Modern Fiction

Phryne Fisher has gone missing in the jungles of Papua New Guinea. Only her pearl-handled gun and a note arrive back home. She's left instruction that say that should she not turn up in six months' time, a letter must be sent to next of kin.

Colin McCool here, everyone’s favorite druid master and trouble magnet extraordinaire. Everyone except the gods, that is, who seem to enjoy messing with me just a little too much. Which is how I ended up in an alternate timeline, trying to save humanity from a vampire apocalypse. After getting my tail kicked by the top leech in Dallas, I decided it was time to level up before round two. That’s why I’m headed to Underhill to bond with a druid oak in this timeline so I can win this war. To do that, I’ll need to recruit the help of the Dagda, leader of the Celtic pantheon....

FIRST PRIZE: Reader’s Choice: Best SciFi Time Travel Trilogy - 2023 SECOND PRIZE: Firebird Awards: Time Travel Novels - 2024 On the brink of suicide, an insecure grad school drop out lets himself get abducted by kooky time traveling Venusians on a mission to prevent Armageddon by rescuing Jesus H Christ and helping him find the legendary emerald tablets, but when he’s cheated by his sources and abandoned by his allies, he must overcome his uncertainties to out-maneuver his rival plotters and the Romans before somebody gets crucified. READER REVIEWS: 5.0 out of 5 stars Couldn't put it ...

Exit Wounds is a thrilling anthology of crime stories written by masters of the genre, including Dean Koontz, Val McDermid, Lee Child, Jeffery Deaver, Elly Griffiths, Dennis Lehane, Joe R. Lansdale, and others.

Med school dropout Lena is desperate for a job, any job, to help her parents, who are approaching bankruptcy after her father was injured and laid off nearly simultaneously. So when she is offered a position, against all odds, working for one of Boston’s most elite families, the illustrious and secretive Verdeaus, she knows she must accept—no matter how bizarre the interview or how vague the job description. By day, she is assistant to the family doctor and his charge—the sickly, poetic, drunken heir to the family empire, who is as difficult as his illness is mysterious.

Cosy Felton is great at her job - she knows just how to handle the awkwardness that comes with working at an adult toy store. So when the hottest guy she’s ever seen walks into the shop looking completely overwhelmed, she’s more than happy to turn on the charm and help him purchase all of the items on his list. Griffin Mills is using his business trip in Las Vegas as a chance to escape the broken pieces of his life in New York City. The last thing he wants is to be put in charge of buying gag gifts for his friend’s bachelor party.

The Dead Father is a gargantuan half-dead, half-alive, part mechanical, wise, vain, powerful being who still has hopes for himself - even while he is being dragged by means of a cable toward a mysterious goal. In this extraordinary novel, marked by the imaginative use of language that influenced a generation of fiction writers, Donald Barthelme offered a glimpse into his fictional universe.

I’ve been known by many names...Junkyard Druid. Justiciar. God-Killer. And now, Trickster. That’s because I’ve thrown my lot in with the Trickster Gods’ Local #113. This merry band of defecation-stirring deities and demigods includes the likes of Sun Wukong, Loki, Heyoka, and the immortal magician formerly known as Gwydion—who happens to be my mentor.

Extreme Extortion... After rescuing a downed American submarine behind enemy lines, the naval mercenaries had their redemption. Or so they thought… Led by expelled U.S. officer Jake Slate, the growing cast of misfits expected lucrative salvage or combat missions. What they got instead was a gun to their heads. CIA tyrant, Olivia McDonald thrusts them between the United States and Turkey to prevent the NATO navies from clashing over the Syrian invasion. Can they subdue the Turks, escape the CIA’s control, and, if forced, attack the USS Lincoln battle group? Sprinting on a razor’s edge,...

Lucian is a Dragon Prince of the House of Smoke...and he's dying. He has to spawn a dragonling to uphold the treaty that keeps the mortal world safe from the immortal Dark Fae, but a dragon's mate rarely survives the birth of a young dragon, and he can't face the horror of another woman's death on his hands. When he rescues a beautiful woman from a demon roaming the streets of Seattle, he has to seduce her without losing his heart.

As a hunter in post-apocalyptic central Texas, Scratch Sullivan has survived zombies, vampires, and rogue military units. Heck, he's even the only human ever known to go hand-to-hand with a werewolf, and survive. But what’s a man to do when the local ‘thrope pack destroys your town and abducts your best girl?

On a lonely cliff beside the vast blue sea there is a house. In the house there lives a girl, and in the girl there lives a dream. Soon she'll be as free as the fishes that swim beneath the water. But until then she bides her time and lives quietly, her every move ruled over by an uncaring, heartless stepmother. The hope for freedom is all she has to hold onto. So close she can almost taste it. But when her stepmother’s estranged younger brother comes to stay, he presents a mystery that lures her in.

Old Gods never die…or so Athena thought. But then the feathers started sprouting beneath her skin, invading her lungs like a strange cancer, and Hermes showed up with a fever eating away his flesh. So much for living a quiet eternity in perpetual health.

From passion to promise. We escaped to a secluded mountain lodge for a weekend of reflection—but what happened there changed everything. Lisa and Becca want to be mothers. And I want to give them everything. In front of the fire, I made a vow: I’m ready to start a family. Not someday. Now. That night, we didn’t just share bodies—we shared our hearts. The harem came together to celebrate our love, our bond, and our future. With every kiss, every touch, every breath, we stepped into something new. And when I finally gave the women who asked me to give them a legacy, it wasn’t just a...

Crafting a killer cozy can be perilous. Fans of the genre expect authors to forego explicit gore and violence while at the same time creating a mind-boggling murder mystery with pulse-pounding tension and a twisty plot. But how is a writer supposed to satisfy such disparate demands? How to Craft a Killer Cozy Mystery tackles this exact problem by providing an actionable roadmap for starting (and completing!) a manuscript that will leave readers dying for more. Packed with charts and questionnaires designed to streamline the writing process, this comprehensive step-by-step guide will help ...

Felicity Hart has one goal: completing her masters in art. Falling in love isn't part of the plan. She reluctantly agrees to attend a Halloween party with her best friend. After sneaking away from the party and falling asleep in an unoccupied room, she wakes to the sexiest pair of eyes she's ever seen. Eyes that belong to the one man who could turn her well organized world upside down. When he flashes that wicked, panty-melting smile at her, the vow to not fall in love seems impossible.

Private Investigator James Benoit Heatley, "Heat" to those few he calls friends, has a reputation for being a bit rough around the edges. Heat's reputation for doing what he believes is just is well deserved, even if his brand of justice happens to be illegal. His reputation for not taking women as clients is equally well deserved. Some say there is a woman to blame and they would be right to do so. It is with great reluctance that Heat takes the case of a wife desperate to find her kidnapped husband, a case that forces Heat to confront his bitter past. Murder, kidnapping, and broken hearts...

While Arran Adair might have followed the call of wanderlust in his younger years, it isn't the reason he stayed away from Ardnoch. Home now, desperate to put the sins of his past behind him, and rebuild his life in the Scottish Highlands, Arran could never have predicted Eredine Willows. The Ardnoch Estate Pilates instructor is a complicated mystery and one Arran can't help but want to solve.

Award Winning Book from author Amadeus Rockefeller. An ancient and powerful Tibetan grimoire called ‘The Book of the Butterfly’ that has existed secretly for thousands of years comes into the possession of a British missionary named Jonathan Woods during the Chinese Civil war. Jonathan flees to Taiwan with the ancient spell book and takes up residence in a high mountain township at the centre of the island. There he tutors a rich landowners daughter Chen Mei-Ying about language, life and sorcery. Mei-Ying enthusiastically takes to the dark arts. But when she is killed in a freak ...

This is a story from the Canterbury Tales II: Modern Verse Translation collection.