No reason. No remorse. It’s June, 1987, and with the single flip of a coin, Death has come to the quiet town of Elden Mills. No one is safe; a flicker of movement or a sudden noise is all it takes to draw his attention. Lurking in the shadows behind a pale mask, he is driven by the need to fill the streets with blood and screams. If he sees you, you’re dead. Morgan Bell fled Elden Mills and everyone who cared about her after a life-shattering assault. Now, after years of self-alienation, she returns to her hometown to pick up the pieces of her former existence. But Morgan’s hopes of starting over are ripped away during a deadly encounter with the madman. In her darkest moment, Morgan must confront both the painful memories of her own attack and the cold, unfeeling brutality behind the mask. Will she find healing in the shadows, or add her voice to the chorus of screams?
Brain on Fire meets High Achiever in this “page-turner memoir chronicling a woman’s accidental descent into prescription benzodiazepine dependence—and the life-threatening impacts of long-term use—that chills to the bone” (Nylon). As Melissa Bond raises her infant daughter and a special-needs one-year-old son, she suffers from unbearable insomnia, sleeping an hour or less each night. She loses her job as a journalist (a casualty of the 2008 recession), and her relationship with her husband grows distant. Her doctor casually prescribes benzodiazepines—a family of drugs that includes Xanax, Valium, Klonopin, Ativan—and increases her dosage regularly. Following her doctor’s orders, Melissa takes the pills night after night until her body begins to shut down. Only when she collapses while holding her daughter does Melissa learn that her doctor—like so many others—has over-prescribed the medication and quitting cold turkey could lead to psychosis or fatal seizures. Benzodiazepine addiction is not well studied, and few experts know how to help Melissa as she begins the months-long process of tapering off the pills without suffering debilitating, potentially deadly consequences. Each page thrums with the heartbeat of Melissa’s struggle—how many hours has she slept? How many weeks old are her babies? How many milligrams has she taken? Her propulsive writing crescendos to a fever pitch as she fights for her health and her ability to care for her children. “Propulsive, poetic” (Shelf Awareness), and immersive, this “vivid chronicle of suffering” (Kirkus Reviews) and redemption shines a light on the prescription benzodiazepine epidemic as it reaches a crisis point in this country.
Driven on by their hatred of the False Emperor, the Night Lords stalk the shadows of the galaxy, eternally seeking revenge for the death of their primarch. Their dark quest leads them to a fractious alliance with the Red Corsairs, united only by a common enemy. Together with this piratical band of renegades, they bring their ways of destruction to the fortress-monastery of the Marines Errant. THEY SEEK ONLY TO BRING DEATH
*WINNER OF THE 2021 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE* *ONE OF PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2021* Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for fiction Shortlisted for the 2022 DUBLIN Literary Award "Astonishingly good." —Lily Meyer, NPR "So incantatory and visceral I don’t think I’ll ever forget it." —Ali Smith, The Guardian | Best Books of 2020 One of The Wall Street Journal's 11 best books of the fall | One of The A.V. Club's fifteen best books of 2020 |A Sunday Times best book of the year Selected by students across France to win the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens, David Diop’s English-language, historical fiction debut At Night All Blood is Black is a “powerful, hypnotic, and dark novel” (Livres Hebdo) of terror and transformation in the trenches of the First World War. Alfa Ndiaye is a Senegalese man who, never before having left his village, finds himself fighting as a so-called “Chocolat” soldier with the French army during World War I. When his friend Mademba Diop, in the same regiment, is seriously injured in battle, Diop begs Alfa to kill him and spare him the pain of a long and agonizing death in No Man’s Land. Unable to commit this mercy killing, madness creeps into Alfa’s mind as he comes to see this refusal as a cruel moment of cowardice. Anxious to avenge the death of his friend and find forgiveness for himself, he begins a macabre ritual: every night he sneaks across enemy lines to find and murder a blue-eyed German soldier, and every night he returns to base, unharmed, with the German’s severed hand. At first his comrades look at Alfa’s deeds with admiration, but soon rumors begin to circulate that this super soldier isn’t a hero, but a sorcerer, a soul-eater. Plans are hatched to get Alfa away from the front, and to separate him from his growing collection of hands, but how does one reason with a demon, and how far will Alfa go to make amends to his dead friend? Peppered with bullets and black magic, this remarkable novel fills in a forgotten chapter in the history of World War I. Blending oral storytelling traditions with the gritty, day-to-day, journalistic horror of life in the trenches, David Diop's At Night All Blood is Black is a dazzling tale of a man’s descent into madness.
For boys becoming men, this Jersey shore resort town was a violent place. By the 1970's, tourist dollars had dwindled. Parents whose futures had dissolved took their disappointments out on their kids. Kids, in turn, punished each other. Growing up meant hustling, and learning how to be tough. To prove yourself you had to do almost anything. Boys wanted to be men. That ambition could destroy them.
“[A] sophisticated and intelligent high fantasy epic.”—Publishers Weekly The legendary Briar King has awakened, spreading madness and destruction across a land devastated by a royal family’s fall from power through treachery and dark magic. Half-remembered prophecies may point to the young princess Anne Dare, rightful heir to the throne of Crotheny, as the world’s only hope. But a mysterious assassin stalks her, so skilled that even Anne’s friend and protector Cazio cannot stand against him, nor can her sworn defender, the young knight Neil MeqVren. Though Anne herself is the conduit of fearsome powers beyond her understanding and control, it is time for girl to become woman, princess to become queen. Anne must stop running and instead march at the head of an army to take back her kingdom . . . or die trying. Praise for The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone “A graceful, artful tale . . . a snare ofterse imagery and compelling characters that grips tightly and never lets up.”—Elizabeth Haydon, author of The Assassin King, on The Briar King “There is adventure and intrigue, swordplay anddark sorcery aplenty.”—Realms of Fantasy, on The Charnel Prince
A TASTE FOR BLOOD Maine, 1820. Lost in a blizzard, a young woodcutter seeks refuge in an isolated cabin, never suspecting that the recluse who lives there is not what he appears to be—or that the strange-tasting brew he’s offered isn’t tea. Too late, the woodcutter realizes that he is doomed to wander the earth, consumed by a raging thirst that can only be sated with human blood. A THIRST FOR MORE Houston, Present Day. For more than a century, he has hunted for fresh prey to feed his inhuman need. Now, his immortality threatened by a deadly blood disease raging across the globe—and pulsing in his own veins—he brilliantly reinvents himself as a world-renowned doctor, racing against time to find the cure that will save him. A HUNGER FOR DEATH As death shadows the infected doctor, ER Physician Matthew Carter and forensic pathologist Samantha Scott are in their own desperate race to find a vicious serial killer who leaves his victims’ bodies horrifically drained of blood. A killer who is poised to strike again . . . and is closer than they think. “If you read one horror book this year, read this one!” —William W. Johnstone
I enjoy carnal pleasures like any mortal man, but six hundred years of existence have taught me loss. Best to stay away from people and save myself the heartache. Then I arrive at the notorious London brothel Maison Rouge, and my life, such as it is, will never be the same again. Ivy Dearing, daughter of the infamous Madam, has requested my assistance. Two of her friends have been murdered, and she is determined to find their killer. I know better than to agree to help, yet Ivy is impossible to resist. No stranger to vampires, she has awakened desires within me that are as potent as my thirst for blood—desires that can only be satisfied by Ivy herself. But when there is another murder, it is all I can do to protect the woman I love from an evil more powerful than the undead . . .
Become a child of darkness with Pathfinder Player Companion: Blood of the Night! All of Golarion's most infamous vampiric races take center stage in this guide to tracking, hunting, and playing the aristocracy of the undead. Join your next campaign as a day-walking dhampir from a variety of vampiric heritages, or infect your game with the vampiric curse as a full-blooded jiang-shi, moroi, nosferatu, or vetala vampire -- complete with details on how to integrate such deadly and deathly characters into existing campaigns. Add a true thirst for blood to your characters with new rules for vampiric hunger, along with new powers associated with the most ravenous undead. Or, for true children of the light, expand your arsenal with the latest and most effective in undead-fighting gear, tactics, and character options. A silent war rages in Golarion's shadows, with Pathfinder Player Companion: Blood of the Night, it's time for you to choose sides!
A collection of vampire stories by women includes elements of African folklore, Eastern European vampire traditions, and a humorous story about a Jewish vampire
