"Happily Ever After" wasn't supposed to come with a do-over option. But when my husband of 20 years packs up and heads for greener pastures, and my son heads away to college, that's exactly what my midlife becomes. A do-over. This time, though, I plan to do things differently. Age is just a number, after all, and at 40 I'm ready to carve my own path. Eager for a fresh start, I make a somewhat unorthodox decision and move to a tiny town in the Sierra foothills.

I had no idea how those words would change my life. Or how they’d changed my life already...until the day the most dangerous man I’ve ever met waltzed onto my farm and left us a death sentence. In an invitation. My younger brother has been chosen for the prestigious, secret magical school hidden within the folds of our mundane world. A place so dangerous, they don’t guarantee you’ll make it out alive. If he doesn't go, our entire family will be killed. It’s the same invitation my older brother received three years ago - the same place where he mysteriously died.

It's no easy job being the town nutcase. Ella knows from experience. She's grown up in a quaint little place with people who pretend the extraordinary isn't happening around them. They ignore the bumps in the night and won't talk about doors closing by themselves or items moving mysteriously. They also won't talk about the old woman who haunts the streets. Those who do are fibbers, begging for attention. But Ella knows it is no lie - when the lightning cracks and the rain thrashes, someone goes missing: a child, lost to the night.

Some people are ordained for greatness. Those people usually have a lot of drama in their life. Drama I happily do without. I live in a forgotten corner of nowhere for a reason: there is safety in anonymity. I have enough problems just trying to get by. But when Kieran, a sinfully sexy demigod at the pinnacle of power, crashes into my life, suddenly my whole world is turned upside down. He’s harboring a deadly secret, one that could destroy all he holds dear. He thinks I’m the key to his salvation, and he wants me to help him claim vengeance. He also wants me with a passion.

It is said that when war threatens the world, one individual will be selected by prophecy to lead the Shadow Warriors out of the Land of Mist and reclaim the freedom that has been stolen. Shanti has grown up under the constant threat of war. Since she helped her people defeat a raiding party by using a special power, she's been a hunted woman. Carrying rare abilities and an uncanny fighting aptitude, Shanti is the only hope of salvation for her people.

It was supposed to be easy: find the drug maker. Find her, and drag her back to the dragons to deal with. She deserves death for what she's done. For someone like Weston, the best alpha in the world, the one who shuts people up just by walking in the room, it would've been. Until he learns what she is. Finding a fated mate is nearly impossible. Very few are able to do it. But the call of their bond is unmistakable. Against all odds, and in the worst situation imaginable, he's found his true mate. Her.

In 1876, we were called to Savannah, Georgia to help with an infestation of demons. If we'd known what we, my wife Evangeline, and I, were walking into, we'd have run the other way. As it was, we shared tea with a vampire and stepped into a battle we did not understand until it was too late.

I knew the sins of my past would call to collect what was left of my soul. If I'd known the price I'd pay, I would've sacrificed more to stay hidden from the magic. In the middle of Wyoming - away from the abnormals of the world - I thought I was free and clear. I started a new life. Found a love I'd never known in a husband, and a son who was my everything. And in a blinding instant, that life was stolen from me.

Plucked out of the Collector’s Pens, auctioned off to a vampire contingent, and sent across the ocean to the Alpha Territories was not exactly how I planned to spend my week. Actually, scratch that. I had planned the first bit. But I was supposed to be sold to the werewolves so I could save my friend from a fate worse than death. Instead, the bloodsuckers have me and so far? It's not going great. I've been shoved into a corset and made to look like an extra on the cast of Bridgerton, all to take part in the Harvest Games....

Ten years ago, I "died", and it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I should have known it wouldn't last. Once my family thought I was dead I was finally free to live. Until the day my brother walks into my tiny book shop....

Annette Marie presents Book One in the Guild Codex: Warped series. Make sure to check out the companion series, The Guild Codex: Spellbound and The Guild Codex: Demonized, available now.

Vampyres don't exist. They absolutely do not exist. At least I didn't think they did 'til I tried to quit smoking and ended up Undead. Who in the hell did I screw over in a former life that my getting healthy equates with dead? Now I'm a Vampyre. Yes, we exist whether we want to or not. However, I have to admit, the perks aren't bad. My girls no longer jiggle, my ass is higher than a kite, and the latest Prada keeps finding its way to my wardrobe.

It’s not easy making the career jump from office-supplies-store middle manager to heroic interdimensional adventurer. At least, Jason tries to be heroic, but it's hard to be good when all your powers are evil. He’ll face off against cannibals, cultists, wizards, monsters...and that’s just on the first day. He’s going to need courage, he’s going to need wit, and he’s going to need some magic powers of his own. But first, he’s going to need pants.

Successful Seattle baker Alena Budrene doesn't want to die. But when she's infected with a lethal virus spread by supernatural beings, her only chance for recovery is to make a deal with the devil - or in this case, a warlock. Though he saves her life, it looks nothing like the life she once knew - and neither does she. Alena is a new breed of "Supe" no one has ever seen before. Even the supernatural police don't know what she is. Now exiled to the northern side of the Wall, is thrust into a dark and magical new world.

There's a reason We Are Legion was named Audible's Best Science Fiction Book of 2016: Its irresistibly irreverent wit! Bob Johansson has just sold his software company for a small fortune and is looking forward to a life of leisure. The first item on his to-do list: Spending his newfound windfall. On an urge to splurge, he signs up to have his head cryogenically preserved in case of death. Then he gets himself killed crossing the street. Waking up 117 years later, Bob discovers his mind has been uploaded into a sentient space probe with the ability to replicate itself.

Hotshot pilot Nax Hall has a history of making poor life choices. So it’s not exactly a surprise when he’s kicked out of the elite Ellis Station Academy in less than 24 hours. But Nax’s one-way trip back to Earth is cut short when a terrorist group attacks the Academy. Nax and three other washouts escape - barely - but they’re also the sole witnesses to the biggest crime in the history of space colonization. And the perfect scapegoats. On the run, Nax and his fellow failures plan to pull off a dangerous heist to spread the truth.

Eli knows corruption runs deep within the compound. It's a reality he's forced to confront every year on Bid Day. But when your job is to go out into the radiation-soaked Fringe so that others can live in peace, you don't ask too many questions. For Harper, the bid system works just fine. She's the best developer in her year, and she's confident she'll find a place among the wealthy, respected Systems workers. But when an upset in the bidding changes the course of Harper's future, she'll be forced to rely on an unlikely ally.

To Inquisitor Angel Xia, it was just another corporate killing on a backwater planet. But as the bodies begin to pile up and she finds herself a target, she realizes she's stepped on one toe too many. Barely escaping attempts on her life by powerful agents with seemingly limitless reach and influence, Angel senses even her co-Inquisitors can't be trusted. But as the web tightens, she receives a cryptic message from a computer program claiming to be a little girl in desperate need of her help.

A walled city surrounded by lush land, protected by high mountain summits, and fortified by a massive gate to secure the only pass into the valley, The Bastion remained humanity's last hope against the fearsome undead creatures known as the Inferi Scourge. On one fateful day, the valley gate failed and the Inferi Scourge overran and destroyed the human settlements outside the walls, trapping the remaining survivors inside the city. Now, decades later, the last remaining humans are struggling to survive....

A detective who refuses to modify her body teams up with her cyborg rival to track down a burglar who is putting toys into homes. A solitary ice miner finds love and friendship while stranded on the surface of Galileo. And two hardheaded negotiators put their differences aside to evade an assassin and save their planets. Enjoy these visions of Christmases yet to come with three science-fiction novellas from Carina Press.

Devi Morris isn't your average mercenary. She has plans. Big ones. And a ton of ambition. It's a combination that's going to get her killed one day - but not just yet. That is, until she gets a job on a tiny trade ship with a nasty reputation for surprises. The Glorious Fool isn't misnamed; it likes to get into trouble, so much so that one year of security work under its captain is equal to five years everywhere else. With odds like that, Devi knows she's found the perfect way to get the jump on the next part of her plan.

Nina is an information broker with a mission - she and her team of mercenary librarians use their knowledge to save the hopeless in a crumbling America. Knox is the bitter, battle-weary captain of the Silver Devils. His squad of supersoldiers went AWOL to avoid slaughtering innocents, and now he's fighting to survive. They're on a deadly collision course, and the passion that flares between them only makes it more dangerous. They could burn down the world, destroying each other in the process....

Three hundred years ago, Earth suffered a mass extinction event. The last humans fled to the stars in search of a new home. In the darkness, they fought to survive. Now the fleet decays, and their hope of finding a better world is fading. Era Corinth works to preserve the archives, but viewing them herself would be treason. When she's faced with the possibility that her unborn child may be aborted due to a genetic defect, her fascination with ancient secrets escalates to obsession.

It’s a good thing Gabe Bristow lives and breathes the Navy SEAL credo, “the only easy day was yesterday”, because today, his life is unrecognizable. When his prestigious career comes to a crashing halt, he’s left with a bum leg and few prospects for employment that don’t include a desk. That is, until he’s offered the chance to command a private hostage-rescue team and free a wealthy American businessman from Colombian paramilitary rebels.

A devastated Earth's last hope is found in Pearls: small, mysterious orbs that fall from space and are capable of supplying enough energy to power entire cities. Battling to control the Pearls are the Skyship dwellers -political dissidents who live in massive ships in the Earth's stratosphere - and the corrupt Surface government.

After a decade of piloting interstellar patrol ships, former captain Chasidah Bergren, onetime pride of the Sixth Fleet, finds herself court-martialed for a crime she didn't commit and shipped off to a remote prison planet from which no one ever escapes. But when she kills a brutal guard in an act of self-defense, someone even more dangerous emerges from the shadows. Gabriel Sullivan alpha mercenary, smuggler, and rogue is supposed to be dead.

It's been happening since Min was eight. Every two years, on her birthday, a strange man finds her and murders her in cold blood. But hours later, she wakes up in a clearing just outside her tiny Idaho hometown - alone, unhurt, and with all evidence of the horrifying crime erased.

When 16-year-old Kyra Agnew wakes up behind a Dumpster at the Gas 'n' Sip, she has no memory of how she got there. With a terrible headache and a major case of déjà vu, she heads home only to discover that five years have passed…yet she hasn't aged a day. Everything else about Kyra's old life is different. Her parents are divorced, her boyfriend, Austin, is in college and dating her best friend, and her dad has changed from an uptight neat-freak to a drunken conspiracy theorist who blames her five-year disappearance on little green men.

Avery Cates is a very bad man. Some might call him a criminal. He might even be a killer - for the right price. But right now, Avery Cates is scared. He's up against the Monks - cyborgs with human brains, enhanced robotic bodies, and a small arsenal of advanced weaponry. Their mission is to convert anyone and everyone to the Electric Church. But there is just one snag: Conversion means death.

Alex Hunter - in the mission that turned him from a normal man into the weapon known as the Arcadian - and the elite team of soldiers known as the Hotzone All-Forces Warfare Commandos must enter a hostile country to rescue a defected Chechen researcher from the centre of a country at war. But the HAWCs are not the only ones looking for the rogue scientist and the mysterious package he carries with him. A brutal and relentless killer and his death squad are on the trail, too - and they bring a savagery with them that Hunter and his team have never witnessed before in modern warfare.

It's no easy job being the town nutcase. Ella knows from experience. She's grown up in a quaint little place with people who pretend the extraordinary isn't happening around them. They ignore the bumps in the night and won't talk about doors closing by themselves or items moving mysteriously. They also won't talk about the old woman who haunts the streets. Those who do are fibbers, begging for attention. But Ella knows it is no lie - when the lightning cracks and the rain thrashes, someone goes missing: a child, lost to the night.

It is said that when war threatens the world, one individual will be selected by prophecy to lead the Shadow Warriors out of the Land of Mist and reclaim the freedom that has been stolen. Shanti has grown up under the constant threat of war. Since she helped her people defeat a raiding party by using a special power, she's been a hunted woman. Carrying rare abilities and an uncanny fighting aptitude, Shanti is the only hope of salvation for her people.

Sasha has always known she was different, but now she also knows that the shadow men she’s seen all her life, are real. With a life goal of fitting in, Sasha hopes her strange abilities will finally make true friendship a possibility. Unfortunately, her magic doesn’t function like everyone else’s. What she thought would make her belong, sets her apart now more than ever. Stefan, all but promised to a different woman, has tried to keep his mind on his duties instead of the irresistible and free-spirited human.

I had no idea how those words would change my life. Or how they’d changed my life already...until the day the most dangerous man I’ve ever met waltzed onto my farm and left us a death sentence. In an invitation. My younger brother has been chosen for the prestigious, secret magical school hidden within the folds of our mundane world. A place so dangerous, they don’t guarantee you’ll make it out alive. If he doesn't go, our entire family will be killed. It’s the same invitation my older brother received three years ago - the same place where he mysteriously died.

Some people are ordained for greatness. Those people usually have a lot of drama in their life. Drama I happily do without. I live in a forgotten corner of nowhere for a reason: there is safety in anonymity. I have enough problems just trying to get by. But when Kieran, a sinfully sexy demigod at the pinnacle of power, crashes into my life, suddenly my whole world is turned upside down. He’s harboring a deadly secret, one that could destroy all he holds dear. He thinks I’m the key to his salvation, and he wants me to help him claim vengeance. He also wants me with a passion.

Something has always been missing from my life. A hole that I could never seem to fill. When I accidentally turn a coven of witches into nightmares, I find out what that something is. Magic. And it turns out, I have a crap load of it. As a latent power awakens deep inside of me, I'm exposed to one of the most powerful and corrupt organizations in the magical world - the Mages' Guild. Barely knowing a spell from a few swear words and luck, I won't be able to evade them alone. And that's when I meet him.

Jenna wants is to grace the NYC skyline with a building of her design. But to do it, she must tear down a neighborhood riddled with dangerous criminals who will stop at nothing to claim vengeance. Sent away from the threat for a week-long tour in the wilds of Colorado, Jenna meets a stranger so intense her desire is equally mixed with fear. Tall, built, and incredibly handsome, he isn't what he seems.

Supernatural Bounty Hunter isn't the sort of thing you see on LinkedIn. But with a rare type of magic like mine, I don't have many options. Dangerous or not, the job is mine. And it was going fine, until an old-as-sin vampire stole my mark, and with it, my pay day. Knowing I'm poor and desperate, he has offered me a job. I'll have to work by his side to help solve a top secret case. Everyone knows not to trust vampires. Especially a hot elder vampire.

Supernatural Bounty Hunter isn’t the sort of thing you see on LinkedIn. But with a rare type of magic like mine, I don’t have many options. So dangerous or not, the job is mine. And it was going fine, until an old as sin vampire stole my mark, and with it, my pay day.

"Happily Ever After" wasn't supposed to come with a do-over option. But when my husband of 20 years packs up and heads for greener pastures, and my son heads away to college, that's exactly what my midlife becomes. A do-over. This time, though, I plan to do things differently. Age is just a number, after all, and at 40 I'm ready to carve my own path. Eager for a fresh start, I make a somewhat unorthodox decision and move to a tiny town in the Sierra foothills.