Showing results for "Skin" in Science Fiction & Fantasy

When moonlighting medical students harvesting skin from a corpse for temporary use accidentally take it from the wrong donor, the results are catastrophic: A New York City hospital ward is destroyed in a bloodbath, and an elderly professor, admitted for a routine skin graft, is suddenly the city's most wanted fugitive. While the police hunt the fleeing professor, Mulder and Scully track the skin that was grafted onto him, a trail that leads from the morgue to the headquarters of a cutting-edge biotech company to the jungles of Thailand.

Derek Doyle has been a member of the Paranormal Investigations Team since the monsters revealed themselves to the world. Considering that he thinks a monster is needed to catch a monster, he's definitely in the right place. As a lone wolf not used to letting many people in, neither man nor beast was prepared for the effect consultant Dr. Ever Chace has on them. Growing up human in a world of supernatural creatures, Dr. Ever Chace has always felt a need to be special, to stand out. When asked to consult on a case where teens are being brutalized, she relishes the chance.

Lord Thornby has been trapped on his father's isolated Yorkshire estate for a year. There are no bars or chains; he simply can't leave. His sanity is starting to fray. When industrial magician John Blake arrives to investigate a case of witchcraft, he finds the peculiar, arrogant Thornby as alarming as he is attractive. John soon finds himself caught up in a dark fairy tale, where all the rules of magic - and love - are changed.

Desperate to escape the dangerous streets of Old Triton, the buried city, Milla takes the ultimate risk. Could a dead girl's identity be her way out? A ticket to a richer, brighter world? Now she's part of a high tech contest, with a prize beyond money, fame, and everything she has ever known. A chance to become something...new. But if anyone finds out who Milla really is, she's dead. The other competitors come from privilege, their faces and bodies tweaked to perfection. Rich and handsome Cale could be the most dangerous of all.

Harry Dresden, Chicago's only professional wizard, is about to have a very bad day. As Winter Knight to the Queen of Air and Darkness, Harry never knows what the scheming Mab might want him to do. Usually, it's something awful. This time, it's worse than that. Mab's involved Harry in a smash-and-grab heist run by one of his most despised enemies, to recover the literal Holy Grail from the vaults of the greatest treasure horde in the world - which belongs to the one and only Hades, Lord of the Underworld.

In the spring of 1995, Nate Cartwright has lost everything: his parents are dead, his older brother has disowned him, and he’s been fired from his job. Looking for a new direction, he returns to his family’s summer cabin in the mountains of Oregon. The cabin should be empty. But it’s not. Inside is a man named Alex - and an extraordinary little girl who calls herself Artemis Darth Vader. But there’s far more to her than meets the eye. Soon, it becomes clear that Nate must make a choice: drown in the memories of his past, or fight for a future he never thought possible.

Angela is a woman trying to get by in this bewildering new world. Though she still lives with her husband and children, they lead separate lives. Confined to their rooms, they communicate via their computers and phones. In some ways, very little has changed. That is, until she spots a mysterious stranger walking through town without even a face mask for protection. A man, it seems, immune to this disease. A man unlike anyone else she knows. A man it might just be safe to touch....

In Skin Folk, with works ranging from science fiction to Caribbean folklore, passionate love to chilling horror, Nalo Hopkinson is at her award-winning best spinning tales like "Precious", in which the narrator spews valuable coins and gems from her mouth whenever she attempts to talk or sing. In "A Habit of Waste", a self-conscious woman undergoes elective surgery to alter her appearance; days later she's shocked to see her former body climbing onto a public bus.

What will become of our self-destructed planet? The answer shatters all expectations in this subversive speculation from the Hugo Award - winning author of the Broken Earth trilogy. An explorer returns to gather information from a climate-ravaged Earth that his ancestors, and others among the planet’s finest, fled centuries ago. The mission comes with a warning: A graveyard world awaits him. But so do those left behind - hopeless and unbeautiful wastes of humanity who should have died out ages ago.

Nothing says you can’t steal a heart. Keeping it though? That’s another problem. Wade Espinoza knows a thing or two about hoards. As a dragon, he’s got plenty. What he doesn’t have is a relationship, and he swears he’s not looking for one. But when he’s sent to Boston to answer a cry for help from another pack, he’s drawn into a mess of fae bargains centered around a selkie who Wade instantly becomes obsessed with.

I’m a selkie, trapped above the waves until I can recover my skin. Humans used to call us seal-wives many years ago - before they broke the planet. I thought that fewer humans, after the warming, would mean less danger. My kind believed our world was finally recovering. We were wrong. Up here, the magic is fading and Old Ones like me are being traded as trophies for rich and powerful humans to display in collections. Without the Old Ones, the magic fades; without magic, the planet dies. Humankind has gone too far, and someone has to put a stop to it.

In "Skin Like Porcelain Death" a half-resurrected cleanup man for the bureaucracy of death confronts a sorcerous collection of chipped porcelain dolls in an attempt to save the soul of a horny young man who chose the wrong girlfriend.

Caitlin Hext’s first shedding ceremony is imminent, but she’s far from prepared to produce a Snakeskin clone. When her skin fails to turn to dust as expected, she must decide whether she wishes the newcomer alive or dead. Worse still, it transpires that the Hext family may be of central importance to the survival of Charmers, a group of people with the inexplicable power to produce duplicates every seven years and, in the process, rejuvenate.

The idea was simple enough for the alien race who took Aneka Jansen from Earth in 2011. Take a human, make her into a perfect tool to observe humanity from the inside, and so determine how best to advance this young race into their future. Unfortunately for them and her, their plans went awry, and Aneka became the only survivor on a dead ship marooned in deep space.

When Game Warden Eden St. Cloud goes up against CEO Monroe StoneCrow, she encounters the most intimidating, powerful, and sexy man she's ever seen. Unaware of the fact that Monroe is the Dominant Skin Walker in North America, it isn't until Eden becomes enmeshed in his life that she realizes it's too late to escape. Worse, she's drawn the children under her care into the lair of the beast and must now succumb to Monroe's desires or risk losing her children forever.

"The possession of power, no matter how enormous, does not bring the knowledge how to use it." Raphael, a failed writer, deep in debt, and unrequited in love, is about to take a suicidal plunge into the Seine River. Just in time, he discovers the "Magic Skin" in an antiquity shop. Its supernatural powers grant every wish but it extracts a terrible toll! This parable depicts the malaise of 19th century France.

Milla couldn't have dreamed of climbing so high. Now, she'll face temptations and trials she never expected. Her limits will be tested, friendships and love will be put to the fire, and Milla's actions will decide the fate of both Triton and Deiterra. When everything turns against her, Milla must sacrifice everything. But with all of Triton at stake, will it be enough?

Thirteen tales are unspun from the deeply familiar and woven anew into a collection of fairy tales that wind back through time. Emma Donoghue reveals heroines young and old in unexpected alliances--sometimes treacherous, sometimes erotic, but always courageous. Told with luminous voices that shimmer with sensuality and truth, these age-old characters shed their antiquated cloaks to travel a seductive new landscape, radiantly transformed.

In the first installment of the A Fire Beneath the Skin trilogy, the city of Klaar has never fallen. No enemy has ever made it across the Long Bridge or penetrated the city's mighty walls. Even when a powerful invading army shows up at the gates, the duke and his daughter, Rina Veraiin, are certain that it poses little threat. But they are cruelly betrayed from within and, in a horrific spasm of violence, the city is brought to its knees.

Rina Veraiin has youth, beauty, and strength. She is a born warrior, able to outride any man, deal death with her fierce blade, and command awesome and mysterious forces granted to her by a set of magical tattoos. Now as the newly minted duchess of Klaar, Rina confronts a menace that threatens her world in a divine conflict that will push her newfound abilities to their limits.