Struggling with writer’s block and a tight deadline for his new novel, David Pragmore suggests a retreat away from Hartford to his wife, Susan, in order to find fresh inspiration. The publishers want David’s new book to shine in the horror genre, so when David reads about the odd manor with a haunted past, it seems like the perfect place to recapture his muse. But David and Susan quickly discover that some stories aren’t meant to be told.The Haunting of Saxton MansionAuthor Rob Hooper and his wife, Janet, are looking for a quiet place to live. The grandiose, isolated Victorian-style relic is everything they could want. A mysterious, widowed owner offers them a deal that can’t be passed up. But they quickly discover that some things are too good to be true.

    One particular summer, young Beau follows his cousin Sumter into a hidden shack in the woods—and christens this new clubhouse "Neverland."Neverland has a secret history, unknown to the children...The rundown shack in the woods is the key to an age-old mystery, a place forbidden to all. But Sumter and his cousins gather in its dusty shadows to escape the tensions at their grandmother's house. Neverland becomes the place where children begin to worship a creature of shadows, which Sumter calls "Lucy."All gods demand sacrifice...It begins with small sacrifices, little games, strange imaginings. While Sumter's games spiral out of control, twisting from the mysterious to the macabre, a nightmarish presence rises among the straggly trees beyond the bluffs overlooking the sea.And when Neverland itself is threatened with destruction, the children's games take on a horrifying reality—and Gull Island becomes a place of unrelenting terror.

    

    Thanks to vivid tales from the locals, no one has breached the shores of the mysterious island or entered the abandoned castle that is its centerpiece in recent memory. But once inside, Alexa discovers another mystery—the portrait of a dark and brooding nobleman.With a single touch, Alexa unleashes a phantom who has been trapped within the canvas for over two hundred years.Contained by a gypsy curse, Damon Forsyth has had centuries to think of nothing but revenge and retribution until intense desire draws the beautiful Alexa to his lair. Though free of the painting, he is still bound to the castle. Only by using the dark magic that enslaves him can he initiate a game of seduction that will end with his freedom—and her undoing.Unable to resist, Alexa surrenders to Damon’s ghostly touch. But will she thwart the magic that holds Damon in thrall…or sacrifice her own mortality in the name of love?

    13:55 EST makes - she counts on her fingers - about 6pm in Berlin. He'll be on his way home. Alice settles into the armchair and dials the number...If Alice hadn't bumped into Will then she would probably never have phoned that afternoon. And if Alice hadn't called, then Michael, poor Michael, might still be alive today...In a digital age of world-spanning communications and easy travel these stories explore how interconnected and yet fragmented our lives have become, and how - no matter where we live or what we do, no matter how different our lifestyles - the universal desires for love and happiness draw us ever onward.Both short story collection and novel, 13:55 Eastern Standard Time finds Nick Alexander at his best. Sometimes disturbing, sometimes funny, these are stories of lives that cross and collide in life-ending drama, or simply run peacefully alongside for a few hours - lives filled with characters who are attracted and repelled, hopeless and yet inspired. Narrated in Alexander's trademark tense prose, these interwoven stories explore the ripples emanating from our every act, ripples that alter distant destinies, and occasionally bounce back, catching us from behind to haunt or inspire.13:55 Eastern Standard Time repeats the success of Alexander's first novel, 50 Reasons to Say Goodbye because again, as with life itself, the whole is mysteriously greater than the sum of the parts.

    . .  A boy literally disappears from Main Street.  A security camera captures the moment of his instant, inexplicable vanishing. An audacious bank robbery goes seriously wrong: four cops are gunned down; a TV news helicopter is shot and spins crazily out of the sky, triggering a disastrous cascade of events that ricochet across twenty different lives over the course of just thirty-six hours.Nick Kavanaugh, a cop with a dark side, investigates. Soon he and his wife, Kate, a distinguished lawyer from an old Niceville family, find themselves struggling to make sense not only of the disappearance and the robbery but also of a shadow world, where time has a different rhythm and where justice is elusive.  . . .Something is wrong in Niceville, where evil lives far longer than men do.Compulsively readable, and populated with characters who leap off the page, Niceville will draw you in, excite you, amaze you, horrify you, and, when it finally lets you go, make you sorry you have to leave.Read the first thirty-five pages.  Find out why Harlan Coben calls Carsten Stroud the master of “the nerve-jangling thrill ride.”

    The hideous, unstoppable creation of man's power gone mad.The other is not natural at all. And it makes the first look like a child's play.

    This is the epicenter of the outbreak, where your average novel doesn’t dare venture. This is Noah Britton fighting his way through the heart of the zombie freakin’ apocalypse. The high school is on lockdown but the infection has already invaded its borders. It’s too late. Screams echo through the halls, blood stains the lockers, the dead don’t die for long. Mutilated, half eaten corpses wander the halls in search of the living. These aren’t your normal slow moving corpses that trudge along hoping for victims. No. They run faster. Fight harder. Know no pain. Show no weakness. Offer no reprieve. Noah must make the ultimate sacrifice and decide who to save and who to leave behind. What ranks higher in these desperate times; friendship or strategy? Can old rivals put aside their differences and work together for the greater good or will human emotions lead to the end of the world as we know it? The edge of your seat intensity never dies as Noah, his neurotic bus driver, his best friends, his worst enemies, the girl he likes, the girl he hates or loves or who the hell even knows anymore and a power hungry rival desperate for control all try to co-inhabit a school bus in search of a safe haven that may no longer exist. Gruesome. Intense. Graphic and Brutally violent. Yet emotionally driven with enough heart to sustain a dying species taken off life support. The characters tear themselves from the pages, forcing their way into your heart, demanding you continue when it all gets to be too much. This is hope. This is strength. This is the end. And it’s only the beginning.

    After abandoning his new home as a lost cause, he's caught up in the poker craze and moves to Atlantic City with a new dream of "playing poker for a living", but soon finds himself stuck in a dizzying spell of bad luck at the card tables. Or maybe he just sucks at poker, like everybody else. His money all gone, and finding that it's actually difficult to drink oneself to death at 1am, he's suddenly offered a chance to make his money back, and then some, by running an underground poker game in New York City. Once in New York, Tim finds himself on the road to recovery and making real money for the first time—but at what cost? We Run Bad offers an authentic and darkly comic look at underground poker culture, while serving up an indictment of post-recession America. Here, every game is rigged, and the only way to come out ahead is to be the one doing the rigging.

    Colin was so shy; Roy was so popular. Colin was nervous around girls; Roy was a ladies’ man. Colin was fascinated by Roy — and Roy was fascinated with death. Then one day Roy asked his timid friend, “You ever killed anything?” And from that moment on, the two were bound together in a game too terrifying to imagine… and too irresistible to stop.Includes an afterword by the author.