Showing results by author "David Niall Wilson" in All Categories

Donovan DeChance is a collector of ancient manuscripts and books, a practicing mage, and a private investigator. This omnibus collection includes books I, II, III, and IV of the series.

In 1712, Johann Bessler unveiled the perpetuum mobile, a wheel that continually spun after being set into motion until it was stopped with no mechanical input. Bessler's secret died with him. Except that it didn’t. Elly Kassel is the granddaughter of Evelyn Kassel. Elly is called into the offices of eminent London solicitors where she discovers that her grandmother was a rich woman. She also receives a trunk and an envelope, which she is not to open until she reaches New York City. In New York, she is told, all her questions about her grandmother and her inheritance will be answered.

Foreman James has always walked the streets of Old Mill, North Carolina, standing tall on street corners and booming his "story" to the world. Not many know where he comes from, or where he goes - no one knows the whole story. When an old, hand-written journal Foreman has carried since childhood goes missing, his carefully preserved world begins to crumble, and Old Mill takes notice.

When asked to follow in secret as a hot-headed group of young vampires set out on a 'blood quest' to kill the ancient who created the young vampire Kali against her will, he learns that - as usual - there is a lot more to the story than meets the eye.

A Midnight Dreary, the long-awaited fifth volume in The DeChance Chronicles, picks up outside Old Mill, NC, when Donovan, reminded that he has promised his lover, Amethyst, and Geoffrey Bullfinch of the O.C.L.T., a story, draws them back in time to a vision of the final chapter of the novel Nevermore - A Novel of Love, Loss & Edgar Allan Poe.

A young girl receives a fright when her father brings home a new Halloween decoration. As the story progresses, she learns more about the "monster" in the box and her own body, and comes to grips with her fears. An amusing story for Halloween, rendered in clever rhyme and beautifully illustrated by Dan Monroe.

Leon flies a crop duster. He also drinks a bit, and so he figures he'd better find a place outside of town to take off and land, just to avoid investigations. He stumbles across an abandoned government airfield deep in the Great Dismal Swamp, not far from Old Mill, North Carolina. He also discovers a lot of barrels filled with something - and being the paranoid type - eventually he starts to worry they'll find him with those barrels, and it will be trouble. He decides to get rid of it by "dusting" it over the local fields. Who will know?

When Nick Leatherman, his girlfriend Ruthie, and their buddies Flash and Weasel invade Shady Grove Cemetery for a "ghost hunt" on their way home from a concert, they are drawn into a web of darkness and intrigue that threatens to consume them. Nick and Ruthie witness a gruesome murder, and Nick's pocket knife shows up at the crime scene the next morning. Nick has had problems in the past, and Inspector Kendall Straker remembers. He remembers Ned Leatherman, Nick's alcoholic step-father as well, and he doesn't believe the boy is a killer.

There is an ancient evil lurking in the mountains of California. One peak over from Friendly, California, there is another, darker place. In that place there are two churches. Displaced from a time and place far distant, an ancient carving watches from an alcove above the door of a nearly forgotten church. When the evil it embodies reaches out and snags the soul of Silas Greene, roots creep down into the mountain and out into everything they touch. There is another church on the mountain. It is made of stone, carved into the stone of the mountain, and also all but forgotten.

Donovan DeChance is a collector of ancient manuscripts and books, a practicing mage, and a private investigator. When, despite the finest in natural and supernatural security, a sexy and well-loved 300-year-old lady vampire is kidnapped right out from under her lover's nose, Donovan is called in to investigate.

There are monsters roaming the desert and menacing the roads. There are sorcerers, harlots, and gamblers rampant in the city. In a compound in a forest, at the base of a mountain, one man and his family have received a prophecy. There will be a reckoning. There will be a flood. They will survive, but only if they obey the prophecy. Only if they build an ark, where there is no water. Only if they gather all of the creatures of the world. Only if they are faithful. Everyone else? Well, they're going to die.

Donovan DeChance is a collector of ancient manuscripts and books, a practicing mage, and a private investigator. Over the span of a long life, he has gathered and archived the largest occult library in the world. When a local houngan begins meddling with powers she may not be able to control, a turf war breaks out between the Dragons motorcycle club and the Los Escorpiones street gang - a war that threatens to open portals between worlds and destroy the city in the process.

This is the very first collection of short stories written by author David Niall Wilson. It was originally published as a signed, limited edition trade paperback in 1995. This book includes many early stories that have never been reprinted, and some, like "On the Third Day," and "A Candle Lit in Sunlight" that were later expanded to full-length novels. This collection includes vampires, magic, Lovecraftian horror, and religious fable. The introduction is by the late grandmaster of horror and fantasy, Hugh B. Cave.

Something very strange is going on in Bowling Green, Kentucky. A masked terrorist attacks a local politician and a news reporter at a minor league baseball game. A Gay Pride parade is bombed. A veteran's home is invaded and taken over by new ownership, and every resident that is not Caucasian has suddenly...disappeared.

When Cletus J. Diggs and his buddy Jasper decide to go fishing, Jasper tells him two fishermen they know saw a dinosaur in The Great Dismal Swamp, Cletus is ready to chock it up to shadows and too much beer. When he and Jasper are out fishing themselves and find a bass boat jammed nose first into the bottom of the Perquimans River with nothing left of the other two men but a boot with a leg protruding from it and one big-assed track in the mud, things get serious.

Brandt is a down-and-out guitarist and vocalist who believes his life has hit rock bottom. He can't make the rent on his apartment, and he drinks so much he can barely make it to the crappy gig that keeps his band afloat, let alone play when he gets there. When he leaves the bar one dark night with a bottle of Jose Cuervo in one hand and his guitar case in the other, he finds he's locked out of his apartment with nowhere to go.

Just after the Civil War, a preacher named Gideon Swayne journeyed south from Random, Illinois to minister to the newly freed slaves. In the bitter prejudice of North Carolina, and the magic of the Great Dismal Swamp, he made a home...that home was taken from him in hatred, and in violence.

When Euphrankes Holmynn, Captain of the Airship Vector, approaches the High Council with a plan for launching an airship through The Second Veil, an energy barrier that has protected their planet since the beginning of their collective memories, he is dismissed and banished from the city. The Second Veil, and the First, which is made up of the domed cities and shielded roads of their planet, are the only things protecting the shrinking resources that keep them all alive.

Father Darren Prescott is a seeker of truth. He works for the Vatican, but his real work is within his own mind and heart; Father Prescott hunts miracles. Father Thomas is a young priest with a quiet congregation that worships at San Marcos by the Sea, a small cathedral outside San Valencez, California. One Easter, Father Thomas’ Mass is interrupted by something he cannot explain - something powerful that shakes his world, and that of his congregation. Father Thomas experiences the Stigmata.

Headless bodies are turning up along the Mexican border. The Mexican government blames overzealous US Border guards. The border guards blame drug runners. In a village just on the Mexican side of the border, they have other ideas. There are legends, older even than the Mayan civilization that has died away, of a God. A bat-headed vengeful demon. Someone is fanning the flames of that superstition, and the piles of bodies continue to grow.