Crossroads Chronicles

Sometimes family is there to love you, and sometimes family is there to kill you . . . When a man came into my shop in the Great Marketplace at the Crossroads of the Worlds and tried to kill me, it completely ruined my day. Not only did I have to clean up the blood, but disposing of his body made me late to meet my friends for drinks. A nagging little detail kept bugging me, though. As he died, he said he was hired by my mother's family-people I hadn't seen for more than a decade. Then I discovered that assassins had made attempts on my brother and sister as well. As much as I didn't want to, I decided I should find out who wanted us dead, and put a stop to it. Talk about stepping out of the pan into the fire . . . Contains mature themes.

When a summoning goes awry, suddenly book nerd Meena's summer job becomes something drastically different. Instead of cleaning eccentric Carol's house, she's bound to a demon as his soul-collector. Soon Meena discovers that the boring, pageant-obsessed, bonfire-loving town that she's never fit in to is a hotbed for soul-sucking demons, demon-hunting witches, and vampires who just wanna have fun . . . And then she comes into her own powers. Could things get any stranger? Good thing she meets new guy Jake-who gets her and still hangs around. When Jake's mom sends him off to his Aunt Zelda's for the summer, he thought he'd be bored. But nothing is what it seems in this town. His aunt isn't just odd, she's a witch who fights demons and tries to maintain the magical balance of the town. Jake should get the hell out of there and, he would leave, except for bad-ass newbie witch Meena, who looks at him like he matters. He never counted on sticking around, but Meena's bound to a demon who wants to destroy her soul-and Jake's finally found someone worth fighting for.

I was blissfully ignorant of a book, usually translated into Human languages as The Gospels of Satan, until it was stolen from the Great Library. My twin sister, a Senior Scholar, showed up at my door and asked me to help her retrieve the cursed book. It's magical, priceless, and in the wrong hands might be dangerous. It could be anywhere in thousands of Worlds, but the logical place for the thieves to sell it is the Great Marketplace at the Crossroads of the Worlds. Not out in the open, but in the shadows known as the Night Market, where the buyers and sellers don't mind disposing of a body or two. Contains mature themes.

It had been thirteen years, but my heart skipped a beat. My brain was bursting with things I wanted to say-many of them contradictory-things I had thought I might say if I ever saw him again. So, I said nothing. He pulled a leather bag out of an inside pocket of his cloak, opened the drawstrings, and turned it upside down over a display tray on the counter. A flood of rubies-smooth but uncut-poured out. "I need you. There's probably a whole mountain full of them. But I can't find the vein myself. Come with me, and we'll split the take." What I had-what he wanted-was a talent for earth magic. I sifted them through my fingers. The quality was extraordinary, the feel of them electric as they touched my magic. Contains mature themes.