Search Worlds Without End

A collection of all-new and previously published short stories featuring Mercy Thompson, "one of the best heroines in the urban fantasy genre today" (Fiction Vixen Book Reviews), and the characters she calls friends...

Includes the new stories...

"Silver"
"Roses in Winter"
"Redemption"
"Hollow"

...and reader favorites

"Fairy Gifts"
"Gray"
"Alpha and Omega"
"Seeing Eye"
"The Star of David"
"In Red, with Pearls"

Beauty and The Beast Hated and feared, magic was banished from the land. But now, freed from the spells of the wicked bloodmages, magic-both good and evil-returns. And Aren of Fallbrook feels her own power of sight strengthen and grow...

Overcome by visions of mayhem and murder, Aren vows to save her village from the ruthless raiders who have descended upon it-and killed her family. With the return of wildlings to the hills and forests, she strikes a bargain with the Hob, a magical, human-like creature imbued with the power of the mountains. But the Hob is the last of his kind. And he will exact a heavy price to defend the village-a price Aren herself must pay...

Anna, four years a werewolf , raped, beaten, half-starved and handed from one male to another, places a call from Chicago to the wilds of Montana. She reaches the Marrok, North America's werewolf ruler, telling him she's seen a boy, one reported missing and possibly injured. He was in a cage her pack's Alpha keeps for confining new werewolves.

The Marrok says that his enforcer is flying from Montana to O'Hare. Anna meets the plane, and, Charles, enforcer, as well as the Marrok's oldest son, insists on staying with her. He has seen she is not the Submissive she thinks she is. Charles is a supreme Alpha, and she is his antithesis, a rare Omega; her very presence lowers tension, calms and soothes. Despite centuries as a Solitary, Charles would wed young Anna. His brother wolf, he says, has already taken her as his mate.

There are, as investigation and confrontation reveal, reasons both for the capture of the boy and for what has been done to Anna. It's a surprisingly tender story.

Charles Cornick is his pack's enforcer and lives a harsh life, doing jobs other wolves can't - or won't. And his most recent task was rescuing Anna Latham from a life of brutality. This leaves him shot and wounded, but he's happy to pay the price. Charles is strongly drawn to Anna, and her growing 'Omega' powers will see his people through dangerous times.

Anna desperately needs her new mountainous home to be safer than the life she's left behind. But when a rogue werewolf starts murdering hikers, Charles and Anna are sent into the winter forests to investigate. Charles is still weak and will need Anna's strength as they discover a web of witchcraft that could drag down the whole pack. Including its leader Bran, Charles's father, head of a vast network of wolves. And if Bran weakens, dark madness could run like a fever through half a continent.

Anna Latham didn't know how complicated life could get - until she became a werewolf. And now she's not just part of any pack, but under the direct supervision of Bran, leader of the North American werewolves. And her mate is his son Charles, the pack enforcer.

With all the advances that have been made in forensics, the werewolves will not be able to hide their existence from humans much longer - and Bran wants their coming out party to be on his terms. But his European counterparts don't see things the same way. Anna and Charles are chosen to represent Bran at a key meeting. But when a French werewolf, one of Bran's most vocal opponents, is found murdered, Charles's reputation shoots him to the top of the suspect list. And among the wolves, there is one penalty for breaking the law: death. The killer must be found, or Charles will take the fall.

When the FBI request a pack consultant on a serial killer case they're following in Boston, Anna and Charles are sent in. They quickly realise that not only the last two victims were werewolves - all of them were.

Someone is targeting their kind. And if Charles and Anna can't get to the bottom of this mystery, they may be next...

For once, mated werewolves Charles and Anna are not traveling because of Charles's role as his father's enforcer. This time, their trip to Arizona is purely personal-or at least it starts out that way...

Charles and Anna soon discover that a dangerous Fae being is on the loose, replacing human children with simulacrums. The Fae's cold war with humanity is about to heat up--and Charles and Anna are in the cross fire.

Mated werewolves Charles Cornick and Anna Latham face a threat like no other - one that lurks too close to home...

They are the wild and the broken. The werewolves too damaged to live safely among their own kind. For their own good, they have been exiled to the outskirts of Aspen Creek, Montana. Close enough to the Marrok's pack to have its support; far enough away to not cause any harm.

With their Alpha out of the country, Charles and Anna are on call when an SOS comes in from the fae mate of one such wildling. Heading into the mountainous wilderness, they interrupt the abduction of the wolf - but can't stop blood from being shed. Now Charles and Anna must use their skills - his as enforcer, hers as peacemaker - to track down the attackers, reopening a painful chapter in the past that springs from the darkest magic of the witchborn...

In the wilds of the Northern California mountains, all the inhabitants of a small town have gone missing. It's as if the people picked up and left their possessions behind. With a mystery on their hands and no jurisdiction on private property, the FBI dumps the whole problem in the lap of the land owner, Aspen Creek, Inc.--aka the business organization of the Marrok's pack.

Somehow, the pack of the Wolf Who Rules is connected to a group of vanished people. Werewolves Charles Cornick and Anna Latham are tasked with investigating, and soon find that a deserted town is the least of the challenges they face.

Death sings in the forest, and when it calls, Charles and Anna must answer. Something has awakened in the heart of the California mountains, something old and dangerous--and it has met werewolves before.

Riding into a war that?s heating up on the border, Ward, the new lord of Herzog, is sure he?s on the fast track to glory. But soon his mission takes a deadly turn. For he has seen a pile of magical dragon bones hidden deep beneath Hurog Keep. The bones could prove to be dangerous in the wrong hands, and Ward is certain his enemies will stop at nothing to possess them.

As the rebellion grows against High King Jakoven, Ward, ruler of Hurog, realizes he must join with the rebels. However, Jakoven can crush his enemies with dragon's blood. The very blood that courses through Ward's veins.

Mercy Thompson's life is not exactly normal. Her next-door neighbor is a werewolf. Her former boss is a gremlin. And she's fixing a VW bus for a vampire. But then, Mercy isn't exactly normal herself.

Mechanic Mercy Thompson has friends in low places-and in dark ones. And now she owes one of them a favor. Since she can shapeshift at will, she agrees to act as some extra muscle when her vampire friend Stefan goes to deliver a message to another of his kind.

But this new vampire is hardly ordinary-and neither is the demon inside of him.

When her former boss and mentor is arrested for murder and left to rot behind bars by his own kind, it's up to shapeshifting car mechanic Mercy Thompson to clear his name, whether he wants her to or not. And she'll have to choose between the two werewolves in her life-whether she wants to or not.

Shapeshifter Mercy Thompson hit the #1 spot on the bestseller list with Iron Kissed...

And she's planning a return trip.

Marsilia, the local vampire queen, has learned that Mercy crossed her by slaying a member of her clan. Now, she's out for blood. But since Mercy is protected from direct reprisal by the werewolf pack-and her relationship with its sexy Alpha-it's not Mercy's blood Marsilia is after...

Mechanic and shapeshifter Mercy Thompson never knows what the next day (or night) may bring. After all, her world is inhabited by witches, werewolves, and vampires. But now a book of fae secrets has come to light, and Mercy's about to find out just how implacable-and dangerous- the fae can be.

Being a different breed of shapeshifter-a walker-Mercy Thompson can see ghosts, but the spirit of her long-gone father has never visited her. Until now, on her honeymoon with the Alpha werewolf Adam. An evil is stirring in the depths of the Columbia River-and innocent people are dying. As other walkers make their presence known to Mercy, she must reconnect with her heritage to exorcise the world of the legend known as the river devil...

Mercy Thompson's life has undergone a seismic change. Becoming the mate of Adam Hauptman--the charismatic Alpha of the local werewolf pack--has made her a stepmother to his daughter Jesse, a relationship that brings moments of blissful normalcy to Mercy's life. But on the edges of humanity, what passes for a minor mishap on an ordinary day can turn into so much more...

After an accident in bumper-to-bumper traffic, Mercy and Jesse can't reach Adam--or anyone else in the pack for that matter. They've all been abducted.

Through their mating bond, all Mercy knows is that Adam is angry and in pain. With the werewolves fighting a political battle to gain acceptance from the public, Mercy fears Adam's disappearance may be related--and that he and the pack are in serious danger. Outclassed and on her own, Mercy may be forced to seek assistance from any ally she can get, no matter how unlikely.

An unexpected phone call heralds a new challenge for Mercy. Her mate Adam's ex-wife is in trouble, on the run from a stalker. Adam isn't the kind of man to turn away a person in need--and Mercy knows it. But with Christy holed up in Adam's house, Mercy can't shake the feeling that something about the situation isn't right.

Soon, her suspicions are confirmed when she learns that Christy has the farthest thing from good intentions. She wants Adam back and she's willing to do whatever it takes to make it happen, including turning Adam's pack against Mercy.

Mercy isn't about to step down without a fight, but there's a more dangerous threat circling. Christy's stalker is more than a bad man--in fact, he may not be human at all. As the bodies start piling up, Mercy must put her personal troubles aside to face a creature with the power to tear her whole world apart.

Mercy Thompson is back, and she'll soon discover that when the fae stalk the human world, it's the children who suffer...

Tensions between the fae and humans are coming to a head. And when coyote shapeshifter Mercy and her Alpha werewolf mate, Adam, are called upon to stop a rampaging troll, they find themselves with something that could be used to make the fae back down and forestall out-and-out war: a human child stolen long ago by the fae.

Defying the most powerful werewolf in the country, the humans and the fae, Mercy, Adam and their pack choose to protect the boy no matter what the cost. But who will protect them from a boy who is fire touched?

Attacked and abducted in her home territory, Mercy finds herself in the clutches of the most powerful vampire in the world, taken as a weapon to use against alpha werewolf Adam and the ruler of the Tri-Cities vampires. In coyote form, Mercy escapes -- only to find herself without money, without clothing, and alone in the heart of Europe.

Unable to contact Adam and the rest of the pack, Mercy has allies to find and enemies to fight, and she needs to figure out which is which. Ancient powers stir, and Mercy must be her agile best to avoid causing a war between vampires and werewolves, and between werewolves and werewolves. And in the heart of the ancient city of Prague, old ghosts rise...

In this powerful entry in the #1 New York Times bestselling series, Mercy Thompson must face a deadly enemy to defend all she loves...

My name is Mercedes Athena Thompson Hauptman, and I am a car mechanic.
And a coyote shapeshifter.
And the mate of the Alpha of the Columbia Basin werewolf pack.

Even so, none of that would have gotten me into trouble if, a few months ago, I hadn't stood upon a bridge and taken responsibility for the safety of the citizens who lived in our territory. It seemed like the thing to do at the time. It should have only involved hunting down killer goblins, zombie goats, and an occasional troll. Instead, our home was viewed as neutral ground, a place where humans would feel safe to come and treat with the fae.

The reality is that nothing and no one is safe. As generals and politicians face off with the Gray Lords of the fae, a storm is coming and her name is Death.

But we are pack, and we have given our word.

We will die to keep it.

I am Mercedes Athena Thompson Hauptman.

My only "superpowers" are that I turn into a thirty-five pound coyote and fix Volkswagens. But I have friends in odd places and a pack of werewolves at my back. It looks like I'm going to need them.

Centuries ago, the fae dwelt in Underhill--until she locked her doors against them. They left behind their great castles and troves of magical artifacts. They abandoned their prisoners and their pets. Without the fae to mind them, those creatures who remained behind roamed freely through Underhill wreaking havoc. Only the deadliest survived.

Now one of those prisoners has escaped. It can look like anyone, any creature it chooses. But if it bites you, it controls you. It lives for chaos and destruction. It can make you do anything--even kill the person you love the most. Now it is here, in the Tri-Cities. In my territory.

It won't, can't, remain.

Not if I have anything to say about it.

Mercy Thompson, car mechanic and shapeshifter, must face her greatest fears...

The vampire Wulfe is missing. Since he's deadly, possibly insane, and his current idea of "fun" is stalking me, some may see it as no great loss. But, warned that his disappearance might bring down the carefully constructed alliances that keep our pack safe, my mate and I must find Wulfe--and hope he's still alive. As alive as a vampire can be, anyway.

But Wulfe isn't the only one who has disappeared. And now there are bodies, too. Has the Harvester returned to the Tri-Cities, reaping souls with his cursed sickle? Or is he just a character from a B horror movie and our enemy is someone else?

The farther I follow Wulfe's trail, the more twisted--and darker--the path becomes. I need to figure out what's going on before the next body on the ground is mine.

Seraph is a Raven mage who left behind her responsibilities for the love of the ex-soldier Tier. But when Tier disappears, Seraph must use her magic--and fulfill her ancestors' oath to protect humanity from destruction.

The Traveler Seraph must use all her cunning and ability as a Raven mage to track down an unimaginable force of destruction known as the Shadowed.

After an upbringing of proper behavior and oppressive expectations, Aralorn fled her noble birthright for a life of adventure as a mercenary spy. Her latest mission involves spying on the increasingly powerful sorcerer Geoffrey ae'Magi. But in a war against an enemy armed with the powers of illusion, how do you know who the true enemy is-or where he will strike next?

Patricia Briggs' "unique" (Kliatt) novel of a slave, swordwielder, and spy gets a second life with an exciting new package to attract the fans that made her Mercy Thompson novels bestsellers.

After escaping from a life of slavery in Darran, Rialla plans revenge against her former masters - only to be chosen to protect a Darran lord planning to outlaw slavery.

Shapeshifting mercenary Aralorn leads a dangerous existence. Now she must return home for her noble father, the Lyon of Lambshold, has passed away. But when Aralorn and her companion Wolf arrive, they find he's not dead, but ensorcelled by the ae'Magi, using him as a conduit to destroy Aralorn and Wolf. She must overcome this mysterious mist or fall to the blackest of magic.