Taylor is the name, John Taylor. My card says I'm a detective, but what I really am is an expert on finding lost things. It's part of the gift I was born with as a child of the Nightside. I left there a long time ago, with my skin and sanity barely intact. Now I make my living in the sunlit streets of London. But business has been slow lately, so when Joanna Barrett showed up at my door, reeking of wealth, asking me to find her runaway teenage daughter, I didn't say no.

A coup has thrown the kingdom of Farshores into turmoil, and one of the pretender’s first moves was to order mercenaries to invade the Mage District and put all its inhabitants - men, women, and children - to the sword. There is one survivor: Horace Stonecutter, the youngest son of the Stonecutter family. Consumed with anger and a hunger for retribution, he journeys out to find who ordered the murder of his family. Along his bloody journey, he meets kings, princes, princesses, noblemen - and not so noble men. May God have mercy on his enemies - because he won’t.

A derelict warship, ancient but still alive. A small team of humans fighting for all humanity. Built for a time when the races were just finding their way to the stars, finding that they could dominate others. The galactic conquests created the arms race and the ancients, the Progenitors had to protect their own. They built a ship to drive the others away.

Abandoned by her family, alone on the wrong side of the color line with little to call her own, Eliza Meeks is coming to terms with what she does have. It’s a gift for communicating with animals. To some, she’s a magical tender. To others, a she-devil. To a talent prospector, she’s a crowd-drawing oddity. And the Bacchanal Carnival is Eliza’s ticket out of the swamp trap of Baton Rouge. Among fortune-tellers, carnies, barkers, and folks even stranger than herself, Eliza finds a new home. But the Bacchanal is no ordinary carnival. An ancient demon has a home there too.

Magic needs a spark. And Maggie’s powers are especially fickle. With no one to help her learn to control her magic, the life debt that she owes stretches eternally over her head, with no way to repay it. Until she meets Griffin, the king’s champion, infamous for hunting down the draignochs that plague their kingdom. Neither has any idea of the destiny that they both carry, or that their meeting will set off a chain of events that will alter every aspect of the life they know - and all of history thereafter.

Laugh till you cry in this new collection of stories from the “Serena Williams of humor writing” (New York Times Book Review) about raising babies and trying to learn how not to be one.

Summer, 1976. Jesse and his brother, Edgar, are on the road in search of victims. They’re rovers, nearly indestructible nocturnal beings who must consume human blood in order to survive. For 70 years they’ve lurked on the fringes of society, roaming from town to town, dingy motel to dingy motel, stalking the transients, addicts, and prostitutes they feed on. This hard-boiled supernatural hell ride kicks off when the brothers encounter a young woman who disrupts their grim routine.

Get ready to experience two more origin stories in the Backyard Starship universe.

When an elderly customer at a Swedish big box furniture store - but not that one - slips through a portal to another dimension, it's up to two minimum-wage employees to track her across the multiverse and protect their company's bottom line. Multi-dimensional swashbuckling would be hard enough, but those two unfortunate souls broke up a week ago. To find the missing granny, Ava and Jules will brave carnivorous furniture, swarms of identical furniture spokespeople, and the deep resentment simmering between them.

Alliance Navy Commander Grayson Stone is patrolling a nearby space station, when a mysterious starship appears. It emerges from a storm of fire, its shields impenetrable, its weapons overwhelming, attacking without provocation and annihilating everything in its path. While his ship is badly damaged in the assault, Grayson manages to survive. Suddenly trapped behind the front line of the invasion and faced with gut-wrenching choices and near-impossible odds, he'll do whatever it takes to escape the grasp of the terrifying new enemy.

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.

Falken Calder dreams of becoming immortal. But as a mere scullery boy in service of the fabled Ardent Lunar Sect, his chances of rising through the ranks are slim. There is only one way he can take up the title of cultivator - to awaken before he comes of age. Time is already running out.

Nestled between Little St. Simons Island and Jekyll Island, Salix Pointe is not a place that many people know of. Part of the Golden Isles of Georgia, all the weeping willows that grow there have led the surrounding town’s folk to call it the Island of Death. Elisa and Tasmin may not want to put too much stock into the folklore of Salix Pointe, but there is a reason that the universe has brought the two women together.

In the realm of Awara, where gods, monsters, and humans exist side by side, Miuko is an ordinary girl resigned to a safe, if uneventful, existence as an innkeeper’s daughter. But when Miuko is cursed and begins to transform into a demon with a deadly touch, she embarks on a quest to reverse the curse and return to her normal life. Aided by a thieving magpie spirit and continuously thwarted by a demon prince, Miuko must outfox tricksters, escape demon hunters, and negotiate with feral gods if she wants to make it home again.

Five years ago Corin Cadence's brother entered the Serpent Spire - a colossal tower with ever-shifting rooms, traps, and monsters. Those who survive the spire's trials return home with an attunement: a mark granting the bearer magical powers. According to legend, those few who reach the top of the tower will be granted a boon by the spire's goddess. He never returned. Now it's Corin's turn. He's headed to the top floor, on a mission to meet the goddess.

All Alice Liddell wants is to escape her Normal life in Oxford and find the parents who abandoned her ten years ago. But she gets more than she bargained for when her older sister Charlotte is arrested for having the infamous Wonder Gene—the key to unlocking the curious Wonderland Reality. Soon, Alice receives a rather cryptic invitation to play for Team Heart in this year’s annual—and often deadly—Wonderland Trials. Now she has less than twenty-four hours to find her way into Wonderland where nothing is impossible...or what it seems.

A team of unlikely friends - an orphaned street musician, a hard-working girl from the tenements, and a talented clockmaker's apprentice - discover that together they can overcome even the darkest of fears.

Faron Vincent can channel the power of the gods. Five years ago, she used her divine magic to liberate her island from its enemies, the dragon-riding Langley Empire. But now, at seventeen, Faron is all powered up with no wars to fight. She’s a legend to her people and a nuisance to her neighbors. When she’s forced to attend an international peace summit, Faron expects that she will perform tricks like a trained pet and then go home. She doesn’t expect her older sister, Elara, forming an unprecedented bond with an enemy dragon.

The year is 1642. As a decades-long war rages through Central Europe, military field surgeon Martin shares a shocking truth with his apprentice Gustav: Demons are real, and the victims of battle are their reward for fighting for mankind. A reveal that changes everything…

In the underground city of Caverna the world's most skilled craftsmen toil in the darkness to create delicacies beyond compare - wines that can remove memories, cheeses that can make you hallucinate and perfumes that convince you to trust the wearer, even as they slit your throat. The people of Caverna are more ordinary, but for one thing: their faces are as blank as untouched snow. Expressions must be learned, and only the famous Facesmiths can teach a person to show (or fake) joy, despair or fear - at a price.

Nicole Palmer and her family have been in hiding for years from the Wake—a shadowy organization that governs all supernatural creatures. If the Wake discovers that Nicole is an Empyreal—a rare kind of creature that can shapeshift into any creature’s natural predator—they’ll force her to join them or kill her for resisting. Like they did her mother.

Ages ago, the world was filled with mythical beasts and cultivators who could shake the heavens. Whispers say they are searching for a way home, but an ancient enemy has blocked the path. After passing through the River of Fate, Verse's memories are fragmented and mixed with others. Only by exploring a world on the verge of destruction will he be able to discover who he is and claim his destiny.

From the mind of basketball legend and Academy Award-winning storyteller Kobe Bryant comes this radically original portrait of five young basketball players, one enlightening coach, and the awesome transformative power of the game. Filled with insights about the mental stamina and emotional clarity that peak performance requires, this is an indispensable story for young athletes, coaches, educators, and anyone interested in the astonishing potential of team sports to unlock individual growth.

Caitlyn Aguirre should have been a magician. Her family certainly expected her to be a magician. But by the time she reached her 12th birthday, Caitlyn hadn't even managed to cast a single spell! In desperation, her parents send her - and her magical sisters - to Jude's Sorcerous Academy, her last best chance to discover her powers. But as she struggles to survive her classes without a single spell to her name, Caitlyn starts to uncover an ancient mystery that may prove the key to her true powers....

In the aftermath of a deadly outbreak - reminiscent of the 1962 event of mass hysteria that was the Tangayika Laughter Epidemic - a city at the tip of Africa is losing its mind, with residents experiencing hallucinations and paranoia. Is it simply another episode of mass hysteria, or something more sinister? In a quarantined city in which the inexplicable has already occurred, rumors, superstitions, and conspiracy theories abound.

Matt Cruse is a cabin boy on the Aurora, a huge airship that sails hundreds of feet above the ocean. One night he meets a dying balloonist who speaks of beautiful creatures drifting through the skies. It is only after Matt meets the balloonist's granddaughter that he realizes that the man's ravings may, in fact, have been true, and that the creatures are completely real and utterly mysterious.

Colin is a druid on a mission. Namely, traveling to an alternate dimension where technology rules, to snag the tech he needs to save his friends in the Hellpocalypse timeline. At first, it sounds simple. He’ll slip through the timestreams, do a little sightseeing, and go home. Heck, it might even be fun to visit a world where actual superheroes exist. But for creation’s unluckiest druid, nothing is ever easy. When things go horribly wrong, Colin finds that his magic is almost completely on the fritz.

When Robert Catesby, the charismatic son of a Catholic gentleman, marries heiress Catherine Leigh and inherits the rich Oxfordshire manor house at Aston from his grandmother, it seems that the future happiness of the couple must be assured. However, Robert’s deep involvement in plots to overthrow the Protestant queen Elizabeth I and his increasingly dangerous behavior threaten the lives of his wife and their young son.

For a decade, I’ve hated the supernaturals who owned my world. I hunted them. I killed them. And now, in the most grand twist of fate - I am bonded to one of them. Oh, the irony. Being a supernatural bounty hunter isn’t exactly a popular job. But after the magic wars, there aren’t many things a human can do that will put food on the table. Thankfully, anything my right hook can’t handle, my guns can. Or so I thought.

Can one boy stand between two kingdoms at war? Jaevid Broadfeather has grown up as a wartime refugee, hiding from the world because of his mixed racial heritage. He feels his future is hopeless - until a chance encounter with a wild dragon lands him in Blybrig Academy, a place usually forbidden to anyone but the rich and royal. But Jaevid's case is special; no dragon has voluntarily chosen a rider in decades, so the proud riders of Blybrig must begrudgingly let him join their brotherhood despite his bloodline.