Showing titles in Dark Fantasy

Enter the mysterious and exotic world of Kelewan.… Mara, the youngest child of the ancient and noble Acoma family, is about to take her pledge of servitude to the goddess Lashima when the ceremony is disrupted by news of her father and brother's deaths in battle. Despite her grief, as the only surviving member of her house, Mara must now take up the mantles of Ruling Lady. But she soon discovers betrayal at the heart of her family's loss, and the Acoma's enemies have brought her house to the brink of utter destruction.

John Taylor works in the Nightside - the gaudy, neon noir, secret heart of London, where it's always three in the morning, where gods and monsters make deals and seek pleasures they won't find anywhere else. He has a gift for finding things. And sometimes what he's hired to locate can be very, very dangerous indeed.

Loren did not ask for the dagger at her waist. She did not ask to be born to cruel parents. And she did not ask to be drawn into a conflict that threatens more harm than she can possibly imagine. After 15 years of toil, when her dreams of adventure have very nearly died out, a spark arrives to rekindle them. A half-glimpsed coat of blue, dodging through the trees of the Birchwood. A wizard. A fugitive. Escape.

Timothy was not a good man in life, and being undead did little to improve his disposition. Find out what a man trapped in his own mind will do to survive when he wakes up to find himself a zombie controlled by a self-aware virus.

Banished for the sin of mercy, Severian, one of the ancient guild of Torturers, flees from exile. In a mountain wilderness. Severian, the disgraced apprentice torturer, has reached his place of exile - Thrax, the city of Windowless Rooms, where he must take up his post as Lictor, executioner and torturer. However, he flees the city and heads into the mountains.

As a brand new blood slave, Annika must learn to survive her dangerous new circumstances or face imminent death from the monstrous wolves prowling outside the Vale's enchanted walls. But not all in the kingdom is as it appears, and when a handsome vampire disguised as a human steps into her life, Annika discovers that falling for the enemy is sometimes too tempting to resist.

If life has taught the jaded sellsword Aaron Envelar anything, it’s that hope is for fools and causes are a sure remedy for breathing. But when his latest job leads him to the corpse of a prince and a conspiracy that threatens to destroy the entire realm, Aaron is forced to choose sides in a war he doesn’t want, between forces he doesn’t understand. Thrust into a world of mythical assassins, a madman with superhuman strength, and a nagging ball of light with a superiority complex who claims to be the embodiment of compassion, Aaron takes on his hardest job yet - staying alive.

Clive Barker has made his mark on modern fiction by exposing all that is surreal and magical in the ordinary world - and exploring the profound and overwhelming terror that results. With its volatile mix of the fantastical and the contemporary, the everyday and the otherworldly, Weaveworld is an epic work of dark fantasy and horror - a tour de force from one of today's most forceful and imaginative artists.

What happens when one takes a murderous psychopath and forces them to team up with a cowardly tinkerer? Though not a question Jeremiah ever expected to ponder, he is nevertheless looking forward to seeing what the aforementioned duo will cook up. Success or failure does not matter to Richard, only that the journey be entertaining.

Once every year, in the city of Sunja, gladiators meet in the arena known as Sunja’s Pit. Some are lured there by the prospect of fortune or fame; others come simply for the thrill of the fight. The games continue for days, until a champion is crowned—or all involved perish. When it becomes clear that to be a Free Trained pit fighter is to live with a mark on one’s head, four warriors struggle to change their lot, both in and out of the arena. But that’s easier said than done, and not everyone is pleased to learn of their plans.

Harry Keogh, the Necroscope, the man who can talk to the dead, and Earth's greatest vampire hunter, has been searching for his wife and infant son gone missing during Harry's war against the vampires. This obsession has left him open to subtle influence by an ancient vampire, Radu. Entombed in amber, trapped in undeath, Radu plans for his resurrection and plots the destruction of other vampires who might challenge his supremacy.

Thrall, wise shaman and the warchief of the Horde, has sensed a disturbing change . . . Long ago, Azeroth’s destructive native elementals raged across the world until the benevolent titans imprisoned them within the Elemental Plane. Despite the titans’ intervention, many elementals have ended up back on Azeroth. Over the ages, shaman like Thrall have communed with these spirits and, through patience and dedication, learned to soothe roaring infernos, bring rain to sun-scorched lands, and otherwise temper the elementals’ ruinous influence on the world of Azeroth.

Somewhere on a salt-and-shingle island, inside a ruined concrete structure known as The Green Chapel, a figure called The Armourer is leading a ritual with terrible intent. But something is coming to stop him. Five more-than-human forms are traversing land, sea and time towards The Green Chapel, moving to the point where they will converge and become Ness. Ness has lichen skin and willow-bones. Ness is made of tidal drift, green moss and deep time. Ness has hagstones for eyes and speaks only in birds. And Ness has come to take this island back.

Young Rhea is a miller's daughter of low birth, so she is understandably surprised when a mysterious nobleman, Lord Crevan, shows up on her doorstep and proposes marriage. Since commoners don't turn down lords - no matter how sinister they may seem - Rhea is forced to agree to the engagement. Lord Crevan demands that Rhea visit his remote manor before their wedding.

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.

On a snowy New Year's Eve, Fennrick negotiates one last hurrah in a seedy internet cafe, but at the stroke of midnight, he receives a tantalizing invitation: "You have been invited to join the Tutorial." And when presented with the available difficulty levels, he makes the obvious choice: Hell. Soon, Fennrick finds himself in frenzied, violent combat, and it's a toss-up as to which he'll lose first: his life or what little sanity he has left. With his criminal record, estranged family, and nonexistent future, he's ready to accept death.

On the Letherii continent the exiled Malazan army commanded by Adjunct Tavore begins its march into the eastern Wastelands, to fight for an unknown cause against an enemy it has never seen. The fate awaiting the Bonehunters is one no soldier can prepare for, and one no mortal soul can withstand - the foe is uncertainty and the only weapon worth wielding is stubborn courage. In war everyone loses, and this brutal truth can be found in the eyes of every soldier in every world.

The war is in full swing. Following the unprecedented outcome of the siege at Fort Yimin, both the Republic and the Empire are forced to drastically reevaluate their plans for the conflict. With matters on the western front more or less settled for the moment, the warring nations turn their attention toward the eastern theatre. Winter looms on the horizon, threatening to deadlock the region and put a temporary halt to hostilities.

Recon Marine Conor McCall didn’t expect action during his training op in the icy waters off Norway. But when a bizarre summer fog engulfs his boat, he and his team find themselves in a fight against strange, cruel monsters from the depths of the North Sea. When even their allies are enemies, the Recon Marines must do what they have always done: adapt or die. But with a world of ice and monsters seeking to destroy them, every second is mission-critical.

Pandemonium: a twilight dimension of nightmare creatures, mythical beings, the undead, and everything in between. To Dead Jack, it’s hell sweet hell. In the first book of the series, the tortured, drug-addicted detective and his associate, the homunculus Oswald, face rogue leprechauns, ghost pirates, a sex-obsessed shark woman, sycophantic ghouls, an insecure fire demon, and a goateed maniac who calls himself the Duke of Pandemonium.