Urban Horror

A week before Lenore Warwick's 21st birthday, she's kidnapped by the brooding and dangerous stranger with cold eyes and a lethal touch, who has been stalking her on San Francisco's fog-shrouded streets. Absolon "Solon" Stavig isn't your average criminal though. He's a centuries-old vampire who's caught between wanting to kill Lenore and wanting to save her.

For 300 years, Sister Autumn has incited wars, burnt villages, killed kings, and released plagues at the bidding of the grimoire. When an order from the grimoire sends Agatha to the Kingdom of Merveille, she already anticipates the worst. Unless she wants to face the wrath of the Goddess, Agatha must keep her head down and do as she's commanded. But when the grimoire orders her to marry a pompous prince and play the role of a peasant "accepted" by vicious aristocrats, she finds herself at the center of a war between the classes and an age-old prophecy.

Ramses the Great, former pharaoh of Egypt, is reawakened by the elixir of life in Edwardian England. Now immortal with his bride-to-be, he is swept up in a fierce and deadly battle of wills and psyches against the once-great Queen Cleopatra. Ramses has reawakened Cleopatra with the same perilous elixir whose unworldly force brings the dead back to life.

J. R. Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood novels have introduced readers/listeners to a "different, creative, dark, violent, and flat-out amazing" (All About Romance) world. Now, as the vampire warriors defend their race against their slayers, one male's loyalty to the Brotherhood will be tested - and his dangerous mixed blood revealed.

When Branson, Missouri, is hit with a death wave - four unsolved murders - it doesn't take an expert to realize that all is not well. But luckily for the locals, Anita Blake is an expert in the kinds of preternatural goings-on that have everyone spooked. And she's got an "in" with the creature that can make sense of the slayings - the sexy master vampire known as Jean-Claude.

When Apollo Kagwa's father disappeared, all he left his son were strange recurring dreams and a box of books stamped with the word improbabilia. Now Apollo is a father himself - and as he and his wife, Emma, are settling into their new lives as parents, exhaustion and anxiety start to take their toll. Apollo's old dreams return and Emma begins acting odd.

Andrew Ranulf Blankenship is a handsome, stylish nonconformist with wry wit, a classic Mustang, and a massive library. He is also a recovering alcoholic and a practicing warlock, able to speak with the dead through film. His house is a maze of sorcerous booby traps and escape tunnels, as yours might be if you were sitting on a treasury of Russian magic stolen from the Soviet Union thirty years ago.

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.

My name is Peter Grant, and I am a keeper of the secret flame - whatever that is. Truth be told, there's a lot I still don't know. My superior Nightingale, previously the last of England's wizardly governmental force, is trying to teach me proper schooling for a magician's apprentice. But even he doesn't have all the answers. Mostly I'm just a constable sworn to enforce the Queen’s Peace, with the occasional help from some unusual friends and a well-placed fire blast.

A rogue master vampire hits town, and Anita gets caught in the middle of an undead turf war. Jean-Claude, the Master Vamp of the city, wants her for his own - but his enemies have other plans. And to make matters worse, Anita takes a hit to the heart when she meets a stunningly handsome junior high science teacher named Richard Zeeman. They're two humans caught in the crossfire - or so Anita thinks.

In the aftermath of the mysterious death of their lead singer, the young members of a now-legendary British acid folk band hole up at Wylding Hall, an ancient English country house with its own dark secrets. There they record Wylding Hall, the album that makes their reputation but at a terrifying cost when Julian Blake, their new lead singer, disappears within the mansion and is never seen again.

In the latest installment of The Vampire Chronicles, Anne Rice summons up dazzling worlds to bring us the story of Armand—eternally young, with the face of a Botticelli angel. We go with Armand across the centuries to the Kiev Rus of his boyhood - a ruined city under Mongol dominion—and to ancient Constantinople, where Tartar raiders sell him into slavery. And in a magnificent palazzo in the Venice of the Renaissance we see him emotionally and intellectually in thrall to the great vampire Marius.

A titan and a wave of paralyzing cold, like a hammer and anvil, are about to flatten the pitiful remnants of the surviving players. What should a simple psychic do in this case? Jump through portals and worlds in search of fragments of a key that will open the door to the Underworld!

From the cramped bowels of a dimly lit radio station, Ghost Radio is beamed onto the airwaves. More than a call-in show to tell scary stories, Ghost Radio is a sanctuary for those sleepless denizens of the night, lost halfway between this world and the next. Joaquin, the host, slowly he finds himself unable to distinguish between the real world and the world populated by the nightmares on Ghost Radio.

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.

In this spellbinding novel, Lestat, rebel outlaw, addresses the tribe of vampires, telling us the mesmerizing story of how he became prince of the vampire world, and of the formation of the Blood Communion, and how his vision for the Children of the Universe to thrive as one, came to be.

Anthony Award-winning author Charlaine Harris has earned a devoted fan base with her USA Today and New York Times best-selling Sookie Stackhouse mystery series. All Together Dead features more dark but frequently hilarious adventures of buxom, blonde, beautiful, and telepathic cocktail waitress Sookie, who prefers the company of vampires to that of the living.

Anne Rice's richly told novel weaves an irresistible story of two worlds: the witches' world and the vampires' world, where magical powers and otherworldly fascinations are locked together in a dance of seduction, death, and rebirth.

Michael Gallatin is a British spy with a peculiar talent: the ability to transform himself into a wolf. Although his work in North Africa helped the Allies win the continent in the early days of World War II, he quit the service when a German spy shot his lover in her bed. Now, three years later, the army asks him to end his retirement and parachute into occupied Paris. A mysterious German plan called the Iron Fist threatens the D-Day invasion, and the Nazi in charge is the spy who betrayed Michael’s lover. The werewolf goes to France for king and country, hoping for a chance at bloody vengeance.

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.