Showing results by publisher "Audible Studios" in Dark Fantasy

Mercenary soldiers in the service of the Lady, the Black Company stands against the rebels of the White Rose. They are tough men, proud of honoring their contracts. The Lady is evil, but so, too, are those who falsely profess to follow the White Rose, reincarnation of a centuries-dead heroine. Yet now some of the Company have discovered that the mute girl they rescued and sheltered is truly the White Rose reborn. Now there may be a path to the light, even for such as they. If they can survive it.

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.

Over the course of two award-winning collections and a critically acclaimed novel, The Croning, Laird Barron has arisen as one of the strongest and most original literary voices in modern horror and the dark fantastic. Melding supernatural horror with hardboiled noir, espionage, and a scientific backbone, Barron's stories have garnered critical acclaim and have been reprinted in numerous year's best anthologies and nominated for multiple awards, including the Crawford, International Horror Guild, Shirley Jackson, Theodore Sturgeon, and World Fantasy awards.

Camille Ellis is the Earthen Conclave's golden girl. Her peculiar talent solves cases with a touch. She isn't afraid of getting her hands dirty, but every bright star casts a shadow, and her deepest scars lurk just beneath the skin. A routine consultation goes sideways when a victim's brother gets involved in the investigation. Riding the edge of grief, the warg will go to any lengths to avenge his sister's death. Even if it means ensuring Cam's cooperation at the jaws of his wolf.

Transported through time to the dank streets of Victorian London, Alex Locke seeks to unravel the mysteries of the Obsidian Heart, the enigmatic object to which his fate is inextricably bound. When a string of grisly murders takes place across the capital, Alex follows a trail that will lead him through the opium dens of Limehouse, into the dark and twisted world of the Society of Blood and ever closer to unlocking the secret of the Heart.

The Sands of Time are filled with dangers and new enemies to face. But for Keira to stand tall in a world she does not know, she must first brave the differences in loving the man she calls Draven and the man she must now call her King. Join Keira as she is thrown into an ancient time and faces her biggest challenge yet...how to get a Demon King to fall for a human girl he is forbidden to love.

The Source, the natural wellspring of Magic in the world, is stretched to the breaking point. If gluttonous witchcraft and human usurpers are not curtailed, it will vanish from the Nine Realms, taking with it every legendary race, and the magical sway of all that is good in the world will disappear forever. Before that end, the gods themselves will wage a final destructive war on Creation. The quest to save Magic at all costs is at hand, and an ancient prophesy awakens.

Death of a Darklord focuses on a young woman who finds that she has a talent for magic in a land and a family unforgiving of such abilities. Her tragic attempts to redeem herself in the eyes of her family involve aiding them on their quest to end the dark magic that has destroyed a neighboring town.

For years, Glen Cook's Black Company series has built a major audience among fantasy fans. Told from the "worm's-eye" view of the soldiers and functionaries who fight in the trenches of vast sorceress wars, this epic has riveted a generation of readers. If the Joseph Heller of Catch-22 were to tell the story of The Lord of the Rings, it might read like the Black Company books.

I ended my life to protect Lucian from his enemies. It should have been the hardest decision to make, but it wasn’t. Now I find that Lucian kept even more secrets, deadly ones that threaten to destroy me. I thought I won the game that he and Katarina played, but he’s never stopped shuffling the pieces on the board. Even so, I’ve found peace in his violence and learned to accept my fate within his embrace. As our enemies are revealed, and worlds crashed down into ours, everything is on the line again. Could we survive his latest betrayal, or would it destroy us all?

Raising twins deep in a protected wood sounds like an ideal task, but when the kids are dangerously magical and just learning how to control their abilities, life can get dicey. Michael Talbot prepares for a difficult trial as his wife, Azile, the powerful Red Witch, is called away on urgent matters and he is left alone in charge of his challenging offspring. Fortunately, Uncle Mathieu, werewolf and Brew Master, arrives to help out. It should have been a swell reunion for them, but conspiracy and war are upon them overnight.

Betrayal cuts deepest when someone you love wields the knife. For Kellik, a once-rising star of Port Gloom's guild of thieves, it also leaves him floating in the bay, bleeding out and without hope or allies. Saved by an urchin and healed by a disgraced saint, Kellick is consumed by a single desire: to find out why his guild master ordered him cut down moments after passing his initiation trial. Burning with injustice, Kellik recruits a number of gorgeous rogues to his side: fallen assassins, dark elf witches, and unnervingly polite necromancers.

Alex Locke is desperately trying to hold on to the disparate threads of the complex web of time he has created. He travels to the First World War, living through the horrors of trench warfare in order to befriend a young soldier crucial to his story, then to the 1930s to uncover the secrets of a mysterious stage magician. He moves back and forth in time, always with the strange and terrifying Dark Man on his heels, gradually getting closer to uncovering the true nature of his destiny with the obsidian heart.

The chieftains of Sevenwaters have long been custodians of a vast and mysterious forest and a new heir has been born. But the family's joy turns to despair when the baby is taken, and something unnatural is left in his place. To reclaim her newborn brother, Clodagh must enter the shadowy Otherworld and confront the powerful prince who rules there.

Upon a time. Remember the faery stories you were told as a child? Tales of tiny, magical, winged beings and elves, wicked witches and goblins. Demons... What if one day you found they were true? What if, when you became an adult, you discovered they were all based on fact? What if you met the fantasy and it was all so very real? That's what happened to Thom Kindred. The wonders were revealed to him – but so were the horrors; for not far behind the Good, there always lurks the Bad.

Ever since Edgar Allan Poe looted a family's ignoble secret history for his classic story "The Fall of the House of Usher", living in the shadow of that sick dynasty has been an inescapable scourge for generations of Usher descendants. But not for horror novelist Rix Usher. Years ago he fled the isolated family estate of Usherland in the menacing North Carolina hills to pursue his writing career. He promised never to return. But his father's impending death has brought Rix back home to assume the role of Usher patriarch - and face his worst fears.

Seventeen years have passed since the Necromancer Queen Talia was overthrown and slain, and her capital city destroyed by the Knights of the Order of Eternal Vigilance. Anskar DeVantte, raised in the sacred disciplines of the Order, is now ready to face the brutal initiation trials to become a consecrated knight-sorcerer. But the further Anskar rises in the ranks the more his faith wavers. As troubling powers awaken within him, a schism grows between Anskar and his hallowed Order, and he draws the hungry gaze of the vanquished queen’s fanatical followers.

Time. Truth. Life. There is weakness in all when lies are told but the strength in each is what we must behold. Can our Chosen One find her way back from the deception and chaos that surrounds her or is this the life of a trapped girl, broken and lost forever? A worldwide search might be on the cards but what if the girl they're looking for was never meant to be found? These are the questions both sides face in a race against time, truth and the life they are all trying to save.

Defeated by the Lady and cast from this world, all that was left of him was a foul trace of lingering evil. But the graveyard that was once the Barrowland contains more secrets than dead. All who would possess the power of the Dominator are drawn to the spike. A foolhardy band of thieves is the first to reach it, and a rapacious and malign spirit is unleashed on an unwary world. The forces gather, sides are drawn, and mortal men can only die as the Dark Lords battle for domination.

Who would suspect that the same mind that created the most famous literary detective of all time also took on the eternally popular genre of vampires? Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a contemporary of Bram Stoker, gave us some fascinating works of vampire fiction. From the bloodsucking plant in "The American's Tale" to the bloodsucking wife in "The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire," he reveled in the horror created by creatures who survived on the blood of men and women.