She returns home to Comfort, Texas, only to be thrust into the middle of a land dispute and developers intent on gaining the Taylor Ranch property. When one of the developer’s employees dies on their property, Christie must extend her break to help her father. Christie sets out to find the killer before they strike again. But will the truth unravel everything? If you love Texas, country life and pies, you’ll enjoy this humorous cozy mystery set in the beautiful hill country. Meet the characters who may remind you of your cantankerous grandpa or your quirky next-door neighbor. Pie Recipe included!Buy Death Takes a Break and get roped in to a your new favorite cozy series.

     It ends with the return of an evil as ancient as the skeleton of the universe. In the middle, normal garden-variety people must figure out how to live their everyday lives—how to survive!—after they discover that all those Bible stories about demons and angels...they're true. When the hot call comes over the radio: “Code Red! Active shooter at Carlisle Elementary School,” Police Sergeant Jack Carpenter has only one job: find the gunman; take him out. Carpenter rushes into the school, fully armed and focused on cold, hard reality. But what happens to him in the next few hours shatters the world as he has always known it. And in the next three days, everything Jack Carpenter believes about himself, about life and reality, about good and evil and the whole nature of the universe will be challenged. Can it possibly be true—seriously?—that invisible demons prowl among us every day? That there exists in the real world a winged creature more horrifying than any Hollywood-animated, computer-generated, mechanical unreality? And that the single-minded mission of that beast—a creation of absolute, soul-less evil—is to kill Jack Carpenter? That’s crazy! Fairy-tale-science-fiction-horror-movie-bogeyman crap! Bottom line: it flat-out cannot possibly be true. But it is. In this first book in The Knowing Trilogy, award-winning journalist and bestselling Christian suspense and thriller author Ninie Hammon begins a sprawling tale of spiritual warfare that spans a quarter of a century. If you enjoy sleep-with-the-lights-on suspense coupled with characters so lifelike they'll feel like family, The Knowing will open up for you a world you probably don't want to believe is real. But it is. Interview with the Author Q - What makes The Knowing special? A - It's real life on paper. Things happen that really are "unexplainable." There are forces at work in the universe we can't see, with power we can't begin to imagine and plans we don't understand. Is it any wonder that some things flat out don't have a reasonable, rational explanation? Q - Is The Knowing a paranormal book? A - Not in the sense that most people think of as "paranormal." It's not about zombies or vampires or people who turn into werewolves or giant bears or attack-gerbils. The characters in The Knowing are folks you could bump carts with in a small-town grocery store, so when the unexplainable starts to happen to them, you realize the same thing could happen to you, too. Q - Is this Christian fiction? A -Yes, Christian fiction with a backbone. There are Scriptural realities that many Christians say they believe, even think they believe--but when push comes to shove, they discover they really don't. Theresa Washington from The Knowing says it best: "The smartest thing Satan ever done was to get people to believe he don't exist." Q - Why should readers give this book a try? A - Because it will capture your heart and mind, grab you in a reality so gripping you'll decide you can fold the towels later and the lawn will still be out there to mow tomorrow.

     If Emma wants to take possession of Little Tombstone's motel, cafe, curio shop and Museum of the Unexplained, then she has to agree to "Love, Honor and Cherish" Earp, her late aunt's ancient and irritable pug. It says so, right there in the will. What Aunt Geraldine's will conveniently omits to mention are the bodies buried underneath the trailer court.

    Especially handsome detectives with kind voices and beautiful eyes. So when her conscience just won’t shut the hell up, and convinces her to corner one such cop in a dark parking lot to tell him what she’s learned, she can just feel this won’t be the end of it. She doesn’t have time to worry about it, though. She has gangsters to piss off, homicidal gangs to infiltrate, and people to search for. Yes, this is Kyra’s life. The endgame is worth it, though. If she lives long enough to attain it. Join Kyra and Gabe in a pulse-pounding chase through Abstreuse City to find a killer and save a child before it’s too late. Because everyone loves good cop meets mysterious woman meets serial killer. And darkness lives in us all. “Intriguing storyline. Good fun…Highly recommend!” –R.V.P. Author Interview: What got you into writing crime fiction? Like so many others, I’ve always loved mysteries. Even a minor mystery is compelling to me and I’ve finished otherwise mediocre books, just to learn what the answer is. I watch a lot of police procedurals and have always especially been fascinated with criminal psychology and serial killers. It was always just a matter of time before I started writing about it. Yeah, but what’s a nice Christian girl like you doing writing about serial killers? Kind of dark subject matter, isn’t it? *laughs* It’s a question I’ve gotten a lot. It’s definitely dark subject matter. I prefer it that way, though. The darker the story becomes, the greater the capacity for character redemption. Lovers of horror understand this concept well. If the character can’t demonstrate a visceral ability to overcome a ridiculous amount of darkness, they’re almost not worth rooting for. Nothing is darker than a person willing to coldly take the lives of other human beings. I think that’s why our society is so interested in this type of villain. It’s a darkness we can’t understand, but want to, if for no other reason than to keep it at bay in ourselves. As an author, exploring that is both fascinating and kind of fun. Why this story? Why Abstreuse and the Mire? I came up with this story all at once. Many authors come up with stories based on the story they would like to see told, but haven’t found. It was more or less that way for me. There wasn’t any specific crime fiction story I was unsatisfied with, but rather while reading and watching them, I couldn’t help but start to form something in my mind I’d love to read myself. By the time I sat down to write, I had the entire draft of book 1 already formed in my head, and basic shape of the rest. It’s one of those stories that took on an urgency because I became so excited to tell it. So I did! You’ve written stories about both urban and rural crime. Do you have a preference? No, I don’t think I prefer one over the other. Being something of a country girl myself, writing about a killer in a small desert town held an interest all its own. But the urban setting of the inner city can definitely prove grittier. They present us with two different feels to the same kind of darkness. I personally find both tremendously compelling.

    

    In twenty-four hours her world is shattered. She loses her parents and her job. Rummaging through the attic she discovers her “dead” grandmother is very much alive. She returns to her hometown; a quiet, sleepy little town perched above the sea. The disappearance and death of an elderly couple sets the town on edge. Accusations fly. The past is dredged up. Bodies are found. Some even question her return and the timing of the murders. As she joins the town constable to help solve the case, she finds herself attracted to her main suspect, Jake Donovan. Jake is handsome, charming, and secretive. Is he a threat to her or just a threat to her heart?

     Book 1 of 3 The world is dead. Plants gone. Animals gone. The air is thick with dust and ash. Water has turned to murky cesspools of death and decay. Life and Earth as we know it are gone—at least all the good parts. It’s been almost a year since the first signs that we killed our planet began to arise. Order and humanity are gone now, replaced by vigilante justice and survival at all costs. Nine months have passed since the quarantines were put in place. Six months since we realized it was too late, and just after that the governments of the world fell. That was nearly seven billion people ago, and now Charles has decided it is time to pack up and leave in search of the one thing still worth living for—his daughters. With rumors of roving bands of cannibals, and even zombies, he knows making the journey is a long shot, but he has to try. He promised their dying mother that he would keep them safe and has every intention of doing just that, come hell or hungry zombies. In a soulless world filled with nothing but pain and death, will his determination be enough to see him through to the end?

    The story is told by a doctor in suburban Maryland who is on the front lines of discovering the disease, but finds himself quickly overwhelmed by a world that collapses into paranoia, fear and loneliness. He makes an unexpected connection to Rosa, a beautiful woman half his age with an inquisitive nature and inherent sense of hope and resourcefulness, and together they go on a sprawling journey across the eastern United States, finding danger, hope, and possibly even the salvation of the world.

    A Detective Lottie King Holiday Mystery Short Story that first appeared in New Shoes: Detective Lottie King Mystery Short Stories, Vol 2. Includes BONUS recipes.

    Jason, with Norah's assistance, soon discovers the ghosts of his past are nothing compared to the battle he's undertaken.Smilodon. A saber-toothed cat. He's angry, he's frightened, he's hungry, and he's 12,000 years from home!Smilodon--75,000 words or about 300 pages

    That is, his specialty is opening safes. Every job is a little mystery, and he has yet to encounter a lock he can't break or a box he can't crack. But the day Holloway gets called in to open a rare, antique safe in a famous author's library, his skills open a door that should have remained closed.In this haunting and singular story, previously published anonymously, Michael Connelly proves once again that he is "superb at building suspense.... the reader can never be sure what sudden turns the plot may take" (Wall Street Journal).

    They didn't kill her — and they'll soon regret it.When DEA agent Jack Thorne's house is stormed by vengeful drug lords, both he and his wife are shot dead. Only his daughter Louie survives — by using a terrifying power that defies reason.Piecing together a life in his absence, Louie embraces her gift and her rage under the force of a single need: revenge.She will destroy the men that took her family. No matter the cost, no matter how many bullets, she won't stop until justice has been well and truly served.

    When he and the crew of the Sea Maggot are cornered by Brynth’s navy, outnumbered and outgunned, O’Connor is forced to prove his bones and carve his place into the annals of outlaw history next to his comrades, the ship’s mythic mage, and their fabled captain. When the cannons have been fired, when the blades have sung their song, when the smoke clears, will a legend rise or will only death linger? A fantasy adventure for fans of Joe Abercrombie, Patrick Rothfuss and Andrzej Sapkowski!

    There are four of them: I Am What I Am; I, Woman; The Hollow; and The One Who Never Leaves. Here, you will come into a dark, strange world, a hyper-reality where nearly everything is firmly rooted in the familiar—except for some quirky detail that twists the yarn, and takes it for a spin in an unexpected direction. This is the reality you will see through the eyes of a ghost of a woman, trying to reclaim her name by appealing to the devil; the eyes of a clay figure of a woman, about to be fired in the kiln, longing for her Creator; the eyes of a woman in the midst of a free fall, about to become a ghost; and the eyes of a feline creature with cracked fangs, trying in vain to resign herself, by hook and by crook, to being locked. These characters explore their identity, and challenge their fate. Inspired by her art, by quotes from literature and the bible, and by the author’s professional career, these tales come from different times and places. Yet all of them share one thing in common: an unusual mind, one that is twisted. So prepare yourself: keep the lights on.

    After being cyberbullied for his entire senior year of high school by three of his former best friends, Terrence doesn't just seek revenge. He murders all three of his old friends in a barbaric manner, he decapitates them with a hatchet.However, would Terrence have gone after his former friends on his own? Or was it The Dark Man's fault? Did the mysterious Dark Man, who might or might not exist, put the hatchet in Terrence's hand.That's what Terrence's family longs to find out, as well as the entire country. The brutal murders become one of the biggest teenage massacre stories reported by the national media since the Virginia Tech Shooting and Columbine.