Monster Fiction

By day, Mark Wojcik can be found elbow-deep in engine grease, making cars and trucks safe for the highway. By night, he can be found traipsing through the wilds of Pennsylvania, making the world safe for humans. He's more than just a mechanic, he's a New Templar Knight. He travels the backroads and byways fighting weresquonks, ningen, selkies, ghosts, and . . . gnomes? Is that gnome . . . naked? (Sigh.) Season One collects the first four novellas in the Spells, Salt, & Steel series: Spells, Salt, & Steel; Open Season; Deep Trouble; and Close Encounters.

In a gauntlet-throwing essay at the start of this brilliant assemblage, Cynthia Ozick stakes the claim that, just as surely as critics require a steady supply of new fiction, novelists need great critics to build a vibrant community on the foundation of literary history. For decades Ozick herself has been one of our great critics, as these essays so clearly display. She offers models of critical analysis of writers from the mid-20th century to today, from Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, and Kafka to William Gass and Martin Amis, all assembled in provocatively named groups.

Axel Hunter Radcliff has trained his whole life to be a hero. Once every generation, someone in his family is called upon to be a Chosen One, and Axel’s prepared himself extensively, just in case it’s him. He just wasn't prepared for the portal. Now he's in another world brimming with dangerous monsters beneath a sky full of magic portals ... and with no idea what he's been summoned to do. All he knows is that every Chosen Radcliff has been aided by a support staff of skilled women.

Ava Baldwin has always tried to keep her anger in check, just like her mom taught her. But when know-it-all classmate Owen King tries to speak over her yet again, Ava explodes . . . and Owen freezes, becoming totally unresponsive. Although Owen recovers, Ava's parents whisk her off to her mother’s alma mater, the Accademia del Forte, a mysterious international boarding school in Venice.

When stepping into a town full of werewolves like me for the first time in my life, I expected to be welcomed—or at least tolerated. Instead, I got hit in the face with a door. And then, found my dad's face on a dartboard in their diner.

Gabriel s'est perdu dans une pyramide. Sa cousine Sari, qui était dans la galerie devant lui, a mystérieusement disparu. Mais Gabriel a l'impression de ne pas être seul. Qui était là avec lui dans les ténèbres ? Peut-on troubler le repos millénaire de la prêtresse Khala sans courir de danger ?

Publié en langue française par Bayard Éditions.

Diego was separated from his family in the early days of the Infection. Since then, he has moved from town to town and place to place—getting by as best as he can. Recently, he has met and joined up with a motley crew of other survivors. After an encounter with a pack of the Infected, members of the group begin to disappear in mysterious and macabre ways. It's becomes clear that not everyone in the group is telling the whole truth. Can Diego and his new friends discover the traitor amongst them before it's too late?

Heidi Waters, CEO of billion-dollar startup Vitality+, is all the rage in Silicon Valley. Her company’s promises to roll out a neurochemical cure for caffeine-related anxiety are set to change the game, a godsend for anyone who’s ever got the jitters from upsizing their morning coffee order. There’s just one problem. There is no cure. The product doesn’t work.

For my kind, to be without a mate is to be doomed. I know it is too late–all that awaits me is retirement and death, and I’ve embraced it. But when a suicide mission lands on my old boss’s desk, I’m the one he calls. Who better to tackle the mission in the deep, oppressive mines of my own ancestral homeland, if not an Arachnae already slated to die? And it’s not a rescue mission–he wants me to retrieve the corpse of a billionaire’s daughter kidnapped by a terrorist organization. Except our intel was wrong. She’s alive. Tortured and injured–but alive.

Welcome to the Isle of Mulch! This little island is home to a large number of horrible grown-ups. The school, the local park, the toy shop and even the island's ice-cream van, are all run by awful adults who like nothing more than making children miserable. And the island is owned by the most awful one of all: Aunt Greta Greed! Something needs to be done about them. But who could be brave enough? Meet Ned: an extraordinary boy with a special power. SLIMEPOWER!

Get this: you wake up in the hospital. You're not feeling so hot—to put it mildly—and also, you're surrounded by hordes of zombies! After trying to run away, you eventually find a map of the building, but guess what? It's in French! Why? 'Cuz you're in France! You've got nothing on you but a baseball bat, and the zombies are just one step away from biting you on your bare backside. But don't worry, there's still hope, because you've got your own personal shelter in spacetime.

Monsters ate my parents, leaving me orphaned and homeless. I found a new pack and life was peaceful . . . until three powerful Alphas invade. They appear to be normal wolf shifters, but they harbor a secret, a gruesome monster form with a taste for blood. They claim I'm their fated mate and that I belong to them. They're big, bad, with appendages so massive they could make a cobra blush. But me and three monsters? Never going to happen. Too bad for me, hot, buff alphas don't handle rejection well . . .

The Labyrinth behind him, Terry and company arrive on the Eastern Steppes in the midst of a carnival, and a fateful decision puts him under a dire curse. Stripped of his bond powers and exiled to the dreamlike Wildervast, he must find and free the ultimate witch, then kill an invincible man. Meanwhile, those left behind must face the machinations of the tauren herd leaders, whose law allows them to take a template for common use, and the remnants of Theseus' bonds in search of revenge.

I’ve always been a scrapper, so when I was snatched from my world by shadow creatures and hauled to another one, I did as I’d always done. I fought. But I still didn’t know anything about where I was. My luck was in, because I quickly had the good fortune of meeting a sexy prophetess and a gorgeous, blue-skinned, redheaded mage who said she was something called a moonwisp. Yeah, magic was a thing. The problem with that? Everyone in the world had some. Magic, that is. Everyone but me. I guess that’s what I get for coming from a non-magic world.

After disgracing themselves at a high society New Year's Eve party in Philadelphia in 1944, Madeline Hyde and her husband, Ellis, are cut off financially by his father, a former army colonel who is already ashamed of his son’s inability to serve in the war. Ellis and his best friend, Hank, decide that the only way to regain the colonel's favor is to succeed where the colonel very publicly failed - by hunting down the famous Loch Ness monster.

From the “terrifyingly talented” (London Times) author of THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG-IN THE NIGHT-TIME and THE PORPOISE, eight mesmerizingly imaginative, deeply-humane stories that use Greek myths and contemporary dystopian narratives to examine mortality, moral choices and the many variants of love.

Benton Bertrand is a banshee, cursed with the ability to sense death. Every time he sleeps, he becomes a trapped passenger within a murderer’s skin: able to hear, see, and feel every part of their kill. No matter how hard he tries, it always ends the same way - with death.

My role as Moric—ruler of a small and prosperous fiefdom in a quiet corner of the world—has always been painfully dull and stifling. Until a beautiful, otherworldly creature with pink skin and a mane of golden hair falls through a strange void that has appeared in my guestroom. I am instantly captivated by him. I have never seen anything like him. I have no idea where he came from, and what else is through that unsettling void—another world filled with soft-skinned, defenseless creatures like him? No tails, no horns, no claws, no sharp teeth. Tiny clothing, rounded ears, bright blue eyes.

Ever since returning from Vietnam, Darren has been haunted by the ghosts of his past. A chance encounter with a small-town sheriff lands him a handyman job at the local library, as well as hope that his wandering days may be over. Ana is the town librarian. She, too, is running from the past. Content to be left alone, she becomes alarmed when Darren sets off her urge to reproduce, a desire that always comes with fatal consequences.

Jack Miller has spent his entire nine years in the same house on the same street in the same town with the same best friend. One day, while delivering papers on his same ordinary paper route, Jack finds himself amidst a very unordinary world. A world where strange and silly monsters become his friends. In this story, Jack and Annabelle face off with the a very difficult monster called Iris. What they learn while inside the house will change everything.