No one speaks of the grace year. It's forbidden. In Garner County, girls are banished for their sixteenth year to release their magic into the wild so they can return purified and ready for marriage. But not all of them will make it home alive. Tierney James dreams of a better life - but as her own grace year draws near, she quickly realizes that there's more to fear about the grace year than the brutal elements and the poachers in the woods. Their...

"Food critic Dorothy Daniels loves what she does. Discerning, meticulous, and very, very smart, Dorothy's clear mastery of the culinary arts make it likely that she could, on any given night, whip up a more inspired dish than any one of the chefs she writes about. Dorothy loves sex as much as she loves food, and while she has struggled to find a long-term partner that can keep up with her, she makes the best of her single life, frequently traveling...

"When a chance encounter sparks an unlikely bond between rival murderers Sloane and Rowan, they find something elusive -- the friendship of two like-minded, pitch-black souls who just happen to enjoy killing other serial killers. From small-town West Virginia to upscale California, and from downtown Boston to rural Texas, the two hunters collide in an annual game of blood and suffering, one that pits them against the most dangerous monsters in the...

Charlie is a Husker on the prowl in the New Hampshire wilderness when he falls in love with one of them: a girl named Jill. Loving Jill means leaving the Husk clan, with its gruesome cannibalistic rituals, and that will be far more difficult - and dangerous - than Charlie could have foreseen. It's only in New York City that the secret to ending his terrible cravings may reveal itself - if it doesn't kill him and everything he has grown to love first....

"When four best friends with a hunger for human flesh attend a music festival in the desert they discover a murderous plot to expose and vilify the girls and everyone like them. This summer is going to get gory."--Publisher's description Three years ago, the melting of arctic permafrost released a pathogen of unknown origin into the atmosphere, causing a small percentage of people to undergo a transformation that became known as the Hollowing. Those...

"By day, Rupert Wong - sorcerer, chef, former triad - prepares delicious meals of human flesh for a dynasty of ghouls in Kuala Lumpur ; by night, he's an administrator for the Ten Chinese Hells. It's a living, of sorts. When the Dragon of the South demands that Rupert investigate the murders of his daughter and her mortal husband, Rupert is caught in a war between gods that's as bewildering as it is bloody. If he's going to survive, he'll need to...

"William Day should be an acclaimed Arctic explorer. But after a failed expedition, in which his remaining men only survived by eating their dead comrades, he returned in disgrace. Thirteen years later, his second-in-command, Jesse Stevens, has gone missing in the same frozen waters. Perhaps this is Day's chance to restore his tarnished reputation by bringing Stevens -- the man who's haunted his whole life -- back home. But when the rescue mission...

To serial slayer Andrew Compton, murder is an art, the most intimate art. After feigning his own death to escape from prison, Compton makes his way to the United States with the sole ambition of bringing his "art" to new heights. Tortured by his own perverse desires, and drawn to possess and destroy young boys, Compton inadvertently joins forces with Jay Byrne, a dissolute playboy who has pushed his "art" to limits even Compton hadn't previously imagined....

Yan Lianke"Chinas most feted and most banned author" (Financial Times)is a master of imaginative satire, and his prize-winning works have been published around the world to the highest honors. Now, his two most acclaimed novellas are collected here in a single volumemasterfully crafted stories that explore the sacrifices made for family, the driving will to survive, and the longing to leave behind a personal legacy.