Every year, each village is required to send a young woman to the Empire's capital - her fate to be burned alive for the entertainment of the masses. For the last five years, one small village's tithe has been the same woman. Gilene's sacrifice protects all the other young women of her village, and her secret to staying alive lies with the magic only she possesses. But this year is different. Azarion, the Empire's most famous gladiator, has somehow seen through her illusion - and is set on blackmailing Gilene into using her abilities to help him escape his life of slavery.

Librarian Jayne Thorne enjoys her quiet life of tea and books. That is, until she finds a spell book in the Vanderbilt archives that accidentally gives her access to a magical dimension.

A champion boxer with a sharp hook and a short temper, sixteen-year-old Carl Freeman has been shuffled from foster home to foster home. He can’t seem to stay out of trouble - using his fists to defend weaker classmates from bullies. His latest incident sends his opponent to the emergency room, and now the court is sending Carl to the worst place on earth: Phoenix Island.

Librarian Sylvia Ashe knows nothing about her past, having grown up without a father and a mother who refused to discuss him. When she stumbles upon a diary that suggests she's descended from magicians, she's skeptical. After all, magicians are special, and she's just an ordinary woman who loves books. She seeks answers from a member of the most prominent family of magicians, but she quickly learns that finding the truth won't be easy, especially when he turns out to be as artless as her, and more compelling and dangerous than books.

Birdie Binkowitz is just a little bitter. As a young actress, she was the toast of Hollywood, definitely destined for greatness. Then the dragons had to rise up from their thousand-year slumber, take over Earth and ruin everything. Twenty years later, Birdie is living her worst life in her hometown of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, working at her father's Seed and Feed (and Bagels). Then, a mysterious dragon appears in front of the store seeking her help. He’s got a bone to pick with his fellow dragons–and he wants to hit them where it hurts.

Ahren's life consists of being beaten up by his drunkard father or bullied by the village lads. But at the annual suitability tests for apprenticeships, the young boy finds himself selected by Falk, the guardian of the forest, to be his apprentice and his world is turned upside down.

Choosing a college when your family is struggling can be difficult, but it isn’t supposed to be world ending. And the falling meteor is seriously limiting Matt’s options. Now in the aftermath, his home city is locked down by a mysterious dome, corporations are looking to monopolize a wealth of new untapped resources, and people are suddenly developing powers via a System that seems to have borderline sinister intentions. In the chaos, Matt decides to stick to what he knows: use his stealth class to adapt and survive.

Fight, survive, adapt, and rely only on yourself. That is Derek’s creed and what's got him through the System Integration on Earth. Everything changed when the System came. Cute bunnies and beautiful butterflies became savage killing machines. Then the Invaders arrived with a single goal: to obtain ownership of this new habitable planet. War has raged ever since. None of this mattered much to Derek, aside from making living a little more perilous.

Described as American Gods meets The Avengers, Paternus combines myths from around the world in a modern story of action and intrigue that is “urban fantasy on the surface, but so much more at its core!”

Born to oppression, Siena is an ordinary young woman, until an act of defiance leaves her scarred and marked as a rebel. She's sold to Ero, a fallen Krey with a desperate plan to redeem his once-powerful family. He intends to enhance slaves by altering their genetic code, increasing their value through an illegal experiment.

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.

Victor can’t wait to get the hell out of high school, go to the local community college on a sports scholarship, and start his own life. But that’s all put on hold when he enters his abuela’s house and somehow ends up stepping into a world unlike anything he’s ever known, filled with fantastical meta-humans; walking, talking devils; and other creatures one usually needs some serious pharmaceuticals to see. Fanwath is no dream, though. In fact, it’s a nightmare.

The path ahead of him is arduous, the challenges many, and the chances of survival are slim. But he is determined to become the level up rebel, a warrior who will unite the survivors and destroy the system holding the world hostage.

On a mountainside at the edge of the Kaigenese Empire live the most powerful warriors in the world, superhumans capable of raising the sea and wielding blades of ice. For hundreds of years, the fighters of the Kusanagi Peninsula have held the Empire's enemies at bay, earning their frozen spit of land the name "The Sword of Kaigen". Born into Kusanagi's legendary Matsuda family, f14-year-old Mamoru has always known his purpose: To master his family's fighting techniques and defend his homeland.

I live by one simple rule: no magic. Not too hard in the human world, plus it keeps me hidden from my evil sorcerer father. Safe. When I’m forced into using magic to save an innocent family, the jig is up. Or so I believe. Instead, I’m whisked off to an academy of magic in a place I never knew existed. The problem is - my power is completely raw, which means I don’t know my butt from a broomstick. At first, it's all wands, witches, and a new wardrobe...until I get caught in a restricted area with a dead body. Now, it's going to take more than magic to clear my name.

Modern gods and goddesses, remote, revered - and like the pantheon of heroes and heroines of ancient myth - possessing great power tempered with flaws. Now, find within this anthology great tales by gifted and award-winning authors who move superheroes from the four-color panels of comic books to the fantastic pages of fiction, stories that will remind anyone who ever wanted to wear a cape or don a cowl of the extraordinary powers of the imagination!

In a desperate attempt to escape destruction decades earlier, humankind was forced underground into the depths of the Earth, creating a new society called the Tri-Realms. After her parents and sister are abducted by the Enforcers, 17-year-old Adele, a member of the middle-class moon dwellers, is unjustly sentenced to life in prison for her parents' crimes of treason.

The Earth is under siege - and no one knows about it because the invaders erase those whom they consume. A handful of men and women stand on the border between the mundane and the magical. They have a special spark of soul - not quite enough to be naturally gifted in spellcraft but greater than the average person, a tiny flame that can ignite incredible potential. They possess the ability to fight back against the Vorid: the ability to become a Contractor.

When Lyric Walker was 14 years old, her life was turned upside down when she witnessed a world-changing event - the arrival of the Triton, a five-nation race of warrior merpeople who walked out of the sea and camped on the beaches of modern-day Coney Island. Suddenly her neighborhood was home to a new minority group numbering in the tens of thousands. But the Triton's arrival also revealed a shocking family secret: Her own mother was a mermaid.

Fed up with her wild behavior, 16-year-old Lex’s parents ship her off to upstate New York to live with her Uncle Mort for the summer, hoping that a few months of dirty farm work will whip her back into shape. But Uncle Mort’s true occupation is much dirtier than shoveling manure. He’s a Grim Reaper. And he’s going to teach Lex the family business. She quickly assimilates into the peculiar world of Croak, a town populated by reapers who deliver souls from this life to the next.

The end of the world didn't happen overnight. After years of war, societal breakdown, freak storms, and rising tides, humanity already hovered near the edge. Then came the most unexpected threat of all: the world's corpses rising up to deliver the final blow.

In the blink of an eye, everyone disappears. Gone. Except for the young. There are teens, but not one single adult. Just as suddenly, there are no phones, no Internet, no television. No way to get help. And no way to figure out what's happened. Hunger threatens. Bullies rule. A sinister creature lurks. Animals are mutating. And the teens themselves are changing, developing new talents - unimaginable, dangerous, deadly powers - that grow stronger by the day. It's a terrifying new world.

Ben McKelvie believes he's moving up in the world when he and his fiancée buy a house in the cushy Washington, DC, suburb of Barcroft. Instead he's moving down - way down - thanks to Madeleine Roux, the crazy neighbor whose vermin-infested property is a permanent eyesore and looming hazard to public health. First Ben's fiancée leaves him; then his dog dies, apparently killed by a predator drawn into Barcroft by Madeleine's noxious menagerie. But the worst is yet to come for Ben.

You can't change your DNA…even when it says you're a murderer. When Davy tests positive for Homicidal Tendency Syndrome, aka "the kill gene," she loses everything. Once the perfect high school senior, she is uninvited from her prep school and abandoned by her friends and boyfriend. Even her parents are now afraid of her - although she's never hurt a fly. Davy doesn't feel any different, but genes don't lie. One day she will kill someone. Without any say in the matter, Davy is thrown into a special class for HTS carriers.

New York Times best-selling author Joe Schreiber pens a funny, action-packed novel that is equal parts Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and La Femme Nikita. It’s prom night, and Perry is looking forward to playing a gig with his band in New York City. But when his mother makes him take their quiet and geeky Lithuanian exchange student to the dance, he finds himself on a reckless ride through Manhattan—in his dad’s red Jaguar—with a trained assassin.

In this collection of 13 fabulously chilling stories from 13 true masters of suspense, including five New York Times best sellers and a number of Edgar Award nominees, all edited by none other than R. L. Stine, nothing is what it seems. From cannibalistic children, to an unwitting date with a vampire, to a crush on a boy who just might be a werewolf, no scary stone is left unturned. A must-have for all fans of the genre!

She won't rest until she's sent every walking corpse back to its grave. Forever. Had anyone told Alice Bell that her entire life would change course between one heartbeat and the next, she would have laughed. From blissful to tragic, innocent to ruined? Please. But that's all it took. One heartbeat. A blink, a breath, a second, and everything she knew and loved was gone. Her father was right. The monsters are real.

Five days after Owen Zastava Pitt pushed his insufferable boss out of a 14th story window, he woke up in the hospital with a scarred face, an unbelievable memory, and a job offer. It turns out that monsters are real. All the things from myth, legend, and B-movies are out there, waiting in the shadows. Some of them are evil, and some are just hungry. Monster Hunter International is the premier eradication company in the business. And now Owen is their newest recruit.

Shelby Brooks learned she is a werewolf on the same night she learned that love and betrayal go hand in hand. She was 16. Now, going into her senior year in a new town, love is the last thing Shelby is looking for, but she finds herself irresistibly drawn to Kale, the son of an Alpha. As her heart slowly reopens to the possibility of happiness, threats mount, and her very presence brings mortal danger to Kale and his entire pack. Is her destiny to be a savior? Or a harbinger of death, as the Summer Omega prophecies foretell?

Sixteen-year-old Sayers Wayte has everything. Popularity, good looks, perfect grades—there's nothing Sayers' family money can't buy. Until he's kidnapped by a man who tells him the privileged life he's been living is based on a lie. Trapped in a windowless room, without knowing why he's been taken or how long the man plans to keep him shut away, Sayers faces a terrifying new reality. To survive, he must forget the world he once knew, and play the part his abductor has created for him.