Double-crossed again, B is confused, enraged and broken. But the battle isn’t over. The end is nigh, but there are plenty of horrors to come. And who will survive? The Zombies? The humans? Or worse…? ‘Zachary…’ Dr Oystein murmurs. ‘No,’ Owl Man replies. ‘There has been enough bloodshed. I know there must be more before this is through, but let’s not kill those we can afford to spare. You and I are monsters, but we have to draw the line somewhere. Let’s draw it here.’ Dr Oystein looks troubled, but he nods reluctantly. Owl Man turns to the girl again. ‘Leave your walkie-talkie,’ he says. ‘Return to County Hall. Tell Mr Dowling that you found me with Becky Smith and Dr Oystein. Tell him it’s over. The outcome has been decided, since we have what Becky stole from him.’

On June 9, 1865, while traveling by train to London with his secret mistress, 53-year-old Charles Dickens--at the height of his powers and popularity, the most famous and successful novelist in the world and perhaps in the history of the world--hurtled into a disaster that changed his life forever. Did Dickens begin living a dark double life after the accident? Were his nightly forays into the worst slums ofLondon and his deepening obsession with corpses, crypts, murder, opium dens, the use of lime pits to dissolve bodies, and a hidden subterranean London mere research . . . or something more terrifying? Just as he did in The Terror, Dan Simmons draws impeccably from history to create a gloriously engaging and terrifying narrative. Based on the historical details of Charles Dickens's life and narrated by Wilkie Collins (Dickens's friend, frequent collaborator, and Salieri-style secret rival), DROOD explores the still-unsolved mysteries of the famous author's last years and may provide the key to Dickens's final, unfinished work: The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Chilling, haunting, and utterly original, DROOD is Dan Simmons at his powerful best

The first things to shift were the doll's eyes, the beautiful grey-green glass eyes. Slowly they swivelled, until their gaze was resting on Triss's face. Then the tiny mouth moved, opened to speak. 'What are you doing here?' It was uttered in tones of outrage and surprise, and in a voice as cold and musical as the clinking of cups. 'Who do you think you are? This is my family.' When Triss wakes up after an accident, she knows that something is very wrong. She is insatiably hungry; her sister seems scared of her and her parents whisper behind closed doors. She looks through her diary to try to remember, but the pages have been ripped out. Soon Triss discovers that what happened to her is more strange and terrible than she could ever have imagined, and that she is quite literally not herself. In a quest find the truth she must travel into the terrifying Underbelly of the city to meet a twisted architect who has dark designs on her family - before it's too late ...

Before Larten Crepsley was a vampire general... Before he was Darren Shan's master... Before the War of Scars... Larten Crepsley was a teenager. And he was sick of the pomp and circumstance of fusty old vampires telling him what to do. Taking off on his own with his blood brother, Wester, Larten takes off into the world to see what his newly blooded vampire status can get him in the human world. Sucking all he can out of humanity, Larten stumbles into a violent, hedonistic lifestyle, where cheats beckon, power corrupts, and enemies are waiting. This is his story.

Charlie Higson's The Enemy is the first in a jaw-dropping zombie horror series for teens. Everyone over the age of fourteen has succumbed to a deadly zombie virus and now the kids must keep themselves alive. When the sickness came, every parent, police officer, politician - every adult fell ill. The lucky ones died. The others are crazed, confused and hungry. Only children under fourteen remain, and they're fighting to survive. ****Now there are rumours of a safe place to hide. And so a gang of children begin their quest across London, where all through the city - down alleyways, in deserted houses, underground - the grown-ups lie in wait. But can they make it there - alive? This edition contains the first chapter of the second book The Dead.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling master of suspense comes a riveting thriller that probes the deepest terrors of the human psyche—and the ineffable mystery of what truly makes us who we are. Here a brilliant young man finds himself fighting for his very existence in a battle that starts with the most frightening words of all… At thirty-four, Internet entrepreneur Ryan Perry seemed to have the world in his pocket—until the first troubling symptoms appeared out of nowhere. Within days, he’s diagnosed with incurable cardiomyopathy and finds himself on the waiting list for a heart transplant; it’s his only hope, and it’s dwindling fast. Ryan is about to lose it all…his health, his girlfriend Samantha, and his life. One year later, Ryan has never felt better. Business is good and he hopes to renew his relationship with Samantha. Then the unmarked gifts begin to appear—a box of Valentine candy hearts, a heart pendant. Most disturbing of all, a graphic heart surgery video and the chilling message: Your heart belongs to me. In a heartbeat, the medical miracle that gave Ryan a second chance at life is about to become a curse worse than death. For Ryan is being stalked by a mysterious woman who feels entitled to everything he has. She’s the spitting image of the twenty-six-year-old donor of the heart beating steadily in Ryan’s own chest. And she’s come to take it back.

With each and every new novel, Dean Koontz raises the stakes--and the pulse rate--higher than any other author. Now, in what may be his most suspenseful and heartfelt novel ever, he brings us the story of an ordinary man whose extraordinary commitment to his wife will take him on a harrowing journey of adventure, sacrifice, and redemption to the mystery of love itself--and to a showdown with the darkness that would destroy it forever. What would you do for love? Would you die? Would you kill? We have your wife. You can get her back for two million cash. Landscaper Mitchell Rafferty thinks it must be some kind of joke. He was in the middle of planting impatiens in the yard of one of his clients when his cell phone rang. Now he's standing in a normal suburban neighborhood on a bright summer day, having a phone conversation out of his darkest nightmare. Whoever is on the other end of the line is dead serious. He has Mitch's wife and he's named the price for her safe return. The caller doesn't care that Mitch runs a small two-man landscaping operation and has no way of raising such a vast sum. He's confident that Mitch will find a way. If he loves his wife enough. . . Mitch does love her enough. He loves her more than life itself. He's got seventy-two hours to prove it. He has to find the two million by then. But he'll pay a lot more. He'll pay anything. From its tense opening to its shattering climax, The Husband is a thriller that will hold you in its relentless grip for every twist, every shock, every revelation. . . until it lets you go, unmistakably changed. This is a Dean Koontz novel, after all. And there's no other experience quite like it.

A retelling of the Snow White fairy tale from the point of view of the "wicked stepmother." This version was a chapbook compiled by Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab and sold at Comic Con 2008 and on the BPAL website with all proceeds going to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

Stories you'll never forget—just try—from literature's favorite transgressive author Representing work that spans several years, Make Something Up is a compilation of 21 stories and one novella (some previously published, some not) that will disturb and delight. The absurdity of both life and death are on full display; in "Zombies," the best and brightest of a high school prep school become tragically addicted to the latest drug craze: electric shocks from cardiac defibrillators. In "Knock, Knock," a son hopes to tell one last off-color joke to a father in his final moments, while in "Tunnel of Love," a massage therapist runs the curious practice of providing 'relief' to dying clients. And in "Expedition," fans will be thrilled to find to see a side of Tyler Durden never seen before in a precursor story to Fight Club. Funny, caustic, bizarre, poignant; these stories represent everything readers have come to love and expect from Chuck Palahniuk. They have all the impact of a sharp blow to the solar plexus, with considerable collateral damage to the funny bone.

Set in the bohemian café society of Paris at the turn of the nineteenth century, Maugham's exploration of hypnotism and the occult was inspired by the sinister black magician Aleister Crowley. At the start of this compulsive gothic horror story, Arthur and his beautiful, innocent fiancée Margaret look forward to an idyllic life together, until they encounter the mesmerising and repulsive Oliver Haddo...

When she chose master vampire Jean-Claude over her ex-fiancé, alpha werewolf Richard Zeeman, Anita learned that sometimes love is not enough. But though she and Richard won’t be walking down any aisles, she can’t turn her back on him when he’s arrested on a rape charge in Tennessee. Anita knows firsthand that Richard has the morals of a saint—or at least a boy scout. But his guilt or innocence is not the issue. He’s behind bars, and in five days a full moon will rise…

"The Great God Pan" is a novella by Welsh writer Arthur Machen. A version of the story was published in the magazine The Whirlwind in 1890, and Machen revised and extended it for its book publication (together with another story, "The Inmost Light") in 1894. On publication it was widely denounced by the press as degenerate and horrific because of its decadent style and sexual content, although it has since garnered a reputation as a classic of horror. Welcome to a special edition of a renowned classic. This classic, difficult-to-find text has been reprinted using a print-on-demand service to provide you with an updated version of the text, at the best value possible! Several edits have been made for readability, including font, text size, spacing, and alignment changes. However, while our goal was to enhance the ease at which this book can be read, we did not alter or change the historic text. Experience this classic in all of its glory and historical significance!

The Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter backlist takes flight with a whole new look. In her ninth adventure, vampire hunter Anita Blake owes a favor to a friend-a man almost as dangerous as the ancient evil she's about to face. #1 New York Times bestselling author Laurell K. Hamilton offers a sexy, suspenseful novel of human—and inhuman—passions, as vampire hunter Anita Blake must repay a favor to a man almost as dangerous as the ancient evil she's about to face...Edward is a hit man, specializing in monsters, vampires, shapeshifters, anything and everything. There are people like Anita who do it legal, but Edward doesn't sweat the legalities, or, hell, the ethics. He's an equal opportunity killer. Anita may be one of the few friends that Edward has, but it’s like being friends with a tame leopard. It may curl up on the foot of your bed and let you pet its head, but it can still eat your throat out...

A Dark And Stormy Night. Teresa Chafey is running away from home. Driving north along the California coast, she picks up two mysterious hitchhikers: Poppy Corn and Freedom Jack. Together the three of them tell stories: Teresa of her devastating relationship with her boyfriend, Poppy of a sad young woman she once knew, and Freedom of a talented young man with a violent temper. Yet as they talk, a darker story unfolds around them. A story of life and death, of redemption and damnation. It will be the longest night of Teresa's life. Maybe the last night of her life.

HANGSAMAN is Miss Jackson's second novel. The story is a simple one but the overtones are immediately present. "Natalie Waite who was seventeen years old but who felt that she had been truly conscious only since she was about fifteen lived in an odd corner of a world of sound and sight, past the daily voices of her father and mother and their incomprehensible actions." In a few graphic pages, the family is before us—Arnold Waite, a writer, egotistical and embittered; his wife, the complaining martyr; Bud, the younger brother who has not yet felt the need to establish his independence; and Natalie, in the nightmare of being seventeen. The Sunday afternoon cocktail party, to which Arnold Waite has invited his literary friends and neighbors, serves to etch in the details of this family's life, and to draw Natalie into the vortex. The story concentrates on the next few critical months in Natalie's life, away at college, where each experience reproduces on a larger scale the crucial failure of her emotional life at home. With a mounting tension rising from character and situation as well as the particular magic of which Miss Jackson is master, the novel proceeds inexorably to the stinging melodrama of its conclusion. The bitter cruelty of the passage from adolescence to womanhood, of a sensitive and lonely girl caught in a world not of her own devising, is a theme well suited to Miss Jackson's brilliant talent.