It would be an understatement to call Trevon Beaumont an accomplished monster slayer. He's traversed the European countryside upholding the legacy of his clan one completed mission at a time for the whole of his adult life. Now he's on his most perilous quest yet: slay the cruel but beautiful Countess Dracula. Just as the two of them seem ready to conclude their final battle, however, an unexpected act of betrayal sends them hurtling together through time—bloodbonding them, thus entwining their fates.

Can't win for losin'...As any gambler will tell you, luck runs hot and cold. For my many sins I've been forced to scrape a life out of poker games and side-jobs on the fringes of civil society. I thought I hit it big when I raked 50-grand off the table at a roadhouse in Texas. It is amazing what a win can cost you. Now, on the run from a drug cartel headed by an unstoppable juggernaut, pursued by a shape-shifting killer, and framed for attempted murder, I have to protect a girl with a bounty on her head.

Terrence Mack was born poor, grew up tough, and died hard. Waking up in a sea cave with nothing but the clothes on his back and a new bullet scar was enough to convince him that wherever his death had brought him, it wasn't paradise. His new world quickly proves to be a place of danger, magic, monsters, and - for Terry at least - women. Known on Celestine as a template, Terry's genes are key to the survival of the eldritch races. But the fiercely competitive eldritch don't typically leave their lovers alive long, and aren't accustomed to taking 'no' for an answer.

You know, life is funny sometimes. When I stumbled across a strange weather phenomenon in the middle of the woods, I could have sworn that it was just a prank from one of my friends. But the truth was, it was a portal, and as soon as I touched it I found myself in a new world, one filled with orcs and elves and most notably, goblins. The breathtaking beauty of the goblin women was something I never would have expected, but hey. Learn something new every day. They had a problem, though. A serious problem.

Every year, the empire administers the rite of passage into adulthood. That rite serves to identify those blessed by Aether to become magi. The new magi are shipped to the academy to learn the arts of magic. The academy is a dangerous place; the tournaments held twice each year can cripple or kill the students, and the clans of the empire will go to great lengths to recruit the students they want. Gregory had one dream: to become a magi like the legends of old. Though he was ridiculed by the residents of the village and his unsupportive father, he never wavered from his dream.

When a trio of cute goblins emerged from a silver portal that appeared out of nowhere on my property...things got a bit more complicated all of a sudden. Also, I soon discovered they bite and scratch: mostly each other, but sometimes me.

It was supposed to be a medical marvel. Instead, it triggered the apocalypse. Half of humanity mutated into mindless zombies. Half the survivors mutated into the inhumans: various new species of people with new appearances and abilities. Some grew scales, some grew fur, some could fly, some could survive only underwater. Decades passed, and from the ashes of the old world, a new patchwork civilization rose. Humans and inhumans lived in tentative peace, and the zombies turned out to be not much of a threat once a few generations of survivors had come and gone.

Have you ever felt like there was something inside of you pushing your actions? A dormant beast, so to speak. I know it sounds crazy. But, that’s the best way I could describe how I’ve felt for a long time. I thought it was normal, some animal part of the human brain that lingered from evolution. But, this is the story of how I learned I wasn’t exactly human, and there was a world underneath our own where all the things that go bump in the night live. And, that my beast was very real indeed.

Life sucks. Gabe Harris has been clued into this fact for a long time now. In his mid-twenties, life has been nothing but low paying jobs, petty power-tripping bosses, and the worst roommates mankind has to offer. Bills, debt, and misery have haunted him for his entire adult life and, to make matters worse, it feels like his dream of being a writer is dead on arrival. One fateful night, he decides to take control of his life and make his dream a reality.

The Demon Lord is dead. The System is broken. Somehow, Elias Hearthsong is neither of these things, despite being at the final battle of the Demon Wars. He is a Master Enchanter, perhaps the last one alive. Determined to keep a promise, he crosses the continent to protect his dead friend's legacy: a crumbling orphanage run by a beautiful kitsune. He isn't a teacher, nor does he have experience with children. But with the love of a few good women, anything can become possible.

The surface world is a strange place for a young man who grew up in hell. Darren was just a boy when he and his mother were betrayed by paladins and chased beneath the Earth. There, with only his paladin's sigil and his quests to guide him, Darren grew from boy to man. Born in fire and blood, hell itself sculpted the perfect paladin.

Taken from my old life with little memory of what brought me here, I wake up in a high tech capsule. A wrinkly old elf tells me that my soul is incomplete and has been fused with that of a Solar Dragon to give me a second chance at life. Where? When? An urban metropolis filled with fantasy races, erected atop the back of a giant asteroid. Meteoropolis. And millions of years in the future, to boot. But that's not all. I've got super powers, too. To add to the excitement, I end up hosted by an anxious unicorn elf named Pinky Peach who is basically a professional gamer girl.

My life definitely wasn’t going according to plan, but that all changed the moment I died unexpectedly. Now I’ve been reborn into the fantasy metropolis of Dragonmont City, where I get a second chance to flourish. A twist of fate brings me into contact with Paulina, the proud but troubled owner of Goblin Girl Maid Service. Together with her slightly crazy best friend Kennedi, these two insanely beautiful goblin girls are trying to get their struggling business off the ground. But the competition, in the form of bearded dwarf ladies with a serious attitude problem, has never been stiffer.

As a villain for hire I followed those rules, facing down heroes in scripted fights to make them look good for the press and brand deals. Sure, losing every time was a pain, but the money was good. Well, decent. And it kept real heroes off my back. Well, usually.

Tommy was at the top of his game. He was dating the hottest women on campus, set a world record in weightlifting, and had more fame than he knew what to do with. But all that came to a crashing halt once he graduated from his university. Piece by piece, his success faded into the corporate grind.

The Keiko is a ship of smugglers, soldiers of fortune and adventurers, travelling Earth's colony planets, searching for the next job. And nobody talks about their past. But when a face from Captain Ichabod Drift's former life sends them on a run to Old Earth, all the rules change. Trust will be broken, and blood will be spilled.

Vampire and private investigator Evan Fournier isn't supposed to be taking on paranormal cases, but when the murderer hits close to home, he agrees to look into it. The last thing he expects is to become a target himself - and then to become irrevocably bonded to the man who just tried to kill him. With his memory gone and his soul bonded to a stranger, former firefighter Colin Zhang wants to be anywhere else. He doesn't have a damn clue why he just tried to kill Evan. Every time either of them tries to leave, pure agony stops them short.

Ari had a game plan for life: shoot people. Get money. Hang out with fellow criminal friends. He saw absolutely no reason to change that plan until one dark night in Memphis, when a little girl reached out to him with pocket change and a desperate plea for him to help her. Adopting an abused little girl off the streets was, needless to say, not part of the plan. Ari had no idea what he was doing with an eight year old. He especially didn’t know how to juggle taking contracts and raising a little girl.

For most people, the story of their lives is just that: the accumulation of time, encounters, and actions into a cohesive whole. But for an unfortunate few, that day-to-day existence is affected - perhaps infected is a better word - by memetic incursion: where fairy tale narratives become reality, often with disastrous results.

The Price family has spent generations studying the monsters of the world, working to protect them from humanity - and humanity from them. Enter Verity Price. Despite being trained from birth as a cryptozoologist, she'd rather dance a tango than tangle with a demon, and is spending a year in Manhattan while she pursues her career in professional ballroom dance. Sounds pretty simple, right?

Trouble just walked into Nicholas Rixey's tattoo parlor. Becca Merritt is warm, sexy, wholesome, pure temptation to a very jaded Nick. He's left his military life behind to become co-owner of Hard Ink Tattoo, but Becca is his ex-commander's daughter. Loyalty won't let him turn her away. Lust has plenty to do with it too. With her brother presumed kidnapped, Becca needs Nick. She just wasn't expecting to want him so much.

Teenage delinquent Angel Crawford lives with her redneck father in the swamps of southern Louisiana. She's a high school dropout, addicted to drugs and alcohol, and has a police record a mile long. But when she's made into a zombie after a car crash, her addictions disappear, except for her all-consuming need to stay "alive".

"Why me? Why now?" That’s what Beaulac, Louisiana, detective Kara Gillian was asking herself when an angelic creature named Rhyzkahl unexpectedly appeared during a routine summoning. Kara was hoping to use her occult skills to catch a serial killer, but never had she conjured anything like this unearthly beautiful and unspeakably powerful being whose very touch set off exquisite new dimensions of pleasure.

Alex McKenna is the new Special Agent in Charge of the Chicago office of the Bureau of Preternatural Investigations - the division tasked with investigating crimes involving shades. Or vampires, as they're more widely known. Children have been going missing, and agents are routinely being slaughtered. It's up to McKenna, and some unlikely allies, to get to the bottom of the problem, and find the kids before it's too late.

Everyone knows that Prophet - former Navy SEAL, former CIA spook, full-time pain in the ass - works alone. But his boss at Extreme Escapes, Ltd. has just assigned Proph a new partner and a case haunted by ghosts from Proph's past. Suddenly he has to confront both head-on. Tom Boudreaux - failed FBI agent, failed sheriff, full-time believer in bad luck - is wondering why the head of a private contracting firm has hunted him down to offer him a job.

Elena Michaels is the world’s only female werewolf. And she’s tired of it. Tired of a life spent hiding and protecting, a life where her most important job is hunting down rogue werewolves. Tired of a world that not only accepts the worst in her–her temper, her violence—but requires it. Worst of all, she realizes she’s growing content with that life, with being that person.

Everything has a cost. And every act of magic exacts a price from its user---maybe a two-day migraine, or losing the memory of your first kiss. But some people want to use magic without paying, and they Offload the cost onto innocents. When that happens, it falls to a Hound to identify the spell's caster---and Allison Beckstrom is the best there is.

Most can’t touch the power. But Liv Warren is special—a paranormal tracker who follows the scent of blood. Liv makes her own rules, and the most important one is trust no one. But when her friend’s daughter goes missing, Liv has no choice but to find the girl. Thanks to a childhood oath,Liv can’t rest until the child is home safe. But that means trusting Cam Caballero, the former lover forbidden to her.

The last thing patrol cop Kate Prospero expected to find on her nightly rounds was a werewolf covered in the blood of his latest victim. But then, she also didn't expect that shooting him would land her in the crosshairs of a Magic Enforcement Agency task force, who wants to know why she killed their lead snitch. The more Prospero learns about the dangerous new potion the MEA is investigating, the more she's convinced that earning a spot on their task force is the career break she's been wanting. But getting the assignment proves much easier than solving the case.

Marsalis is one of a new breed...literally. Genetically engineered by the U.S. government to embody the naked aggression and primal survival skills that centuries of civilization have erased from humankind, Thirteens were intended to be the ultimate military fighting force. The project was scuttled, however, when a fearful public branded the supersoldiers dangerous mutants, dooming the Thirteens to forced exile on Earth's distant, desolate Mars colony. But Marsalis found a way to slip back.

Can't win for losin'...As any gambler will tell you, luck runs hot and cold. For my many sins I've been forced to scrape a life out of poker games and side-jobs on the fringes of civil society. I thought I hit it big when I raked 50-grand off the table at a roadhouse in Texas. It is amazing what a win can cost you. Now, on the run from a drug cartel headed by an unstoppable juggernaut, pursued by a shape-shifting killer, and framed for attempted murder, I have to protect a girl with a bounty on her head.

Growing up on modern day Earth, I had no idea I’d been selected from birth to help a dying race save their population. So when a starship abducts me for a royal wedding with galactic consequences, my only option is to help its crew of beautiful officers complete their mission. The catch? I have to protect my gorgeous bride and new allies from an alluring enemy who wants my immunity to a fertility-killing plague for herself, even if it means I have to take command.

Arthur Cain was a hero to his city, the most accomplished and respected of the firefighters in his entire district. But when a call comes in from the so-called "Halfbreed Heights", the monsterfolk part of the city, Arthur's life gets flip-turned upside down.

Terrence Mack was born poor, grew up tough, and died hard. Waking up in a sea cave with nothing but the clothes on his back and a new bullet scar was enough to convince him that wherever his death had brought him, it wasn't paradise. His new world quickly proves to be a place of danger, magic, monsters, and - for Terry at least - women. Known on Celestine as a template, Terry's genes are key to the survival of the eldritch races. But the fiercely competitive eldritch don't typically leave their lovers alive long, and aren't accustomed to taking 'no' for an answer.

It would be an understatement to call Trevon Beaumont an accomplished monster slayer. He's traversed the European countryside upholding the legacy of his clan one completed mission at a time for the whole of his adult life. Now he's on his most perilous quest yet: slay the cruel but beautiful Countess Dracula. Just as the two of them seem ready to conclude their final battle, however, an unexpected act of betrayal sends them hurtling together through time—bloodbonding them, thus entwining their fates.

The world changed the day the rifts happened. Trolls, elves, and other races from fantasy and myth emerged into a modern world, bringing magic with them. The world governments worked to segregate these new arrivals into refugee camps, which eventually became the nation of De’Vas. A nation of paranormals.

Max Slater is a man on a mission. A life of salvaging tech and fighting horrors in deep space has given him nerves of steel, but now he finds himself coming up against the toughest job of his life. On a frozen, not-quite-dead planet, a desperate salvage operation has gone wrong. Max has been hired to investigate. What's left of civilization badly needs that salvage. But when his own rescue operation goes just as wrong, he finds himself fighting for his life.

Collected for the first and only time, are these three stories by Kirk Mason! Devour the two interconnected books A Tale of Tail Brushing and Big City Goth GF, and then chase with the standalone, Knight's Bane!

Garth had been the favorite for the number-one draft pick in the next season of the USA's top sport. His college career was supposed to end on a high note… but it didn't. Sabotaged in his final game, he found himself shut out of the Dungeon League of America, forced to retire his jersey in shame. With no other options, he leaned on his university degree and became a licensed psychiatrist and therapist. That should have been the end of his dungeon-crawling days. But then, a new dungeon appeared in his city.

Zach Riley is a man on the run… from something, or someone, that he just can’t figure out. What, pray tell, might that be? Women who are around him want to jump him, and get him into bed. But Zach can’t figure out why! He simply can’t take it anymore, so he escapes, taking refuge in his own spaceship and he never, ever, leaves it. But his comfortable, if lonely, lifestyle is suddenly thrown into chaos.