Classic Literature Dark

He thought it was the end, and his gun sat ready to make sure. But an oddball offer from his last friend comes at the literal last second. Curiosity gets the best of him, and he finds himself sucked into iNcarn8, a game claiming to be a whole new life. Now, as Montana, the larger-than-life tank warrior, he has one more last time to get his life right.

Whistling Tor is a place of secrets: a mysterious, wooded hill housing the crumbling fortress belonging to Anluan - a chieftain whose name is spoken throughout the region in tones of revulsion and bitterness. A curse lies over Anluan's family and his people, and the woods themselves hold a perilous force whose every whisper threatens doom. Then the young scribe Caitrin appears in Anluan's garden, admiring the rare plant known as heart's blood. Retained to sort through entangled family documents, Caitrin brings about unexpected changes.

Charlie Bucket and his family are rushing around the Earth at seventeen-thousand miles an hour in a great glass elevator. It belongs to the fantastic Mr Willy Wonka, and the adventure becomes even greater upon discovering they're not the only ones orbiting the Earth at that particular time....

"It began as a mistake." By middle age, Henry Chinaski has lost more than 12 years of his life to the U.S. Postal Service. In a world where his three true, bitter pleasures are women, booze, and racetrack betting, he somehow drags his hangover out of bed every dawn to lug waterlogged mailbags up mud-soaked mountains, outsmart vicious guard dogs, and pray to survive the day-to-day trials of sadistic bosses and certifiable coworkers.

Moon, Jade, and other favorites from the Indigo Cloud Court return with two new novellas from Martha Wells, who continues to enthusiastically ignore genre conventions in her exploration of the fascinating world of the Raksura. Her novellas and short stories contain all the elements fans have come to love from the Raksura books: courtly intrigue and politics, unfolding mysteries that reveal an increasingly strange wider world, and threats both mundane and magical.

The monster showed up after midnight. As they do. But it isn't the monster Conor's been expecting. He's been expecting the one from his nightmare, the one he's had nearly every night since his mother started her treatments, the one with the darkness and the wind and the screaming.... This monster is something different, though. Something ancient, something wild. And it wants the most dangerous thing of all from Conor. It wants the truth.

Low-life writer and unrepentant alcoholic Henry Chinaski was born to survive. After decades of slacking off at low-paying dead-end jobs, blowing his cash on booze and women, and scrimping by in flea-bitten apartments, Chinaski sees his poetic star rising at last. Now, at 50, he is reveling in his sudden rock-star life, running three hundred hangovers a year, and maintaining a sex life that would cripple Casanova.

It's been five years since the events of City of Heavenly Fire that brought the Shadowhunters to the brink of oblivion. Emma Carstairs is no longer a child in mourning but a young woman bent on discovering what killed her parents and avenging her losses. Together with her parabatai, Julian Blackthorn, Emma must learn to trust her head and her heart as she investigates a demonic plot that stretches across Los Angeles, from the Sunset Strip to the enchanted sea that pounds the beaches of Santa Monica. If only her heart didn't lead her in treacherous directions....

The ads enthused, "The virtual lands of Mirror World await you! Live out your most secret dreams in our world of Sword and Sorcery! Become a Great Wizard or a Famous Warrior! Build your own castle, tame a dragon, conquer a kingdom! All those desperate, lonely, and insecure - Mirror World offers you a chance!" But Oleg isn't meant to become a great wizard or a famous warrior. He'll never have a castle of his own. Nor will he ever tame a dragon. And he's definitely not the type to conquer a kingdom, however virtual it may be.

Is it easy to survive in the game world? You could say yes, if you didn't know what the additional conditions were. They are unusual: it's the real world in which you have lived all your life. The enemy, craving to destroy you. Your own class who couldn't care less about you. Are you still sure that survival is easy? Then welcome to The Game! It will prove you wrong.

One minute I was a courier for criminals, making ends meet so I could take care of my little brother; the next, four stunningly hot Norse gods had brought me back from the dead with wings sprouting from my back and a whole set of valkyrie powers. I guess that's just how life goes sometimes. Too bad our victory over our supernatural enemies turned out to be a farce. The divine home I thought I'd receive is a trap instead - a trap that's slowly closing in on us, dredging up every painful moment from our pasts.

Canary Islands, 1882: Explorer and plant biologist Niklas Bruunis researches a species alleged to have hallucinogenic qualities capable of eliminating the psychic limits between one human mind and another. Buenos Aires, 1983: Born to a white Argentinian anthropologist and a black Brazilian engineer, Cassio comes of age with the Internet, and demonstrates the skills and personality that will make him one of the first great Argentine hackers. The southern Argentinian techno-hub of Bariloche, 2024: Piera, on the same research group as Cassio, studies human DNA.

Liam was waiting for his father to come home from work when the house shook, and two moons appeared overhead. Stranded within a land where he doesn't speak the language and people are set on attacking him, he must survive in this new land where nothing makes sense. A gorgeous princess holds the key to him learning about this new world he has found himself in, and little of it is good news. First up, learning why people keep attacking his house.

American poet, critic, and short-story writer Edgar Allan Poe is universally recognized for his cultivation of the macabre in fiction. His stories are characterized by an original kind of supernatural horror, often using the awareness of death as a catalyzing force in its own right. His tales and poems brim with psychological depth and intense imagery, made vivid through his musical language and hypnotic rhythms, which are especially captivating when heard aloud.

Zoë Merrick lived an ordinary life until late one night, she was brutally attacked and left for dead. She survived, saved by a stranger who witnessed her undergo a physical transformation. That's not the only thing that's different. Zoë is unable to control an unexplainable energy coursing through her body. Justus De Gradi is a man who can teach her that control. He's handsome, arrogant, and not entirely human. He reveals that she is a Mage - an immortal made of light, not magic. She must now make a choice: Rebuild her life in the human world with the man who saved her, or live with Justus and learn how to use her extraordinary gifts. Justus has sworn an oath to protect her life, but can he guard her from the one man who has a right to claim it?

When the Lords of the Icelandic Elves summon me to use my talents to find a lost dragon's egg, I find it hard to say no. I've seen what a dragon can do, and a young, just-hatched dragon is a being of pure destruction. But word of the egg gets out, and the race to find it begins. Mages from many realms are on the hunt - including a dragon - and they don't always play well together. Unless I want to join the casualties, I need to find that egg and return it to where it belongs. Luckily, I have help, but I wish that damned golden-winged Nephilim would keep his shirt on.

Flann O'Brien's most popular and surrealistic novel concerns an imaginary, hellish village police force and a local murder.

Weird, satirical, and very funny, its popularity has suddenly increased with the mention of the novel in the TV series Lost.

Children have always disappeared under the right conditions - slipping through the shadows under a bed or at the back of a wardrobe, tumbling down rabbit holes and into old wells, and emerging somewhere...else. But magical lands have little need for used-up miracle children. Nancy tumbled once, but now she's back. The things she's experienced...they change a person. The children under Miss West's care understand all too well. And each of them is seeking a way back to their own fantasy world.

In these selections, an animal plays an important role in the action or plot of the story. The animals in these stories are real or are stand-ins for humans: Sredni Vashtar by Saki (H. H. Munro) Kholstomer, The Story of a Horse by Leo Tolstoy A Dark-Brown Dog by Stephen Crane Kashtanka by Anton Chekhov The Cat That Walked By Himself by Rudyard Kipling The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe The Fly by Katherine Mansfield The Boar-Pig by Saki (H. H. Munro) The Tiger Guest by Pu Songlbying Jackals and Arabs by Franz Kafka

To defeat his greatest enemy, he may have to become his greatest fear.... Now that he's come home, Wardin is determined to reclaim all that was lost. But when his enemies unite against him, he finds himself outnumbered and outmatched, and his kingdom in more danger than ever. Amid these threats comes a chilling warning against walking the same treacherous path as his father before him. Desperate not to repeat the failures of his forebears, Wardin turns to mysterious new allies and perilous new magic. And even that may not be enough.