Urban For Children

The year is 1985: A gallon of gas is roughly a dollar, New Coke is a bust, "We Are the World” is a number one hit, and none of that really matters. Because Jennifer Knight is no longer on Earth. After slipping through her enemies' fingers, Jennifer Knight has fled to Magus, the gothic world where she was born. Here—along with her mother, her best friend, and a mystical guru—Jen discovers an exotic, fantastical world where magic, not technology, reigns supreme. The excitement of that moment proves short-lived.

Who can you trust when everyone has the face of an Angel? Angels, Demons, Guardians, brooding guys with green eyes - 18-year-old Grace is sick of the lot of them. All she wants is a normal life, but when tragedy strikes, Grace and her foster family are hurled head-first into a world of magic, intrigue, and deceit. As the threads of her life begin to unravel, Grace finds herself at the epicenter of a battle to save those she loves.

Every state has an urban legend that evokes fear and curiosity in equal parts, and we've chronicled all of these logic-defying horrors here in the Haunted States of America anthology. From the Jersey Devil to La Llorona, each story included introduces a new chill inducing, stomach churning monster, specter, or poltergeist certain to keep you up at night. A broad ranging collection of authors, including seasoned veterans and some first timers making a fright-tastic debut, have all united to unearth the scariest lore from each state in the US, as well as D.C. and Puerto Rico.

Death didn't solve anything for Claire. Now condemned to an eternity of roaming the Earth as a 16-year-old, she has to figure out this whole ghost thing from the other side. Lesson one: Memories are power. Lesson two: This sucks.

Things have changed for Atticus Higginbottom. After the near catastrophe in the Fourth Reality, Tick’s being homeschooled in the fields of science, trying to master the mysterious Chi’karda. But just as he begins to make progress, Mistress Jane reappears, now hideously scarred and much more powerful. She has tapped into the universe’s darkest secret to create the Blade of Shattered Hope, and in her quest to attain a Utopian Reality for the future of mankind, she’s ready to risk billions of lives...

Last spring Claire's seemingly normal - if not totally screwed up - life was tossed on its head. For five years she'd been one of the damned - a human that knows the truth about the otherworldly among us. She'd worked for The Boss - the Demon King himself - as his administrative assistant, handling everything from early retirements, to Maintenance's incessant requests for dental. No one gets dental.

In the fifth and final volume of the epic saga of Leven Thumps, all of Foo is rushing madly to exit the realm of dreams while Leven is headed in the opposite direction. Fate snatches him to the island of Alder, where he is poised to pass or fail the final test. Meanwhile, in Reality, Ezra and Dennis are welcoming those flowing out of Foo - but only so they can selfishly conquer them and gain control of both realms. Phoebe is loose, and it takes Geth getting a hold of her to begin to balance the emotions and passions of all that is crumbling.

Ten years after leaving his ancestral homeland, Michael Singleton returns—haunted, hunted, and running out of time. Marked by a deadly curse, Michael is doomed to have his soul claimed by the Shadowlands, the eternal domain of the Witch Goddess. His only hope lies in opening a portal to the Otherworld, the realm of Corvus, god of beasts. The key to this spell is a secret known to only one man: the powerful Guardian of the Dead.

Emma and her friends have survived the Necromancers sent to the city to kill them. They've gone to ground in a cottage north of the city, but time is not on their side. There are no barriers that can keep the dead out, and the dead obey their Queen. It's only a matter of time before they're found. Nathan has been blessed by the Queen of the Dead. She has granted him a physical body. He can eat, he can breathe, he can speak and be heard. The Queen calls this resurrection. Nathan calls it Hell. The living think he's alive. He's not.

Something evil has haunted a ghost town in the mountains of Oregon for a long time, few if any who visit that town return alive. The Hawk and Wolf lead a team into that forest to investigate, and there they find vestiges of an old evil. Even worse, treachery coming from within the team. Can they do the job? Can they even survive the savagery that comes at them? This mission will test them beyond reason.

Evil hides in plain sight. Can Ana find the killer before it's too late? Ana Price has never lived in one place for more than six months at a time. For as long as she can remember, her mother’s paranoia has led them across the country in a game of cat and mouse, fleeing from an unseen force too terrifying to describe. As Ana struggles with her resentment towards her mother’s seemingly baseless worries, her parents decide to return to their hometown - the quaint little town of Clermont.

On an average night, 17-year-old Ridley uses her forbidden magic to steal from the wealthy and secretly give to those in need. But tonight, someone follows her home - and ends up murdered outside her apartment. The guy who happens to be too close to the scene? Archer Davenport, heir to the city's largest fortune. He's also the guy from whom Ridley just stole. Archer reveals a dangerous truth: The artifact Ridley stole from him contains secrets that could put many lives in danger. Which means Ridley has to get it back.

Are you brave enough to discover the dark secret of Snow Island? Vampires, werewolves, unicorns, pterodactyls, and other creatures from myth or brought back from extinction. A deadly monorail with an insanely cheery artificial intelligence tour guide. A fortune-teller's frighteningly accurate prediction of death.

If knowledge is power, then what's a secret? A year after thwarting the Kabbahl's attempt to restore shadow magic, the impetuous Marcus Fith, denied the opportunity to help his family search for his sister, decides to take matters into his own hands. When the only meaningful clue his family has seen mysteriously shows up - a letter addressed to him... written in his own blood - Marcus escapes in order to work out the set of expiring instructions that promise to lead him to his sister. Promises are slippery things, however.

Gabrian Shadwell is one of the most lethal and powerful supernatural beings on Earth. Her blood is one part silver mage and the other vampire. The problem is she has no idea she even has it. When her magic surfaces and makes its claim on her, Gabrian loses control of her life and becomes a danger to everyone around her. The world she knows turns upside down and fills with chaos. Stubborn and hell-bent on getting her life back, she makes a deal with a smooth-tongued devil who claims he can help her gain control.

For Noa and Callum, being together is dangerous, even deadly. From the start, sixteen-year-old Noa senses that the mysterious transfer student to her Monterey boarding school is different. Callum unnerves and intrigues her, and even as she struggles through family tragedy, she's irresistibly drawn to him. Soon they are bound by his deepest secret: Callum is Fae, banished from another world after a loss hauntingly similar to her own.

Rocio Lopez and Finn Lockwood are finally reunited - but under desperate circumstances. Magic is raging, and the mage community is in chaos as the Confed struggles to hold onto its secrets. Rocio believes exposing those secrets is the key to saving the world's magic. She never wanted to become the leader of a revolution, but with her unique understanding of the crisis, taking charge may be the only way to see her mission through.

When Hunter Cassidy revealed her true power to Slade Baines during a fight for their lives, everything she wanted was ripped away from her. Now, with her heart in pieces, Hunter is left only with her determination to find and destroy the deadly weapon that led her to infiltrate the Assassin's Legion in the first place.

When Hunter Cassidy plans to infiltrate the Assassin's Legion, posing as an assassin-in-training, she is prepared to encounter danger every step of the way. What she doesn't expect is the ruggedly handsome and relentlessly fierce trainee, Slade Baines. It's hard enough that Hunter is the first female to be accepted to train with the Master Assassin himself. Even when she beats the other candidates, the Master ranks her lowest of all. In the male-dominated Legion, the other trainees see her as a weak link to be driven out of their ranks.

NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS’ CHOICE A blazingly original story collection about the interconnected lives of the residents of a public housing project on the South Side of Chicago “The residents and their buoyant dreams are documented, celebrated, honored. I bow to this writer...