Showing titles in Contemporary

"I very much need to be dead." These are the chilling words left behind by a man who had everything to live for - but took his own life. In the void that remains stands his widow, Jane, surrounded by questions destined to go unanswered...unless she does what all the grief, fear, confusion, and fury inside of her demand: find the truth, no matter what. There is no one else to speak for Jane's husband - or the others who have followed him into death at their own hands.

Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden has had a rough couple of weeks. As the only openly practicing professional wizard in the Chicago area, he has squared off against a multitude of supernatural bad guys. Harry has won the day against demons, poltergeists, sorcerers, trolls, vampires, werewolves, and even an evil faerie godmother. You might think nothing could spook him. You would be wrong.

On a brisk autumn day, a 13-year-old boy stands on the shores of the gray Atlantic, near a silent amusement park and a fading ocean resort called the Alhambra. The past has driven Jack Sawyer here: His father is gone, his mother is dying, and the world no longer makes sense. But for Jack everything is about to change. For he has been chosen to make a journey back across America - and into another realm. One of the most influential and heralded works of fantasy ever written, The Talisman is an extraordinary novel of loyalty, awakening, terror, and mystery.

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.

Indigo Watson gets serotonin from sticking to her plans. She has a long list of to-do’s, including grading midterms, and the list only grows longer when she meets a sexy half-orc at the bar. After spending a weekend with the woman, Indigo is beside herself with feelings, and for once, it’s not anxiety: it’s lust.

The last thing Jonathan "Tilly" Tillman remembers is the thunderous crack of a flame-engulfed building collapsing as he tried to save a little girl . . . Until a system administrator offers him a new life on Nephesh, the realm where ideals, myths, and legends clash endlessly for supremacy in the hearts of men. Carrying all the trauma and regrets of his decades-long career as a first responder, Tilly must start from scratch—without a tutorial—in a system-governed universe. To make matters worse, on day one he finds himself facing off against a cosmic force bent on corrupting the entire realm.

Kit and her lover, Damon, the Alpha of the Southern Cat Clans, are hot on the trail of Madae, an ancient entity that has haunted Kit’s people through the ages, stealing and discarding bodies once she's worn them out. Kit was supposed to be the next target, but she proved to be tougher than Madae expected. As both an act of revenge and expediency, Madae went for the next nearest of kin, Kit's cousin, Doyle. Earth-shattering truths are revealed and secrets laid bare, including secrets that threaten the love between Kit and Damon, and their very lives.

The enemy unknowingly opened a portal to the Netherworld, and our world’s only wizard somehow managed to close it. Unfortunately, something got through. Something big. A dragon. Now Kaz Wolfe, with help from his dog Duke who is channeling the spirit of a wizard from ancient Babylon, and with no help from Azib the Cowardly Genie, must find the dragon before someone gets a cellphone video of the thing, and the world learns that magic is real. Or, you know, before the dragon eats someone.

No one's tried to kill Harry Dresden for almost an entire year, and his life finally seems to be calming down. For once, the future looks fairly bright. But the past casts one hell of a long shadow.

In Chicago, someone has been killing practitioners of magic, those incapable of becoming full-fledged wizards. Shockingly, all the evidence points to Harry Dresden's half brother, Thomas, as the murderer. Determined to clear his sibling's name, Harry uncovers a conspiracy within the White Council of Wizards that threatens not only him, but his nearest and dearest, too.

New York Times and USA Today best-selling author Charlaine Harris has won an Anthony Award for her one-of-a-kind Sookie Stackhouse mystery series. Sookie, a Louisiana cocktail waitress, skilled telepath, and friend to vampires, has a dedicated fan base that grows larger every day.

Winter lasts most of the year at the edge of the Russian wilderness, and in the long nights, Vasilisa and her siblings love to gather by the fire to listen to their nurse’s fairy tales. Above all, Vasya loves the story of Frost, the blue-eyed winter demon. Wise Russians fear him, for he claims unwary souls, and they honor the spirits that protect their homes from evil. Then Vasya’s widowed father brings home a new wife from Moscow. Fiercely devout, Vasya’s stepmother forbids her family from honoring their household spirits, but Vasya fears what this may bring.

In a Tokyo suburb, a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife’s missing cat—and then for his wife as well—in a netherworld beneath the city’s placid surface. As these searches intersect, he encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists. Gripping, prophetic, and suffused with comedy and menace, this is one of Haruki Murakami’s most acclaimed and beloved novels.

Bringing the magic and suspense of the All Souls Trilogy to a deeply satisfying conclusion, this highly anticipated finale went straight to number one on the New York Times best seller list. In The Book of Life, Diana and Matthew time-travel back from Elizabethan London to make a dramatic return to the present - facing new crises and old enemies. At Matthew’s ancestral home, Sept-Tours, they reunite with the beloved cast of characters from A Discovery of Witches - with one significant exception.

When an unknown someone shoots him and leaves him to die, Harry Dresden hopes he might be heading to a better place. Unfortunately being dead doesn't make Harry's life any easier. Trapped between life and death, he learns that his friends are in serious trouble. Only by finding his murderer can he save his friends and move on - a feat that would be a lot easier if he had a body and access to his powers. Worse still are the malevolent shadows that roam Chicago, controlled by a dark entity that wants Harry to suffer even in death.

Richard Mayhew is a young man with a good heart and an ordinary life, which is changed forever when he stops to help a girl he finds bleeding on a London sidewalk. His small act of kindness propels him into a world he never dreamed existed. There are people who fall through the cracks, and Richard has become one of them. And he must learn to survive in this city of shadows and darkness, monsters and saints, murderers and angels, if he is ever to return to the London that he knew.

Locked behind bars for three years, Shadow did his time, quietly waiting for the day when he could return to Eagle Point, Indiana. A man no longer scared of what tomorrow might bring, all he wanted was to be with Laura, the wife he deeply loved, and start a new life. But just days before his release, Laura and Shadow's best friend are killed in an accident. With his life in pieces and nothing to keep him tethered, Shadow accepts a job from a beguiling stranger he meets on the way home, an enigmatic man who calls himself Mr. Wednesday.

Becoming a knockoff Dracula in tight leather pants was never part of Vincent’s plans. Neither was being summoned to another world by a cult of vampire wannabes. But both happened. Now, Vincent’s left to pick up the tattered pieces of his humanity as he tries to grow strong enough to keep his family safe. The world is filled with nightmares, and the looming threat of losing his soul stands between his goal and his reality, so it’s not like it will be too hard or anything. Hell should tremble. A good man is going to war.

In this entry from Anthony Award winner Charlaine Harris' New York Times best-selling series, the gorgeous and feisty telepath hits the road to find her missing boyfriend, who may have run off with his former lover - a notorious vamp.

The world of unknowable objects—magical items that most people have no idea possess powers—has been quiet for decades, but the three members of a secret society have remained watchful, meeting every six months in the basement of a bookshop in London. They are pledged to protect their archive of magical items hidden away, safe from the outside world—and the world safe from them. But when Frank Simpson, the longest-standing member of the Society of Unknowable Objects, hears of a new artifact coming to light in Hong Kong, he sends Magda Sparks—author by day and newest member—to investigate.