Urban Mystery Thrillers

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.

Career-driven witch, Shayla Loci, is about to turn forty and is ready for a change. When she retires from capturing criminal supernaturals for the government, she figures her days of chasing bad guys are over. Little did she know her new job as the game warden on Enchanted Island would thrust her right back into harm's way . . . and she wasn't even officially on the clock yet! But when Sheriff Stone enlists her help to find out who killed an island resident, Shayla readily agrees. Between sorting through alibis, gathering clues, and mentoring a wayward teenager on how to be a witch.

Not every danger comes in the form of a mega-threat like a Titan. Some predators are a lot cozier...more personal. When one such creature threatens an independent tutor, Harry Dresden must shake off the blood and dirt of his most recent battles and rise to the occasion, even when it turns out that the new predator is far more dangerous and connected than first appearances would suggest.

Dead in Days. Emily Glass will be dead in days unless she can overcome destiny. An overlord of Hell has a price on Emily's head and every demon in the underworld wants to claim the prize. She might be the Great Banisher, but even she can't fight off an army of demons. The only way to survive might be to trust an enigmatic Seraphim, and to find the source of her powers. Where does her demon banishing power come from? How can she rip the powers from vampires?

Before Area X, there was Ambergris. Jeff VanderMeer conceived what would become his first cult classic series of speculative works: the Ambergris trilogy. Now, for the first time ever, the story of the sprawling metropolis of Ambergris is collected into a single volume, including City of Saints and Madmen, Shriek: An Afterword, and Finch.

Aisling Smith is about to try out for a new job - a job writing for a paper she's never heard of. But seeing as she's currently writing classified ads and obituaries, it would be foolish not to give it a shot. Riddler's Edge might be a small town, but it's definitely not boring. Her train hasn't even pulled into the station, and already a woman has been murdered. According to the grumpy but gorgeous Detective Quinn, the passenger's death wasn't a murder at all. He insists that Bathsheba Brookes died of a nut allergy.

Welcome to Jewell, North Carolina, a small strip of land on the Crystal Coast with no stop signs or traffic lights, but it's got a whole lot of magic. Ruby Mae Jewell helps run the family business of selling antiques and refurbished goods. But with old objects, you never know when one of them possesses more than just dust and cobwebs. When Rue hits up a flea market, she gets more than she bargained for. Finding a potentially dangerous magical object, she has to get it off the market and out of mortal hands.

As the festival of Beltane draws near, mysterious fires are springing up around the magical village of Myrtlewood, and Rosemary Thorn can't help but try to solve the case. Rosemary already has too much on her plate with a hoard of foundling children to house and her own teenager to raise. On top of all this, she has run out of excuses. There's nothing standing between Rosemary and her dream of becoming a magical chocolatier. Well, nothing except her own self-sabotage. Meanwhile, Athena Thorn is yearning for the fae realm and harboring a secret that could put the whole town at risk.

When the truth is poisoned, everyone's a suspect. Reading minds should make life easier, but Shelby Nichols knows better. Between poisoned pastries, cyber-attacks, and killers on the loose, her so-called “psychic” gig is turning deadly. Everyone’s lying and the truth is more dangerous than she ever imagined. Good thing Shelby’s got sass, smarts, and zero plans to die anytime soon. Psychic consultant. Mob asset. Mom. Multitasking has never been this deadly.

Rosemary and Athena are just settling into their new life in the unapologetically magical village of Myrtlewood. After so many years in financial turmoil, things are looking up. Rosemary even nabs the perfect part-time job while waiting on a certain handsome vampire lawyer to process her inheritance. Life is surprisingly peaceful until strange disappearances throw everything into chaos leading up to the Spring Equinox.

When 17-year-old Laurel Harper decides to go live with her estranged father and step-family, she's unaware of the fact that her fate was already sealed the day she was born. She is now exactly where some higher power wants her to be. But it's not until she meets the proud and mysterious Sam Laurens that she feels something strange is going on. And when she learns the dark truth about her own future, a sinister secret that will change everything as soon as she turns 19, she wants to run and hide, but soon realizes that there is no hiding from fate.

The city of Bulikov once wielded the powers of the gods to conquer the world, enslaving and brutalizing millions - until its divine protectors were killed. Now Bulikov has become just another colonial outpost of the world's new geopolitical power, but the surreal landscape of the city itself - first shaped, now shattered, by the thousands of miracles its guardians once worked upon it - stands as a constant, haunting reminder of its former supremacy. Into this broken city steps Shara Thivani.

Crispin is a mosaicist, a layer of bright tiles. Still grieving for the family he lost to the plaque, he lives only for his arcane craft. But an imperial summons from Valerius the Trakesian to Sarantium, the most magnificent place in the world, is difficult to resist. In a world half-wild and tangled with magic, a journey to Sarantium means a walk into destiny. Bearing with him a deadly secret and a Queen's seductive promise, guarded only by his own wits and a talisman from an alchemist's treasury, Crispin sets out for the fabled city. Along the way he will encounter a great beast.

Past secrets have come back to haunt the residents of Freak House and their visitors. With the help of a 300-year-old ghost, Charity, Samuel, and their friends peel back the layers of lies and deception to reveal the terrible events of 1867 that changed everything. At the heart of it all is a page of spells and two missing men. But as they draw closer to answers, Charity pushes Samuel further away. Desperate to win her love, he hovers on the brink of madness and misery. One small push might send him over the edge.

An ancient secret lies buried in Earth’s religions. Magical beings once ruled our planet. Man has forgotten them, but they are coming back. Their plan for mankind? Enslavement. An ancient curse banished them from the realm of man...now that curse grows weak, and they are finding their way back.

When two operatives go dark in Tampa, chasing the trail of an oligarch with ties to the demonic underworld, Vigilant Lock - the nation’s first and last line of defense against occult attack - sends their best to the rescue: Harmony Black, a troubled investigator and an elemental witch with a keen but tangled mind; and her partner Jessie Temple, the daughter of a supernatural slasher and the inheritor of her father’s powers.

Justin and gang finally find a way back to Eden. But the world they find isn't the one they left. The people are gone. Zombie-like creatures roam the streets. And the grand ruler of this dystopia is a man named Vokan. How did Eden die? How did Vokan gain power over the ashes of civilization? None of the clues make sense and Vokan isn't giving straight answers. What started as a jubilant return home becomes a lethal quest to fight Vokan and save the world yet again. But Vokan is no pushover and his kind of magic is something Justin has never faced before.

During a routine Custodian investigation into illegal activities by vampires, Emily Glass discovers a massive demon-summoning pattern in a warehouse. Her demon-possessed boyfriend, Tyler Rock, identifies it as a demonicus - an ancient pattern used to summon demons from different levels of hell all at the same time, with the most powerful demon devouring the souls of humans to magnify his power.

Solstice Winters has spent most of her life halfway between normal society and the world of her magical parents. However, when getting caught between two worlds becomes more than metaphorical, being able to summon light or open locks might not be enough.

With the world clinging to a fragile peace forced on the Fae by humanity after the Faerie Wars, metalsmith Alex Blackwood is plunged into the world of the half-fae who traffic in illegal magical artifacts. Her best friend's murder and his cryptic last message place her in the crosshairs of a scheme to reignite the decade-old war between humans and fae. Worse, violent attacks against her and the arrival of a fae knight on a mission force Alex to face a devastating revelation of who and what she is.