Urban Historical

Thinking that she has been summoned by German immigrant Agnes Otto to usher a new life into the world, midwife Sarah Brandt is greeted by the news of an untimely death instead. It seems that Agnes' beautiful younger sister, Gerda, had fallen into the life of a "charity girl". Caught up in the false glamour of the city's nightlife, she would trade her company and her favors for lavish gifts. And now she was dead - victim, no doubt, of one of her "gentlemen friends".

In a world where an industrial revolution is powered by magic, Tyen, a student of archaeology, unearths a sentient book called Vella. Once a young sorcerer-bookbinder, Vella was transformed into a useful tool by one of the greatest sorcerers of history. Since then she has been collecting information, including a vital clue to the disaster Tyen’s world faces.Elsewhere, in an land ruled by priests, Rielle the dyer’s daughter has been taught that to use magic is to steal from the Angels.

Join John Rogers as he ventures out into an uncharted London like a redbrick Indiana Jones in search of the lost meaning of our metropolitan existence. Nursing two reluctant knees and a can of Stella, he perambulates through the seasons seeking adventure in our city’s remote and forgotten...

From “the Chuck D of Palestinian hip-hop” (Los Angeles Times), a memoir of three generations of one family of Palestinians up against loss, oppression, and a shape-shifting past, present, and future, in a work of stunning originality and kinetic energy 3Gs tells the stories of a father, his...

Kerovan of Ulmsdale has long borne the curse of his ancestors’ depredations. After pillaging a sanctum of the Old Ones, his bloodline has been forever marred by painful sickness and death. Kerovan was born strong and hardy, but he walks on hooves instead of human feet and sees through eyes of amber - just as the Old Ones had. Bound in marriage to the beautiful Joisan of Ithkrypt, Kerovan seeks to claim his rightful place as lord-heir of Ulmsdale. But first, the couple - separated by distance, yet linked in spirit - must unlock the powers held within a mystical necklace Joisan wears.

Cha Ming’s new brother is a demon fox. He’s cute. He’s naughty. And he’s always hungry. If only Godbeasts didn’t grow so damned quickly. When the duo joins their classmate Gong Lan on an expedition, they soon discover that not everything is as it seems. It’s not rebels they’re fighting, but devils wearing human skins. Can they disrupt an evil merchant’s soul trade without the help of the army? Gong Lan’s techniques are driving her mad, and it’s only a matter of time before she turns on them.

Nainai has lived in Shanghai for many years, and the time has come to find a wife for her adopted grandson. But when the bride she has chosen arrives from the countryside, it soon becomes clear that the orphaned girl has ideas of her own. Her name is Fu Ping, and the more she explores the residential lanes and courtyards behind Shanghai’s busy shopping streets, the less she wants to return to the country as a dutiful wife. As Fu Ping wavers over her future, she learns the city through the stories of the nannies, handymen, and garbage collectors of postwar Shanghai....

Welcome to Bailey's Café, the most mythically real diner you've ever walked into. Presided over by Bailey and his helpmate, Nadine, it is a magnet that draws a wide variety of the "colored" people of 1948, each with a story to tell.

As war rages in 1944, young army lieutenant Lucas Athan recovers a sarcophagus excavated from an Egyptian tomb. Shipped to Princeton University for study, the box contains mysteries that only Lucas, aided by brilliant archaeologist Simone Rashid, can unlock. These mysteries may, in fact, defy - or fulfill - the dire prophecies of Albert Einstein himself.

After fighting off a group of bandits, Cha Ming helps a people rebuild. His heart is heavy with guilt, but he can’t stay long. To face an inevitable foe, Cha Ming must journey to Quicksilver City, where he’ll meet the man who once enslaved him. Will he find the courage to face him?

On a freezing Christmas Eve in 1879, a forensic psychic reader is summoned from her Baker Street lodgings to the scene of a questionable death. Alexandrina Victoria Pendlebury (named after her godmother, the current queen of England) is adamant that the death in question is a magically compromised murder and not a suicide, as the police had assumed. After the shocking revelation contained by the body in question, Alex must put her personal loss aside to uncover the deeper issues at stake, before more bodies turn up.

Gwenyth Killigrew, the Witch of Kerrow, has seen the tragic fate that awaits any man she's foolish enough to fall in love with. Yet she yearns for a daughter to carry on her healer's wisdom and otherworldly gifts of Sight. When Rafe Fleming, a notorious smuggler, washes ashore near her home, she thinks she's found the man to father that child.

Before writing the Conan stories, Robert E. Howard wrote an alternate history of the world that included the origins of the various races and countries that formed the background of his most famous heroic character. This history shows where the Cimmerians originated and the tribes they fought to establish their kingdom. How did the backward skin-wearing Picts overrun an empire? The answers are here. Fans of the Conan stories will enjoy this grand view of the history of the Hyborian Age.

Hazel's parents saw the 1912 sinking of the Titanic as a portent of doom and locked their daughter away. Isolated and alone, each birthday she wishes to be free, whatever the risk. If only her childhood friend, Henry, would return and breach the high walls. On the front lines of the Great War, Henry kept a token of happier times - a worn photograph of a young girl with long blonde plaits. He returns from war damaged and vowing to do one brave thing to make up for his cowardice: release Hazel from her prison.

The Abe clan and its allies are in full rebellion. When the Emperor's greatest military leader, Yoshii, is targeted for assassination by magic, it is up to the newly sober Lord Yamada and his exorcist associate Kenji to keep the young man alive long enough to put down the uprising before the entire country is consumed by war. Yamada knows how to deal with demons, monsters, and angry ghosts, but the greatest threat of all is one final assassin, hidden most secretly of all.

In an ancient Japan where the incursions of gods, ghosts, and demons into the living world is an everyday event, an impoverished nobleman named Yamada no Goji makes his living as a demon hunter for hire. With the occasional assistance of the reprobate exorcist Kenji, whatever the difficulty - ogres, demons, fox-spirits - for a price Yamada will do what needs to be done, even and especially if the solution to the problem isn’t as simple as the edge of a sword.

St. Louis in 1880 is full of ghosts - mangled soldiers, tortured slaves, the innocent victims of war - and Jacob Tracy can see them all. Ever since Antietam, when he lay delirious among the dead and dying, Trace has been haunted by the country's restless spirits. The curse cost him his family, his calling to the church, and damn near his sanity. He stays out of ghost-populated cities as much as possible these days, guiding wagon trains west with his pragmatic and skeptical partner, Boz.

Yamada no Goji is a minor nobleman of ancient Japan who has lost everything - except a single purpose: keep a promise to the woman he loved. In order to fulfill his vow, all he has to do is fight a horde of demons and monsters, bargain with a few ghosts, outwit the sinister schemers of the emperor's court, find a way to defeat an assassin who cannot be seen, heard, or touched - and change the course of history.

World-famous “consulting detective” Sherlock Holmes faces a terrible crisis: a ring of criminal masterminds has threatened to loose thousands of plague-infected rats into the streets of London. But the Black Death isn’t Holmes’ only problem. A lone killer haunts the city. His calling card is a trail of corpses, drained of blood to the last drop.The key to solving both crimes rests in the hands of a mysterious nobleman recently returned to London on a personal matter. His name is Dracula.

This is the saga of the immortal Gon, a 30,000 year-old vampire. The first volume of his memoirs recounts his mortal life in prehistoric Germany alongside his male companion, Brulde, and his two wives, the Neanderthal Eyya and his Cro-Magnon mate, Nyala. It details the fearsome events that lead to his transformation from man to undying monster.