But as she forms an unlikely connection with her abductor, Luke, her adventure takes a strange turn.There is nothing magical about growing up in a mountainside castle, when it’s your prison. Kaya’s ruthless and powerful father keeps her under lock and key, watched every second of the day–and Kaya’s not really sure why. She’s just a normal girl…no one special. She doesn’t understand her father’s obsession with her safety – until she is kidnapped. Dragged through a brutal wilderness, Kaya’s captor shows her the devastating truth, and even though he has dark secrets of his own, she is inexplicably drawn to him–when the stars are in your eyes, sometimes the line between right and wrong is blurred. Passion obliterates common sense. Love... makes you reckless. As Kaya's father’s men and her devoted bodyguard scour the woods to find her, she wonders if staying in the arms of her abductor is the safer place to be. At least, that’s what her heart is saying—her head is saying run… Dangerously passionate and darkly romantic, SERENADE is a page-turning thriller and seductive love story.

    All her life she's been cursed-- every man she's ever kissed has turned into a toad. Love isn't likely to come her way, she knows.If that weren't a big enough problem, her 'curse' has come to the attention of the Council of Magic and she may never be able to use her powers.Enter the perfect man-- handsome, sweet, and loves food just as much as Cindy does. It would seem to be a match made in Heaven, or is it?Cindy isn't the only one keeping secrets.With toads, cupcakes, romance, magic and ice cream, life never has time to get dull!

    But behind closed doors, she's suffering.She has a life many women would kill for, complete with two healthy young children and a doting husband who puts her every want and need above his own. Her happy family is the envy of friends and neighbors alike.Looks can be quite deceiving. Layla's husband is in big, life-altering trouble and will soon be headed to federal prison. No one knows. Layla is desperate to keep it that way.Can she withstand the pressure? Will her marriage survive? And how will she hold true to her own sense of right and wrong? Her Broken Trust is the eighth book in the Rosemary Run Series featuring the women of a California town who face the darkness hiding beneath their community’s picturesque facade.

    But a shadow falls over her return one early October morning when a sinister house miraculously appears in the center of the city, sparking a media frenzy that attracts attention nationwide.Soon after the newspapers label it, "The House that Fell from the Sky," Scarlett's childhood friend Hannah becomes obsessed with the idea that the house holds the key to discovering whether there really is life after death. Undeterred by her friends' numerous warnings, Hannah becomes increasingly consumed with the desire to enter the house, convinced it would allow her to reconnect with her recently deceased mother.Despite a series of escalating events suggesting that the house may be more dangerous than anyone ever thought possible, a privately owned company seizes control of the property and hosts a lottery to lure the city's residents, promising the winners a large cash reward if they dare to enter the house.To Scarlett's horror, Hannah uses her vast wealth to secure a spot among the winners to gain access to the house. Now, it's up to Scarlett, her older brother Tommy, and her friend Jackson to face their fears and journey into a place where nothing is ever quite as it seems, and decide if they can help a friend in need, or if Hannah truly is lost.

    I wouldn't know about that. I see only the violently slain. They could be victims of hit-and-run, innocents caught in cross-fire, the murdered. I've come to terms with that. In fact, I've made a career out of it. They whisper to me and they never, ever, forget the face of their killer. They aren't the only supernatural things I see. No, they're not vampires, werewolves or fae - those things don't exist. We live side by side with what some call the Otherworldy. That's too much of a mouthful for me. I call them demons. If you saw them as I do you'd know why. Right now I'm trying to find a missing boy whose mother was murdered. Or was she murdered? To further complicate the case, Clarion PD gave me a partner I would rather shoot than work with. I can't tell them he's a demon. They'd think I'm crazy. I'm Tiff Banks. Welcome to my world. Whisperings. Parnormal mystery with a splash of humor and dash of romance.

    It’s been seventeen years, and though desperate to start a new life with her fiancé, Hannah is compelled to question the events of her last summer at Brackenhill.When a human bone is found near the estate, Hannah is convinced it belongs to her long-lost sister. She launches her own investigation into that magical summer that ended in a nightmare. As strange happenings plague the castle, Hannah uncovers disturbing details about the past and startling realizations about her own repressed childhood memories.Fueled by guilt over her sister’s vanishing, Hannah becomes obsessed with discovering what happened all those years ago, but by the time Hannah realizes some mysteries are best left buried, it’s too late to stop digging. Overwhelmed by what she has exposed, Hannah isn’t sure her new life can survive her old ghosts.

    Empty tents flap in the breeze, but there’s no sign of the carnies. For a group of close friends, the festivities have just begun. A masked figure haunts Trevor Sheevis in every reflection. Cole Reagor’s dream of being a stand-up comedian suddenly isn’t so funny, and Tommy Gallaghan’s cell phone makes ominous threats. At school, Angela Rayburn is smiling at Mathew Potts, and for Ashley Gifford, the monster he fears most sleeps under his very same roof. When their friend, Steven Delhomme, turns up missing, their worst fears come true. The smell of autumn leaves is in the air, the first pumpkins are aglow, and the crows are gathering in the cornfields. The moon is full, and something is visible beyond the veil between the living and the dead calling itself the Scarecrow King. As Halloween approaches, the dead exchange places with the living, and the All Hallows Eve Midnight Traveling Spook Show opens its doors. In Hill Haven Creeps, every fear will come to life, and every dream will turn into a nightmare. But will Halloween will have the final say? Or is something more ominous on the night wind?

    Monsters murdered my parents when I was eight. Turns out my folks were paranormal investigators and Hell always settles its debts. Naturally I decided to join the family business. For two decades I've studied the occult and traveled the world hunting nightmares. Vampires. Shifters. Demons. Wraiths. I've faced them all. But my greatest challenge still lay ahead... From the moment Celeste stepped into my office, I knew she was in trouble. Black magic trouble. Her father had promised her soul to a powerful demon on the day she was born. Now, twenty-one years later, the forces of darkness were gathering to collect their long-awaited prize. Guess who's about to pick a fight with the Devil himself?

    When several bystanders died in their mansion, the house was sealed. After nearly a century of rumors and haunted stories, the mansion will be opened for a live TV event, allowing five contestants to spend one night and win their share of a million dollars.The contestants: a psychic, a high-tech ghost hunter, a Hollywood scream queen, a local woman, and a paranormal skeptic named Harlan Holt fuel excitement as each tries to solve the mystery. Upon entering the journal of the family patriarch, Vinton Drake is discovered, illuminating the puzzle, rooted all the way back to Vinton’s service as a medic in WWI when he first met the magician.Departing from the familiar haunted house tale, this story explores the very nature of belief in the supernatural with consequences more frightening than any ghost story. Intensity soars when the contestants discover their lives, and thousands more, are in genuine peril. Is the mansion haunted? What fate befell Malvern and the Drake family? And will the contestants uncover the truth in time to save themselves…One Night in Drake Mansion is the first book in Whitaker's Skeptic Detective Series.

    The scrappy lead columnist for the Chicago Journal normally writes about politics, and, rather than shying away from fights, she tends to pick them, but every once in a while, Deuce’s search for a good story brings her face to face with more trouble than she was really looking for. In Award-winning journalist Jean Heller’s first action-packed mystery featuring the intrepid sleuth, Deuce learns in short order that if you mess with organized crime, you have to be tough—and you’d better be as much detective as reporter. The second volume finds Deuce on the wrong side of the NSA, the FBI and the CIA. At a minimum. Exhausted by these two white-knuckle investigations in one year, Deuce is content to focus on her column until she gains information that could help catch the relentless arsonist whose Burning Rage is consuming Chicago. Fans of hard-boiled female protagonists should hang onto their fedoras-- this one’s an action-packed extravaganza! "Good reporters do not always good novelists make, but Jean Heller is both." -- The Boston Sunday Globe "Superb ... It reads like a multimillion-dollar movie thriller." -- St. Louis Post-Dispatch “Deuce … finds dead-ends and danger at every turn. Part journalism procedural, part character study, THE SOMEDAY FILE is a humdinger of a mystery, the first of a welcome new series.” --Paul Levine, author of Bum Rap THE SOMEDAY FILE Deuce uncovers a series of crimes committed over nearly six decades, and, as her human interest story morphs into a hard-boiled, action-packed mystery, she finds herself dead center in a storm of threats and reprisals from the mob. Fortunately, she has many allies, but at least one of them, she suspects, is hiding a secret–- corruption? Murder? The veteran reporter knows: if you’re talking Chicago crime scene—it’s probably both. THE HUNTING GROUND The grisly discovery of a human bone while Deuce is out for a hike with handsome arson investigator Mark Hearst leads to the unearthing of a vast burial field, a human trafficking ring, and international intrigue. The pull-no-punches columnist-- and meticulous detective-- keeps turning up information, but the Journal’s lawyer appears daily, bringing warnings about “national security.” What, Deuce seethes, could be a greater matter of national security than the safety of the city’s children, who are being kidnapped and murdered? BURNING RAGE Whole blocks of Chicago real estate are falling to an arsonist, but no one knows why and everyone suspects the worst – terrorism. But no terrorist group has claimed the mayhem. From the moment she hears the earliest details of the first fire, her detective-instincts say the pieces don’t fit, and every other instinct tells the hard-hitting reporter she can’t walk away from the story – even though she knows she’ll regret it. WHO WILL LIKE IT: Fans of Chicago private investigators VI Warshawski and Libby Fischer Hellman’s Georgia Davis, get-the-story-or-die reporters like Hank Philippi Ryan’s Jane Rylan

    And that was only this morning. This afternoon I’m going to take on a fallen angel. So, if you need the impossible done and you have nowhere else to turn, call me. Sholto ‘Hex’ Gunn, warrior mage for hire. But bear in mind, the best don’t come cheap and I don’t do no charity work. Don’t insult me by asking for a discount.”A group of dark Mages are looking to muscle in on New York. They reckon it’s about time that darkness ruled.But they didn’t take into account that Hex might disagree.The last thing that you wanna do is upset Hex in his home town because he just might decide to start kicking butt and taking names … and one of those names just might be yours!Sholto ‘Hex’ Gunn – he’s our kind of trouble!

    . . Recently settled in Hode’s Hill, Pennsylvania, Maya Sinclair is enthralled by the town’s folklore, especially the legend about a centuries-old monster. A devil-like creature with uncanny abilities responsible for several horrific murders, the Fiend has evolved into the stuff of urban myth. But the past lives again when Maya witnesses an assault during the annual “Fiend Fest.” The victim is developer Leland Hode, patriarch of the town’s most powerful family, and he was attacked by someone dressed like the Fiend.    Compelled to discover who is behind the attack and why, Maya uncovers a shortlist of enemies of the Hode clan. The mystery deepens when she finds the journal of a late nineteenth-century spiritualist who once lived in Maya’s house—a woman whose ghost may still linger. Known as the Blue Lady of Hode’s Hill due to a genetic condition, Lucinda Glass vanished without a trace and was believed to be one of the Fiend’s tragic victims. The disappearance of a young couple, combined with more sightings of the monster, trigger Maya to join forces with Leland’s son Collin. But the closer she gets to the truth, the closer she comes to a hidden world of twisted secrets, insanity, and evil that refuses to die . . .

    David Hobbs, vacationing with his wife Miriam, inadvertently stumbles upon a small cloth 'keepsake' bag and a broken tooth. A human tooth. Miriam begs David to hand the bag and tooth over to park officials, but he ignores his wife's pleas and secretly keeps the 'harmless' items. The action opens a doorway that had been closed for nearly a hundred years and unleashes hell on earth, or at least hell in the lives of David and Miriam.Following the brutal murder of his best friend in Denver, and an aborted attack on his oldest son, David desperately seeks to understand why a mysterious teenage girl has chosen to terrorize him and the males closest to him. To prevent further devastation to his family and end the wanton bloodshed, he returns to the enchanted hills of eastern Tennessee, where a terrible truth awaits discovery...one that forces him to face the consequences for the unpaid sins of his ancestors.

     A demon’s life is never easy. Join Xoe as she’s thrown to the wolves, the werewolves that is. As if witches, human sacrifices, and other demons weren’t enough to deal with, Xoe must struggle to rein in her powers before she sets something more important than a washing machine on fire. If she can’t, her whole life might go up in flames.

    Welcome to Kilhaven. Rookie Officer Norman Green is a small-town human living in a big city of paranormal beings. Fresh out of the Kilhaven Police Academy, he’s got a lot to learn about the violent and filthy side of law enforcement. Luckily, Green has field training officer Heather Valance to show him how things are done. And sometimes how they should never be done. She may not always play by the rules, but what Officer Valance lacks in decorum, she makes up for with being one terrifying werewolf bitch. Which is great when things go south in a heavily shapeshifter sector. But it’s not so great when it comes to Green’s looming board review that will determine whether he stays or goes after his probationary period. As long as Green can win over Valance—and not get himself or anyone else killed—he just might make it through his rookie year …If you’re hungry for a heaping pile of police procedural with a sloppy side of paranormal creatures and a sprinkle of vulgar jokes, buy Shift Work to satisfy your unhealthy cravings.