Blood Blade Skinners Book 1

Welcome to the nightmare . . . There is a world you don't know about, inhabited by supernatural creatures of darkness—vampires, werewolves, and all manner of savage, impossible beasts that live for terror and slaughter and blood. They are all around us but you cannot see them, for knowledge of their presence—so close and so hungry—would surely drive any ordinary human insane. But for centuries a special breed of hunter has kept the monsters at bay, preventing them from breaking through the increasingly fragile barriers protecting our mortal realm. These guardians are called skinners. But beware . . . for there are very few of them left.

Edinburgh's hardest cop hunts a serial killer... The book that launched a legend: Skinner's Rules is the first novel in the bestselling Bob Skinner series by acclaimed author Quintin Jardine. Perfect for fans of Ian Rankin and Peter James. 'Remarkably assured novel... a tour de force' - New York Times As head of Edinburgh's CID, Detective Chief Superintendent Bob Skinner has seen it all... but even he is shocked by the savagely mutilated corpse discovered in a dark alleyway. The victim is identified as a successful young lawyer, and the motive for the brutal death remains a mystery. Then further seemingly random killings in the city begin to suggest a vicious serial killer is on the rampage. But when the lawyer's fiancée is also murdered, Skinner realises that someone is in deadly earnest... What readers are saying about Skinner's Rules: 'Quintin Jardine is by far the best author of crime fiction I have ever read' 'Brilliant book, with strong characters who are likeable and believable. Well worth reading if you like crime thrillers that keep you on the edge of your seat' 'Quintin Jardin starts to build the rich character of Bob Skinner from the start, capturing the quintessence of both Edinburgh and a crime investigation... You'll pick it up and not put it down'

“Pelegrimas has done the impossible—come up with a fresh and exciting twist on vampire lore.” —Ed Gorman, New York Times bestselling coauthor of Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein: City of Night Enter the world of the Skinners, a dark alternate Earth inhabited by vampires, werewolves, shape-shifting monsters…and the humans who hunt them. In Howling Legion—the phenomenal follow-up to the spellbinding series debut, Blood Blade—author Marcus Pelegrimas thrusts video-game designer and skinner-in-training Cole and his sexy, kick-ass partner Paige into a deadly war of beasts and bloodsuckers. Unrelentingly thrilling, Howling Legion is a perfect escape for Halo and True Blood aficionados, and for fans of Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan’s vampire epidemic epic, The Strain.

The year's best, and darkest, tales of terror, showcasing the most outstanding new short stories and novellas by both contemporary masters of the macabre and exciting newcomers. As ever, this acclaimed anthology also offers the most comprehensive annual overview of horror around the world in all its incarnations; a comprehensive necrology of famous names; and a list of indispensable contact addresses for the dedicated horror fan and writer alike. The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror remains the world's leading annual anthology dedicated solely to presenting the best in contemporary horror fiction. Praise for Stephen Jones: 'The best horror anthologist in the business is, of course, Stephen Jones, whose Mammoth Book of Best New Horror is one of the major bargains of this as of any other year.' Roz Kavaney 'An essential volume for horror readers.' Locus 'Stephen Jones . . . has a better sense of the genre than almost anyone in this country.' Lisa Tuttle, The Times Books

Having fallen in battle long ago, Count Vlad Dracula is reborn as a katana-wielding young vampiress in an alternate-history Europe. After the reincarnated Dracula rescues a girl named Clara from a mysterious stranger, Clara explains that she is the creation of a certain Victor Frankenstein. She also reveals that she is fleeing from an organization called Cerberus, which seeks to capture and study “monsters” such as herself in order to create an army of human-monster hybrids. Clara begs the vampiress to flee with her to an island of monsters where the two of them will be safe…but as they set out for Monster Island, the sinister forces of Cerberus are in hot pursuit.

Called to duty at last, Lieutenant John Nevis faces his assignment with trepidation. Boarding the USS Nicodemus—a sloop of war built in a single night at the top of the world—Nevis wonders uneasily at its strange aura of power, its cannonballs of virgin brass . . . and its uncanny ability to glide swiftly through the waters without steam or sail. As great armies clash all around them, the mission of Lieutenant Nevis and the Nicodemus crew is shrouded in an impenetrable gray mist of magic and malevolence. For a fearsome adversary awaits on roiling waves—an awesomely powerful vessel fueled by cruelty and terror; a demon raider driven by an insatiable lust . . . for blood.

25th ANNIVERSARY EDITION • From the bestselling author of The Passenger and the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Road: an epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion, brilliantly subverting the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the Wild West. Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, Blood Meridian traces the fortunes of the Kid, a fourteen-year-old Tennesseean who stumbles into the nightmarish world where Indians are being murdered and the market for their scalps is thriving. Look for Cormac McCarthy's latest bestselling novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris.

“One of the most underrated paranormal fantasy sagas out there.” —Paul Goat Allen “An action-packed, blood-soaked ripsnorter of a monster-hunter series.” —Tom Piccirilli, author of The Midnight Road “Twilight fans hungering for more vampire/werewolf drama can look forward to Skinners.” —USA Today Humankind’s last defense against the darkness, Skinners are back in The Breaking. Book five in Marcus Pelegrimas’s phenomenal dark, nonstop urban fantasy series finds creature-hunters Paige and Cole desperately trying to forestall the Apocalypse in the face of terrifying shapeshifter carnage and inexplicable threats from fellow Skinners. Fans of Jim Butcher and dedicated Halo gamers will be swept away by The Breaking, and the other installments in series Barnes and Noble previously named among the Year’s Best Paranormal Fantasies.

In outer space you can never feel sure that your adversary is altogether human. The runcible buffers on Samarkand have been mysteriously sabotaged, killing many thousands and destroying a terraforming project. Agent Cormac must reach it by ship to begin an investigation. But Cormac has incurred the wrath of a vicious psychopath called Pelter, who is prepared to follow him across the galaxy with a terrifying android in tow. Despite the sub-zero temperature of Samarkand, Cormac discovers signs of life: they are two 'dracomen', alien beasts contrived by an extra-galactic entity calling itself 'Dragon', which is a huge creature consisting of four conjoined spheres of flesh each a kilometre in diameter. Caught between the byzantine wiles of the Dragon and the lethal fury of Pelter, Cormac needs to skip very nimbly indeed to rescue the Samarkand project and protect his own life. Gridlinked is the first sci-fi thriller in Neal Asher's compelling Agent Cormac series.

Skinner founded his career in "asset protection" on fear. To touch anyone under his protection was to invite destruction. A savagely effective methodology, until Skinner's CIA handlers began to fear him as much as his enemies did and banished him to the hinterlands of the intelligence community. Now, an ornate and evolving cyber-terrorist attack is about to end that long exile. His asset is Jae, a roboticist with a gift for seeing the underlying systems violently shaping a new era of global guerrilla warfare. At the root of it all is a young boy, the innocent seed of a plot grown in the slums of Mumbai. Brought to flower, that plot will tip the balance of world power in a perilous new direction. A combination of Le Carre spycraft with Stephenson techno-philosophy from the novelist hailed by the Washington Post as "the voice of twenty-first century crime fiction," Skinner is Charlie Huston's masterpiece -- a new kind of thriller for a new kind of world.