The Best Horror of the Year Volume Two edited by Ellen Datlow

Celebrities take refuge in a white-walled mansion as plague and fever sweep into Cannes; a killer finds that the living dead have no appetite for him; a television presenter stumbles upon the chilling connection between a forgotten animal act and the Whitechapel Murders; a nude man unexpectedly appears in the backgrounds of film after film; mysterious lights menace the crew of a small plane; a little girl awakens to discover her nightlight–and more–missing; two sisters hunt vampire dogs in the wild hills of Fiji; lovers get more than they bargained for in a decadent discotheque; a college professor holds a classroom mesmerized as he vivisects Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death”…

What frightens us, what unnerves us? What causes that delicious shiver of fear to travel the lengths of our spines? It seems the answer changes every year. Every year the bar is raised; the screw is tightened. Ellen Datlow knows what scares us; the seventeen stories included in this anthology were chosen from magazines, webzines, anthologies, literary journals, and single author collections to represent the best horror of the year.

Legendary editor Ellen Datlow (Tails of Wonder and Imagination), winner of multiple Hugo, Bram Stoker, and World Fantasy awards, joins Night Shade Books in presenting The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Two.

The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume Four edited by Jonathan Strahan

A ruthless venture capitalist finds love–or something chemically similar–in an Atlanta strip club; a girl in grey conjures a man from a handful of moonshine; an ship blazing a highway between the stars discovers an island of life on a distant gas giant; a boy becomes a man by mastering the sword; a rebellious young woman suffers a strange incarceration; an astronaut shares a lifeboat–and herself–with an unfathomable alien; an infected girl counts the days until she becomes a vampire; an aviatrix and an inventor square off against saboteurs and monstrous brains; a big man travels to a tiny moon to examine an ancient starship covered with flowers…

The depth and breadth of science fiction and fantasy fiction continues to change with every passing year. The twenty-nine stories chosen for The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume Four by award-winning anthologist Jonathan Strahan carefully map this evolution, giving readers a captivating and always-entertaining look at the very best the genre has to offer.

Tails of Wonder and Imagination edited by Ellen Datlow

What is it about the cat that captivates the creative imagination? No other creature has inspired so many authors to take pen to page. Mystery, horror, science fiction, and fantasy stories have all been written about cats.

From legendary editor Ellen Datlow comes Tails of Wonder and Imagination, showcasing forty cat tales by some of today’s most popular authors. With uncollected stories by Stephen King, Carol Emshwiller, Tanith Lee, Peter S. Beagle, Elizabeth Hand, Dennis Danvers, and Theodora Goss and a previously unpublished story by Susanna Clarke, plus feline-centric fiction by Neil Gaiman, Kelly Link, George R. R. Martin, Lucius Shepard, Joyce Carol Oates, Graham Joyce, Catherynne M. Valente, Michael Marshall Smith, and many others.

Tails of Wonder and Imagination features more than 200,000 words of stories in which cats are heroes and stories in which they’re villains; tales of domestic cats, tigers, lions, mythical part-cat beings, people transformed into cats, cats transformed into people. And yes, even a few cute cats.

Heartland by Mark Teppo

Seek the Light
Embrace the Heartland

Markham returns to Paris where he lost his love, and nearly his life. The ancient order of manipulative magicians that once cast him out is now in turmoil . . . a turmoil made all the greater by the swaths of destruction that Markham tried to avert in the Pacific Northwest.

Teamed with an unlikely partner, Markham seeks to overturn the corrupt remains of an order no longer able to police its own practitioners. Yet, he can’t escape the feeling that he’s still just a pawn in a larger game.

The second novel of the Codex of Souls further explores the strange occult world first introduced in Lightbreaker. Mark Teppo’s vision of a magical underworld is a non-stop adventure that continues to bring new light to the occult origins of our history.

The Shadow Pavilion by Liz Williams

Detective Inspector Chen is back! (And now in Mass Market Paperback!)

The Snake Agent returns in The Shadow Pavilion, the fourth Detective Inspector Chen novel from Liz Williams. When Chen’s partner, the demon Seneschal Zhu Irzh, disappears, along with Chen’s wife Inari’s guardian badger, Chen must enlist all of his allies and assets in order to locate them.

Meanwhile, Zhu Irzh and the badger find themselves trapped in an unfamiliar jungle hell, stalked by a rogue demon lord and his harem of tigress demons, an assassin from between worlds targets Mhara, the new Lord of Heaven, and a beautiful Bollywood starlet holds a deadly secret…

From the strange streets of Singapore Three to the rough and tumble world of Bollywood, where money flows fast and emotions flare even faster; from the realms of the Celestial to the haunts of the Infernal and all the spaces in between, The Shadow Pavilion delivers the thrills, excitement, and near-future occult action fans have come to expect.

Shadowline: The Starfishers Trilogy, Volume One by Glen Cook

The passing of an era… The shaping of a soldier… Vendetta!

Centuries ago, a private army’s deadly strike on the planet Prefactlas freed human slaves from cruel Sangaree masters. A single Sangaree survived–the young Norbon heir, who swore vengeance on the Storm family and their soldiers. Generations later, his carefully mapped revenge scheme is about to hatch.

Now, mercenary warlord Gneaus Julius Storm surveys his domain from the Fortress of Iron, his citadel among the stars. Surrounded by the mementos of his centuries of conquest, his hand-picked soldiers, and his sons, Gneaus has grown weary of warfare and his artificially extended life. But far away, on the burning half of the planet Blackworld, the armies of the galaxy are about to clash, battling for wealth unimaginable along the Shadowline.

From Glen Cook, the master of modern heroic fantasy, comes Shadowline, the first novel in the Starfishers Trilogy, a seamless blend of ancient myth, political intrigue, and scintillating futuristic combat action.