Metaphysical Thriller

When an ancient demon called the Soulstealer takes him as its host, Nythan’s normal life is thrown into torturous chaos. The demon has only one demand - help it steal the souls of the living so that it might leave this world. A secret order known as the Ordo Solis has other plans. They’ve been chasing the Soulstealer one host at a time for thousands of years, and their sights are set on Nythan. Their oath is simple - kill the host, save the world.

I don’t wish to frighten you, reads the anonymous note introverted and bullied eight-year-old Leo Cruz finds in his backpack. All the sender asks is that he avoid a certain spot on a certain day, or he’ll die. Leo has reason to be afraid. The warning hearkens back to nearly a decade ago - to the same site, where a murder has become local folklore and a favorite campfire tale reinvented year after year by the kids of Arenas, a small Spanish town.

Exposed is quickly beginning to unravel the ties-that-bind Jackson Stafford's story together. Brent has revealed his true nature and his mission. The Defector has the director of the FBI in his corner intervening for a notorious assassin. Don and Nancy, NSA professionals locked in the final throws of uncovering the greatest of all truths about Jackson Stafford, stand stunned by the facts.

Since her encounter with Ori years ago, Jessica has continued her mission to print the truth that the world needs to hear. This pursuit has led her to meet with a source, Zach Carver, a leading mind at Singularity Group. The meeting goes awry, and Jessica awakens to find that she has a gap in time and memory and that Zach is now missing. To her surprise, Ori reappears to help her. His solution involves a promising young recruit, Malik, whose research could be the key to recovering Zach. Yet the forces they are up against have proven they will go to great lengths to remove any obstacle.

As the people of Annecy in the French Alps meet the Gestapo’s brutality with surprising resistance, a teen-aged girl cannot rest until she solves the mystery of a death in her family. Aurelie watches as her father places a shrouded body on the north side of the roof of the family home. It’s winter, under a Nazi-declared state of siege, and they must wait until the spring thaw for the burial. But who died? And why is no one speaking to her anymore? Aurelie cannot rest until she discovers the truth and fights to prevent the same terrible fate from happening to her best friend.

An unknown enemy. Loved ones in peril. A battle for survival. Tatya has sent the demon who pursued her back to Hell. Now she’s about to open a healing center and use her gifts to help those in need. The only one she can’t help is the man she is in love with, the vampire master, Vanse, who lies in a coma. When an ambitious vampire arrives in town with designs on Vanse’s family, Tatya’s plans are turned upside down. Her best friend, the local shaman, Forked Lightning, puts his life on the line to help, but chaos and tragedy follow when Tatya is kidnapped.

Tarot reader Sara Wilde has spent her whole life finding the lost with the use of her trusty cards. But when her newest assignment sends her straight to Hell, she discovers more than she bargained for. The journey through Dante's playground forces Sara to endure a client's bitter loss, fall victim to a vicious betrayal by her own kind, and come face-to-face with the woman she might have been. Not even Sara's blossoming love for the darkly sensual Magician is safe in the underworld. She's tested in ways she never fathomed, ways that could drive her mad or utterly destroy her.

“A must-read—a gorgeous literary novel that asks us to imagine all the possible versions of ourselves that might exist.”—J. Courtney Sullivan, New York Times bestselling author of Saints for All Occasions The residents of a sleepy mountain town are rocked by troubling visions of an...

Sam Meeko never thought that he’d ever get a superpower, especially one that allows him to smell everything. Everything. With his unconventional power, Sam joins forces with a group of women hellbent on getting to the bottom of a countrywide conspiracy. It’s going to take some thinking outside the box, and when that doesn’t work, Sam and his group might need to tear the walls down.

Victoria Sheldon's life couldn't get anymore mundane. Since marrying Adam, who's often occupied with more important matters than investing time in their marriage, Victoria got used to being lonely. She passes the time by watching movies, including those with Kyran Cornell, her imagined flame. That's until she finds herself abducted and thrust into a fantasy guided by a madman with a bizarre appetite for brutality.

Set in three cities in three eras, The Mirror Thief calls to mind David Mitchell and Umberto Eco in its mix of entertainment and literary bravado. The core story is set in Venice in the 16th century, when the famed makers of Venetian glass were perfecting one of the old world's most wondrous inventions: the mirror.

Krygelski writes a compelling and startling story centered on the mysterious arrival of a man who claims to be the Creator. Clearly not a mortal, Elohim - as the stranger prefers to be known - astounds those he meets with unexplainable miracles and reality-altering answers. All of this is but a prelude to his announcement that he has come to do something...something which will affect every person on Earth...something which will occur in five days.

This work is dedicated to the listeners who seek narratives that challenge, provoke, and ultimately resonate with the very essence of their being. To those who appreciate the intricate dance between fact and fiction, science and speculation, and who are unafraid to confront the uncomfortable truths hidden beneath the surface of reality. Your intellect, your curiosity, and your willingness to engage with complex themes are the driving force behind this endeavor. Your imagination, the boundless canvas upon which these words are painted, is what truly gives this story life.

Murder and dark magic aren't even the worst of it. Oona Goodlight just wants to get through hockey practice, but a dead body on the ice means practice is canceled. A secret psychic and empath, she is shocked by the brutal death and shocked again when she witnesses the murder - and the killer - in a vision. When a wizard investigator asks her to use her psychic abilities to find the murderer, she’s pulled into a battle she never wanted to fight against a grudge-holding foe who’s waited a long time to see her dead.

Ori may seem like an idealist, but he understands how this world works. Powerful people want it to stay that way, and a degree of social order is needed to ensure that. However, through everything he has done as founder and CEO of Singularity Group, Ori has proven what good can come from granting people certain freedoms. Though he hoped otherwise, he knew the day might come when powerful forces would threaten what he has built. When a series of suspicious events escalates to an attempt on his life, Ori must use all he is capable of to see who, or what, is pulling the strings.

When humans, Ciaran, a billionaire, technology genius and his wife, Madeline, a quirky, psychic journalist, are forced to enter the multiverse with few resources beyond the love they share, countless lives hang in the balance. Traversing in this strange new world with unfamiliar technology and a language neither Ciaran nor Madeline understand, the pair struggles to distinguish friend from foe, allies from an enemies, and reality from illusion.

Poet Gabriel Syme believes in the beauty of order and, as such, is recruited by Scotland Yard to an anti-anarchist police corp. While undercover, Syme meets fellow poet Lucian Gregory, a verse writer devoted to disorder, who introduces him to London’s anarchist underworld. Just as Gregory is to be elected to the central council, Syme’s cover is revealed and he is forced to make a decision that sends the cabal into chaos. Is anyone in this underground faction who or what they seem? Syme suddenly realizes he doesn’t have all the answers.

Deep down, Robert Goldner knows he's a mistake. His mother told him so when he was just five years old. But he never found the courage to ask just what she meant before she was murdered under mysterious circumstances on his 11th birthday. Now, on the eve of his 17th birthday, Robert is dead set on becoming a Virginia high school state wrestling champion in order to redeem himself once and for all, reversing whatever curse his mother saw within him.

Remy is a Chorister, rescued from the surface world and raised to sing in a choir of young boys. Remy is part of a strange crew who control the Leviathan, an aging nuclear submarine, that bears a sacred mission: to trigger the Second Coming when the time is right. But Remy has a secret, too - she's the submarine's only girl. Gifted with the missile's launch key by the Leviathan's dying chaplain, she swears to keep it safe. Safety, however, is not the priority of the new chaplain, who has his own ideas about the mission.

A Year in the Borderlands writer Kevin Candela's wild second excursion into alternate realities includes 17 tales, twelve of which have appeared in previously released anthologies and are collected here for the first time. These short stories combine with five never before released works, including the novella It's Only Funny if You Laugh, to produce a wide-ranging panoramic view of the worlds and realities that exist beyond our own. Playing With Reality is another vividly detailed page in the Atlas of the Unknown.