15 intriguing Urban Fantasy tales. Written by wizards... intended for muggles. This collection of fresh voices features paranormal investigators and jazz-loving demons, dragons and the supernatural, gods in Chicago and killer clowns. Each author in this collection has a wealth of additional stories, meaning this is just the beginning. Pick it up now… and enter a new and fantastic world!
The New York Times bestseller “The Shadow of the Wind is ultimately a love letter to literature, intended for readers as passionate about storytelling as its young hero.” —Entertainment Weekly (Editor's Choice) “One gorgeous read.” —Stephen King Barcelona, 1945: A city slowly heals in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, and Daniel, an antiquarian book dealer’s son who mourns the loss of his mother, finds solace in a mysterious book entitled The Shadow of the Wind, by one Julián Carax. But when he sets out to find the author’s other works, he makes a shocking discovery: someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book Carax has written. In fact, Daniel may have the last of Carax’s books in existence. Soon Daniel’s seemingly innocent quest opens a door into one of Barcelona’s darkest secrets--an epic story of murder, madness, and doomed love.
A breathless criminal investigation against the bloody canvas of the French Revolution The Paris Commune's "bloody week" sees the climax of the savagery of the clashes between the Communards and the French Armed Forces loyal to Versailles. Amid the shrapnel and the chaos, while the entire west side of Paris is a field of ruins, a photographer fascinated by the suffering of young women takes "suggestive" photos to sell to a particular clientele. Young women begin disappearing, and when Caroline, a seamstress who volunteers at a first aid station, is counted among the missing, her fiancé Nicolas, a member of the Commune's National Guard, and Communal security officer Antoine, sets off independently in search of her. Their race against the clock to find her takes them through the shell-shocked streets of Paris, and introduces them to a cast of fascinating characters.
While working on a project translating letters from sixteenth-century Prague, high school senior Nora Kane discovers her best friend murdered with her boyfriend the apparent killer and is caught up in a dangerous web of secret societies and shadowy conspirators, all searching for a mysterious ancient device purported to allow direct communication with God.
Dr. O'Connell's collection of stories and essays, written during thirty years of caring for homeless persons in Boston, gently illuminates the humanity and raw courage of those who struggle to survive and find meaning and hope while living on the streets.
Masterfully told, marked by irony and humor as well as outrage and a barely contained sadness, Jerald Walker’s Street Shadows is the story of a young man’s descent into the “thug life” and the wake-up call that led to his finding himself again. Walker was born in a Chicago housing project and raised, along with his six brothers and sisters, by blind parents of modest means but middle-class aspirations. A boy of great promise whose parents and teachers saw success in his future, he seemed destined to fulfill their hopes. But by age fourteen, like so many of his friends, he found himself drawn to the streets. By age seventeen he was a school dropout, a drug addict, and a gangbanger, his life spiraling toward the violent and premature end all too familiar to African American males. And then came the blast of gunfire that changed everything: His coke-dealing friend Greg was shot to death—less than an hour after Walker scored a gram from him. “Twenty-five years later, tossing the drug out the window is still the second most difficult thing I’ve ever done. The most difficult thing is still that I didn’t follow it.” So begins the story, told in alternating time frames, of the journey that Walker took to become the man he is today—a husband, father, teacher, and writer. But his struggle to escape the long shadows of the streets was not easy. There were racial stereotypes to overcome—his own as well as those of the very white world he found himself in—and a hard grappling with the meaning of race that came to an unexpected climax on a trip to Africa. An eloquent account of how the past shadows but need not determine the present, Street Shadows is the opposite of a victim narrative. Walker casts no blame (except upon himself), sheds no tears (except for those who have not shared his good fortune), and refuses the temptations of self-pity and self-exoneration. In the end, what Jerald Walker has written is a stirring portrait of two Americas—one hopeless, the other inspirational—embodied within one man.
In Faerie, magical power means everything. Keeping it means finding the key. After barely escaping with my life, returning to Faerie is the last thing I want to do. But my mission has grown only stronger now that I've sworn to save more held trapped in that realm. If only I know about their fate, then I'm sure as hell going to save them. Even if it means returning to hell. The upside is I now know where Julia is being kept. The downside is she's being used as bait by the High Mage. Meanwhile, the Seelie are losing their stranglehold on magical power as the realm destabilizes around them. Which only makes them more dangerous in their quest to regain immortality. There's both fighting in the streets and search parties on the hunt. I soon learn those men are hunting for me. My only hope is taking refuge with more of the hunted, the rebel faction plotting to take back magical power. They need me and I need them. But there's another who needs me too, the intoxicating fae lord who hasn't forgotten what passed between us. It may be that his power over me proves too hard to resist. But how can I know if he wants me for who I am, or because of the magic that may lay hidden within me? Because if I'm the one foretold in the prophecies, I may hold the fate of three realms in my hands.
Thieves, dangerous magic, and a weapon built with the power to destroy a god clash in this second novel of Gareth Hanrahan's acclaimed epic fantasy series, The Black Iron Legacy. "This is genre-defying fantasy at its very best... Insanely inventive and deeply twisted" (Michael R. Fletcher). Enter a city of spires and shadows . . . The Gutter Miracle changed the landscape of Guerdon forever. Six months after it was conjured into being, the labyrinthine New City has become a haven for criminals and refugees. Rumors have spread of a devastating new weapon buried beneath the streets - a weapon with the power to destroy a god. As Guerdon strives to remain neutral, two of the most powerful factions in the godswar send agents into the city to find it. As tensions escalate and armies gather at the borders, how long will Guerdon be able to keep its enemies at bay? "A groundbreaking and extraordinary novel . . . Hanrahan has an astonishing imagination" (Peter McLean). The Shadow Saint continues the gripping tale of dark gods and dangerous magic that began with Hanrahan's acclaimed debut The Gutter Prayer.
Life is strange and beautiful. But sometimes overwhelming. As a result, we tell ourselves stories, to make these times move easier. If it were not for our daily stories, we would simply drift away into oblivion. I brought forward a collection of tales, twenty four in all, from as far away as the other side of the moon, to as near as your own home. They say truth is stranger than fiction, but this I tend to doubt. This is a book of fiction, So remember, things are not as they seem, and it's not over till the fat lady sings. So hang in there until the end, and you will not be disappointed.
Sixteen-year-old Darcy Jones knows little about her past except that she was abandoned outside a Chicago firehouse at age five, but when the mysterious Conn arrives at her high school she begins to discover things about her past that she is not sure she likes.
