Skylar's best friend has been taken captive, and it's all her fault. Tevita is being held by the Opener of Ways, the architect of every threat that has pursued Skylar since she first heard about the Veil. Skylar knows it's a trap, but she doesn't have a choice. Besides, she's learned some new tricks that just might help her rescue Tevita and get out alive. Accompanied only by Aiken, the handsome kelpie, Skylar undertakes a perilous journey across dangerous and desolate realms, trying to find a back door into the home of the Opener of Ways himself. What she finds there will upend everything she thought she knew about the Veil and about herself.
Skylar is waiting out her suspension, listening with frustration as more stories of chaos and violence filter in from around the realms. Even when a horrific act of destruction occurs in her adopted home of Inter-Realm, the Council refuses to act. Skylar is forced to do it herself. When her best friend's home is in imminent danger, Skylar rallies support from under the Council's nose to lead a dangerous mission. But the threat is even more grave than she had realized. It seems like Skylar has led her friends into a deadly trap.
When Skylar Dufrense got the opportunity to leave school and her unappetizing job prospects behind for an internship with the Trans-Realm Investigation and Protection agency, she leapt in with both feet. Now, she is in over her head. The wonder of stepping through the Veil into new realms, meeting elves and dwarves and kelpies, even her discovery that she can wield magic, has all faded in the endless grind of training. Skylar is hopelessly behind her fellow trainees, but that isn't her biggest problem. There is a malignant force lurking just below the surface, an evil stirring up trouble wherever Skylar goes. But she can't convince her superiors to take it seriously. And then the danger follows her home.
When Skylar Dufrense attends a career fair, she is attracted to a booth with an unusual banner. The strange thing is that nobody else can see it. But when she is attacked by a creature that doesn't exist, can't exist in real life, she is drawn into a world that is more vast, amazing, and dangerous than she could have imagined. Now she is faced with a stark choice: return to the relative safety and predictability of her university or leave her old life behind and leap into a world of magic and monsters and join an elite group of Veilwalkers who traverse the boundaries between realms to hunt down dangerous creatures. For Skylar, it isn't really a choice. Someone powerful has his eye on her. Danger pursues her wherever she goes. She will have to learn to wield new powers and use new skills if she is going to survive.
Lucy Ladelle has big dreams—bigger than the tiny island in Boston Harbor where she’s lived her entire life. But first she needs some moolah. So when a matchmaking service hires her as date bait, she jumps at the chance. She’ll meet a few men, flatter their egos, and give them a sense of hope so they’ll sign on as clients. It’s only temporary . . . and, anyway, this counts as acting, right? But Lucy’s first “date” goes down the tubes when she’s caught on tape by a sting-operation TV exposé on the sketchy matchmaking firm. And Lucy’s name—and fetching new sandals—are dragged through the mud. They practically accuse her of turning tricks. The only bright spot comes when, in the ladies’ room, she meets a larger-than-life woman who offers her a chance to audition for an actual Broadway show. Of course, the offer comes with a price. And before she knows it Lucy is juggling a surprising new romance and the professional chance of a lifetime—not to mention some very strange adventures.
It takes a fragile glass or a drop of water to break the sun’s rays. The harsh rays of the sun, which sting the eyes and burn the skin, are broken down into beautiful colours that are soothing and become a feast for the eyes. The human mind is like the glass prism or the water droplet as it has the power to create a rainbow from the harshest of situations. That is its beauty. It can perceive beauty in the struggle of the balloon seller to sell his wares on a busy street, it can decipher beauty in the blooming of the sole Gulmohur tree amidst the mass of concrete in the city and sense the romanticism in the rain. It presents life as an array of colours for the human brain to imbibe and the heart to revel in. The poems in this book are the hues of life brought out by the mind, in the hope that there could be a few more hearts out there that would love to revel in these hues.
For every start, an end. With every dusk, a new dawn. For Truddie Mae, grief and joy go hand in hand. Struggling with the increasing damage to the veil, Gordy and Niles make a dramatic return bringing evil to her doorstep. As old friends offer help and plans unfold to keep two worlds apart, she’ll soon find that stopping the coming storm may be a losing battle for them all. Amid the astral planes, Leesa learns that some answers come with sinister questions. A link to the magical past brings danger as secrets take center stage. Alone and lost, her only hope for survival will force her to choose between salvation or destruction. The end times have arrived as the Keepers face their greatest threat against hungering darkness. Pulled to the breaking point, Truddie Mae must summon the courage to fight alongside her family for the sake of the universe. As the Keepers battle to prevent disaster, they’ll learn that the coils of their supernatural lives are frayed on both ends and that sometimes the simplest of cuts are the deadliest.
In a review of his first collection, The Convulsion Factory, esteemed critic Stanley Wiater stated, “This writer knows where the sad people, the bad people, and the mad people live.” Indeed. For his expansive command of characters as well as the situations, from the visionary to the grittily mundane, in which he finds them, and for his lyrically crafted prose and skewed perspectives (not to mention his penchant for run-on sentences), Hodge has racked up an eclectic list of comparisons: from Elmore Leonard to Clive Barker, from Honoré Daumier to David Cronenberg, from Carl Jung to Marilyn Monroe*. Now comes his most far-reaching collection yet, 150,000 words chronicling the people, places, and things that his readers have come to expect, but never predict: The dancer who becomes the latest repository for the fervent sexuality that fueled the world’s most ancient cities. The serial killer whose grasp of media symbiosis puts him light-years ahead of the law. The modern-day castrato learning undreamt-of lessons in love, death, and divine madness. The Civil War veteran living a grotesque twist on the Old West myth of the outlaw who never takes off his gun belt. William Faulkner once noted that writers are congenital liars … that if they weren’t liars, they would never have become writers in the first place. In that spirit, Brian Hodge has been enthusiastically lying ever since his earliest mastery of the alphabet, guided by only one stipulation: Never letting a trivial thing like the facts get in the way of the ugly truth. * Sadly, the Monroe comparison is a total fabrication. Stories included in this collection: “Madame Babylon” “The 121st Day of Sodom” “Empathy” “Cancer Causes Rats” “Some Other Me” “Nesting Instincts” “Before the Last Snowflake Falls” “An Autumnal Equinox Folly” “Confession” “Cenotaph” “Far Flew the Boast of Him” “Now Day Was Fled As the Worm Had Wished” “Pages Stuck By a Bowie Knife to a Cheyenne Gallows” “Driving the Last Spike” “Little Holocausts” “Dead Giveaway” “Past Tense” “Our Lady of Sloth and Scarlet Ivy” “The Last Testament” “The Alchemy of the Throat” “Come Unto Me, All Ye Heavy Laden” “Endnotes: From the Gutters of Civilization to Your Discerning Eye”
Following the success of the 1996 illustrated novel Hellboy: The Lost Army, Dark Horse commissioned writer Christopher Golden to gather some of the brightest creative lights in horror and mystery fictionBrian Hodge, Poppy Z. Brite, Nancy A. Collins, Greg Rucka, Chet Williamson, legendary horror/humor cartoonist Gahan Wilson, and many moreto produce a prose anthology of Hellboy short stories, presenting original tales of the world's greatest paranormal investigator. Illustrated by Hellboy creator Mike Mignola.
Poetry. "DeNicola's debut, divided into four very different sections, is jarring, sensuous, and intelligent. She includes biblical and classical allusions, history, and nature but balances the collection with personal pieces focusing on adolescent sexual awakening, leaky faucets, and even a cold sore (1A bit of rosy leprosy on the upper lip. / The kiss of a tropical sun, that / overzealous lover, your burgeoning religion'). Her elegant writing suits the subjects she chooses as she skillfully uncovers common truths in minor matters. Thanks to DeNicola's wit and liveliness, mythical figures like Demeter rise from the page, and Eve finally gets a fair trial when DeNicola brings her back to life. These are poems of art, myth, and history infused with a singing spirituality that makes us eagerly await their author's next collection"--Elizabeth Gunderson, Booklist.
