Probationary Constable Peter Grant dreams of being a detective in London’s Metropolitan Police. Too bad his superior plans to assign him to the Case Progression Unit, where the biggest threat he’ll face is a paper cut. But Peter’s prospects change in the aftermath of a puzzling murder, when he gains exclusive information from an eyewitness who happens to be a ghost. Peter’s ability to speak with the lingering dead brings him to the attention of Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale, who investigates crimes involving magic and other manifestations of the uncanny. Now, as a wave of brutal and bizarre murders engulfs the city, Peter is plunged into a world where gods and goddesses mingle with mortals and a long-dead evil is making a comeback on a rising tide of magic.

The city of Bulikov once wielded the powers of the gods to conquer the world, enslaving and brutalizing millions — until its divine protectors were killed. Now, Bulikov’s history has been censored and erased, its citizens subjugated. But the surreal landscape of the city itself, forever altered by the thousands of miracles its guardians once worked upon it, stands as a haunting reminder of its former supremacy. Into this broken city steps Shara Thivani. Officially, the unassuming young woman is just another junior diplomat sent by Bulikov’s oppressors. Unofficially, she is one of her country’s most accomplished spies, dispatched — along with her terrifying “secretary”, Sigrud — to solve a murder. But as Shara pursues the killer, she starts to suspect that the beings who ruled this terrible place may not be as dead as they seem, and that Bulikov’s cruel reign may not yet be over. A tale of vast conspiracies, dead gods, and buried histories, City of Stairs is at once a gripping spy novel and a stunningly original work of fantasy.

In the canton of Yarrowdale, at the very edge of the Empire's reach, an impossible crime has occurred. A Treasury officer has disappeared into thin air-somehow abducted from his quarters while the door and windows remained locked from the inside, in a building whose entrances and exits are all under constant guard. To solve the case, the Empire calls on its most brilliant and mercurial investigator, the great Ana Dolabra. At her side, as always, is her bemused assistant Dinios Kol. Before long, Ana's discovered that they're not investigating a disappearance, but a murder-and that the killing was just the first chess move by a thief who seems to be able to pass through warded doors like a ghost, and who can predict every one of Ana's moves as though they can see the future. Worse still, the killer seems to be targeting the high-security compound known as the Shroud. Here, the Empire's most brilliant minds dissect fallen Titans to harness the volatile magic found in their blood. Should it fall, the destruction will be terrible indeed--and the Empire itself will grind to a halt, robbed of the magic that allows its wheels of power to turn. Din has seen Ana solve impossible cases before. But this time, with the stakes higher than ever and Ana seemingly a step behind their adversary at every turn, he fears that his brilliant superior has met an enemy she can't defeat.

'We must learn to love, learn to be kind, and this from our earliest youth ... Likewise, hatred must be learned and nurtured, if one wishes to become a proficient hater' This volume contains a selection of Nietzsche's brilliant and challenging aphorisms, examining the pleasures of revenge, the falsity of pity, and the incompatibility of marriage with the philosophical life. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) Nietzsche's works available in Penguin Classics are A Nietzsche Reader, Beyond Good and Evil, Ecce Homo, Human, All Too Human, On the Genealogy of Morals, The Birth of Tragedy, The Portable Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Twilight of Idols and Anti-Christ.

A beautifully produced new edition of Blackwood’s weirdest supernatural stories, including “The Willows,” highlighted by H.P. Lovecraft as "the single finest weird tale in literature” Lauded as one of our greatest storytellers, and inspiring generations of writers from H.P. Lovecraft to Tolkien to Stephen King, Algernon Blackwood left a legacy as one of Britain’s greatest conjurors of weird and supernatural stories. Blackwood’s inimitable style puts readers right in the middle of the story, with visceral and nature-inspired fear that lies just beyond the real, often in the form of a nameless dread. This beautifully produced edition, with a stunning cover and thoughtful design and layout to ensure the most enjoyable reading experience, features four of his most unnervingly curious tales: • Ancient Sorceries—a traveller stops in a remote French hill town and soon finds himself unable to leave; there is something strangely feline about the inhabitants, he notices, and they all seem to be watching him very closely… • The Listener—a lodging house guest feels himself observed by a malevolent presence. Soon it transpires his room’s previous occupant is watching him from beyond the grave, and is envious of the very flesh on his bones. • The Sea Fit—an old retired ship’s captain’s ravings build to a terrifying climax, as he offers himself up as a sacrifice to the cruel gods of the sea. • The Willows—two friends on a canoeing trip spend a terrifying night on a lonely willow-covered island, haunted by the strange trees and sinister shapes in the water. Story Locale: spooky rural England and French locales, incl forests and at sea

In 17th-century Rome, men are falling like flies and nobody knows why...Hidden within the alleys and shadows of the Eternal City lies a criminal magical underworld of witches, sorceresses and a mysterious circle of female poisoners working under the guise of a cosmetics shop.Since her childhood in Palermo, Giulia has dedicated her life to helping the broken and abused - the wives, daughters, and mistresses of Italy. She is known to be many things - healer, midwife, abortionist and poisoner. It only takes a few drops of an undetectable lethal poison to murder each of Giulia's victims, which come to number a thousand men.Pope Alessandro VII is determined to rid the city of witches and heretics, including this circle of murderous poisoners. But what great lengths will he go to stop these cunning women?

A female apothecary secretly dispenses poisons to liberate women from the men who have wronged them - setting three lives across centuries on a dangerous collision course. Rule #1: The poison must never be used to harm another woman. Rule #2: The names of the murderer and her victim must be recorded in the apothecary’s register. One cold February evening in 1791, at the back of a dark London alley in a hidden apothecary shop, Nella awaits her newest customer. Once a respected healer, Nella now uses her knowledge for a darker purpose - selling well-disguised poisons to desperate women who would kill to be free of the men in their lives. But when her new patron turns out to be a precocious twelve-year-old named Eliza Fanning, an unexpected friendship sets in motion a string of events that jeopardizes Nella’s world and threatens to expose the many women whose names are written in her register. In present-day London, aspiring historian Caroline Parcewell spends her tenth wedding anniversary alone, reeling from the discovery of her husband’s infidelity. When she finds an old apothecary vial near the river Thames, she can’t resist investigating, only to realize she’s found a link to the unsolved “apothecary murders” that haunted London over two centuries ago. As she deepens her search, Caroline’s life collides with Nella’s and Eliza’s in a stunning twist of fate - and not everyone will survive.

From the Sunday Times bestselling author of Starling House, Alix E. Harrow, comes a moving and genre-defying adventure through time – as a reluctant lady knight and a not-so-heroic-historian will fight through time and space to rewrite their tragic fates . . . and finally reveal the truths hidden beneath the greatest legend ever told. It begins where it ends: beneath the yew tree – a girl not yet a knight, and a boy without a story. It is where she pulls a sword from the heartwood and becomes a legend. And it is where, more than a thousand years later, he will find her – and lose her – and find her – and lose her again. It is where a new story will be written – but whose will it be?

A spellbinding tale about two daring women who hunt for truth and justice in the perilous art of conjuring the dead.1873. At an abandoned château on the outskirts of Paris, a dark séance is about to take place, led by acclaimed spiritualist Vaudeline D’Allaire. Known worldwide for her talent in conjuring the spirits of murder victims to ascertain the identities of the people who killed them, she is highly sought after by widows and investigators alike.Lenna Wickes has come to Paris to find answers about her sister’s death, but to do so, she must embrace the unknown and overcome her own logic-driven bias against the occult. When Vaudeline is beckoned to England to solve a high-profile murder, Lenna accompanies her as an understudy. But as the women team up with the powerful men of London’s exclusive Séance Society to solve the mystery, they begin to suspect that they are not merely out to solve a crime, but perhaps entangled in one themselves…

An enchanting, illuminating, highly personal tour of some of the most iconic cemeteries of the world—part travelogue, part memoir, part hauntology by the author of Our Share of Night and "Buenos Aires's sorceress" (The New York Times)"Enriquez is a queen of horror."—Los Angeles Times"One of Latin America’s most exciting authors."—Silvia Moreno-GarciaMariana Enriquez has been fascinated by the haunting beauty of cemeteries since she was a teenager, visiting them frequently, a goth flaneur taking notes on her aesthetic obsession as she walked among the headstones. But in 2013, when the body of a friend's mother who was dissapeared during Argentina's military dictatorship was found in a common grave, she began to examine more deeply the complex meanings of cemeteries and where our bodies come to rest. In this vivid, cinematic book, Enriquez travels North and South America, Europe and Australia, visiting the catacombs of Paris, Prague's Old Jewish Cemetery, Elvis's grave at Graceland, the above-ground mausoleums of New Orleans, her hometown of Buenos Aires's Recoleta, and more. She investigates each cemetery's history, architecture, its dead (famous and not), its saints and ghosts, its caretakers and visitors. Weaving personal stories with reportage, interviews, folklore, musicology, and literature, Somebody Is Walking on Your Grave is memoir channeled through Enriquez's obsession with cemeteries, revealing as much about her own life and unique sensibility as the graveyards and tombstones she walks among. Exhilarating, unsettling, and unlike anything else, Enriquez's first work of nonfiction is as original and enthralling as the stories and novels for which she's become so admired and beloved.

The New York Times bestselling author of The Hangman's Daughter returns with the first volume in a brand-new mystery series which introduces a gravedigger and young inspector who must stop a serial killer in fin de siecle Vienna—the period during which modern criminology was born. Vienna, 1893. A gravedigger at the city’s famous Central Cemetery, Augustin Rothmayer is aan unorthodox yet highly educated oddball who finds solace amongst the dead as well as in the writing the pages of  the first almanac of his profession. But his fragile peace is abruptly disturbed when young inspector Leopold von Herzfeldt, an ambitious young transfer from Graz, arrives in need of help from someone expert in death. No one knows the subject better than Augustin Rothmeyer. A superstitious killer is on the loose. His victims include several maids, each brutally staked. Recognizing the killer is using an ancient ritual for keeping the undead buried, the gravedigger joins the inspector on a journey that will take them deep into the underworld of their glamorous cosmopolitan city. In their search for a depraved monster, they receive unexpected help from telephone operator Julia Wolf, who impresses them with her unusual insight even as she fights her own personal demons. Oliver Pötzsch’s inventive historical crime series delivers the thrills and historical detail modern international mystery fans a grippingly plotted mystery, a rich and painstakingly researched setting, a fascinating look into the beginnings of modern criminology, and an unlikely and unforgettable trio of characters.