They have three kids and a house with a mortgage. Josie has worked hard making and selling wreaths to make money for Christmas presents. Two days before Christmas, while she is collecting pine cones for her wreaths, she finds a woman named Helen lying in the woods behind her house. She is bruised and beaten, but won’t let Josie call for help. Helen lets Josie take her inside her house where Helen meets Josie’s husband, Hank, and their daughter, Mabel. Josie notices Helen’s strange, old-fashioned clothes and wonders where she came from. While talking about her son, Billy, Helen suddenly disappears. Was Helen a ghost? As Josie begins to investigate, she discovers that Helen was a real person. In fact, she was Josie’s great-grandmother, a woman who abandoned her young son and her husband to become a chorus girl in Atlantic City. But is the family history regarding Helen true, or a story concocted by her husband to cover her murder? When Josie receives a foreclosure notice and realizes they are about to lose their house, it’s just the beginning of a bad Christmas Eve. When circumstances threaten to ruin their Christmas, Josie and Hank discover that the old abandoned house across the street may hold the key to the mystery surrounding Helen’s appearance, and to finding the money they need to save their family’s home.

    . . and her dark past follows closely behind.

    His design business has been quiet all year, but in December, it always picks up – and this year, he really needs the money. Trouble is, they cut off his internet in November, so now he needs to spend all day in a coffee shop if he wants to get any work done. Shame about having to buy coffee to keep himself in business. He can barely afford it. Cue Stef Tucker. Stef is a barista with an optimistic mind and an eye for troubled souls. Seeing Misha struggle, he’s kind enough to cover a few cups of coffee for him per day. At first, Misha feels inclined to point out that he’s not gay – that if this is flirting, then it’s not going to get anywhere. But the more time they spend together, the more Misha realizes that Stef just has a good heart… and that he might have spoken too soon when he said it’d never happen. Can Misha get himself together before Stef gives in and goes back to Jake, the pragmatic ex-boyfriend who canned him last Christmas? Can Stef’s generosity hold out until Misha’s standing back on his own two feet? Only one thing’s for sure – baby, it’s cold outside, and they’re going to need to give it everything they’ve got to stay warm this Christmas. This story is approximately 30,000 words.

    There is no heaven waiting for you. I own your soul and your body. I own your mind. I am your life and your only reason for existence.” Catacombs is a tale of pure horror featuring the ruling vampire lord and his captive Treasure. Be warned. Previously published in the anthology "When the Dark Wins".

    It has the elves and Santa and his reindeer, but Santa and Mrs. Claus aren't the jolly couple the world believes them to be. The elves, while short, aren't pointy-eared tiny men with squeaky voices. The reindeer are all shape-shifters who transform into gorgeous beings in human form. Feared by all, the reindeer keep to themselves and only associate with their own. Randy the Chief Reindeer is the most feared of all. The largest of the pack at six-five, Santa's Village breathes a sigh of relief when he takes off on his Harley to parts unknown during the off-season. Elf Willy is all about kink and will do almost anyone and everyone. The one he wants most is out of his league - Randy the Chief Reindeer. While drunk on Peppermint Whiskey, Willy is dared by the Master Elf to sneak onto Randy's property to take a compromising photo. Getting caught is a given, as the Chief Reindeer values his privacy above all else. Does Randy kick Willy's elfy self all the way to Tinsel Town? Or does he mete out a more appropriate punishment for the kinky elf? Tags: Christmas, Gay Erotica/Romance, Mild BDSM (Orgasm Denial, Metal Cock Rings, Restraints, Spanking), One Cocky Elf, One Very Alpha Reindeer

    He has won four World Fantasy Awards, ten British Fantasy Awards, three Bram Stoker Awards, and the Horror Writers' Association's Lifetime Achievement Award. Three decades into his career, Campbell paused to review his body of short fiction and selected the stories that were, to his mind, the very best of his works. Alone With the Horrors collects nearly forty tales from the first thirty years of Campbell's writing. Included here are "In the Bag," which won the British Fantasy Award, and two World Fantasy Award-winning stories, "The Chimney" and the classic "Mackintosh Willy." Campbell crowns the book with a length preface which traces his early publication history, discusses his youthful correspondence with August Derleth, illuminates the influence of H.P. Lovecraft on his early work, and gives an account of the creation of each story and the author's personal assessment of the works' flaws and virtues.In its first publication, a decade ago, Alone With the Horrors won both the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. For this new edition, Campbell has added one of his very first published stories, a Lovecraftian classic, "The Tower from Yuggoth." From this early, Cthulhian tale, to later works that showcase Campbell's growing mastery of mood and character, Alone With the Horrors provides readers with a close look at a powerful writer's development of his craft.

    guided only by his unyielding lust.Stavros never wanted to hurt her. He meant to set her free…But Fallon’s freedom comes with a steep price.No passport, no money, and no proof of her identity make her an easy target for enemies and family alike.Stavros loves hard. Too hard.As he falls for the woman he purchased for submission, he understands the darkest truth:He can’t ever let her go.

    Now and then he moved a little to quiet the protest of cramped muscles and stagnant blood, but most of the time he was as motionless as the heap of rags he resembled. Not once did he hear or see a Bohas agent, or, for that matter, anyone. The predawn darkness had hidden his panting flight from the transie jungle, his dodging across backyards while whistles shrilled and voices shouted, and his crawling on hands and knees down an alley into the high grass and bushes which fringed a hidden garden. For a while his heart had knocked so loudly that he had been sure he would not be able to hear his pursuers if they did get close. It seemed inevitable that they would track him down. A buddy had told him that a new camp had just been built at a place only three hours drive away from the town. This meant that Bohas would be thick as hornets in the neighborhood.

    It doesn’t spoil the main story.

    The men are sworn enemies, embroiled in a generations-old land dispute. On this particular night, each hopes to find the other in order to kill him in defense of their property rights

    They have a fun time in their London home, renting films on VHS and watching TV, even if Stephen can hardly ever get her to watch Doctor Who on Saturday nights.If their life really is so very ordinary, though, then why is a corpse slumped in the corner of their living room – and another in the downstairs toilet?

    Winner of six Emmys (he was nominated nine times), two Sylvania Awards, on Peabody Award, and one Christopher Award for his teleplays, Serling came as close as anyone to dominating an era that abounded with talented men. His plays "Requiem for a Heavyweight" and "Patterns" are usually the first items on the lips of television aficionados reminiscing about the good old days. Yet as television changed, Rod Serling kept pace. He became producer and chief writer for the famous "Twilight Zone" series. These bizarre and fantastic adventures into the occult and demonic were without doubt one of the most creative, imaginative and successful enterprises in the history of television.Now Rod Serling has applied his prodigious writing talents to a new medium: one in which he is perhaps destined to make his greatest mark. The three novellas that compromise THE SEASON TO BE WARY betray the skillful hand of a master storyteller and prose stylist. Fired with a savage yet disciplined irony, paced with deliberate cadence that rises to a starting denouement, each story explores the theme of a terrible vengeance delivered for terrible deeds performed.In "The Escape Route," ex-Gruppenfuehrer Joseph Strobe - ex-deputy assistant commander of Auschwitz, ex-confidant of Heinrich Himmler - putters about his little rathole in Buenos Aires chewing over the good times he had breaking Jews. Yet his snug little world is turned upside down b the capture of Adolf Eichmann, and Strobe soon finds himself on the wrong end of a terrifying hunt."Color Scheme" recounts the life and times of the great King Connacher, racist and rabble-rouser, who makes his living on the stump, preaching the lynching gospel, only to find himself one summer evening the victim of an extraordinary case of mistaken identity.In "Eyes," Miss Claudia Menlo, who in her fifty lifeless years has been denied nothing that she wanted - except her sight - manipulates people with the same purposeful indifference with which she fondles the expensive bric-a-brac in her lavishly cluttered dwelling. Yet her insistant will is brutally thwarted by the one set of circumstances she cannot control.Serling has infused these simple, forceful tales with an extraordinary richness of character and detail. There is, for example, the Prussian officer Gruber, who cannot stomach the pigs like Strobe he helped create and with whom he is forced to share his guilt. And there is Indian Charlie Hatcher, the most memorable portrait of a burned-out prizefighter since Serling's own justly famous Mountain Rivera.The power, the drive, the complexity and subtlety of these novellas mark Rod Serling as one of the most important and graceful fiction writers. Mr. Serling is a graduate of Antioch College and lives in Southern California with his wife and two children.

    Imagine opening your front door one morning only to have your life horribly ripped apart.In a moment, you're implicated in the murder of your entire family and hounded by something not of this world.And the very thing that did this to you is now asking for something more-Your faith.

    Our village is known for many festivals, but nothing compares to the Christmas Matchmaking Festival. People visit from all over the Highlands, but there is only one Scotsman that I wish to be matched with this Christmas. But after a kiss and a misunderstanding over the summer, he's given me the cold shoulder. Can the festivities of the holiday warm his heart and show him that my feelings haven't changed?DOUGALIt's only ever been her, but when she breaks my heart after a kiss that I thought would change everything, I'm not willing to put my heart on the line again. But things start to heat up when we are pushed to work together in my family's bakery for the Christmas Matchmaking Festival. Will the magic of the season give us a second chance at love?Sugar & Spice Nights is a multi-author series of holiday inspired instalove, curvy woman and hot guys stories. Come find out how hot and sweet the nights can get today!

    Welcome to another kind of terror as Peter Straub leads us into the outer reaches of the psyche. Here the master of the macabre is at his absolute best in seven exquisite tales of living, dying and the terror that lies in between…No one tells a story like Peter Straub. He dazzles with the richness of his plots and the eloquence of his prose. He startles you into laughter in the face of events so dark that you begin to question your own moral compass. Then he reduces you to jelly by spinning a tale so terrifying – and surprising – that you have to sleep with the lights on. Now, with these seven acclaimed stories he has given us his finest and most imaginatively unsettling collection yet.‘WHEN STRAUB TURNS ON ALL HIS JETS, NO ONE IN THE SCREAM FACTORY CAN EQUAL HIM.’STEPHEN KING