If you’d asked me a week ago, I would have told you that the best cupcakes were dark chocolate with chocolate cream cheese icing, that dancing in a crowd of magic wielders—the Adept—was better than sex, and that my life was peaceful and uneventful. Just the way I liked it. That’s what 23 years in the magical backwater of Vancouver will get you—a completely skewed sense of reality. Because when the dead werewolves started showing up, it all unraveled—except for the cupcake part. That’s a universal truth.

The day I turned 19, I expected to gain what little freedom I could within the restrictions of my bank account and the hallucinations that had haunted me for the last six years. I expected to drive away from a life that had been dictated by the tragedy of others and shaped by the care of strangers. I expected to be alone. Actually, I relished the idea of being alone. Instead, I found fear I thought I'd overcome and terror that was more real than anything I'd ever hallucinated before. I'd seen terrible, fantastical, and utterly impossible things...but not love. Not until I saw him.

The plan was to hop a train to Oslo, hang out at a coffee shop, and connect my personal archive, Infinity, to the Internet. Yes, completely disregarding the well-established fact that magic and technology didn’t mix. At all.

They called me an amplifier. And they had bred me, raised me, and trained me to be a killer with preternatural precision. I was capable of taking, holding, and transferring power that wasn’t my own with a simple touch. Skin-to-skin contact. Along with four others of my generation, I could infiltrate any magical organization, extracting whoever or whatever I’d been ordered to extricate. Then I could destroy all evidence of our passing presence. They had made me. They directed me. Controlled me. Then they tried to kill me.

I preferred it when life came in tidy packages. When it didn’t — when something went awry — I was exceedingly skilled at packaging it back up. It was my job to do so after all. I was a reconstructionist. I collected the puzzle pieces, then I gave those pieces to an investigative team to sort out. I didn't ask questions. I didn't offer answers. I saw. I recorded. I moved on. I didn't dwell or obsess. I didn’t hunt down suspects. I didn’t follow clues to find a killer. And I certainly didn’t work side by side with anyone.

My life was going just fine by most standards. I ran a successful business in a tight-knit magical community, and lived just blocks from a beautiful lake and series of hiking trails. Then Selene showed up. According to some magical code I inherit my aunt's ancient familiar; a grumpy ten-pound cat with a broken filter. She fancies herself something of a saber-toothed tiger, and claims to have wrestled the thread of her ninth life from the hands of the Fates themselves—although, I'm pretty sure that last part isn't true. Almost positive.

Charley sees dead people. That's right, she sees dead people. And it's her job to convince them to "go into the light." But when these very dead people have died under less than ideal circumstances (i.e., murder), sometimes they want Charley to bring the bad guys to justice. Complicating matters are the intensely hot dreams she's been having about an Entity who has been following her all her life...and it turns out he might not be dead after all. In fact, he might be something else entirely.

Sasha Pierce hasn’t had a single dream since she was a child...until she accepts a substitute teaching position in the charmingly witchy village of Old Middleton. Her first dream in twenty-five years ought to be enchanting, but her wonder quickly turns to shock when she realizes that it’s not a dream at all, but an entirely different sort of magic. Catapulted through an ancient portal into the fairytale kingdom of Between, Sasha’s astonishment is swiftly upgraded to panic when she accidentally performs a supposedly impossible feat and is declared the True Queen of Between.

"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.

It was a dark and stormy knight, and nine dark defenders embarked upon a most perilous quest. They're the ultimate defenders of humanity, modern day knights who do dark deeds for all the right reasons. In this all-star collection, nine of today's hottest paranormal authors bring us thrilling, all-new stories of supernatural knights that are brimming with magic mystery and mayhem.

In New Orleans, a pair of undead serial killers is about to turn Mardi Gras into a horror show - unless the immortal hitman Bones can hunt them down first. From Jeaniene Frost comes a thrilling novella featuring characters from her New York Times bestselling Night Huntress series. Originally appeared in the anthology Unbound.

On the outside, Dina Demille is the epitome of normal. She runs a quaint Victorian Bed and Breakfast in a small Texas town, owns a Shih Tzu named Beast, and is a perfect neighbor, whose biggest problem should be what to serve her guests for breakfast.

Del Sol, New Mexico is known for three things: its fry-an-egg-on-the-cement summers, its strong cups of coffee - and, now, a nationwide manhunt? Del Sol native Sunshine Vicram has returned to town as the elected sheriff - thanks to her adorably meddlesome parents who nominated her - and she expects her biggest crime wave to involve an elderly flasher named Doug. But a teenage girl is missing, a kidnapper is on the loose, and all of this is reminding Sunshine why she left Del Sol in the first place.

She’s happy renovating homes and occasionally thumping bad guys until she learns of a mysterious artifact hidden under the house she’s working on. Everybody from humans to orcs to werewolves wants it, and they’re willing to kill to get it. Things go from bad to worse when someone frames her for murder.

When fifteen-year-old Clary Fray heads out to the Pandemonium Club in New York City, she hardly expects to witness a murder - much less a murder committed by three teenagers covered with strange tattoos and brandishing bizarre weapons. Then the body disappears into thin air. It's hard to call the police when the murderers are invisible to everyone else and when there is nothing - not even a smear of blood - to show that a boy has died. Or was he a boy?