Blade Runner meets The Fifth Element in this eccentric cyber-noir thriller series about a bleak world ravaged by corrupt leaders, mega-corporations, and crime lords… and the washed-up cyborg detective who might be the only one crazy enough to take them on.

Embark on a transformative auditory journey with “The Orchid: The Secret Code of Modern Goddesses,” where the serene whispers of self-discovery meet the echoes of empowerment.

A young man in his teens is transported from our world to a magical realm that contains seven levels of reality. Very quickly transformed by magic into a grown man of heroic proportions, he takes the name Able and sets out on a quest to find the sword that has been promised to him, a sword he will get from a dragon, the one very special blade that will help him fulfill his life ambition to become a knight and a true hero. Inside, however, Able remains a boy, and he must grow in every sense to survive the dangers and delights that lie ahead in encounters with giants, elves, and wizards.

There is only one way to travel across the Wastelands: on the Trans-Siberian Express, a train as famous for its luxury as for its danger. The train is never short of passengers, eager to catch sight of Wastelands creatures more miraculous and terrifying than anything they could imagine. But on the train's last journey, something went horribly wrong, though no one seems to remember what exactly happened. Not even Zhang Weiwei, who has spent her life onboard and thought she knew all of the train’s secrets.

In this dual collection of short stories, Alexander McCall Smith brings his trademark humor and warmth to inventive tales of spying and vengeance. In one story, a spy dropped deep into enemy territory manages to disguise himself—quite convincingly—as a nun. In another, an invitation to join the Vatican Secret Service sends a prospective operative down a rabbit hole of controversy and confusion. A third story finds an author, on the brink of public ruin, seeing the error of his ways after an act of kindness saves the day.

Morgan Carter, owner of the Odds and Ends bookstore in Door County, Wisconsin, has a hobby. When she’s not tending the store, she’s hunting cryptids—creatures whose existence is rumored but never proven to be real. It’s a hobby that cost her parents their lives, but one she’ll never give up on.

Librarian Sherry Pinkwhistle keeps finding bodies—and solving murders. But she's concerned by just how many killers she's had to track down in her quaint village. None of her neighbors seem surprised by the rising body count...but Sherry is becoming convinced that whatever has been causing these deaths is unnatural. When someone close to Sherry ends up dead, and her cat, Lord Thomas Crowell, becomes possessed by what seems to be an ancient demon, Sherry begins to think she’s going to need to become an exorcist as well as an amateur sleuth.

Out on the Yorkshire Moors lives a secret line of people for whom books are food, and who retain all of a book's content after eating it. To them, spy novels are a peppery snack; romance novels are sweet and delicious. Eating a map can help them remember destinations, and children, when they misbehave, are forced to eat dry, musty pages from dictionaries.

Dreams taunt me, filling me with questions even more so than the supernatural world I’d only just learned about. Making matters worse, a vampire attacked me while I was alone in the middle of the night. Death was imminent until a silver wolf saved me. A silver wolf who shifted into the most gorgeous man I'd ever seen, and no matter how hard I try to ignore it, there’s something pulling me toward him. Secrets come to light, and nothing is as it seemed. I'm being hunted.

Charlie Hall has never found a lock she couldn’t pick, a book she couldn’t steal, or a bad decision she wouldn’t make. She's spent half her life working for gloamists, magicians who manipulate shadows to peer into locked rooms, strangle people in their beds, or worse. Gloamists guard their secrets greedily, creating an underground economy of grimoires. And to rob their fellow magicians, they need Charlie Hall.