Grave Surprise

When cleaning lady and karate student Lily Bard discovers the dead body of her landlord, her plan of leading a quiet life becomes complicated. Accused of murder, she realizes that finding the true killer may be the only way to prove her innocence. Using the easy access her job gives her, Lily investigates the people of tiny Shakespeare, uncovering skeletons in closets, and ultimately, the killer...

Welcome to Midnight, Texas, a town with many boarded-up windows and few full-time inhabitants, located at the crossing of Witch Light Road and Davy Road. It's a pretty standard dried-up western town. There's a pawnshop (someone lives in the basement and is seen only at night). There's a diner (people who are just passing through tend not to linger). And there's new resident Manfred Bernardo, who thinks he's found the perfect place to work in private (and who has secrets of his own). Stop at the one traffic light in town, and everything looks normal. Stay awhile, and learn the truth....

Librarian Aurora Teagarden reckons she knows everything about her fellow townsfolk, including which ones share her interest in the darker side of human nature, as she and her friends have formed a club to discuss real life killings. But fiction soon becomes fact as more and more bodies are discovered, and the similarities between prior murders and those of Aurora's fellow townsfolk become frighteningly common.

Sookie Stackhouse is a small-time cocktail waitress in small-town Louisiana. She's quiet, keeps to herself, and doesn't get out much - not because she's not pretty - she's a very cute bubbly blonde - or not interested in a social life. She really is . . . but Sookie's got a bit of a disability. She can read minds.

After a modeling stint in New York, Nickie Callahan returns to Tennessee hoping to enjoy the sweet, easy life as a college roommate to her best friend. But then a sexual predator strikes close to home, victimising women in a string of vicious attacks. Desperate to stop the brutality, Nickie casts a suspicious eye at every man she knows. She soon narrows her list down to 10 suspects - and then takes matters into her own hands.

Scarlett Bernard is used to cleaning up messes. As a human who cancels out any magic around her, Scarlett's job is to keep the supernatural world hidden - at any cost. But on the eve of the Vampire Trials, a two-day tribunal that allows the otherworldly community to air their grievances, Scarlett receives a blood-soaked message from Molly, her estranged former roommate. Molly, a vampire, had been living with 12 human college students...and in one terrible night, she slaughtered them all.

Catherine Linton has returned to her hometown of Lowfield, Mississippi, unconvinced that the death of her parents in a car crash six months earlier was an accident. And her suspicions are confirmed when she stumbles upon the dead and beaten body of her doctor-father's longtime nurse. There are secrets being kept in Lowfield. And the town where Catherine grew up may be the same place where she is sent to her grave.

It's the end of the roaring twenties, and the exuberant and Honourable Phryne Fisher is dancing and gaming with gay abandon. But she becomes bored with London and the endless round of parties. In search of excitement, she sets her sights on a spot of detective work in Melbourne, Australia. And so mystery and the beautiful Russian dancer, Sasha de Lisse, appear in her life. From then on it's all cocaine and communism until her adventure reaches its steamy end in the Turkish baths of Little Lonsdale Street.

In New Orleans, a pair of undead serial killers is about to turn Mardi Gras into a horror show - unless the immortal hitman Bones can hunt them down first. From Jeaniene Frost comes a thrilling novella featuring characters from her New York Times bestselling Night Huntress series. Originally appeared in the anthology Unbound.

My name is Mercedes Athena Thompson Hauptman, and I am a car mechanic. And a coyote shapeshifter...And the mate of the Alpha of the Columbia Basin werewolf pack. Even so, none of that would have gotten me into trouble if, a few months ago, I hadn't stood upon a bridge and taken responsibility for the safety of the citizens who lived in our territory. It seemed like the thing to do at the time. It should have only involved hunting down killer goblins, zombie goats, and an occasional troll. Instead, our home was viewed as neutral ground, a place where humans would feel safe to come and treat with the fae.

My name is Peter Grant, and until January, I was just probationary constable in that mighty army for justice known to all right-thinking people as the Metropolitan Police Service (and as the Filth to everybody else). My only concerns in life were how to avoid a transfer to the Case Progression Unit - we do paperwork so real coppers don't have to - and finding a way to climb into the panties of the outrageously perky WPC Leslie May. Then one night, in pursuance of a murder inquiry, I tried to take a witness statement from someone who was dead but disturbingly voluble....

It begins with absence and desire. It begins with blood and fear. It begins with a discovery of witches. Diana Bishop, a young scholar and descendant of witches, discovers a long-lost and enchanted alchemical manuscript deep in Oxford's Bodleian Library. Its reappearance summons a fantastical underworld, which she must navigate with a vampire, Matthew Clairmont. This manuscript, Ashmole 782, holds the secrets of their past...and the key to their future. 

Her beginning may be our end.... Deep in the humid Mississippi bayou, a half-wild child is dragged from the murky waters. She has no memories and no family and is covered in mysterious markings. Adopted by the policeman who rescued her, Luce Boudreau follows him onto the force, determined to prove herself in the eyes of those who are still suspicious.

He is Spade, a powerful, mysterious vampire who has walked the earth for centuries and is now duty-bound to protect this endangered, alluring human—even if it means destroying his own kind. Denise may arouse his deepest hungers, but Spade knows he must fight his urge to have her as they face the nightmare together, because once the first crimson drop falls, they will both be lost.

Elizabeth Cage is a child when she discovers that there are things in this world that only she can see. But she doesn't want to see them, and she definitely doesn't want them to see her. What is a curse to Elizabeth is a gift to others - a very valuable gift they want to control. When her husband dies, Elizabeth's world descends into a nightmare. But as she tries to piece her life back together, she discovers that not everything is as it seems.