Urban Horror

It’s no surprise to Betsy that her trip to Hell with her sister, Laura, landed them in hot water. Betsy isn’t exactly sorry she killed the Devil but it’s put Laura in a damnable position: assuming the role of Satan (she may not have the training but she looks great in red) - and in charge of billions of souls as she moves up in the world. Or is that down? But Betsy herself is in an odd new position as well - that of being a responsible monarch suddenly in charge of all things more earth-bound: like her vampire husband, Sinclair, who has gone from relieved to ecstatic to downright reckless now that he can tolerate sunlight.

The year is 2048. Climate change and bio-warfare have ravaged much of the Earth, and societal meltdown has splintered the US into fragments. But out of the ruins, Northern California has built a thriving culture based on respect for the four sacred things: air, fire, water and earth.

The world of man was brought to its knees with the zombie apocalypse. A hundred and fifty years have passed since man clawed and climbed his way back from the brink of extinction. Civilization has rebooted, man has begun to rebuild, creating new communities and society. It is on this fragile new shaky ground that a threat worse than the scourge of the dead has sprung... Once again, one man finds himself once thrust into the forefront of a war he wants nothing to do with and seemingly cannot win.

Marcus grew up believing his father killed his mother—then blamed it on the boogeyman under the bed. Always leave the lights on, his father warned, or the boogeyman will get you. Marcus still heeds the superstition, especially when he invites his new girlfriend over. Is Marcus haunted by a creature or has he just inherited his father’s murderous delusions? The night will tell.

In 525 BC, the Persian king Cambyses sent 50,000 soldiers across the conquered Egyptian desert to take an oasis city not far from where the Libyan border stands today. According to Greek history, a hurricane-force sandstorm struck near the end of their 600-mile trek. The army - all 50,000 men - vanished without a single trace. Fast forward to 1986. A British archaeological team, sent to the edge of the Great Sand Sea to exhume evidence of the incident, has also gone missing.

First setting: an all-male prep school in Arizona, where two sensitive freshmen form a bond based on their interest in magic tricks. Second setting: the labyrinthine house of a weird magician uncle in New England, where the two boys spend a memorable summer being trained in the art of illusion. Or is it real magic? Third setting: an alternate world where dark forces are at play - forces that first show up at the school, but intensify their power the summer.

Last week they invaded Manhattan. This week they will destroy the world. The vampiric virus unleashed in The Strain has taken over New York City. It is spreading and soon will envelop the globe. Amid the chaos, Eph Goodweather - head of the Centers for Disease Control's team - leads a band out to stop these bloodthirsty monsters. But it may be too late.

There are angels, and they are not beneficent or loving. But they do watch over us. They watch our lives unfold, analyzing us for repeating patterns and redundancies. When they find them, the angels simplify those patterns and remove the redundancies, and the problem that is "you" gets solved.

Centuries ago, Sebastian Wroth was turned into a vampire - a nightmare in his mind - against his will. Burdened with hatred and alone for ages, he sees little reason to live - until an exquisite, fey creature comes to kill him, inadvertently saving him instead. When Kaderin the Cold Hearted lost her two beloved sisters to a vampire attack long ago, a benevolent force deadened her sorrow - accidentally extinguishing all of her emotions. Yet whenever she encounters Sebastian, her feelings emerge multiplied.

Twenty-something Harper Connelly has a gift. After being struck by lighting as a child, she discovered an eerie ability to locate the deceased. In Memphis, skeptical Professor Nunley wants her to demonstrate that skill at an ancient cemetery. There, Harper stands atop a grave and says there are two bodies entombed: one centuries old, but the other, a young girl named Tabitha.

It is a dark time for the world. Humanity is just crawling out from under 300 years of domination by the race of vampires known as the Nobility. The war against the vampires has taken its toll; cities lie in ruin, the countryside is fragmented into small villages and fiefdoms that still struggle against nightly raids by the fallen vampires - and the remnants of their genetically manufactured demons and werewolves.

Lestat speaks. Vampire-hero, enchanter, seducer of mortals - for centuries he has been a courted prince in the dark and flourishing universe of the living dead. Lestat is alone. And suddenly, all his vampire rationale - everything he has come to believe and feel safe with - is called into question. In his overwhelming need to destroy his doubts and his loneliness, Lestat embarks on the most dangerous enterprise he has undertaken in all the danger-haunted years of his long existence.

Jake Cutter is reluctantly learning how to be a Necroscope - how to use the Mobius continuum to travel instantaneously from place to place, how to talk to the dead - but dead humans don't like him much. As far as he's concerned, Jake won't stop until he's satisfied his own bloodlust. He wants revenge against the Italian mobsters who killed the woman he loved and nearly killed him. But it seems vampire hunting is truly Jake's job now. To defeat them, Jake will need every weapon in a Necroscope's arsenal, including the power to pull all the unsleeping dead out of their moldering graves.

Three great vampires - two Lords and a Lady - arrive on an unsuspecting Earth that teems with defenseless humans, easy prey for the marauding vampires. But humanity has defenders. Though the Necroscope is gone, the psychically gifted men and women of E-Branch move swiftly against the vampire infestation.

It is autumn 1981 when inconceivable horror comes to Blackeberg, a suburb in Sweden. The body of a teenager is found, emptied of blood, the murder rumored to be part of a ritual killing. Twelve-year-old Oskar is personally hoping that revenge has come at long last—revenge for the bullying he endures at school, day after day. But the murder is not the most important thing on his mind. A new girl has moved in next door—a girl who has never seen a Rubik's Cube before, but who can solve it at once. There is something wrong with her, though, something odd. And she only comes out at night.

Charles Thomas Tester hustles to put food on the table, keep the roof over his father's head, from Harlem to Flushing Meadows to Red Hook. He knows what magic a suit can cast, the invisibility a guitar case can provide, and the curse written on his black skin that attracts the eye of wealthy white folks and their trained cops. But when he delivers an occult page to a reclusive sorceress in the heart of Queens, Tom opens a door to a deeper realm of magic.

In a nearly deserted village off the coast of Canada, strange things are happening. A local hunter discovers bare footprints in the snow. The stray dog population has ceased to exist. And people are beginning to ask questions about the town’s recluse.

The year is 1988. High school sophomores Abby and Gretchen have been best friends since the fourth grade. But after an evening of skinny-dipping goes disastrously wrong, Gretchen begins to act...different. She's moody. She's irritable. And bizarre incidents keep happening whenever she's nearby. Abby's investigation leads her to some startling discoveries - and by the time their story reaches its terrifying conclusion, the fate of Abby and Gretchen will be determined by a single question.

Jon Hudson, lead investigator for the Department of Homeland Security's Fusion Center-P, thinks his job is a joke. While other Fusion Centers focus on thwarting terrorist activity, Hudson's division is tasked with handling paranormal threats to national security, of which there have been zero during his years at the DHS. When yet another Sasquatch sighting leads to a research facility in the backwoods of Maine, disguised as an abandoned Nike missile site, Hudson's job becomes deadly serious.

The twin sons of Harry Keogh, the Necroscope, have taken very different paths. Nathan as his father's powers - to talk to the dead, to travel instantly through space. Like Harry, this new Necroscope fights evil wherever he finds it. His twin, Nestor, has become the most horrifying evil imaginable: a shape-shifting, blood sucking Wamphyi Lord! Devoid of human feeling, Nestor and his companion, the beautiful, malevolent Wratha the Risen, hunt without mercy.