True Urban

In this remarkable challenge to conventional thinking about the environment, David Owen argues that the greenest community in the United States is not Portland, Oregon, or Snowmass, Colorado, but New York City.

Apprentice mage Chance Fortunato just can’t catch a break. His training has gotten even harder, and his mentor, Dr. Corwin, is pushing him to take his mage trials early. Still, it beats his old gig working for a demon. But life takes a turn for the worse when a member of his girlfriend Shade’s werewolf pack is killed by a member of a rogue pack. Adding insult to grief, the pack is forced to let the Conclave send an observer to monitor their investigation.

All Detective Romeo Moon wanted to do was hunt down and capture a mass-murdering demon-god who just so happened to be a member of his family. A man-to-dog shifter himself, he'd usually be up for the task, family or not, especially with the help of his best friend, a mixed-species zombie-human undertaker.... But what is one to do when you discover a conspiracy that includes the mayor, the city police, a robber baron with the most powerful magic of all (money), a Dracula Vampire, and an army of both the living and the dead all involved in a plot to take over the city?

Sound interesting? The author thinks so too! Listen to Hardcore Horror Stories, The Best Horror Stories of the Year and experience this compelling horror story collection.

Headed for some well-deserved shore leave, Shepard is gunned down in the streets of Seattle, a victim of "a mugging gone stupid." He awakens, not in a hospital bed, but in the surreal world of Purgatory. Within seconds of his arrival, he is saved from a gruesome and painful end by his new best friend, Horace. That's Quintus Horatius Flaccus the philosopher, to you Roman history buffs. Horace explains to Shepard the cold, hard rules for surviving in Purgatory. More than just the walls have ears, and he's not sure how long Shepard will last.

At the end of the 1976 football season, more than forty Harvard athletes went to Boston's Combat Zone to celebrate. In the city's adult entertainment district, drugs and prostitution ran rampant, violent crime was commonplace, and corrupt police turned the other way. At the end of the night, Italian American star athlete Andy Puopolo, raised in the city's North End, was murdered in a stabbing. Three African American men were accused of the crime. His murder made national news and led to the eventual demise of the city's red-light district.

Surprising, charming, upsetting, enlightening, and ultimately hopeful - driven by the insight and humor of Salzman’s voice and by the intelligence, candor, and strength of his students, whose writing appears throughout the book - True Notebooks is itself a reward of the self-expression Mark Salzman teaches: a revelatory meditation on the process, power, and meaning of writing.

Aurora has spent the past year fighting for survival, freedom, and justice. Now she's about to face the biggest battle of her life. Field agents are turning up dead and everyone is working to stop Jared before he starts a full-blown war between vampires and hunters.

My life couldn’t get any better or more bizarre. Ever since moving to small town Prosper Woods, California, and meeting my vampire lover, the oddest things have been happening. Of course, a lot of that has to do with the fact that this whole place has turned out to be one giant melting pot of the strangest paranormal creatures on the planet. Let’s face it, this little place is like the United Nations of weirdos. Not all of them like me.

When I moved to Prosper Woods, California, a couple of weeks ago, I’d had big plans for a quiet life. Let’s just say, things haven’t exactly turned out the way I expected they would. For one thing, as new sheriff, I hadn’t planned on investigating a murder the day after my arrival. For another thing, no one told me supernatural creatures existed. I didn’t believe it at first, but when Vincent Lasco suddenly smiled at me with a mouth full of fangs, things got interesting.

On the 50th anniversary of her murder, Kevin Cook presents the real Kitty Genovese. She was a vibrant young woman - unbeknownst to most, a lesbian - a bartender working (and dancing) her way through the colorful, fast-changing New York of the ’60s, a cultural kaleidoscope marred by the Kennedy assassination, the Cold War, and race riots. Downtown, Greenwich Village teemed with beatniks, folkies, and so-called misfits like Kitty and her lover. Kitty Genovese evokes the Village’s gay and lesbian underground with deep feeling and colorful detail.

Journey into the dark recesses of the wilderness with terrifying and true tales of horrific encounters and unexplained phenomena. From bone-chilling run-ins with Bigfoot and elusive cryptozoological creatures, to mind-bending UFO and ghost sightings, and run ins with horrible humans. This collection of first-hand stories from park rangers, police officers, hunters, campers, hikers, and more will leave you wondering what really lurks beyond the safety of civilization.

After laterally transferring from the sleepy bedroom hamlet of the Town of Camillus Police Department, Officer Patrick MacKenna has a whole different learning curve to contend with.... He rarely if ever had to pull his gun at CPD, but now he has a hard time leaving it in the holster. Drug dealers, gang bangers, robberies, shootings, and stabbings just keep adding up in his daily log as he tries to assimilate to the fast pace life of a city cop in an urban setting.

My name is Vincent Lasco. I’ve searched a long time to find a new place to settle down. Because of what I am, I need to pull up stakes and start over every 20 years or so - before people realize that I don’t age anymore. Prosper Woods has everything a man like me could ever want. Though there aren’t many humans, it doesn’t really matter. I’m so old, I don’t need to eat very often, and there’s no reason to expose myself to the locals whom I hope to call friends some day.

Surprising, charming, upsetting, enlightening, and ultimately hopeful - driven by the insight and humor of Salzman’s voice and by the intelligence, candor, and strength of his students, whose writing appears throughout the book - True Notebooks is itself a reward of the self-expression Mark Salzman teaches: a revelatory meditation on the process, power, and meaning of writing.

Cassius Avery’s life is anything but simple. Music is his escape from reality and has earned him the name “Billion Dollar Cash”. The void that exist in Cash’s life is one that money can’t fill and has been present for the majority of his life. Tru Bisset has experienced heartbreak and betrayal on unimaginable levels. Torn between the comfort of her past relationship and the need to be secure in her future, she struggles daily to remember her worth. Both Tru and Cash are aware that they need to leave the past in the past, but it’s easier said than done.

Meet Marcel and Sabrina, a hitman and a bookkeeper for the Mob. The couple should have never met, let alone fallen in love. When they decide to go against the grain, all hell breaks loose. Somebody wants them dead; they just don't know who. It could be Leo, Marcel's jealous older brother; Othello, Sabrina's crooked father; or it could be The Family, a roundtable of the top contenders in the underworld. There is no honor amongst thieves. Marcel and Sabrina will find the old adage to be true the hard way.

CIA Agent Daniel Winters is having a bad day. Scratch that. A bad week. After being questioned by Internal Affairs - and hesitantly cleared - he’s on his way to Paraguay. New day. New mission. Another chance for answers. Instead, he only finds more questions, more suspicious behaviors from supposed allies, and more reasons to trust no one. To make matters worse, the aliens make their first move. Add some witches to the mix, because why make things easy? Daniel has his work cut out for him.

On March 11, 2003, in Brownsville, Texas - one of America's poorest cities - John Allen Rubio and Angela Camacho murdered their three young children. The apartment building in which the brutal crimes took place was already run down, and in their aftermath a consensus developed in the community that it should be destroyed. It was a place, neighbors felt, that was plagued by spiritual cancer.

Shortly after a dismembered torso was discovered by a pond outside Philadelphia in 1887, investigators homed in on two suspects: Hannah Mary Tabbs, a married, working-class Black woman, and George Wilson, a former neighbor whom Tabbs implicated after her arrest. As details surrounding the shocking case emerged, both the crime and ensuing trial - which spanned several months - were featured in the national press. The trial brought otherwise taboo subjects such as illicit sex, adultery, and domestic violence in the Black community to public attention.