Urban Contemporary Fiction

With Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami gives us a novel every bit as ambitious and expansive as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which has been acclaimed both here and around the world for its uncommon ambition and achievement, and whose still-growing popularity suggests that it will be read and admired for decades to come.

Welcome to Newford: to the music clubs, the waterfront, and the alleyways where ancient myths and magic spill into the modern world. Gemmins live in abandoned cars and skells traverse the tunnels below, while mermaids swim in the gray harbor waters and fill the cold night with their song. Come meet Jilly, painting wonders in the rough city streets; and Geordie, playing fiddle while he dreams of a ghost; and the Angel of Grasso Street gathering the fey and the wild and the poor and the lost.

A call from a distraught wife, and another from Lt. Murphy of the Chicago PD Special Investigation Unit makes Harry believe things are looking up, but they are about to get worse, much worse. Someone is harnessing immense supernatural forces to commit a series of grisly murders. Someone has violated the first law of magic: Thou Shalt Not Kill. Tracking that someone takes Harry into the dangerous underbelly of Chicago, from mobsters to vampires....

The last in a proud line of witches, he’s come to test his small magic in the big city. Stealing enchanted artifacts pays the rent, but the competition is fierce. And handsome. And great at magic too.

Once upon a time, there was a forgotten era of magic and monster. But the remnants—and all memory—of the old world have been replaced by the sane, the scientific, and the rational. But sometimes the magical past isn’t content to stay past. That’s where Jack Damian comes in. It’s his joy to protect our present from the supernatural remnants of an earlier time, a different history. It’s his job to make the past safe. Jack is called to the Tate Museum, where dozens of people have disappeared beneath the surface of a painting.

When Ben, a suburban family man, takes a business trip to rural Pennsylvania, he decides to spend the afternoon before his dinner meeting on a short hike. Once he sets out into the woods behind his hotel, he quickly comes to realize that the path he has chosen cannot be given up easily. With no choice but to move forward, Ben finds himself falling deeper and deeper into a world of man-eating giants, bizarre demons, and colossal insects.

C'est la Nuit de l'Hiver dans la contrée de Deux-Rivières et, en ce soir de fête, l'excitation des villageois est à son comble. C'est alors qu'arrivent trois étrangers comme le jeune Rand et ses amis d'enfance Mat et Perrin n'en avaient jamais vu : une dame noble et fascinante nommée Moiraine, son robuste compagnon et un trouvère. De quoi leur faire oublier ce cavalier sombre et sinistre aperçu dans les bois, dont la cape ne bougeait pas en plein vent.

No one's tried to kill Harry Dresden for almost an entire year, and his life finally seems to be calming down. For once, the future looks fairly bright. But the past casts one hell of a long shadow.

Alissa doesn’t believe in magic. Her father’s stories about the Hold, a legendary fortress where human Keepers learn magic from the enigmatic Masters, are just that—stories. But her mother insists Alissa has inherited her father’s magical ability, so she must go to the Hold to be trained. On her way, she crosses paths with Strell, a wandering musician from the plains.

Working as a quality-assurance grunt in the gaming industry sounds like fun, right? You get to play the coolest new games before anyone else. And all you have to do is to find, reproduce, and report bugs before the last pixel is locked in and the games are launched to an eager public. Sure, there’s the unpaid overtime, the office politics, and the ever-present threat of layoffs. But you get to game!

The Youngbloods are a mafia-like demon family, sent as a sinister advance team to prepare Earth for an infernal invasion. But when something goes wrong, the demon invasion never comes and the Youngbloods are stuck on crappy Earth with the worst creatures in the world—each other. Petra Youngblood is the family’s hunter. Her job: to track and kill the annual human sacrifice that keeps the Youngbloods immortal. Otherwise, they will crumble to dust. But as Petra is hunting down this year’s sacrifice, a man named Killian Irons, she breaks the first demonic rule.

By the divine promise of sacrifice, he awakened an Ash Angel with a new body, new powers, and a new war to fight. Cassandra, his temperamental trainer, tries to get him ready to battle Ghostpackers and Dreads, but it might be too little too late: for the first time in history, the Ash Angels are faltering against the fury of an evil more ancient than they are. While he fights to survive run-ins with a Sheid-hunted pop star and a gorgeous but dangerous Dread, Trace realizes his new life cannot erase the trauma of the old.

Every facet of Ivy Pierce's life is meticulously planned out. Cynical and jaded by 16, Ivy's only hope is to escape the legacy she was born into. She has a plan, a carefully thought out escape plan. She just has to play by the rules until everything falls into place. Unfortunately, as predictable as her life can be, she never sees Ryder Sutton coming. He tumbles into her life, unimpressed and untouched by her and the rules she's forced to live by. He's an enigma to her. A gorgeous, frustrating, sincere mystery in the ugly prison of her life.

Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden is Chicago's only openly practicing wizard. He is also dead broke. His vast knowledge and magical skills are unfortunately matched by his talent for making powerful enemies and alienating friends. With little more than his integrity left, he accepts an offer of work from Lt. Karin Murphy of Chicago's Special Investigations Unit. He wants to redeem himself in Murphy's eyes and make enough money to quiet his rumbling stomach.

Nyssa Blacksea is eager to silence her doubters. As the only warrior in her guild without magick, she's forced to rely solely on her martial arts mastery, unwavering confidence, and charisma. When given the chance to hunt down a mysterious woman named Quinn and earn the coveted title of Ashcloak, Nyssa seizes the opportunity. Track down a fugitive? An easy task. There's just one problem—Quinn isn't receptive to Nyssa's charms and refuses to go down without a fight. Dangerous secrets swirl around Quinn and a treacherous guild leader, rattling Nyssa's faith in the very system that raised her.

The Winter Queen of Faerie has manipulated Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden into accepting a case to solve a murder and stop a war between the courts of Summer and Winter that could have literally earth shattering consequences. His own soul is up for grabs. Dresden must dig deep to discover that at time a willingness to accept a little help from your friends, be they a cub pack of werewolves, old loves in sheep's clothing, or a battalion of pizza loving dewdrop fairies, is a very good thing.

A simple man, lacking in knowledge, but quick of wit. He is flung into the future, where everything is different. Now, he has to make a name for himself, carve his own path in life. He decides to play a game, the biggest one in the world. A strategy game, focused on tactics, used to select the top managers of the largest international corporation. Now, he has to prove his mettle and earn a place for himself in the future....

I decided that Orion Lake needed to die after the second time he saved my life. Everyone loves Orion Lake. Everyone else, that is. Far as I’m concerned, he can keep his flashy combat magic to himself. I’m not joining his pack of adoring fans. I don’t need help surviving the Scholomance, even if they do. Forget the hordes of monsters and cursed artifacts; I’m probably the most dangerous thing in the place. Just give me a chance and I’ll level mountains and kill untold millions, making myself the dark queen of the world.

Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden has had a rough couple of weeks. As the only openly practicing professional wizard in the Chicago area, he has squared off against a multitude of supernatural bad guys. Harry has won the day against demons, poltergeists, sorcerers, trolls, vampires, werewolves, and even an evil faerie godmother. You might think nothing could spook him. You would be wrong.

The one thing you never talk about while you’re in the Scholomance is what you’ll do when you get out. Not even the richest enclaver would tempt fate that way. But it’s all we dream about: the hideously slim chance we’ll survive to make it out the gates and improbably find ourselves with a life ahead of us, a life outside the Scholomance halls. And now the impossible dream has come true. I’m out, we’re all out. We saved everyone. So much for my great-grandmother’s prophecy of doom and destruction. Ha, only joking! Actually, it’s gone all wrong.