The Kransens live in an expensive, elegant home in the small town of Flening, Florida. Majestic and private, the grounds are surrounded by lush trees and colorful flowers. But there is an ugliness underneath the manicured and perfect facade... Secrets hide within the walls and curses whisper through the air. Newlyweds Ben and Ana Kransen are moving into the house with their in-laws. They’ve got high hopes and expectations for a better life. But soon after they move in, strange things start to happen. Noises fill the air, dark rooms unlock nightmares of the past, and it becomes clear that some people are not welcome in the Kransen House. Their lives are infiltrated by death, evil, and an unspoken religion. Ana knows something is wrong and her family is in danger. Left with few choices, she must find a way to save the ones she loves or face the consequences of an evil legacy.

    Any man... but him. So I run.In the midst of a wild storm, three hot men save me. Men with dark secrets and a demonic nature my pack might never accept, but my heart's already claimed them. They're mine.Grab this steamy why choose shifter romance now and enter the world of Hell Baited Wolves, a sexy demon paranormal romance series by Cali Mann and Freya Black.

    Now forever means something vastly different for the two best friends. Taria just being a college student she never thought she would run into a vampire serial killer or being accused of murder, to becoming a vampire herself. Taria never thought that asking for excitement in her life she would end up with Michael a sexy vampire with deadly secrets but who made her his Queen. Michael has always seen visions, but he never saw Taria coming into his life. The couple is more than just lovers but soulmates who were destined to be together. Michael can feel his power growing as the New Year approaches as he fights whoever attacks his family and friends. He knows that he must protect his people as he takes the throne, but before that can happen, he had to take the Van Allans down. With Taria by his side, Michael knows he can defend and rule the vampire covens, or they would die trying. LaToya never imagined finding someone who loves her enough to let her be herself. She never thought she would have children and now can’t Imagine life without them. LaToya went looking for answers about herself and found that she was more than what she appeared. Quinn with deadly secrets himself found his mate and would never let her go. Finally finding of his own past, he has to find the True Alpha inside if he wants to keep his mate, children, and all wolf shifter packs safe. Enemies are all around the friends who became more. They found allies, friends and more secrets to uncover but before they can move on to their next adventure in their lives, they had to deal with the fact something wants to end the world, and another wants to rule it. It's up to these four to make it right even at the cost of their own lives. They will come to realize nothing lives forever. Will Michael gain the power that belongs to him or will Victor Van Allan finally take it? Will Quinn be able to be the True Alpha of his kind? Will LaToya keep her children safe while learning to use her birth given gifts? Will Taria be able to fulfill her hunter role, help Michael rule the vampire covens, and finally figure out the power that is hidden inside of her? Who will make it in this last installment of Deadly Secrets Brothers That Bite? This story will be best read if you read Deadly Secrets Brothers that Bite 1-4, Desire of the Harvest Moon: The Change, Twice Marked Witches and Wolves first.

    It’s their turn. First off, it at long last solves the enigma of Abigail’s first husband Joel Sutton’s disappearance, and death, a decade before…the tragic event that sent Abigail to Spookie in the first place to begin a new life. The new life that would grow so big as to include a new love, a new family, quirky, but well-meaning friends, and the strange murder mysteries her new friends would drag her into over the years. As an unsolicited, and unwanted, envelope arrives from Abigail’s now dead detective she’d hired a decade before to find her missing first husband, its contents sends Frank searching for the truth. The envelope’s files are full of disturbing facts concerning the unsolved crime and it piques Frank’s interest. Soon, against Abby’s wishes, he’s on the cold trail of what actually happened to Joel Sutton–had he been a victim of just an accident, as some have always believed, or did someone murder him? In his search for the truth, Frank ends up in lethal danger when the investigation comes to a violent conclusion. This story is also about an infamous haunted house at 707 Suncrest, in the woods; about the cold blooded murders of a whole family that occurred there forty years before. Is the house on Suncrest truly haunted by the ghosts of the dead family? Is it dangerous? When Abby decides to paint a series of canvases of the spooky old house, she’ll find out. Then along with those two new mysteries to unravel, of course, all of Spookie’s quirky town characters have returned to irritate, amuse and sleuth with Abby and Frank. Will they get out of these new mysteries alive, too? Perhaps.

    This collection includes thirteen lean and mean stories from the fingertips of Garnett Elliott, Glenn Gray, John Hornor Jacobs, Patricia Abbott, Thomas Pluck, Brad Green, Ron Earl Phillips, Kent Gowran, Amy Grech, Benoit Lelievre, Kieran Shea, David Cranmer, and Wayne D. Dundee and a boiled down look at hardboiled fiction in an introduction by Ron Scheer. Edited by David Cranmer and Scott D. Parker.

    Liz had lingered behind, savouring the last of the night air. She pushed at the stray blond lock with her fingers, willing it to stay in place. On letting go the hair slid back. She secured it with her ivory comb. She began to run, overcome by a desperate need to see her children. A sense of dread swept over her. An unaccountable ache lay in her belly. The twins were so vulnerable, what if she failed in her duty to protect them? Then she stopped. She stood very still. The ache and the cold were replaced by the warmth of a hug and a kiss on her cheek. She turned to say thank you, but she was alone. The others were already at the house.'Beckman's appeared to be Liz's dream house, the perfect home in which to raise her young family. She had an immediate inexplicable affinity with the property, and it welcomed her with open arms. Why then should just one of its many rooms, the fourth room, make her feel as if she was an intruder? What secret was it hiding? She knew it was connected to the burnt out boat house and that sunken old rowing boat. Something about it was linked to her: its presence haunted her. She knew she needed to unravel the mystery before some dreadful disaster overcame her family. Her daughter's elusive friend Harriet had the answers but would she reveal them? And then there was that horrid Tarot reading. The potent image of the Five of Cups would not leave her. What were the cards trying to tell her and more to the point, would she listen? After all they were just bits of paper.Cover: The Five of Cups from a set of Tarot cards designed by the author.

    Demons, imps, and spirits, evil and benign, spill into the universe from the netherworld. In Paris, a series of grisly murders that couldn't possibly be performed by a human, no matter how depraved, leads the Grand Chatelet and his men to try and raise a demon of their own to learn how to combat the creature that is terrorizing the city. Unfortunately—or perhaps fortunately—the demon who is summoned brings with him a van from the Paris of the twenty-first century. The van contains a modern day drama teacher, her son, and eight precocious high school students—along with all of their electronic devices. Soon, their laptops, tablets and cell-phones become possessed by imps and spirits of the netherworld, some of whom are brilliant and all of whom are insatiably curious. Soon it's a race to see which pack of outsiders can create the most turmoil in the late Middle Ages—monstrous demons or precocious teenagers who soon have their own allies and followers among the ranks of demonkind. And King Charles V had already been in trouble! Piled onto his own poor health, a suspicious and contentious church, France's always-quarrelsome nobility—worst of all, his unscrupulous and ambitious brother, Philip the Bold—the king now has both demons and people from the future to contend with. He does have one asset—and not a small one. He can place his trusted Constable of France, Bertrand du Guesclin, in charge of the rambunctious teenagers from the future and their ever-growing legion of demons. And Bertrand has a great asset of his own—his wife Tiphaine de Raguenel, perhaps the best astrologer in all of France and, for sure and certain, not a woman to take seriously the prattling nonsense of youngsters skeptical of her lore and knowledge.

    And that’s when it happens – the moment I’m blindsided by the imminent collision of time and fate.  For one, surreal moment my sense of self bleeds away, and I become all that I’ve seen, and all that will come to be at my choosing. *** It’s been two years since Paige Prescott discovered the gift that nearly got her committed.  But now she knows better than to tell anyone about the visions that plague her: futures for which she’s fated, unless she can change them first. But when a tragic event unfolds on the last day of senior year, Paige’s carefully crafted façade shatters, plunging her into a dangerous new reality where her gift is a coveted weapon – and she learns she's not the only one with a secret. Now, torn between a world she thought she knew and one she wished she didn’t, Paige must rely on her gift – and the guidance of a veiled enigma – to outmaneuver a formidable kind.  But if she wants to reclaim her future, she’ll have to make a stunning choice: one bound by love, loyalty, and lies – And the power of timing fate.

    

    Others might refer to him as a criminal or a pimp or an extortionist or all of these things, if they knew what he was doing at night. His income is derived from a number of brothels and gambling parlors that are secreted behind iron doors in what appear to be typical apartment buildings. The police—whom he refers to as “the machos”—are oblivious of his enterprises, but he was incarcerated years ago and is uncommonly careful. When Tasking cannot convince someone to do something he wants, he alters that person’s life—elaborately and maliciously—until that person yields to his wishes. He is oblique and autonomous, and he is successful. Daily, his plots, parlors, and prostitutes bring him closer to the large dollar amount that is his ultimate career goal. Things start to change when he walks into the Cherry Red strip club for the first time and meets the dancer, Erin Green. . . .

    A short while later, Danny Turner is found in his car at the bottom of a ravine, after having taken his own life. Any explanation as to why a loving father and husband would suddenly commit a series of such heinous crimes has gone to the grave with the accused. The mystery only deepens as the details of the murders emerge, and evidence of premeditation as well as Danny’s hidden past are revealed. Subsequently, Rachel’s closest friend, Carolyn Bianci, sinks into a deep depression, while her husband, Mitch, copes with his despair by attempting to uncover the facts of the crime. Eventually they encounter Joanna Larson, a fascinating woman who possesses extraordinary spiritual gifts. Through Joanna, the truth about the events that took place the night of the murders are unveiled. The answers Mitch and Carloyn get are beyond their human understanding. Inspired by true events, The Ravine is a story of faith, forgiveness, and most of all, the restoration of hope—even for the most seemingly unredeemable among us.

    Higgins, Patricia Highsmith, and David Mamet. Rick and Frank are recovering addicts and accomplished house thieves whose partnership extends beyond their professional lives. They do not steal randomly - - they steal according to order, hired by a mysterious handler who assigns the work to them. The jobs run routinely until they're tasked with breaking into a home and taking a seemingly worthless trophy: an object that generates interest and obsession out of proportion to its apparent value.Just as the robbery is completed, the two are involved in a freak car accident that sets off a chain of events and Frank disappears with the trophy. As Rick tries to find Frank, and the missing haul, he is forced to confront his past, upending both his livelihood and his sense of reality. The narrative builds steadily into a powerful and satisfyingly shocking climax. Reveling in its con-artistry and double-crosses, Just Thieves is a nail-biting, eerily existential and noirish exploration of the working lives of two unforgettable crooks and the hidden forces that rule and ruin their lives.

     The individuals whose experiences you are about to read know that only too well, since nothing in their lives had prepared them for their encounters with things that are not supposed to happen — but did! Events like these remain hidden because those they happen to are afraid to speak out of a natural reluctance to have their sincerity or sanity questioned. Societies define their own realities and those who challenge them do so at their own peril. The moral seems to be that where these kinds of events are concerned, ignorance is the best policy. Ignorance, of course, will not stop people from having strange, inexplicable experiences. Mysterious stuff will continue to fall out of the sky. People will continue to have bizarre UFO encounters. Little men, monsters, talking mongooses and invisible presences won't stop their determined trespassing into our reality. While most of the world turns a deaf ear to these dimensions of experience, FATE has been listening. And a great number of people have shared their stories with FATE. You are about to read the strangest of them, the reports that represent the greatest challenge to science, reason and understanding. What you will find here, in The World's Strangest True Stories, is nothing less than a full, unobstructed view of these other realities, tantalizing glimpses of things that don't belong here, of worlds not our own...

    Containing many "lost" pieces, it is a compendium of suspense from the pulp magazines of the '20s to his last efforts in the '70s. Fine.

    It’s Halloween in Abbott Cove, and Grandma Grant is keen to win the pumpkin pie competition. In fact she’s so eager to win, Harper suspects her grandmother may have used magic to enhance her entry. Already concerned and on the lookout for odd signs of magic, Harper’s stress levels shoot through the roof when someone is poisoned during the competition. Fearing her grandmother may be the number one suspect, Harper gets to work, determined to solve the mystery of the poisoned pumpkin pie. Note: this is a 15,000 word short set in the Harper Grant universe. This story was first published in the Witch or Treat Anthology.