Inside a Los Angeles church, on the altar steps, lies the blood-soaked, decapitated body of a priest. Carefully positioned, legs stretched out, arms crossed over the chest, the most horrifying thing of all is that the priest's head has been replaced by that of a dog. Later, the forensic team discover that, on the victim's chest, the figure 3 has been scrawled in blood. At first, Detective Robert Hunter believes that this is a ritualistic killing. But as more bodies surface, he is forced to reassess. All the victims died in the way they feared the most. Their worst nightmares have literally come true. But how could the killer have known? And what links these apparently random victims? Hunter finds himself on the trail of an elusive and sadistic killer, somone who apparently has the power to read his victims' minds. Someone who can sense what scares his victims the most. Someone who will stop at nothing to achieve his twisted aim.

Red is now living at Elvesden Manor under her real name, Rowan, and trying to put her past behind her. But staying on the straight and narrow isn't as easy as she had hoped... Hounded by fairy messengers who are trying to convince her to participate once more in the changeling trade, Rowan is haunted by dreams of the Hedgewitch's cottage and the chained-up Eldritch, who threatens revenge against her. Her past is about to catch up with her — can Tanya and Fabian prevent it consuming her altogether?

High in his attic bedroom, twelve-year-old David mourns the death of his mother. He is angry and alone, with only the books on his shelf for company. But those books have begun to whisper to him in the darkness, and as he takes refuge in his imagination, he finds that reality and fantasy have begun to meld. While his family falls apart around him, David is violently propelled into a land that is a strange reflection of his own world, populated by heroes and monsters, and ruled over by a faded king who keeps his secrets in a mysterious book... The Book of Lost Things. An imaginative tale about navigating the journey into adulthood, while doing your best to hang on to your childhood.

Kibou-daini is a planet obsessed with cheating death. All well and good, so long as they kept to themselves. But now the Kibou-daini are attempting to franchise out their Fountain of Youth wares to the rest of the galaxy and the Barrayar Galactic Empire is none too pleased with the implications. Cue Miles Vorkosigan, malformed royal troublemaker — but also heir and savior of empire. On Kibou-daini, Miles unearths a war of generations as the oldsters in charge refuse to die and their descendants threaten outright patricide, matricide and maybe even genocide — the prize being a big fat slice of the immortality pie. Bribery, corruption, conspiracy, kidnapping-something is rotten on Kibou-daini, and Miles is up to his neck in trouble and adventure once more.

Young Samuel Johnson and his dachshund, Boswell, are trying to show initiative by trick-or-treating a full three days before Halloween, which is how they come to witness strange goings-on at 666 Crowley Road. The Abernathys don't mean any harm by their flirtation with the underworld, but when they unknowingly call forth Satan himself, they create a gap in the universe, a gap through which a pair of enormous gates is visible. The gates to Hell. And there are some pretty terrifying beings just itching to get out.... Can one small boy defeat evil? Can he harness the power of science, faith, and love to save the world as we know it? Bursting with imagination and impossible to put down, The Gates is about the pull between good and evil, physics and fantasy and the courage of a boy who is barely old enough to trick or treat on his own. This novel makes anything seem possible.

In John Connolly's thriller, Charlie Parker is haunted by a man and a woman who appear to have only one purpose: to end to Parker's existence.

A comedic fantasy masterpiece years in the making, here are the complete Myth tales of New York Times best-seller Robert Asprin collected for the first time. Included is all the short fiction set in Asprin's legendarily hilarious mythic world of sword, sorcery and wordplay. These tales chronicle the misadventures of Skeeve and Aahz, a magician who has lost his power and his hapless human apprentice, as they travel through strange worlds in pursuit of wealth, glory, and good-times — but succeed mostly in getting into one myth-filled mess after another. Also includes more short works by Asprin together with the award-winning novelette The Cold Cash War, and a trove of previously unpublished stories discovered after the writer's death!

In The Shadow of Your Smile, worldwide bestselling author Mary Higgins Clark weaves a spellbinding thriller revolving around a long-held family secret that threatens to emerge and take the life of an unsuspecting heiress. At age eighty-two and in failing health, Olivia Morrow knows she has little time left. The last of her line, she faces a momentous choice: expose a long-held family secret, or take it with her to her grave. Olivia has in her possession letters from her deceased cousin Catherine, a nun, now being considered for beatification by the Catholic Church — the final step before sainthood. In her lifetime, Sister Catherine had founded seven hospitals for disabled children. Now the cure of a four-year-old boy dying of brain cancer is being attributed to her. After his case was pronounced medically hopeless, the boy's desperate mother had organized a prayer crusade to Sister Catherine, leading to his miraculous recovery. The letters Olivia holds are the evidence that Catherine gave birth at age seventeen to a child, a son, and gave him up for adoption. Olivia knows the identity of the young man who fathered Catherine's child: Alex Gannon, who went on to become a world-famous doctor, scientist, and inventor holding medical patents. Now, two generations later, thirty-one-year-old pediatrician Dr. Monica Farrell, Catherine's granddaughter, stands as the rightful heir to what remains of the family fortune. But in telling Monica who she really is, Olivia would have to betray Catherine's wishes and reveal the story behind Monica's ancestry. The Gannon fortune is being squandered by Alex's nephews Greg and Peter Gannon, and other board members of the Gannon Foundation, who camouflage their profligate lifestyles with philanthropy. Now their carefully constructed image is cracking. Greg, a prominent financier, is under criminal investigation, and Peter, a Broadway producer, is a suspect in the murder of a young woman who has been extorting money from him. The only people aware of Olivia's impending choice are those exploiting the Gannon inheritance. To silence Olivia and prevent Monica from learning the secret, some of them will stop at nothing — even murder. Clark's riveting new novel explores the juxtaposition of medical science and religious faith, and the search for identity by the daughter of a man adopted at birth.

IN this star-studded cross-genre anthology, seventeen of the greatest modern authors of fantasy, science fiction, and romance explore the borderlands of their genres with brand-new tales of ill-fated love. From zombie-infested woods in a postapocalyptic America to faery-haunted rural fields in eighteenth- century England, from the kingdoms of high fantasy to the alien world of a galaxy-spanning empire, these are stories of lovers who must struggle against the forces of magic and fate. Award-winning, bestselling author Neil Gaiman demonstrates why he's one of the hottest stars in literature today with The Thing About Cassandra, a subtle but chilling story of a man who meets an old girlfriend he had never expected to see. International blockbuster bestselling author Diana Gabaldon sends a World War II RAF pilot through a stone circle to the time of her Outlander series in A Leaf on the Winds of All Hallows. Torn from all he knows, Jerry MacKenzie determinedly survives hardship and danger, intent on his goal of returning home to his wife and baby — no matter the cost. New York Times bestselling author Jim Butcher presents Love Hurts, in which Harry Dresden takes on one of his deadliest adversaries and in the process is forced to confront the secret desires of his own heart. Just the smallest sampling promises unearthly delights, but look also for stories by New York Times bestselling romance authors Jo Beverley and Mary Jo Putney, and by such legends of the fantasy genre as Peter S. Beagle and Tanith Lee, as well as many other popular and beloved writers, including Marjorie M. Liu, Jacqueline Carey, Carrie Vaughn, and Robin Hobb. This exquisite anthology, crafted by the peerless editing team of George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, is sure to leave you under its spell.

Can a killer's basement blood-feast be a tax write-off (under Entertainment)? Not if Vlad the IRS agent nails him first in Heather Graham's Death and Taxes. What does a pack of hungry she-wolves do to solve their man troubles? Ladies Night Out takes a wicked turn in Dog Tired (of the Drama!) by L. A. Banks. How far will an elite call girl go to beat a murder rap? Stuck with a dead client in a luxury L.A. hotel room, she might strike a costly bargain with a woman of unearthly powers in Allison Brennan's Her Lucky Day. Who actually writes those tabloid stories about Bigfoot? Meet a journalist of the unexplained (she's 50 percent demon) and her boyfriend (he's 100 percent thief), as they heat up a museum exhibition that's also a soul-snatching battleground in Lucifer's Daughter by Kelley Armstrong.

A group of disenchanted former soldiers has begun its own smuggling operation. Anything can be smuggled between Maine and Canada — drugs, cash, and even people. To stop it, Charlie Parker must form an uneasy alliance with a killer he fears more than any other — The Collector.

While Mary lies in a glass coffin aboard a ghost train heading west, her minions are awaiting her re-awakening by bringing lots of new souls into Everlost to serve her. Meanwhile Jackin' Jill has met Jix, a fur-jacker — a skin jacker who can take over the bodies of animals, most notably jaguars. Jix serves a Mayan god who collects Everlost coins, and has his own agenda. In the concluding volume of The Skinjacker Trilogy, Neal Shusterman reveals new sides of the characters of Everlost, who are pitted against each other in a battle that may destroy all life on Earth.

Every life has a soundtrack. All you have to do is listen. Music has set the tone for most of Zoe Baxter's life. There's the melody that reminds her of the summer she spent rubbing baby oil on her stomach in pursuit of the perfect tan. A dance beat that makes her think of using a fake ID to slip into a nightclub. A dirge that marked the years she spent trying to get pregnant. For better or for worse, music is the language of memory. It is also the language of love. In the aftermath of a series of personal tragedies, Zoe throws herself into her career as a music therapist. When an unexpected friendship slowly blossoms into love, she makes plans for a new life, but to her shock and inevitable rage, some people — even those she loves and trusts most — don't want that to happen. Sing You Home is about identity, love, marriage, and parenthood. It's about people wanting to do the right thing for the greater good, even as they work to fulfill their own personal desires and dreams. And it's about what happens when the outside world brutally calls into question the very thing closest to our hearts: family.

Rose Feller is thirty years old, a high-powered attorney, with a secret passion for romance novels, an exercise regime she's going to start next week, and dreams of a man who will slide off her glasses, gaze into her eyes, and tell her that she's beautiful. Meet Rose's sister Maggie. Twenty-eight years old, drop-dead gorgeous and only occasionally employed, Maggie is a backing singer in a band called. She dreams of fame and fortune — and of getting her dowdy big sister to stick to a skin-care regime. These two women with nothing in common but a childhood tragedy, shared DNA, and the same size feet, are about to learn that their family is more different than they ever imagined, and that they're more alike than they'd ever believe. Funny and poignant, richly detailed and wrenchingly real, In He Shoes will speak to anyone who's endured the bonds of sisterhood, and to everyone who's dreamed of trying something else on for size.

Colors is sure to brighten any preschooler's day. On every page, an interactive slider moves up and down, transforming the picture and revealing the name of the featured color. It's definitely a colorful way to learn.

Take a numerical safari with Numbers: A Silly Slider Book, the second book in Accord's Silly Slider Book series. Designed especially for beginning counters, Numbers teaches youngsters how to count from one enormous elephant to ten sparkly dragonflies, with a whole zoo-full of critters on the pages in between. As young counters move the sliders, they'll learn to count-and spell from one to ten. Each page presents a featured numeral and a host of number-specific critters. And, with just one slip of a slider, both the numeral and its spelling are suddenly revealed. Magical!

Yasmine Surovec began sketching her clever and sarcastic Cat Versus Human cartoons as a way to relax and unwind. Soon, her popular blog at catversushuman.blogspot.com began receiving as many as 12,000 hits per day, with a number of posts going viral and appearing on popular Web sites such as The Huffington Post and I Can Has Cheezburger. Now, a selection of 100 Cat Versus Human strips — many never previously published — can be found inside this inaugural collection of Cat Versus Human. Proud owners of Felis domesticus will instantly recognize Surovec's keen insights into cat behavior and all of the characteristic intricacies of the cat-human relationship, such as the allure of an empty cardboard box trumping an expensive battery-operated toy or how a cat's favorite nap spot might as easily be inside a litter box, on top of clean laundry, or directly on top of a human face. Cat Versus Human also encourages an affectionate look at your once-was-in-mint-condition midcentury modern sofa that is now being unstuffed one cat claw at a time.

Power! Sex! Money! Fame! — the new Hollywood wives are back with a vengeance. Ambitious, young, smart and lethal, whatever they don't have, they want — and whatever these women want, they get. You will meet Lissa Roman, mega movie and singing star, her wild daughter Nicci, Michael Scorsinni, the handsome private investigator with an edge, and Taylor Singer, a sometime actress married to the Hollywood mogul. Into their lives comes Eric Vernon, a dangerous psychopath with kidnapping on his mind... Like the original, HOLLYWOOD WIVES — THE NEW GENERATION will shock and surprise, amuse and startle, taking readers on a roller-coaster ride of fun and suspense they won't soon forget.