But when Ilan, Terrac, and the Fists in their command enter Skeltai territory through a magic portal, they find themselves in more danger than they bargained for. Their only hope of returning home alive may lie in sacrificing the thing Ilan values most -- her enchanted bow. * * * * *Book 5: Journey of Thieves -- Upon leaving Dimmingwood, Ilan thinks she has finally escaped the influence of her old enemy, the Praetor. But the secrets of her past catch up to her when she and her friends are trailed across the provinces by a mysterious assassin with a haunting connection to her childhood. * * * * *Book 6: Rule of Thieves -- Returning home, Ilan finds nothing is as she left it. After a year of peace, Skeltai raiders are once again threatening the province, even as the Dimmingwood thieves find themselves betrayed by the praetor. From within the castle in Selbius Ilan must guard against an unknown enemy plotting her assassination, while uncovering a mage's secret that could help her protect the province. When old friends turn against her, will a new alliance prove powerful enough to defend against the dark magic of the enemy? Or will the coming battle be Ilan's last? --- Books 1, 2, and 3 sold separately --

    When she learns that the boy in the painting was deaf, like her dead son, she starts to try to communicate with his ghost.Meanwhile, Clayton finds himself entangled in an equally undesirable friendship with a retired fire chief who knows more about the painting than he is prepared to let on.Is The Crying Boy painting cursed, and can numerous house fires be linked to it?Struggling with their unstable marriage, the couple find themselves in further danger as an increasingly disturbing bond develops between Avril and The Crying Boy.In a twist of events Avril's irrational behavior is brought to a dramatic halt when she discovers she is pregnant. With her affections once again restored for Clayton, she decides to dispose of the sinister portrait. But the cast off painting wants revenge and its anger towards Avril's unborn child might just prove immeasurable.

    What he gets instead is just the opposite. His daughter, Hannah, twelve, struggles with grief, loneliness, and what it means to be Jewish as a Chinese adoptee. She wants to fit in, but that's difficult in their new mostly white and Christian town--so she decides to secretly convert. His son, Aaron, a senior in high school, is applying to Ivy League schools and counting down to when he can leave the small town--until he discovers a shocking secret that threatens his entire future. Lurking in the shadows is a pastor who says he just wants to support the kids in his congregation, but is that all he really wants? The Opposite of Normal is about what it means to love and accept, what it means to do the right thing, and what it means to heal after loss.

     Every teenage girl has a diary in which she vents her frustrations with siblings and parents. But a zombie apocalypse? This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things During the Zombie Apocalypse is a comedic adventure about a teenage girl, her frustrating family, two high-spirited dogs, and a neighborhood of loveable rednecks coming together to survive a zombie outbreak.

    When an oil rig drills too deep under the Gulf of Mexico it breaks the capstone separating our world from the UnderRealms - home to monsters, daemons and dark magiks. The nightmares of our long ago come flooding back into the world where they are met by automatic weapons fire, heating seeking missiles (they're hell on dragons, don'tcha know) and one drunken, dissolute son of a bitch called Dave. But this is not Dave's story. This is the story of the poor bastards who had to put up with him while he saved the world and acted like a jerk.

    You better pass it, feller. You’re joining the circus. Ain’t that the best news you ever got?"Delivered by a trio of psychotic clowns, this ultimatum plunges Jamie into the horrific alternate universe that is the centuries-old Pilo Family Circus, a borderline world between Hell and Earth from which humankind’s greatest tragedies have been perpetrated. Yet in this place—peopled by the gruesome, grotesque, and monstrous—where violence and savagery are the norm, Jamie finds that his worst enemy is himself. When he applies the white face paint, he is transformed into JJ, the most vicious clown of all. And JJ wants Jamie dead!

    But when she and her friend, Peter, find a valuable coin and try to take it out of the shop, they find themselves in the fifteenth century. But that is only the beginning. The Edward V Coin The discovery of the coin from the short lived reign of Edward V, prompts Peter to want to find out what really happened to the princes in the Tower. The Anne Boleyn Necklace When Peter finds the famous B necklace worn by Anne Boleyn in many portraits, he is eager to use it to go back and see her in the flesh. But Rachel has sworn she'll never time travel again, until she finds a journal which reveals a cousin, stranded in the fifteenth century. She feels she must rescue her, but she doesn't stop to wonder if the cousin wants to be rescued. The Ripper Rings Jack the Ripper took souvenirs in the form of organs from his victims. But from one victim he took three rings and when they turn up in the antique shop, both Peter and Rachel are keen to find out how they got there.

    

    

    Follow the terror and drama in five short stories that will bring you gravely close to your fears. The winds are howling, can you hear the screams? WARNING: Not the famous Stephen King from Maine.

    The clerics and defenders that could once be found across the nine lands are no more. Priests huddle in the great temple, clinging to the echoes of their lost religion. But the Father has fallen silent. There are none who still hear his voice.The mines of Aspiration lie far below the temple's marble halls. Slaves toil in the blackness, striving to earn their way into the church and the light. Wynn has been sold into this fate, traded for a handful of silver. In the depths of the mines, where none dare carry flame, he must meet his tally or die. But there are things that lurk in that darkness, and still darker things within the hearts of men.When the souls bound to the great forge are released in a failed ritual, one novice flees down into the darkness of the mines. The soulwraiths know only hunger, the risen know only hate. In the blackest depths Kharios must seek a light to combat the darkness which descends.

    But the house sits on a nexus point; a gateway to demonic realms.Amid a turbulence of twisting realities, and facing legions of fallen angels and nightmarish servitors, Frank and Roz become separated. Frank turns to a local pensioner for assistance. But the enigmatic George Smoke is a man who offers more questions than answers.Confronted by dark gods and cosmic abominations, Frank faces a battle for his wife's soul. It seems a fight he is destined to lose... but he must succeed. Saving Roz is the key to everything.

    Disoriented, he blinks his eyes, rubs them for good measure, but the result is the same. The sky is as black as the beach below it. In this place, the sun and moon and stars are long dead. But the darkness, full of eyes and teeth, is very much alive. Others like him say it’s a curse. Someone he knows has sentenced him to an eternity here, and now Lewis must ask himself if it’s an eternity he deserves. Guided only by his own hands, hunted by otherworldly forces, it’s up to him to scour the darkness of his past in search of his own redemption. Only the truth will light the way.

     It starts when Stella, an archaeologist specializing in Anasazi culture, finds David, a young Navajo boy who stumbles onto their dig site in a remote corner of the Navajo Reservation. David's coat is smeared with blood and he's in shock from something he's seen, revealing nothing but his name. Soon Stella and the other archaeologists will discover that something is chasing David, an unimaginable ancient evil that will stop at nothing to get him. After Stella escapes the dig site with David, driving north into Colorado, right into a blizzard, she's carjacked by a gang of criminals fleeing a botched bank robbery. All of them take refuge from the snowstorm in what they believe is an abandoned cabin. But after they find the owner's mutilated body stuffed into a freezer, they realize that something is out there in the blizzard waiting for them. The Ancient Enemy wants things . . . you have to give it what it wants or bad things will happen. Very bad things.