Get set to swoon: read Ash's heart-rending final letter to Meghan. It was available on the author's website as a pdf file.

In the West, a fragile peace has held the bickering provinces of Adjuria together for the past twenty years. In the East, the Empire of Jonguria has been bound together for generations by force.But now both countries are losing their grip. Will an Adjurian Royal Council offer up a solution, or will politics prevail? Can two ancient enemies bind their wounds, or is war on the horizon?In the West, a fragile peace has held the bickering provinces of Adjuria together for the past twenty years. In the East, the Empire of Jonguria has been bound together for generations by force.But now both countries are losing their grip. Will an Adjurian Royal Council offer up a solution, or will politics prevail? Can two ancient enemies bind their wounds, or is their hope for reconciliation, the Jongurian Mission, doomed from the start?Join a motley group of war veterans tasked with opening up a reclusive country. But when their mission of peace suddenly turns deadly, all bets are off, and the Jongurian Mission takes on a whole new meaning: survival.

** *The “unparalleled romantic adventure”* of Nalini Singh’s New York Times bestselling series continues as a new dawn begins for the Psy-Changeling world...* ** The Psy-Changeling world has undergone a staggering transformation and now stands at a crossroads. The Trinity Accord promises a new era of cooperation between disparate races and groups. It is a beacon of hope held together by many hands: Old enemies. New allies. Wary loners. But a century of distrust and suspicion can’t be so easily forgotten and threatens to shatter Trinity from within at any moment. As rival members vie for dominance, chaos and evil gather in the shadows and a kidnapped woman’s cry for help washes up in San Francisco, while the Consortium turns its murderous gaze toward a child who is the embodiment of change, of love, of piercing hope: A child who is both Psy…and changeling. To find the lost, protect the vulnerable—and save Trinity—no one can stand alone. This is a time of loyalty across divisions, of bonds woven into the heart and the soul, of heroes known and unknown standing back to back and holding the line. But is an allegiance of honor even possible with traitors lurking in their midst?

With Pandora, Anne Rice began a magnificent new series of vampire novels. Now, in the second of her New Tales of the Vampires, she tells the mesmerizing story of Vittorio, a vampire in the Italian Age of Gold. Educated in the Florence of Cosimo de' Medici, trained in knighthood at his father's mountaintop castle, Vittorio inhabits a world of courtly splendor and country pleasures - a world suddenly threatened when his entire family is confronted by an unholy power. In the midst of this upheaval, Vittorio is seduced by the vampire Ursula, the most beautiful of his supernatural enemies. As he sets out in pursuit of vengeance, entering the nightmarish Court of the Ruby Grail, increasingly more enchanted (and confused) by his love for the mysterious Ursula, he finds himself facing demonic adversaries, war and political intrigue. Against a backdrop of the wonders - both sacred and profane - and the beauty and ferocity of Renaissance Italy, Anne Rice creates a passionate and tragic legend of doomed young love and lost innocence.

From the Newbery Medal–winning author of The Hero and the Crown: the story of a princess who flees her father’s unwanted attention and finds an unexpected new life. Princess Lissla Lissar is the only child of the king and his queen, who was the most beautiful woman in seven kingdoms. Everyone loved the splendid king and his matchless queen so much that no one had any attention to spare for the princess, who grew up in seclusion, listening to the tales her nursemaid told about her magnificent parents. But the queen takes ill of a mysterious wasting disease and on her deathbed extracts a strange promise from her husband: “I want you to promise me . . . you will only marry someone as beautiful as I was.” The king is crazy with grief at her loss, and slow to regain both his wits and his strength. But on Lissar’s seventeenth birthday, two years after the queen’s death, there is a grand ball, and everyone present looks at the princess in astonishment and whispers to their neighbors, How like her mother she is! On the day after the ball, the king announces that he is to marry again—and that his bride is the princess Lissla Lissar, his own daughter. Lissar, physically broken, half mad, and terrified, flees her father’s lust with her one loyal friend, her sighthound, Ash. It is the beginning of winter as they journey into the mountains—and on the night when it begins to snow, they find a tiny, deserted cabin with the makings of a fire ready-laid in the hearth. Thus begins Lissar’s long, profound, and demanding journey away from treachery and pain and horror, to trust and love and healing.

Blue Bamboo is a collection of seven short stories by one of Japan's preeminent postwar writers and prose stylists, Osamu Dazai. Not the typical romantic fantasies so often seen in Japanese writing, filled with water sprites and vengeful ghosts, these stories are a mixture of fantastic allegory, slightly skewed fables, and affecting romantic tales. Revealing the wide range of Dazai's imaginative powers, they also give a glimpse of his humane and idealistic side. From the title story, about an impoverished, henpecked scholar who is transformed by the love of a voluptuous bird, to "The Chrysanthemum Spirit," about a passionate gardener who meets a brother and sister with extraordinary powers, Dazai creates a world of fantasy and romance that is infused with his own psychological concerns. Many readers may recall the poignancy of Oscar Wilde's The Happy Prince or Han Christian Andersen. The collection is capped by two delightful stories-within-a-story, in which the assorted members of a quirky family compose alternate episodes of a slightly gothic romance with hints of Poe and Saki (in "On Love and Beauty") and a wildly elaborate retelling of Rapunzel that is engaging, horrifying, and touching by turns (in "Lanterns of Romance"). All in all, these warm, inventive, and life-affirming stories will strike a deep, satisfying chord in many readers.

"The Queen's Witch" is a short story connected to the New York Times bestselling Cassandra Palmer and Dorina Basarab series of urban fantasy novels. It features Kit Marlowe in a supernatural thriller set in Elizabethan England. It's a companion novel to The Gauntlet.

When Lucy Pennykettle suspects there's a monster in her bedroom, her mum knows exactly what to do. She makes a guard dragon - Gruffen - to look after Lucy. But soon Gruffen realises there's a mystery behind the monster...

Short story of 7k words On the night that Christ was born, he received many visitors, and among those, unchronicled, the vast host of the legendary creatures who still roamed the world: the dragon, the unicorn, the phoenix, and the Queen of all Faerie, to name only a few. The immortals were called by a strange, unknown constellation, drawn to the child whose birth would herald the start of a new age—and the end of an old one.

Welcome to Fifteen, a world where every inhabitant is fifteen years old and dangerous. The laws of this strange world demand that boys and girls remain mortal enemies and these laws are upheld with cold-blooded determination."You will always be fifteen, just like everyone else here.""But, where are the adults, the babies, the cities?""There are none. It’s just the castle, the forest, the cornfield and us."Welcome to Fifteen, a world where each inhabitant is fifteen years old and dangerous. The laws of this strange world demand that boys and girls remain mortal enemies and these laws are upheld with cold-blooded determination.When Akeem and his best friend Quinn find themselves in the world of Fifteen, they become opponents on opposite sides of an endless war. Though separated, they have the same goal, to find each other and find a way home but their friendship is forbidden and they would face a death sentence if their true feelings for one another are ever discovered. Will Akeem risk the wrath of the collective to find Quinn or will he save his own life by hunting her down?

Killing and mingling don't mix, which is why Atropos' number-one rule is to avoid relationships with humans. Caring for the people she has to kill is a fast track to insanity. But, when Alex Morgan walks into her English class, she knows she's in trouble. He's the worst kind of human for her to like—one with a rapidly approaching expiration date. And he makes Atropos want to break all the rules.Zeus gave her one simple job: Kill every human. Atropos—daughter of Zeus and the third goddess of Fate from Greek mythology —spends her eternal life snipping human lifelines when their mortal lives are over. As if being a killer doesn't make life miserable enough, she and her Fate-wielding sisters must live amongst the humans on Earth thanks to a long-running feud between their mother and Zeus. Living on Earth means they must mingle with the mortals, attend the local high school, and attempt to fit in—or at least not stand out too much.Killing and mingling don't mix, which is why Atropos' number-one rule is to avoid all relationships with the humans. Caring for the people she has to kill is a fast track to insanity. However, when Alex Morgan walks into her first-period English class, she knows she's in for trouble. He's the worst kind of human for her to like—one with a rapidly approaching expiration date. And he makes Atropos want to break all the rules.

Free short story in Nalini Singh's November Newsletter. Spoiler Alert: If you haven’t yet read KISS OF SNOW, you might want to save this short story to read later. This is part of the series of shorts focusing on the everyday lives of the characters, away from politics and danger. Set soon after Naya’s birth, this short story features... For those of you new to the Psy-Changeling world, this short story is set in the changeling leopard pack DarkRiver (changelings are able to shapeshift into their animal form at will). Sascha is the mate of the DarkRiver alpha, Lucas, and a Psy member of the pack. The Psy race is gifted with incredible mental abilities from telepathy to telekinesis.

The men and women of the Otherworld – witches, werewolves, demons, vampires – live unseen among us. Only now a reckless killer has torn down the wall, trapping one very human woman in the supernatural crossfire. Robyn moved to LA after her husband died to try to put some distance between herself and the life they had together. And the challenges of her job as the PR consultant to a Paris Hilton wannabe are pretty distracting. But then her celebutante is gunned down in a night club, and Robyn is suddenly the prime suspect. The two people most determined to clear her are her old friend, the half-demon tabloid reporter Hope Adams, and a homicide detective with an uncanny affinity for the dead. Soon Robyn finds herself in the heart of a world she never even knew existed – and which she was safer knowing nothing about . . .

After a year at the king's palace, Miri has learned all about being a proper princess. But the tables turn when the student must become the teacher! Instead of returning to her beloved Mount Eskel, Miri is ordered to journey to a distant swamp and start a princess academy for three sisters, cousins of the royal family. Unfortunately, Astrid, Felissa, and Sus are more interested in hunting and fishing than becoming princesses. As Miri spends more time with the sisters, she realizes the king and queen's interest in them hides a long-buried secret. She must rely on her own strength and intelligence to unravel the mystery, protect the girls, complete her assignment, and finally make her way home. Fans of Shannon Hale won't want to miss this gorgeously woven return to this best-selling, award-winning series.

Robert E. Howard is famous for creating such immortal heroes as Conan the Cimmerian, Solomon Kane, and Bran Mak Morn. Less well-known but equally extraordinary are his non-fantasy adventure stories set in the Middle East and featuring such two-fisted heroes as Francis Xavier Gordon—known as “El Borak”—Kirby O’Donnell, and Steve Clarney. This trio of hard-fighting Americans, civilized men with more than a touch of the primordial in their veins, marked a new direction for Howard’s writing, and new territory for his genius to conquer. The wily Texan El Borak, a hardened fighter who stalks the sandscapes of Afghanistan like a vengeful wolf, is rivaled among Howard’s creations only by Conan himself. In such classic tales as “The Daughter of Erlik Khan,” “Three-Bladed Doom,” and “Sons of the Hawk,” Howard proves himself once again a master of action, and with plenty of eerie atmosphere his plotting becomes tighter and twistier than ever, resulting in stories worthy of comparison to Jack London and Rudyard Kipling. Every fan of Robert E. Howard and aficionados of great adventure writing will want to own this collection of the best of Howard’s desert tales, lavishly illustrated by award-winning artists Tim Bradstreet and Jim & Ruth Keegan.