an otherwise pleasant meal at Elaine’s is interrupted by the CIA with news of Dick’s death—apparently by his own hand. It seems that Dick Stone, a quiet family man who doubled as a CIA agent, methodically executed his wife, daughter, and then himself...or did he? Appointed executor of Dick’s will, Stone must settle the estate and—with the help of his ex-partner Dino and friend Holly Barker—piece together the elusive facts of his cousin’s life and death as a CIA operative.

In the dusty arenas of New Mexico, cowboys are being found murdered in elaborate tableaus mimicking iconic Western films, and it's up to FBI Agent Harley Cole to lasso the truth. As she digs deep into the rodeo world, can she outwit a killer whose act is as precise as it is lethal before the final curtain call?

When NYPD detective Marie Reinhart met Nessa Roth, a Manhattan socialite and dabbler in the occult, sparks flew. Then came the gunfire. Nessa and Marie are the Witch and her Knight, characters from a fairy tale brought to life and trapped in an endless curse: to meet, fall in love, and be torn from each other’s arms by violent death, again and again for all eternity. Now they have one slim chance to escape their doom. It lies in Wisdom's Grave, the resting-place of the first witch who ever lived, and the wellspring of magic.

Once he was a hero of the Great War, and then a member of the dreaded Black House. Now he is the criminal linchpin of Low Town. His name is Warden. He thought he had left the war behind him, but a summons from up above brings the past sharply, uncomfortably, back into focus. General Montgomery's daughter is missing somewhere in Low Town, searching for clues about her brother's murder. The General wants her found, before the stinking streets can lay claim to her, too.

Detective Evan Bolton is gutted by his latest investigation. His friend and mentor, retired detective Rod McLeod, has been murdered, his body left in the trunk of a junkyard car. When McLeod’s daughter and grandson abruptly vanish, Evan knows it’s not a coincidence. Search and rescue canine specialist Rowan Wolff agrees as she and her dog, Thor, track the missing family.

David Valentine resigns as a Wolf militia, and accepts an offer to become a Cat, one of the stealthy warriors trained to spy on, and go toe-to-toe with the Reapers. Under the command of his mentor, Smoke, Val's first mission is to enter the Kurian zone and investigate "The Twisted Cross", a strike force of alien-human hybrids, possessing the skills of combat veterans and the hunger of the Reapers....Along the way he befriends a powerful alien, a Grog named Anh-Ka, who declares David his blood brother after Valentine nurses him back from death.

Eugene is a midwesterner living in New York, an erstwhile Catholic and not-quite-openly-gay photographer. When a Holy Week pageant in the gritty Lower East Side erupts into a riot, he is sucked into the city's shadowy depths. While photographing the parade, Eugene has his eye on a handsome teen, but when things turn violent the youth is stabbed and Eugene's camera is stolen. To find the camera and its precious film, which may provide evidence, Eugene has to become acquainted with a seedy, unfamiliar world, and hold on to his sanity in the process.

Some warriors are born. Others are chosen by fate and forged by circumstances. In the mountains of Kurdistan, a mysterious woman fights for freedom while her own past remains locked away.

When the Australian Mystery Writers’ Society invited me to their crime-writing festival aboard the Ghan, the famous train between Darwin and Adelaide, I was hoping for some inspiration for my second book. Fiction, this time: I needed a break from real people killing each other. Obviously, that didn’t pan out.

Around the world, black handprints are appearing on doorways, scorched there by winged strangers who have crept through a slit in the sky. In a dark and dusty shop, a devil's supply of human teeth grown dangerously low. And in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal otherwordly war. Meet Karou. She fills her sketchbooks with monsters that may or may not be real; she's prone to disappearing on mysterious "errands"; she speaks many languages—not all of them human; and her bright blue hair actually grows out of her head that color.