Metaphysical Thriller

Homicide detective Adam Garrett is already a rising star in the Boston police department when he and his cynical partner, Carl Landauer, catch a horrifying case that could make their careers: the ritualistic murder of a wealthy college girl that appears to have satanic elements.

Booklist calls the world of Hugo Award winner Elizabeth Bear’s spellbinding Jacob’s Ladder series “magnificently populated, well worth visiting.” Here the trilogy that began with Dust and Chill draws to its stunning conclusion. The passengers of the generation spaceship Jacob’s Ladder have found a new home at last. But the planet Grail is already inhabited - and its population of genetically engineered humans has no intention of sharing the world.

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.

Thomas Tessler, devastated by a tragedy, has cloistered himself in his bedroom and shut out the world for the past three years. His wife, Silke, lives in the next room, but Thomas no longer shares his life with her, leaving his hideout only in the wee hours of the night to buy food at the store around the corner from their Manhattan apartment. Isolated, withdrawn, damaged, Thomas is hikikomori. Desperate to salvage their life together, Silke hires Megumi, a young Japanese woman attuned to the hikikomori phenomenon.

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 elusion. As their family grows, so too do the dangers around them. Can they muster the strength and gather the necessities in order to save millions of lives and emerge unscathed?

When a reclusive tech genius is found dead inside a sealed AI lab, a disillusioned journalist and a burned-out ethics professor are drawn into a high-stakes investigation. What they uncover isn't just a machine capable of passing the Turing Test—it’s an intelligence that seems to know their secrets. As the line between simulation and consciousness begins to blur, they must confront a terrifying truth: the future of humanity might already be thinking without us.

Josh is a young man just starting out in life. But when he is taken from this world, to the other side, and back, evil follows. A special person on the other side gives Josh an obligation to find and destroy that evil. Helped from the other side in ways he never thought possible, Josh can see auras, and finds two very special friends to help him in his task. Cassie is Josh's age and from this world, while Ezekiel, known as Zeke, is a different story.

Neil Double is a 'conference surrogate', hired by his clients to attend industry conferences so that they don't have to. It's a life of budget travel, cheap suits, and out-of-town exhibition centers. But his latest job, at a conference of conference organizers, will radically transform him and everything he believes as it unexpectedly draws him into a bizarre and speculative mystery. In a brand-new Way Inn - a global chain of identikit mid-budget motels - he meets a woman he has seen before in strange and unsettling circumstances.

Rachel Connor has qualified as a physician, but her brother’s pain is haunting her. Locked in prison for murder, he carries the power of life and death in his hands. New Zealand has settled in an uneasy peace, but Rachel’s father, the Prime Minister, sees the threat of a nuclear holocaust on the horizon.

Deep in the forests of the Pacific Northwest is a small village called Dark Root, a town steeped in magic, mystery, and secrets. But for Maggie Maddock, Dark Root is also a prison - a place where she is forced to work in her mother's Magick Shoppe while the rest of the world moves forward without her. When a mysterious stranger offers to take Maggie away from it all, she leaves without looking back. Seven years later, Maggie is called home by her beloved older sister.

When Fate pays Simon a visit accusing him of disrupting causality, she makes him an offer he can’t refuse - become mortal or die. There’s only one small problem. In order to become mortal, Simon must find the goddess, Kali the Destroyer, and convince her to remove her curse. To complicate matters further, Haven and Roxanne are under attack by an ancient spell - an entropic sphere designed to kill everyone inside the facility.

Lilac Noble must face the traumatic experiences of her childhood before she can conquer the dark entities that have wreaked havoc on her family. On this epic journey, Lilac undergoes the destructive process of spiritual enlightenment in order to lift the veil of darkness and shame that has obscured her youth. As Lilac unlocks painful memories of abuse, suppressed in her subconscious from years of fear-based conditioning, she uncovers menacing secrets feeding the evil within her generational bloodline.

Siddhanta Sarma-a thinker, teacher, and unexpected explorer of truth-finds himself drawn into a conflict that spans continents and timelines. From ancient sites in Southern India to high-security locations in the Middle East, he uncovers a network of hidden influences that go beyond conventional threats-forces that shape thoughts, alter perception, and challenge human autonomy.

At the end of a metaphysical conference, reluctant attendee Camille Dare discovers an envelope with her name on it. Filled with travel documents, a photograph, and bloody scarf material, the source of the envelope and its contents remain anonymous, but the directive is clear: Find the missing person in this unusual case. The missing person, Katherine Agurre, comes from a high-profile family. A growing obsession with the missing person case and her own quest for self-understanding compel Camille to begin a trip to meet people she never knew and locations she never expected to visit.

Nineteen-year-old Mercy Habernackle is a witch gone off the rails. Causing problems with the law in her hometown, she's faced with two options. Go to a correctional institution or get shipped off to witch boarding school, or as her mother prefers to call it, finishing school. Choosing the latter, Mercy's mother, Linda, drives her daughter cross country to the Paranormal Institute for Witches, situated high in the beautiful Appalachian Mountains in cozy Aspen Falls, Pennsylvania.

Penelope Drayton Spence made a choice years earlier, and picked marriage and family over a promising career as an investigative reporter. Now, divorced and with her children spread around the country, she is having second thoughts. A mysterious call from the Managing Editor of the Washington Post, offers her a second chance at big time journalism. He has a story so sensitive that the President of the United States personally asked the Post to leave it alone.

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.

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.

They reach the shore, barks and joyful laughter swallowed by the crashing waves. Suddenly, an odd-looking object in the sky draws closer. As dark clouds loom, a flicker of unease crosses Scotty’s face. Before he can react, an eerie glow surrounds both boy and dog. In an instant, they vanish without a trace. Now aboard an alien ship, Scotty faces a reality far from home. The walls breathe, the corridors pulse and his fear deepens.

Rebekah Scarlet is celebrating her 23rd birthday at a midnight pub in downtown Raleigh when fired gunshots send the freezing January night into a blazing panic. In an effort to escape, Rebekah conjures a powerful entity from the dead to protect her. Only, her summoning fails when bullets tear through her side, leaving her unconscious as cops and ambulances race to the scene.