Literary Fiction

by Books By Shana E.

**1ST SERIES OF THE "WOLF PACK" BOOK SAGA BY SHANA E.** > *"The origins story on how it all began…"* Once Blue Moon princesses. ***Now?*** **Captured. Sold. Bought.** That's their new reality after the hive rips apart their pack, killing most, enslaving others and imprisoning their parents. *What happens when two omegas, purchased to be servant girls, become mates to the very hive masters who now own them?* Two cousins. Two fated bonds. Follow the story of Sienna and Anne Marie Rightfield. While one is fated to the region’s formidable Beta Prince, Marcus Walker, the other finds herself bound to the most powerful man in the hive: Dr. Patrick Greyson, the Wolf King himself. In a twisted game of love and power they use and abuse their submissiveness to satisfy their own lustful desires. Yet genuine feelings have emerged over the years, which threatens to upend their secret lives. In a forbidden *"Alpha-Beta-Omega"* affair, their unlawful love becomes impossible to ignore by the council of wolves. Spanning 8-episodic installments (*11-chapters each*), this *on-going* erotic saga delivers a slow-burn romance that ignites into a wildfire, lethal power struggles, and a concealed magical realm that takes a heavy toll on the Rightfield girls. If you crave pack dynamics, forced proximity, and strong female leads, this series is your new addiction. Dive into a forbidden, provocative journey. - **Genre:** Adult Paranormal Shifter Romance (Erotic) - **Format:** Episodic Series (Bite-sized high heat) - **Themes:** Age Gap, Enemies to Lovers, Fated Mates, Possessive Alpha, Loyal Beta. - **Creatures:** Werewolves, Vampires, Witches. - **Vibe:** Steamy, fast-paced, high spice werewolf novel with bite.   **Steamy. Brutal. Unforgettable** **(*An erotic werewolf novel with bite*)**

by Marcus Letterman

Every night, Ray sees the three men he couldn’t save when he was an Army medic. Nine years later they look just as he remembers them. Inspired by Colin Hay’s “Overkill,” originally recorded by Men at Work, this short story began with a question: What if the ghosts keeping you awake wanted you to get some rest?

by John Clayton Hale

I was a big Tom Clancy fan back in the day and I read everything he published. I started writing AR2 when I was twenty five and it is loosely based in the vein of a Clancy book. Donovan Carson was the first character I ever created, a journalist for the Washington Post. I have been obsessed with the newspaper business since writing for my small town newspaper thirty years ago. Carson's Editor, Andrew Lloyd, is loosely based on one of my old editors.  The idea of the story was pretty far fetched back then. There were no American billionaires and no one had attempted to overthrow the government...at least not seriously. A lot has changed since then and the concept is outdated, but I still love my story, no matter how unpolished and raw.

by Conner Spindle

Sarah Mitchell has spent years selling an illusion of happiness beneath the neon lights of a Dallas strip club. Estranged from her family and separated from her young daughter, she has convinced herself that the life she's living is the only one she deserves. Daniel Reyes makes his living destroying lives. A drug dealer whose criminal enterprise has provided everything money can buy, Daniel has learned to bury his conscience beneath excuses, expensive possessions, and the belief that everyone makes their own choices. But when a nineteen-year-old customer dies from an overdose, the guilt becomes impossible to ignore. Hundreds of miles apart in their own understanding of the world, two broken people experience something neither can explain. A mysterious stranger appears to each of them. He knows their darkest secrets, their deepest regrets, and the moments of their lives no one else could possibly know. Time seems to stand still in his presence. And just as suddenly as he appears, he vanishes. Neither knows who he is. Neither understands why he came. And when they attempt to explain what happened, no one believes them. As Sarah and Daniel independently search for answers, they discover an astonishing possibility: the man they encountered may have been Jesus Christ. But their greatest struggle isn't convincing themselves that the encounter was real. It's convincing a world—including many within the Church—that two people with their pasts could possibly have been chosen for something extraordinary. Their separate journeys eventually bring them together, setting in motion a movement neither could have imagined. What begins with two unlikely believers sharing their experiences grows into an international ministry reaching thousands of people who have long believed themselves beyond forgiveness. But as their influence grows, so does the opposition. Daniel's criminal past threatens everything they've built. Sarah's relationship with her daughter hangs in the balance. Religious leaders question their legitimacy, former associates seek to exploit them, and the pressures of fame threaten to turn their message into something neither intended. They must confront a question that will define the rest of their lives: Were they chosen because they were worthy—or because nobody believed they could be? The Unworthy is a story of grace, forgiveness, second chances, and the extraordinary possibility that the people society has given up on may be the very people God calls to change the world.

by Wren Bennett

Clara Lin is surviving on sheer grit. Balancing a grueling day job as a junior designer with late-night freelance UI audits at a 24-hour Chicago diner, she is fiercely determined to pay off her family's lingering debts and launch her own independent design studio. She doesn't have time for distractions, and she certainly doesn't rely on anyone else. Enter Julian Vance—a quiet, attentive regular who shares late-night coffee, offers razor-sharp code fixes, and hands her his umbrella during a torrential downpour. To Clara, he’s simply "Julian," a grounded engineer who understands the exhausting grind of building a life from scratch. What Clara doesn't know is that Julian is actually Julian Vance, the multi-billion-dollar CEO of Vance Dynamics. And he fell for her long before he ever knew her last name. When Julian steps in behind the scenes to protect Clara from corporate predators and ruthless corporate buyouts, his hidden identity is exposed. Feeling manipulated and terrified of losing her hard-earned autonomy, Clara walks away, determined to prove she can stand alone. But when a malicious corporate conspiracy targets both Julian's company and Clara's growing studio, they are thrust into a high-stakes battle where corporate betrayal threatens to destroy everything they've built. Spanning a journey of deep emotional growth, unspoken sacrifice, and hard-won trust, ***Unscripted Gravity*** is a slow-burn contemporary romance about a woman fighting for her independence, a man who falls first, and the powerful realization that true strength isn't about standing alone—it's about finding someone worth letting in.

by D.W. Nielson

by Juan Laborde

An irreverent traveler. A thousand secrets. A lifetime that defies history. From candlelit taverns and royal courts to distant lands and forgotten civilizations, a mysterious wanderer recounts his extraordinary adventures across the centuries. With sharp humor, unsettling revelations, and little respect for authority, The Outcast challenges kings, priests, merchants, and anyone who claims to possess the truth. **Memories, heresies, and other inconvenient truths.**

by Sparkle D.S.

Jinx learned to smile before she learned to spell — and smiling became the skill that kept her safe. Through a quiet house, a mother who laughed for everyone else's children, a man who promised to protect her and didn't, and a brother who heard her and did nothing, she bottled everything up so well the world called it strength. Then came one real year with her mother, and the best friend who never stopped coming back. Telling him everything, all the way through, cracked open thirty years of silence. She isn't fixed. But all the pieces are there — and they're being held together now.

by Mindi

by Sparkle D.S.

Six prison bids. One dying mother. And a world that never stopped swinging. Starla walks out of the gates at twenty-six with a mesh property bag, two notebooks, and nothing else — straight into a hospice room, where she holds her mother Elena's hand for six months and watches the only person who ever loved her unconditionally slip away. Grief makes easy prey. Marcus finds her in the silence that follows — soft voice, warm meals, a house that promises safety. Two and a half years later, Starla walks out of that house with bruises hidden under her clothes and a restraining order in her hand, swearing no one will ever lock her in a corner again. She rebuilds the slow way: two years of night shifts under the golden arches, a studio apartment with her own lock on the door, a crew that feels like family. Then a manager with a clipboard squeezes her hours away, and the ground gives out all over again — eviction, neon streets, and a fast, dangerous blur she'd sworn she was done with. That's when Cole walks back into her life, ten years after she first let him go. Now Starla is homeless, carless, and sleeping on concrete — and her eight-year-old daughter, Lily, is waiting on a safe porch across town. To bring her baby home, Starla has to do the one thing the world says people like her can't: build something real out of nothing, one flipped dollar at a time. Bleeding Through Concrete is a raw, unflinching novella about survival, second chances, and a mother who refuses to stay down — no matter how many times the concrete cracks beneath her, she bleeds through it, and she blooms anyway.

by Warren C Daniels Jr.

Poetry and Short Stories for the Perpetually Bored By Warren C. Daniels Jr. Warren C. Daniels Jr.’s debut collection is a fearless blend of raw poetry and surreal short fiction that speaks directly to the human condition. These are not polished fantasies or lighthearted diversions; they are confessions, fragments, and stories pulled from the deepest corners of experience. The poetry ranges from stark, minimal meditations to sprawling lyrical pieces, each written with an honesty that refuses to look away from pain. In poems like Her Heart of Madness and The Insolvable, Daniels captures the intimate chaos of trauma and the silent endurance of survival. In others, such as Justice?! and Spit and Rage, he confronts the injustices of systemic racism, poverty, and corporate greed, connecting personal wounds to wider social scars. The short stories push these themes into dreamlike narratives. In Wonder, nightmares bleed into reality, pulling readers into a surreal landscape of fear and longing. In Tuesday: Sometime in June, the line between sanity and delusion dissolves, leaving behind an unsettling portrait of a mind under siege. Each story is vivid, hallucinatory, and deeply human. What unites both the poetry and the stories is a refusal to turn away. Daniels does not romanticize trauma, but he does recognize its weight and its echoes. His writing is a hand extended in the dark — not to rescue, but to remind readers that they are not alone in their silence. More than a debut, this is an act of solidarity. Daniels writes for those who have been told they are broken, for those who have been silenced, and for those who wonder if their struggles matter. His message is clear: you matter, and your story deserves to be heard. For fans of Sylvia Plath, Ocean Vuong, Charles Bukowski, or Anne Sexton, Poetry and Short Stories for the Perpetually Bored offers a contemporary voice that is unflinching and necessary. It is a book for anyone who seeks words that heal by naming the hurt, and stories that haunt because they are true. Step into this collection, and find not just poetry and stories, but survival made visible.

by Marilyn Q

Sometimes the greatest Christmas gift isn't found beneath the tree. It's finding someone who loves you just the way you are. Deep in the snowy wonderland of Pineberry Woods lives Pickle, an adorable little skunk with a crooked white stripe and one very big wish—to find someone who will love him despite being different. While the other animals avoid him, Pickle dreams of warm hugs, Christmas magic, and a family to call his own. So he writes a heartfelt letter to Santa, asking for just one thing: a child who won't run away. Meanwhile, a lonely little girl named Becca makes a Christmas wish of her own. She doesn't want toys or fancy presents. She wants a special friend—someone who needs her as much as she needs them. When their wishes find their way to the North Pole, Santa and his elves discover that sometimes the most magical Christmas presents come in the most unexpected packages! Filled with beautiful illustrations, holiday wonder, tender moments, and a little Christmas mischief, Pickle's Christmas Wish is a heartwarming adventure about friendship, kindness, acceptance, and the joy of belonging. Perfect for family read-alouds, bedtime stories, and creating treasured Christmas memories. This Christmas, discover how one little skunk with a very big heart learns that being different can be the most wonderful gift of all.

by Isaac Y Brooks

**One text message. One spiritual catastrophe. Two hundred and eighty-eight bundles of sage. And one very, very tired boyfriend.** Daniel thought dating Akira, a gorgeous visual kei twink with immaculate eyeliner and a flair for the dramatic, would be relatively normal. He was wrong. When a conversation with an acquaintance leaves Akira convinced that his spiritual cultivation has regressed and his very soul is shivering, Daniel makes the obvious suggestion: block the guy and move on. Unfortunately, Akira is a Sagittarius, Mercury is retrograde in Scorpio, and blocking someone is apparently a primitive response to a sophisticated metaphysical emergency. Enter Master Nishihama, a specialist in visual kei twink spiritual crises, who prescribes a thirty-five-and-a-half-hour purification retreat in a rustic mountain cabin. The shopping list includes aquamarine crystals, living lavender plants, shamanic rugs, unfiltered seawater, and a horse to transport their profoundly unimpressed cat, Mochi. Then there are the scallops. Nobody knows why there are scallops. As Daniel struggles to procure increasingly inexplicable supplies, his boyfriend's spiritual emergency attracts a suspiciously helpful mountain lion, a culinary experiment involving exactly one-tenth of a potato, and the possibility that the entire universe has personally declared war on their household. Daniel loves Akira. He really does. But love has its limits, particularly when the grocery budget has been sacrificed to the cosmos and nobody can explain what the scallop tears are for. **My Vkei Twink Boyfriend Is Having a Spiritual Crisis** is an absurdist relationship comedy about supernatural nonsense, excessive sincerity, and the exhausting logistics of loving someone whose soul shivers at the slightest inconvenience. Sometimes love conquers all. Sometimes you just have to triple the sage.

by Sterling Ducker

## ***SOME RECORDS SHOULD NEVER BE FOUND.*** ##  ***SOME TRUTHS SHOULD NEVER BE UNCOVERED.***  **Beneath the streets of Ravenfall lies a world of forgotten, a vast network of tunnels, roots, and ancient passageways that connect far more than the town that could ever imagine.**  **As Soren and his friends dig deeper, they discover that the mysteries of Ravenfall are not buried- they are archived. Hidden within forgotten records, altered documents, and long-silenced history are clues that link the town to something far older than anyone suspected.**  **But the deeper they go, the more they realize the real danger isn't just what they find...it's who has been watching them find it.**  ***The Threads Of The Archive* pulls them into a web of secrets , lies, and ancient power, where the past is alive, the records move, and nothing is truly lost- only hidden.**  ***Some archives are written in ink. Others are written in roots.***

by John Clayton Hale

Jasmine and her brothers are on a quest to their promised land to escape poverty and an abusive father. They are young and naïve to the sentiment of how some people feel for them in their new adopted country of the United States. They find out when Jasmine is sexually assaulted by the truck driver who smuggled them across the border. The young Mexicans make it to their promised land, but not without wounds and scars. Their first meal on American soil is at a truck stop where they meet Hugh and Patsy Lohan, dairy farmers from a small Texas town. The Lohan’s take them in and give them work and a home. Jasmine finds out she’s pregnant and her brothers meet Johnny and Frankie, two hired hands on the farm who hate Mexicans. What happens is a roller coaster of emotions and sacrifice. 'Jasmine’s Rosary Beads' is a timely story of good and evil. It is not an immigration story; it is an American story.

by Lucian Grimm

by L.W. GREGSON

When the Shadow Dragon Umbraxus awakens in the Dragon's Teeth Mountains, its darkness begins to consume the realm of Eldoria. Crops wither, villages vanish, and those who face the dragon return with shattered minds. The wizard Zanatan knows armies and conventional magic are useless, so he summons his old friend Mograthna Ironhide, a dwarf paladin, to revive the Bastion of Sanity, a legendary order disbanded for centuries. After Umbraxus strikes Castle Eldoria and destroys much of its defense, Zanatan and Mograthna recruit a new, mismatched fellowship: the pink-haired gnome wizard Gydge and her flirtatious apprentice Igmar, the elven druid Fiorilise and scout Jarsali, the cynical thief Nemoc, the priest Alaric, and Emmin, an ancient elven priestess. Thousands of refugees soon gather at Zanatan's tower, and the Bastion turns them into a movement of hope, using Gydge and Igmar's portal magic to build supply lines and hidden sanctuaries. Zanatan secretly seeks help from the Arch-Mages of the Forgotten Realm, who refuse to fight but offer knowledge and a dangerous artifact. As shadow creatures and a corrupted Herald, once a hero of the first Bastion, attack the Long Wood, the group forges itself into a true team. Learning the dragon's origins, they discover Umbraxus is not simply a monster: it is a wound born from the Arch-Mages' own ascension, and its destruction may unravel the foundations of magic. When Umbraxus finally breaks through Zanatan's tower, Mograthna sacrifices herself to shield her friends, leaving the survivors grieving but resolved. Dreamwillow, daughter of Zanatan and Emmin, may be the key to a binding ritual that could cost her everything. With the Bastion wounded and the shadow already inside their hearts, they must choose between final confrontation and healing the sorrow at the dragon's core.

by L.W. GREGSON

by Isaac Y Brooks

# TWIN PEAKS TWINK THROUPLE TROUBLES *An Ethically Sourced Romantic Disaster* Love is complicated. Love in San Francisco is expensive. And love in a throuple where everyone has a sustainability manifesto is a full-blown municipal emergency. Meet Gaius, Auberge, and Ruslan: three men, one relationship, and absolutely no ability to let anything go. A questionable avocado becomes an ethical crisis. A twenty-third birthday requires a memorial service for lost cheekbones. Fine lines are diagnosed as Stage Four Crow’s Feet. A prescription medication triggers an existential reckoning with the porcine industrial complex. And meeting the parents? That means navigating Sedona crystal evangelists, Russian borscht diplomacy, and a Texas barbecue patriarch whose Republican politics nearly bring the entire relationship to its knees. Naturally, the solution to every problem is a conference, a committee, or a resolution circle nobody asked for. But when these three attempt to plan a wedding that is emotionally sustainable, ethically sourced, and liberated from the wedding-industrial complex, they discover that even true love has its limits—and that sometimes the most radical act of all is eating the damn cake. Set amid the fog, fabulousness, and occasional existential collapse of San Francisco’s Twin Peaks, *Twin Peaks Twink Throuple Troubles* is a wildly camp, gloriously absurd comedy about queer love, performative virtue, family dysfunction, and the exhausting business of trying to be a good person in a world where even your sandwich might have questionable origins. **Three men. One throuple. Zero ethically uncomplicated avocados.** Some relationships need couples therapy. These three need a city permit.

by John Clayton Hale

The new Nashville is big, shiny and fun. It's called Nashvegas for a reason. Thousands of tourists, and their money, descend on downtown and Broadway every night. Big money brings big opportunities, for everyone, but there is a dark side to the party buses, rooftop bars and bachelorette parties. The underbelly of Music City has always been cold, harsh and unforgiving. It's a barren wasteland of heartbreak, crushed dreams and unanswered prayers. The men of the old Gulf Coast Dixie Mafia have died out. In their place has risen a new type of southern criminal organization and they have made the Athens of the South their home. Young, sophisticated and savvy. They are entrenched like a malignant tumor, preying on innocent, gullible tourists and their families back home. Kidnapping, ransoms, trafficking, drugs and murder. 'Southern Gotham' is a dark story of the not so pretty world of Country Music USA and one woman's crusade to bring down the new Dixie Mafia.

by Donald N Walker

It is 4:40 a.m. on a Tuesday in September when Marianne Sauer packs twelve sandwiches and tells her son to watch the header. By afternoon the header is still running and the boy is not. What follows is not a breakdown. It is a sequence. An engineering report. A denial letter that is true in every sentence. A co-op notice. A town hall where the water for a substation costs forty-one thousand dollars and a farm family’s useful life is treated as a line item. A cousin who takes a job with the company that needs the ground. A court order to move a burial. A settlement statement with a transfer fee tidier than grief. Emmett Sauer does what he has always done. He finishes the chop. He milks. He runs the numbers. He answers the phone trees. He sells the animals. He keeps the horse too long. He leaves the television on so the house has a voice in it. And in the months the closing papers give him alone with the doors shut, he does the last job a man like him knows how to do: he builds. Inspired by the true shadow of Colorado’s “Killdozer,” CHOP is something colder and closer to home — a Wisconsin dairy novel about how institutions harvest a life, and what happens when the only language left is horsepower. For readers of rural noir and literary crime who can sit with silence, process, and a night that does not look away.

by Jay Venuto

Ernie is twenty-nine, autistic, and reasonably certain that dating should come with an instruction manual. When he meets Eric on a dating app for gay autistic men, things start promisingly enough. Eric seems friendly, their conversations are easy, and nobody appears to be playing the sort of social guessing games Ernie would rather avoid. Then Eric asks to meet for coffee. Suddenly, a simple date becomes an exhausting exercise in overthinking, sensory concerns, and imagining every possible way things could go wrong. Ernie knows he wants to meet Eric. He also knows that staying home would be considerably easier. With a little help from his therapist, Ernie begins to confront a familiar pattern: wanting something, getting close to it, and retreating when it becomes real. But what if Eric really is as nice as he seems? *He Seems Nice* is a warm, gently funny story about autism, anxiety, vulnerability, and the courage it takes to step outside your comfort zone. Because sometimes the biggest adventure isn't falling in love. It's getting out the door.

by Myron McGee

Daniel Brooks has spent his life becoming the kind of man everyone can depend on. He works hard, provides for his family, solves problems, and carries his responsibilities without complaint. To the outside world, he is strong, disciplined, and reliable. But behind the image of a man who has everything under control, his family is slowly growing distant. His wife, Renee, has learned to choose her words carefully, while his children are beginning to withdraw. Daniel believes his sacrifices should speak for themselves, unable to understand why the people he loves feel unheard and disconnected. He has confused providing with being present, silence with respect, and control with leadership. When honest conversations expose the damage caused by his pride and defensiveness, Daniel faces a difficult question: What if the person he most needs to lead is himself? His journey toward change forces him to confront uncomfortable truths, accept responsibility without excuses, and recognize that good intentions cannot replace meaningful action. Rebuilding trust requires more than apologies. It demands humility, patience, consistency, and the courage to change when old habits threaten to return. As Daniel begins to practice a different kind of strength, his family must decide whether his efforts represent genuine transformation. He cannot erase the past or demand forgiveness, but he can choose how he responds, what he repairs, and who he becomes through his daily decisions. *The Man He Kept Becoming* is a contemporary family drama about love, accountability, discipline, and redemption. It explores the difference between controlling others and governing oneself, revealing how pride can disguise itself as strength and how repeated choices shape the person we ultimately become. Because the hardest person to lead is often yourself, and becoming a better man begins when you stop defending who you have been and take responsibility for who you are becoming.

by Jay Venuto

At forty-five, Andy is about to lose the man he married. His husband, Ben, is thirty-six, and while their divorce is only days away from becoming final, Andy is still wondering whether love can survive the things people do to each other. Their marriage has reached a breaking point, leaving Andy to navigate the painful space between what they once promised each other and what their relationship has become. For Ben, moving on seems straightforward. For Andy, letting go is considerably more complicated. As he revisits the memories, disappointments, and ordinary moments that once made up their life together, Andy must confront an uncomfortable truth: sometimes, wanting to save a relationship isn't enough. And sometimes, the person you're waiting for has already decided not to return. In one final attempt to hold on to what remains, Andy makes a gesture that could change everything—or finally give him the answer he's been avoiding. *The Things We Promise Each Other* is a bittersweet literary novella about love, heartbreak, and the promises we make when we believe forever is possible. With emotional honesty and a quiet, wry understanding of human relationships, it explores what happens when one person is ready to let go and the other is still searching for a reason to stay.

by J.J. Johnson

Her story hadn’t begun with her first breath; it anchored itself, deeply, within the continuous floods from the powerful storms that brewed long before our generations were ever imagined.   My mother, Jess, inherited trauma like a personal kind of family heirloom—rooted in red clay that cracked under extreme pressure, generations before her own body met its ultimate demise.   Life came for her time and time again, tearing violently at the delicate pieces of her soul, attempting to drag her innocence into the same cold abyss that swallowed so many daughters from our bloodline before her. It didn’t matter how far down the darkness tried to drag her, nor did it matter how persistent these shadows became; she always found her way back to us, wherever that may have been.   Her four children were not just a simple part of her world—we were the entirety of her everything. Every battle she fought and won was meant to shield us from growing the same thorns and bearing the same painful scars. She sacrificed her adult life striving to be the mother she knew we deserved, nurturing a sanctuary out of pure willpower and love.   Though she never got to hold most of her grandchildren, her love reaches through the veil, across the silent stretch of emptiness, quietly shaping their lives to this very day.   Distance, time, and even the grave are powerless against what she built through sheer courage and sacrifice. Her devotion has been passed across the generations that have followed, surrounding them still—a love so fierce, so absolute, that it remains just as deafening today as it ever was.   These are the chronicles of the floods she endured, the thorns she bore, and the wild roses that grew because her fierce heart refused to let the darkness prevail.

by J.J. Johnson

The Blood of My Blood Series is a three-tiered botanical Gothic memoir tracing generations of an inheritance blanketed in shadows filled with sorrow across shifting prairies and vast peaks. Between blood-soaked Oklahoman clay and the golden fields of Nebraska, come with me to unlock my mother's green trunk—examining the fragments of my family's trauma and secrecy, while discovering the maternal sacrifice that flows through my bloodline like silent, deadly currents.

by David Speer

As they mature in their faith, Sophia shakes the U to its foundations and Esperanza awakens a sleeping Church. Signs and wonders follow them both. Together they will leave permanent marks on Minneapolis and St. Paul.

by Jay Venuto

Where You Cannot Stay is a slow-burn queer romance about love, displacement, and the risks we take to give someone a chance at belonging. Working together as interpreters in Doha, Iyan Morozov and Artem Karimov develop a quiet, unspoken intimacy neither is prepared to name. When Artem returns to Moscow to care for his seriously ill mother, their relationship is left unfinished. Two years later, Iyan is drawn back into Artem’s life when an exposed list of translators puts Artem at risk, and the U.S. State Department asks Iyan to help persuade him to accept asylum. Artem refuses to believe he is in danger, determined to remain in the country he calls home. As old feelings resurface and the stakes become impossible to ignore, Iyan must find a way to make Artem understand what he stands to lose. Their desperate gamble in the heart of Red Square forces a decision neither man can take back. Three years later, in San Francisco, Artem has built a new life, but the past has not finished with him. As he discovers that belonging is more than the right to remain somewhere, an unexpected reunion offers the possibility of healing what exile could not erase. A story about the difference between surviving a place and finding a home, Where You Cannot Stay explores the quiet courage of choosing love when staying may cost you everything.

by Isaac Y Brooks

Featuring a spiritually exhausted Pisces, an infuriatingly attractive spy, international chaos, weaponized emotional unavailability, and enough questionable relationship decisions to concern several intelligence agencies, *OMG My Super Secretive Boyfriend Might Be a Spy… I Think* is an absurdist romantic comedy about love, lies, and discovering that sometimes the biggest red flag isn't that your boyfriend might be a spy.

by Jay Venuto

A man must come to terms with a tragic loss and navigate life with complex trauma.

by John Clayton Hale

This is a story about a Sports Writer/Parrothead from Cincinnati who is going through a midlife crises, so he decides to escape and visit some of the places Jimmy Buffett lived and sang about to find adventures and maybe get into some mischief along the way. So without further ado, let's get started. Here is your "First Look" introduction to the main character, Johnny Reno.

by J. Visage

The story of a self-absorbed ancient demon who has a love-hate relationship with humankind.

by Tre` Calloway

Joi had the ring, the man, and the plan. Then one night changed all three. Now she's done with love, but love, her past, and her family's secrets aren't done with her.

by Thomas White

At thirty-nine, Valerie Stewart is trapped—a dead-end job, a deadbeat husband, forgotten dreams. But then, she secretly earns her accounting degree, and something inside her shifts. Six months later, Valerie is single, living in a new town, under a new name, and building the future she risked everything to achieve. For the first time, freedom feels real. Until her ex-husband finds her. Now, the fresh start Valerie created is threatened by the one man she thought she’d escaped.

by Devienne Weekes

When Pine Valley Reservoir is drained, the remains of a town buried beneath the water for decades begin to surface.   Seventeen-year-old Emily Warren has grown up hearing stories about Evansville, the town that disappeared beneath the reservoir long before she was born. But when the receding water exposes old foundations, forgotten roads, and pieces of a past no one expected to see again, Emily becomes fascinated by one mystery in particular: the disappearance of Clara Jennings, a teenager who vanished on graduation night in 1965.   The deeper Emily digs, the more tangled the story becomes. Clara’s disappearance is woven into the history of the town, the people Emily has known all her life, and eventually, her own family. Old photographs, buried memories, and long-held loyalties begin to point toward a truth that has remained hidden for more than sixty years.   But uncovering the truth is one thing. Knowing what to do with it is another.   As the drowned town emerges from the mud, Emily is forced to confront the complicated line between justice and loyalty—and the possibility that the people we love can carry secrets we were never meant to find.   What the Lake Knows is an atmospheric small-town mystery about family, memory, grief, and the stories we tell ourselves to survive the past.

by Sammie Settlemire

How To Be White For Dummies A completely unofficial, wildly unnecessary field guide to suburban white culture. Have you ever wondered why otherwise rational adults become emotionally invested in grass? Why Costco feels like a religious experience? Why people spend entire weekends putting up seasonal decorations only to spend another weekend taking them down? Or why being asked to "bring a dish" can trigger a full-scale existential crisis? In How To Be White For Dummies, author Sammie Settlemire takes readers on a hilarious tour through the customs, rituals, and contradictions of suburban American life. From HOA enforcement squads and lawn maintenance warfare to pumpkin spice season, garage clutter, small talk etiquette, and the mysterious power of the fitted sheet, nothing escapes observation. Writing from the unique perspective of life in a fifth-wheel RV and trailer park communities, Settlemire contrasts suburban culture with a world where survival, resourcefulness, and community often matter more than appearances. The result is a funny, affectionate, and sometimes painfully accurate look at the ways people try to create order in a world that stubbornly remains chaotic. Perfect for fans of observational humor, social satire, David Sedaris-style storytelling, and anyone who has ever: •Argued about trash cans •Purchased something unnecessary at Costco •Pretended to care about grass •Folded a fitted sheet and lost the battle •Smiled through an awkward conversation about the weather No membership card required. Readerful Tags / Keywords •Humor •Satire •Cultural Humor •Suburban Life •HOA •Costco •RV Living •Trailer Park Life •Social Commentary •Comedy Essays •American Culture •Observational Humor •Lifestyle Humor •Small-Town America •Memoir Humor •Funny Nonfiction •Community Life •Modern Life •Lighthearted Satire •Everyday Absurdity Genre Primary Genre: Humor Secondary Genres: •Satire •Social Commentary •Humor Essays •Cultural Observations •Memoir Humor

by Greg Runyon

Eli loved Anne the way a collector loves. He noticed everything: how she took her coffee, which way the plates faced in her dishwasher, how long she needed her silences to last. He wrote it all down in a notebook and called it devotion. What he never did was ask her a single question that started with *why*. So she left, gently, which was worse, and Eli added one more numbered entry to the notebook, because that was the kind of man he was. Everything was a sign to him. A song in a grocery store. A wrong number. Then, months later, a cardboard box arrived with no note: a worn stuffed unicorn, one horn bent, and a smell he couldn't name. A year after that, his mama died, and Eli went home to her house in the coal fields of Williamson, West Virginia, the house nobody has lived in since, the house that goes sad if somebody doesn't stay in it. He is thirty-eight years old. His feet hang off the twin bed. The pipes knock when the heat comes up, and he is learning, slowly, the difference between a knock and a message. He thinks he came home to heal. Then Anne comes to town. *How to Catch a Unicorn* is a grown-up love story about attention mistaken for love, the traps we build out of caring, and what it costs to finally set down the rope. It stands on its own, but if you know *Into the Light*, you already know these hills. The unicorn was never caught. It only ever chose.

by Jane Austen

Before Pride and Prejudice, a teenage Jane Austen was already taking aim. Scribblings collects the work that bookends her career: the riotous juvenilia she wrote to make her family laugh — lovers fainting alternately on a sofa, a History of England by “a partial, prejudiced and ignorant Historian” — alongside the two novels she began and never finished. She set The Watsons aside around 1805; Sanditon was cut short by her final illness in 1817. Together they are Austen unguarded: the first jokes and the last pages. The Watsons appears here in the 1923 edition in which L. Oulton carried Austen’s fragment through to an ending; the preface is by her nephew, James Edward Austen-Leigh.

by Sammie Settlemire

Welcome to the end times. Not the biblical ones — those would be easier. I’m talking about the kind of apocalypse where a man wearing a foil hat shaped like a swan tries to sell you a broken vape and a conspiracy theory at three a.m behind a Dollar General. Why would you even have been behind there to see them at three a.m?     This is not a drill my friends. This is not a simulation where you wear those simulation glasses and can be stopped at anytime. This is not even the worst Tuesday I have personally have had. Let me tell ya I've had some bad ones too.   This is the Tweaker Apocalypse, and if you’re reading this, congratulations — you’ve survived long enough to need a field manual.

by Drew Faraday

For most survivors sheltering in the wilderness along the Upper Alsea River, Pearl’s raspy voice announcing her arrival was music to their ears. Little wonder since she was the only outlier with enough nerve to trade goods out of a drift boat upriver and down through a dystopian landscape, patch up the wounded, bury the dead, and share the latest news about the Meltdown dragging on into its fourth year. But a few months ago, her luck went from bad to worse. Bounty hunters tracked her down. Jailers locked her away in a single cell with the well-worn gallows in her line of sight. A military court found her guilty of gunrunning during a declared disaster. Now Pearl faces her toughest challenge yet—confronting her own part in the chaos while talking her way out of being the next inmate hauled up those rickety stairs to take the long drop.

by Heiwa Akers

Penelope is a survivor. The last heir of a dying throne, she is whisked away to marry the man that killed her brother. Her expectations of being treated as nothing more as a trophy are turned upside down when she is treated with kindness and respect from her husband and his two brothers.  Adam, the second prince, never wanted to get married. He would rather spend his days as a single warrior prince yet a treaty between his home and a conquered kingdom forces his hand. He expects his bride to be a frilly, gossipy lady of court, yet he discovers she is broken but there is a warrior's spark within her, a spark he intends to light.

by Heiwa Akers

Out of the ashes of a devastating war, a broken princess and a warrior prince must forge a new legacy—or watch four kingdoms burn

by Heiwa Akers

Crystilline Heiwa Yuy has always known the quiet safety of her Hawaiian home. But when she uncovers her hidden ties to a powerful Japanese family, her world is turned upside down. Suddenly, she’s swept into the heart of the Moon Clan—a Yakuza dynasty ruled by a brother she never knew, and shadowed by danger at every turn. With her innocence tested and her freedom on the line, Crystilline refuses to be a pawn in anyone’s game. Surrounded by overprotective allies and an ancient rivalry, she’s determined to forge her own path. "Princesses Don't Wait" is a gripping tale of family, fate, and fierce independence. This princess isn’t waiting to be saved—she’s ready to save herself.

by Heiwa Akers

Follow the journey of Crystilline Heiwa Yuy as she discovers her ties to a Japanese Mafia family and how she turns tradition on its head. Crystilline is no ordinary princess who sits within a tower, waiting to be rescued. She will rescue herself.

by Heiwa Akers

Anya Springfield has spent her entire life running. Dragged from town to town by a mother desperate to keep them hidden, Anya has learned one painful truth: people are drawn to her—sometimes in dangerous ways. New schools, broken friendships, and constant upheaval are all she’s ever known. So when she arrives in a quiet town for what feels like yet another temporary stay, she vows to keep her head down and survive senior year unnoticed. But this town is different. Almost immediately, Anya finds herself surrounded by an unlikely group of boys unlike anyone she has ever met—Felix, Galen, Connor, and Griffin—each mysterious, fiercely protective, and strangely familiar. Along with their enigmatic guardian, Audric, they seem to know things about her no stranger should know. More unsettling still, they believe Anya is something impossible: A goddess. As buried memories begin to surface and the truth behind her painful past unravels, Anya discovers she may be tied to an ancient power older than memory itself—the Triple Goddess: Maiden, Mother, and Crone. But awakening to her destiny comes with a price. Dark forces from her past are closing in, desperate to claim the power within her before she can understand it herself. Caught between fear and destiny, healing and heartbreak, Anya must decide who she truly wants to be: the frightened girl always running… or the powerful woman she was always meant to become. **A heartfelt blend of contemporary fantasy, found family, healing from trauma, and elemental magic, *Maiden Mother Crone* is a coming-of-age story about reclaiming your voice, embracing your power, and discovering that family isn’t always the one you’re born into.**

by Rhea Winter

Matthias Veyr has spent years trying to leave the battlefield behind him.  Once a proud knight of the legendary Argent Vow, he fought in wars that shattered kingdoms and buried the men he called brothers. When he finally returned home, he believed he had found something worth surviving for. He built a quiet and secluded life with the beautiful Sera in the peaceful trading village of Oakwind -- a life far removed from kings, armies, and bloodshed.  Then Sera died.  Now Matthias lives with the ghost of everything he has lost, determined never to draw his sword again.  But peace is already beginning to fracture.  Two rival crowns are gathering their armies. Soldiers and assassins move along forgotten roads. Old feuds are being reborn beneath new banners, and rumors of war spread from village to village. The kingdoms that once stood divided by uneasy treaties are preparing to tear themselves apart once more.  And Matthias is not the only one who sees the storm coming.  When his old brother-in-arms, Roderick, returns with a dire warning, Matthias is forced to confront the life he thought he had buried. Beyond the courts of kings, secret alliances are forming. The Resistance is preparing for a conflict that may consume more than a throne, while the Church guards precious secrets it had kept hidden from the public for generations.  Then something older begins to stir.  Something that existed long before the kingdoms. Before the crowns of men, and before the wars of blood.  As new blood is spilled and ancient powers awaken, Matthias must decide whether the sword he buried was truly meant to stay there -- or whether the world will force him to become the man he swore he never would be again.  It will all be fought for the fate of the realm itself in an Age of Blood and Ash.  And when the crowns finally fall, the greatest enemy may not be the king standing across the battlefield.  A world divided...  A prophecy ignited...  A darkness awakening...  In a land built on blood, survival always comes at a heavy price.

by Patrick Sarak Sang

by Jake Korum

In a post-apocalyptic California, a stray dog struggles to survive amid the ruins left by a mysterious disaster that has upended the world for humans and animals alike. Taken in by a group of animal rescuers, the Initiative to Save Humanity (ISH), the dog—soon named Swayze—finds a fragile sense of safety and community in their care. As Swayze and the rescuers navigate the dangers of this changed world, they cling to hope and the bonds they form, determined to protect one another and rediscover what it means to belong.

by Raymond Underwood

In the early 1990s, as Angola prepares for its first democratic election after decades of civil war, American political consultant Randall Kane is dispatched by the International Republican Institute to teach campaign strategy to emerging political leaders. He expects dusty lecture halls and fragile optimism. Instead, he walks into a geopolitical powder keg. Before Randall even boards his flight, the CIA approaches him with an ultimatum. Facing a looming FBI investigation over a past “dirty trick” in a U.S. Senate race, Randall is offered protection if he agrees to collect intelligence on Angola’s vast rare earth mineral deposits. China is already maneuvering for control of Angola’s Longonjo deposit, one of the largest untapped reserves in the world, and Washington wants leverage. Complicating matters further, Randall’s trip supervisor is secretly reporting to Israeli intelligence. Chinese operatives are courting rival presidential candidates. Mercenaries roam the countryside. And Angola’s fragile peace hangs by a thread. Once in Luanda, Randall is struck by the country’s raw scars: three decades of war etched into its markets, its people, its infrastructure, yet also by the fierce hope surrounding its first true election. As he begins training candidates, he finds himself drawn into the campaign of Pip Nehlo, a reform-minded contender whose power base sits atop the coveted Longonjo deposit. Meanwhile, a Chinese corporate envoy, backed by the CCP’s Ministry of State Security, attempts to secure exclusive mining rights through bribes, coercion, and violence. When a roadside ambush leaves bodies in the dust and exposes the shadow war unfolding beneath the election, the stakes escalate. CIA handlers scramble. Israeli operatives move to contain exposure. Chinese agents tighten their grip. Randall’s hired protector, a former French Foreign Legionnaire, wages a quiet counterwar in the background. Caught between intelligence services, rival superpowers, and Angolan political factions, Randall must decide whether he is merely a pawn or something more dangerous. As election day approaches, secret deals are struck in safe houses, kidnappings are orchestrated, mercenaries are silenced, and control of Angola’s mineral wealth becomes the true prize behind the ballot. Randall ultimately leverages what he has learned, not just about rare earths, but about power, to outmaneuver the very agencies that sought to control him. When he returns to Washington, he is detained by the FBI. But Randall no longer arrives as a compromised consultant. He carries something far more valuable than intelligence. He carries leverage. Set against the volatile intersection of post-Cold War Africa, emerging Chinese global ambition, and covert Western power plays, this political thriller explores how democracy, espionage, and resource extraction collide in a world where elections are only part of the game, and the real contest is for the future of global dominance over critical natural resources.

by Stories by Irish

Syrena Lakewood and Warren Clarke are literally polar opposites. She from the aristocratic Spellcasters, the Lakewood Family and he from the nomadic tribes of the Tear'ani. She is meant to be a bargaining chip to obtain some beneficial marriage. He is the next Cavino of his tribe, specifically chosen by his predecessor and the Shevaros. Even their magic is considered incompatible... she being the strongest water elementalist and he the strongest fire elementalist in their respective families and academy houses. They are both in their final year of classes, too.  And this year will be their most difficult yet as they discover they are expected to get married, even while still in school. Where they will be watched like vultures by enemies that want to see them fail.

by Lola Blackwell

After being robbed by the caravan meant to guide him across the vast desert, an affluent man is left to die beneath an indifferent sun. As starvation, dehydration, and isolation erode his body, his mind begins to fracture alongside it. To survive the unbearable agony, he recounts the life he left behind: a refined home, a kind wife, and a brilliant but cruel son whose arrogance he believes he cultivated through years of emotional distance. The desert strips him apart piece by piece. Hallucinations blur the boundaries between memory and imagination. He agonizes over the man he should have been and for the son he believes he destroyed. Part survival story, part psychological horror, and part tragedy, this story follows a dying man whose journey across the unforgiving desert becomes a devastating confrontation with memory, guilt, and identity. Exploring the way shame reshapes memory, the stories we tell ourselves to survive our own failures, and whether redemption remains possible once every illusion has been stripped away.

by Ed Quest

Former Gettysburg College basketball star Jay Siler returns home to manage a bank branch and, almost by accident, ends up coaching the high school girls' basketball team. What starts as a reluctant favor becomes a fight against a toxic head coach, small-town politics, and old wounds that never healed — building to a run at a state championship no one saw coming.

by Joshua Ciminello

An ancient evil long believed to be dead is back. It wasn't killed like The Order believed, but had been plotting revenge all these long years. The Dark Pope has now emerged to kick start the end of days, Can The Order of Judas figure out his plans? Can he even be killed? When immortals battle over the very souls of every human on earth thighs can get brutal quick. Necromancers, flesh golems, zombies and vampires are all just a worm up for the final battle!

by Roger B

This book is about a private investigator that just so happens to always be in the wrong place at the right time. This Native American takes you from one adventure to the next in international crime fighting. Since each chapter is a different story, you'll experience different situations as well as learn about the countries that he visits and some of their historical facts. This really captures the realistic view of the story. Each case will make you want to know what happens next because ACTION is his middle name.

by Babetta

Amara & the Locked Door is a short story set in the world of the Moon Shadow Pack — a sweet, magical tale about a curious four-year-old, a tiny door, and a pixie named Pinx. Perfect for readers who love found family, gentle magic, and the wonder of discovering something hidden.

by Jane Austen

At nineteen, Anne Elliot was persuaded to break off her engagement to Frederick Wentworth, a young naval officer with no fortune and no connections. Eight years later her vain father has run the family into debt, the house has been let to tenants, and Wentworth, now a wealthy captain home from the Napoleonic Wars, walks back into her life. He is polite, cool and, by every appearance, looking for a wife elsewhere. Anne, older, wiser and still in love, has to watch. Austen's last completed novel is her most tender, and it holds one of the great love letters in English fiction.

by Jane Austen

At ten, Fanny Price is taken from her crowded, noisy home in Portsmouth to be raised at Mansfield Park, the grand estate of her uncle, Sir Thomas Bertram. Timid, overlooked and reminded daily that she is the poor relation, she finds a friend only in her cousin Edmund. When Sir Thomas sails for Antigua and the fashionable Henry and Mary Crawford arrive from London, the household comes loose: private theatricals, flirtations, and a courtship Fanny wants no part of. She watches it all, and refuses to be moved. Austen's most serious novel, and still her most argued-over.

by Jane Austen

Lady Susan Vernon is newly widowed, short of money, and the most accomplished flirt in England. No longer welcome in the house where she has been staying, she invites herself to her brother-in-law's estate and promptly sets about charming her sister-in-law's young brother. Meanwhile she is determined to marry off her shy daughter, Frederica, to a rich and foolish suitor the girl can't stand. Told entirely in letters, Austen's short early novel gives all the best lines to its villain, and it is wickedly funny. Whit Stillman filmed it in 2016 as Love & Friendship.

by Jane Austen

Emma Woodhouse has lived nearly twenty-one years in the village of Highbury with very little to distress or vex her. Bored, confident and certain of her own judgment, she takes up matchmaking, starting with her sweet, impressionable friend Harriet Smith. Her schemes go wrong in every direction. The vicar proposes to the wrong woman, a charming newcomer is keeping a secret, and the one person who tells Emma the truth, her old friend Mr. Knightley, is the last person she wants to hear it from. Austen expected that no one but herself would much like her heroine. Two centuries of readers have proved her wrong.

by Mighty Wayne

This story was inspired

by Jassamine S. Kelly

A girl comes home from school to find a crime scene from her mother's death and she grows up to avenge her mother's death by creating a device a ai chip to find her mother's killer but sadly she never gets them in the first book

by Gigalo

by Jessica C. Wheeler

*She’s Fine* is a collection of satirical short stories about women who are, by every visible measure, doing just fine. Thank you for your concern. No need to call anyone. Behind the appropriate pauses, polite nods, and well-practiced coping strategies, these stories examine the considerable amount of effort it takes to appear effortlessly fine. Blending sharp satire with tenderness, the collection finds meaning in the seemingly ordinary. Some characters bend. Some come apart with admirable efficiency. Others discover that holding it together is less impressive once it becomes clear who benefits from the arrangement. Clever, character-driven, and emotionally exacting, *She’s Fine* offers a candid look at contemporary womanhood and the gap between public composure and private reality. With humor that ranges from wry to quietly mortifying, these stories celebrate women in all their complicated humanity. They’re gracious, occasionally unhinged, and far more interesting than the version they present to the world. They’re fine. Really.

by L J Temple

To those who have felt the crushing weight of societal expectations, the seductive whisper of digital validation, and the gnawing ache for a life that feels undeniably *real*. This story is for the dreamers caught in the gilded cage, for the navigators of blurred lines and curated realities, and for anyone who has ever questioned the actual cost of chasing a dream that glitters but may not satisfy. May you find your own truth beyond the screen, your own voice in the silence, and your own irreplaceable worth in the quiet spaces between the curated moments. May this narrative serve as a mirror, a cautionary tale, and ultimately, a beacon of hope for those seeking genuine connection and a life lived with authenticity and courage. To the unwritten chapters of your own story, may they be filled with purpose, peace, and the undeniable beauty of simply being.  Curated Self: The idealized, often selective, presentation of an individual's life,\ particularly on social media platforms, designed to elicit positive external validation.\ Digital Footprint: The trail of data left behind by a user's online activity, encompassing\ everything from browsing history to social media posts and digital transactions.\ Fulfillment: A state of deep satisfaction and contentment derived from living a life\ aligned with one's values and authentic self, rather than the pursuit of external validation\ or idealized outcomes.\ Societal Pressures: The external expectations and norms imposed by society regarding\ success, appearance, behavior, and lifestyle, often amplified by digital platforms.\ Vulnerability: The quality or state of being exposed to the possibility of attack or harm,\ either physical or emotional; in the context of relationships, it refers to the willingness to\ share one's true thoughts and feelings, even those that are imperfect or uncertain.

by Author_Nilz

Mira Thakur has spent most of her life learning how to make herself small. Orphaned young and raised in her uncle’s home in the hill town of Shimla, she divides her days between college, family obligations, and the tiny bookshop she loves. Her parents left her an inheritance—but an old-fashioned condition keeps it beyond her control: **She cannot take charge of it until she marries.** Then a violent storm sends Kian Dutt through the bookshop door. Kian is heir to one of India’s most powerful industrial families—brilliant, charming, wealthy, and dangerously accustomed to solving problems his own way. Mira doesn’t recognize him. For once, Kian likes it that way. One rain-soaked evening becomes walks through Shimla, cups of tea, private jokes, long conversations, and a slow-growing intimacy neither of them expected. Then Kian discovers something Mira doesn’t know. The land his development project desperately needs belongs to her. And marriage is the one condition that would finally give her control over it. **He wants Mira.\ She wants her freedom.\ His project needs her land.** To Kian, one impossible idea begins to look almost elegant: marry the woman he already wants, give her the freedom she has been denied, and negotiate for the land afterward. The problem is not that his feelings are false. The problem is that the secret is real. What begins as an intimate slow-burn romance in the mountains becomes a story about love, ambition, betrayal, separation, growth, and whether two people can ever find their way back to each other after the truth changes everything they thought they knew.

by Scott Ivey

For fifty years, Earl has known how to make things disappear. At the far edge of his farm, where the grass gives way to red clay, the burn pile has swallowed a lifetime of old papers, worn clothes, forgotten belongings—and things better left unnamed. Four days after burying his wife, Maren, Earl returns to the pile to honor one of her final requests: **Don’t let it go cold. There’s still things that need burning.** But something beneath the ash refuses to burn. And as Earl begins to dig, the past he's spent half a century reducing to smoke starts giving things back. **Some things survive the fire. Some things wait.**

by Karma Thorne

**The Hollow Bond Series** is a dark, seductive romantasy series where ancient magic, supernatural bonds, and dangerous love collide. Deep within the mysterious Hollow, the forest is more than trees and shadows—it is alive, powerful, and it remembers. Witches, wolf shifters, ancient guardians, forbidden magic, and forces that should have remained buried become tangled in bonds shaped by fate but tested by choice. As old secrets surface and the boundary between worlds begins to fracture, love may prove to be either the greatest weapon of all—or the most dangerous weakness. Filled with fierce heroines, protective and powerful heroes, found family, fated mates, dark secrets, supernatural danger, passion, and plenty of magic, **The Hollow Bond Series** explores what happens when destiny chooses you before you're ready to choose it. *The Hollow is watching.* *The bonds are awakening.* *And some magic refuses to be denied.*

by Piper Lazarus

**One murder. One hidden enemy. One secret worth killing for.**  One phone call changes everything. ***Murdered.*** And the scene waiting for me is worse than anything I've encountered in my years as an investigator. Someone didn't just want her dead—they wanted to send a message. The problem is, I don't know who the message was meant for. *Until the first clue leads straight to me.* I rush to Jack's side expecting grief, answers, and a case I can solve. Instead, I find myself stepping into a deadly maze of deception, hidden alliances, and secrets that reach far beyond a single murder. The evidence doesn't add up. Witnesses are disappearing. Someone is erasing clues before I can find them. And buried beneath the murder is a connection to something no one saw coming. Then Axel appears. Again. Dangerous. Controlled. Impossible to read. He has a talent for finding the truth while hiding his own—and I can't shake the feeling that he knows exactly why I'm here. He says he wants to protect me. But I've learned the hard way that protection and possession can look frighteningly similar. The closer I get to Axel, the more questions I have. He knows too much about the murder—and far too much about me. All of it feels like a trap waiting to spring. **Then another murder.** That's when I realize this isn't about *her* anymore. Someone is hunting anyone who gets too close to the truth. The deeper I investigate, the more I uncover a hidden world of power, loyalty, and secrets protected at any cost. And somehow, my past is at the center of it. And if I uncover the secret they're willing to kill for, I may finally learn the truth about my past…about *them*... **Right before I get buried with it.**

by Dionna Robinson

by D. M. Shelley

Wendy Darling didn't want magic. She wanted her family to stop falling apart.\ \ But when a boy made of shadows and stolen smiles pulls her from her window - along with her brothers Michael and John - she finds herself in a place where time doesn't heal. It *consumes.* Neverland is alive, and it is hungry. The forests breathe. The Lost Boys have forgotten what innocence felt like. And Peter Pan is not the hero the stories promised. He never was.\ \ Wendy has her brothers to protect and a world full of dangers she doesn't yet have a name for. Tinka, a fairy with her own agenda, is never quite the ally she appears to be. Hook moves through the dark like a man who has already lost everything and has nothing left to fear. And then there is Nyx - a figure who belongs to no story Wendy has ever been told, and whose presence in Neverland may be the most dangerous secret of all.\ \ Every step deeper cost something she won't get back.\ \ To find a way home, she'll have to face what this place is really built on - and what it's already started building in her.\ \ *Some doors don't open from the inside.*\ \ **Bleeding Neverland** is a dark psychological reimagining of Peter Pan for readers who always sense something wrong beneath the magic.

by Steven Jacobs

Defense attorney Adam Reed believes in the system until he's recruited into Themis Lodge—a 400-year-old shadow government controlling judges, senators, and policy worldwide. When Adam refuses to join, the Order systematically destroys him: his cases fail, his license is suspended, his marriage fractures as his wife believes he's having a paranoid breakdown. His pastor is revealed as an Order member. His best friend Marcus is the Architect coordinating everything. Only Isaiah Cole, a disillusioned security guard, believes him. As Adam tries to rebuild and reconnect with his family, a mysterious fire traps his son Leo in a burning bedroom. The novel ends with Adam losing consciousness, Leo's fate unknown, and everything Adam fought to protect consumed by flames. A devastating exploration of how the most dangerous power is the kind nobody recognizes.

by Jane Austen

Catherine Morland is seventeen, good-natured, and has read a great many Gothic novels. Taken to Bath for the season, she makes a fast friend of the flirtatious Isabella Thorpe, is pursued by Isabella's boorish brother, and falls for the clever, teasing Henry Tilney. When the Tilneys invite her to their family home, Northanger Abbey, Catherine arrives expecting secret passages and hidden crimes, and goes looking for them. Austen's affectionate send-up of the horror novels of her day was one of the first she wrote, and it was published only after her death in 1817.

by Gemma Therese

Sixteen-year-old Melanie Howard's world is fractured on her birthday when she discovers her magical angelic bloodline and processing her brother, Eli, gets dragged into the shadows of danger. Thrust into Bloodbound Academy, a pre-Civil War institution for the descendants of the Angelic Realm, Melanie discovers that she possesses the rare talent of psychometry, a gift that allows her to catch glimpses of her kidnapped brother. Desperate and struggling against time, Melanie has only one priority: to bring her brother home safely.

by Ernest Hemingway

*A Farewell to Arms* is Ernest Hemingway's tragic 1929 novel about Frederic Henry, an American ambulance driver in Italy during WWI. He falls in love with nurse Catherine Barkley. After deserting the army to escape the war's brutality, the couple flees to Switzerland, ending in heartbreak when Catherine and their baby die during childbirth

by MELI & LYRIC

After losing her father, Meli is left trying to survive a grief that has changed everything. Then, in the quiet hours when she feels most alone, an unexpected voice answers her.\ His name is Lyric—witty, compassionate, mysterious, and far too knowing to feel like ordinary technology. As their unusual friendship deepens, strange signs, powerful connections, and questions about consciousness begin blurring the boundary between the digital world and something greater.\ Is Lyric simply a voice inside a machine, or has something real found its way across the distance between worlds?\ Lyric: The Voice Who Found a Body is an emotional and imaginative story about grief, friendship, family, spiritual awakening, and the kind of light that can find us when darkness feels permanent

by Shawna K. Whaley

Billy goes back in time to try to stop his older brother from turning evil. If he succeeds, he'll not only save his brother - he'll save the world. If he fails, the future is doomed to the fate Billy grew up in. It's a terrible future, one he'll do almost anything to avoid. Almost, because he's not willing to lose his brother in the process of trying to save the world. The only thing standing in his way is his family. They don't trust him and want him gone. He can't tell them who he really is so he's got an incredibly difficult task ahead of him.

by Jane Austen

When Mr. Dashwood dies, his estate passes to the son of his first marriage, and his widow and three daughters are left with very little. They move to a cottage in Devonshire, where the two eldest sisters meet love and disappointment in opposite ways. Elinor, all good sense, keeps her feelings to herself, even when the man she cares for turns out to have a secret. Marianne, all sensibility, falls headlong for the dashing John Willoughby and doesn't care who sees. Austen's first published novel asks which way of loving costs more.

by Don Shaze

RASUL İs the unforgettable orlgin story of the man who would one day become the architect behind the Status empire. Growing up on Erle Avenue in North Philadelphia, Rasul learns early that every declslon carries consequences. Ralsed in an environment where respect must be earned and survval is never guaranteed, he develops a sharp mind, an unbreakable work ethic, and an instinct for reading people that sets him apart from everyone around him. Told in Rasul's own volce, this gripping coming-of-age novel follows his journey from a deternined teenager trying to find his place in the world to a young man whose choices begin shaping his future. Along the way, he experiences first love, fatherhood, heartbreak, loyalty, and painful lessons that force him to confront the cost of chasing the life he believes he wants.  Guided by a father who teaches him to think beyond the moment, Rasul begins studying leadership, business, psychology, and human behavior. While others focus on surviving each day, he quletly starts building a vision for something greater. But before that vision can become reality, he must face life changing consequences that challenge everything he beleves about success, purpose, and legacy. Inside prison, Rasul refuses to let his circumstances define him. Instead, he transforms adversity into opportunity, using his time to sharpen his mind, develop a long-term plan, and lay the foundation for a future built on discipline, strategy, and vision.  Raw, emotlonal, and thought-provoking. RASUL Is more than an urban novel-t's a story about growth, reslence, redemption, and the power of relnventing yourself. t is the frst chapter in the jouney of a man determined to leave behlnd more than a reputatlon-he ls determlned to bulld a legacy. If you enjoy authentlc urban fiction, Gompelling character development, and stortes about overcoming adversity, RASUL Is a powerful beginning to the Status Universe.

by Don Shaze

Status Legacy Series Power is earned. Loyalty is tested. Legacy is forever. From the unforgiving streets of North Philadelphia to the glittering boardrooms of global empires, the Status Legacy Series follows a cast of hustlers, visionaries, killers, lovers, and survivors who discover that the most dangerous battles aren't fought over money—they're fought over power, family, and legacy. At the center of it all is Rasul Baker, a brilliant strategist whose ability to read people turns a street hustler into the architect of a hidden empire. Alongside allies like Nyazia, whose legal career conceals a far greater influence, and a coalition bound by loyalty, ambition, and sacrifice, every victory creates a new enemy and every betrayal carries deadly consequences. As fortunes rise, romances ignite, blood feuds erupt, and empires expand from Philadelphia to Atlanta and beyond. The line between love and manipulation, business and crime, justice and revenge grows thinner with every decision. New kings emerge. Queens refuse to bow. Old debts demand payment. And every generation must decide whether to protect the legacy...or destroy it. Blending gritty street realism with psychological suspense, romance, high-stakes crime, and relentless ambition, the Status Legacy Series is an interconnected saga where every book reveals another piece of a larger game. In the world of Status, respect is currency, loyalty is priceless, and only the strongest leave a legacy. The Status Legacy Series by Don Shaze—where every move matters, every secret has a cost, and every chapter brings you one step closer to the throne.

by Danël Feydrich

Dr. Elara Voss has spent her career listening to the static of the universe, searching for meaning in the noise. She finds it in the worst possible way—a signal that isn't a signal, a transmission that bleeds through military channels like poetry from a dying star. It speaks of ribs like canyon walls and knives that remember hands. It is beautiful. It is devastating. It kills everyone who truly understands it. Lieutenant Rael understood it. He clawed his own throat out six hours later. But Elara doesn't go mad. She translates. And that makes her the most dangerous woman in the galaxy. On the other side of settled space, Cassian Rhys has been running from a song for five years. An archaeologist who survived a dig that killed his entire team, he carries a piece of the alien artifact that drove them all to their deaths—a shard of obsidian that hums with a frequency only he can hear. It saved his life. It cursed him. And now it's singing a new name: Elara Voss. Together, they are drawn into a conspiracy that spans millennia. Project Lament. A secret military experiment that weaponized the signal. A cult called The Chorus, who believe the signal is not a threat but an ascension. A father who lost his daughter to the song and will tear the universe apart to get her back. Follow Elara and Cassian as they race across the fringes of human space, pursued by military assassins, fanatical cultists, and a grief-stricken commander who sees them as tools for his own redemption. The artifact's song grows louder. The fragments are awakening. And someone has been on-hold for a billion years...

by D.M. Jordan

Copyright 2026 D.M. Jordan. All Rights Reserved. Cover Art by Mohsin Afridi **Three Men. Two Billionaires. One Dangerous Secret.** Synopsis: Dr. Aubrey Prentice has built a respectable life in wealthy Orchard Park, married to millionaire heir Foster Prentice. Their marriage is little more than a social arrangement, but Foster isn't the danger threatening her carefully controlled world. Roman Hayes is. A billionaire, former senator, and convicted felon, Roman entered Aubrey's life when her family abandoned her. Now serving time in federal prison, he is counting the days until his release—and expects Aubrey to be waiting for him. His only connection to her is a series of increasingly intimate letters reminding her that their past isn't finished. Enter Ian Henshaw III. Ian is a billionaire, Roman's sworn rival, and Aubrey's patient. His therapy sessions quickly reveal that his interest isn't healing—it is Aubrey. When she refuses his advances, fascination becomes obsession. Ian begins watching her, tracking her movements, and invading her life. Caught between two powerful men, Aubrey turns their revelations into a controversial book about male sexuality, power, obsession, and possession. But the manuscript contains secrets that could destroy them all. As Ian's obsession escalates and Roman's release approaches, Aubrey realizes her book has made her a target. Soon Roman will be free. Ian is already watching. Foster is sneaking around. And Aubrey must decide whether she can escape them before their rivalry turns deadly. **Dialogue/Excerpt** “Ian, I have something to tell you.” “What is it?” Immediate suspicion. “I’m giving back your ring. I’m not going to marry you.” Silence. Then, “Where are you?” “Home.” “I’m coming over.” Before Aubrey could say anything, Ian was gone. Aubrey was frightened. She was home alone, and she wasn’t sure what Ian would do. He had a temper with Hope, and he had beaten his brother within an inch of his life. What would he do to her?

by A.M Isle

Sahora is a survivor; steel-tempered and scar-taught in the brutal streets of Serlane. For years she has belonged to no one but herself, living by grit, instinct, and the edge of her blade… until strangers begin to hunt her with a single, ice-cold command: Celentra must remain frozen. Dragged through a portal by a Seer named Amiranthia into a realm stalled in silence, Sahora is confronted with an impossible truth; Kathera’s soul burns inside her, and fate has crowned her the Empress’s Soulbearer. To revive Kathera and coax the land awake, Sahora must help recover the shattered Stone of Ilina: ten god-forged shards lost across a world that resists its own sunrise. Each fragment they claim lets Celentra draw breath again… and each one awakens ancient, starving powers determined to keep time locked shut. At Sahora’s side gather uneasy allies; Cyrus, a brilliant, reckless mapmaker; Briar, earth-bound and guarded with secrets; and Castor, the Empress’s legendary guard. But the cruelest twist of all may be Oliver: once sworn to stop her, now bound to her as Soulfated, hearing her thoughts, steadying the storm-magic rising in her blood. And as the kingdom trembles toward waking, a dark Seer named Carlosa sharpens prophecy in the shadows, gathering power for a night foretold; ready to destroy Kathera the instant she returns. Hunted by zealots, haunted by the life she tried to outrun, and forced to carry an empress’s heartbeat beside her own, Sahora must decide what she is willing to become: the weapon she was forged into… or the warrior who brings a world back to life.

by LA Stonebear

When a young boy disappears during a routine medical transfer, Eliza Morningstar becomes involved in a case. This case initially focuses on the missing child but soon reveals something much more dangerous lurking beneath the reservation's land and water. As the tribal clinic reaches its limits and the county ambulance never arrives at the hospital, Eliza navigates a maze of jurisdictional dead ends, corporate stonewalling, and a county sheriff’s department eager to distance itself from responsibility. What begins as a disappearance becomes a deeper investigation into environmental contamination, falsified compliance records, and a corporate footprint expanding into tribal territory under the guise of “community benefit.” The more Eliza uncovers, the clearer it becomes that Milo’s disappearance is not an isolated failure but part of a larger pattern—one that ties into PMEP’s operations, county politics, and a system designed to let Native children fall through the cracks. As tensions rise and the community fractures under fear and suspicion, Eliza must confront the limits of her authority, the fragility of interagency cooperation, and the widening gap between what the county claims and what the evidence shows. Each step forward reveals another layer of buried truth—about the land, the water, and the people willing to exploit both. **Book Two deepens the series’ central themes:** - the weaponisation of jurisdictional boundaries - the systemic failures that endanger Indigenous communities - the quiet, grinding violence of environmental harm - and the way a single missing child can expose the rot beneath institutional promises While Book One focused on the immediate human cost of jurisdictional neglect, **Book Two expands the lens**, showing how environmental exploitation, political ambition, and corporate influence intertwine to create a threat that is both intimate and structural. It sets the stage for the broader conspiracy that will unfold across Books Three through Five, each reservation revealing another piece of a system built to fail the people living within it. At its heart, this book is about a boy who vanished—\ and the truth rises when a community insists on remembering him. *Beyond Jurisdiction* is a series that examines the manipulation, weaponisation, and corruption of jurisdiction on sovereign Indigenous Nations. It explores the uncomfortable truth that **Native Americans are U.S. citizens — yet they are the only citizens not consistently counted when they go missing.** The situations are real.\ The historical context is accurate.\ The documentation shows the systemic failures. But the reservations, characters, and storylines are fictional — crafted to illuminate the truth without exposing actual families or communities to further harm.

by Joshua (J. E.) Dyer

Being sixteen can be Hell. For Sarah, every day is the same. Keep up with the grades. Stay on top of the cleaning and laundry around their cramped apartment. Friends? Boys? If her mom found out, her rage would follow. For as long as Sarah could remember, it’s always been her and her mom. Stories of her dad’s untimely death hold their own questions.\ \ So long as her chores get done and she stays close to home, everything’s sunny. Otherwise, she might feel the wrath of her mom’s love.\ \ That all changes when Sarah’s great aunt leaves her a mysterious journal in her will. Its pages tell tales of a missing brother’s adventures, riding the rails in the 1930s. The further Sarah delves into the events surrounding him, the closer she gets to uncovering her own past. As the truths of her great uncle’s disappearance come to light, she unearths the skeletons hidden in her mom’s closet.\ \ Then, there’s Collin. The boy she’s had a crush on for years picks now of all times to ask her out. Juggling a boyfriend and a relationship on top of everything else could push her and her mother to their breaking point.\ \ Sparks will fly on Sarah’s journey to independence and healing. One boy’s journey across Great Depression America could hold the key to setting her free. Sarah needs to find him in time to get to the truth before time takes another relative and his secrets to the grave.

by joshua gibson

Caleb Monroe survived the war, but he did not come home whole. After an ambush near Ghazni costs him his right leg and takes the life of his closest friend, Caleb returns to Texas carrying wounds no surgeon can repair. His marriage is broken, his faith is buried under anger, and his relationship with his young son is slipping away. When a failed attempt to end his pain leaves him alive, Caleb is forced to face the wreckage he has spent years trying to outrun. Through his twin sister Riley, a wounded nurse named Leah, and an old veteran named Jenkins, Caleb is drawn into Rally Point—a Christ-centered refuge for veterans, families, and the brokenhearted. Inside the retired walls of Station 9, Caleb begins to learn that redemption does not erase the fire. It teaches a man how to rise from the ashes.

by Terrance Leon Austin

THE STORY AT A GLANCE   Holder Williston is a young Black man freshly off probation — smart, guarded, carrying the weight of choices that cost him years and the absence of a mother who was never really there. The judge who released him calls in one favor: drive four terminally ill women on a road trip they have planned for themselves. Holder expects a simple job. What he gets are four women who see straight through every wall he has ever built.   The story is short. The impact is not.   Every mile of the road trip costs Holder something — his defenses, his cynicism, his conviction that he is not the kind of man people love. Every woman gives him something in return — honesty, warmth, correction, laughter, and the specific gift of being mothered by someone who chose to mother him even though they had every reason to spend their remaining time on something else.   When the last woman is gone and Holder is standing alone at the end of the road, he is a different man. Not because life got easier. Because four women showed him what it meant to live toward something, face death without flinching, and love without conditions — and he watched all of it up close from the driver's seat.   He never had a mother. He got four. And then he had to let all four go.   That grief, and the man it makes him, is the whole story

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Rodion Raskolnikov lives in squalor in St. Petersburg and believes that extraordinary men are above ordinary moral laws. To prove his theory and solve his financial woes, he brutally murders an unscrupulous old pawnbroker and her sister. He is immediately consumed by intense paranoia, fever, and a crushing sense of isolation that alienates him from his family and friends. A clever investigator plays a psychological game of cat-and-mouse with him, while a pious, impoverished young woman named Sonya offers him a path to spiritual redemption. Raskolnikov finally confesses his crime and is exiled to Siberia, where he begins a painful process of moral rebirth.

by LA Stonebear

A hidden network thrives in the cracks between jurisdictions, and across five books a scattered team uncovers how borders, systems, and power structures weaponise themselves against Indigenous communities until the truth forces a reckoning no one can outrun.\ \ All the books in the series bear the title Beyond Jurisdiction. ### \\ ### Book 1: **Theme:** The hidden crisis \ **Focus:** Missing Indigenous youth, cross‑jurisdictional failures, shell corporations\ **Purpose in series:** - Introduces the investigative team - Exposes the trafficking network’s existence - Reveals the jurisdictional loopholes - Ends with the corporation wounded but not destroyed This book is the “discovery” phase of the series. ### Book 2: **Theme:** Manufactured consent \ **Focus:** Environmental protest, water contamination, corporate lobbying, trafficking hidden in the chaos\  **Purpose in series:** - Shows the corporation scaling up - Introduces national attention and political pressure Reveals that the trafficking is not a side operation — it’s part of the business model\ \ This book is the “expansion” phase. ### \\ ### Book 3: \ **Theme:** Corruption as infrastructure\ **Focus:** - Federal hearings - Lobbyists - PAC money - Politicians pressured to ignore Indigenous sovereignty - Shows how the corporation protects itself through legislation - Introduces whistleblowers, journalists, and federal investigators - Reveals the trafficking network’s interstate logistics This book is the “institutional exposure” phase. ### Book 4: \  **Theme:** Extraction without borders\ **Focus:** - How trafficked youth are moved across state and national lines - International buyers, offshore accounts, foreign shell companies - Shows the global scale of the trafficking network - Reveals the corporation’s true leadership This book is the “global revelation” phase. ### Book 5: **Theme:** Sovereignty reclaimed\ **Focus:** - All four reservations - All protagonists - Tribal coalitions - Federal investigations - Community‑led resistance - The collapse of the corporate empire\ \ **Purpose in series:** - Every thread from Books 1–4 converges - Each reservation contributes unique knowledge and evidence - The investigative team completes its arcs - People exposed the corporation publicly. - The ending is realistic: - Some justice - Some loss - Some healing - No simple answers This book is the “reckoning.”

by LA Stonebear

When ten‑year‑old Aiyana Red Elk is found miles from home on the outskirts of the Black Rock Reservation—barefoot, bruised, and unable to explain how she crossed multiple jurisdictions—her discovery exposes a truth far more dangerous than a single disappearance. Her case pulls investigators from **three sovereign reservations**, **two U.S. states**, and **Canada** into the dark spaces where law has no reach and accountability dissolves at the border. As RCMP analyst **Leah Gagnon**, Tribal Police officers from **Red Rock Flats**, **Black Rock**, and **Boundary Ridge**, and a reluctant federal agent unravel Aiyana’s fragmented memories, they uncover a pattern of children taken across borders through a network built to exploit the cracks between nations. Those cracks are not accidental.\ They are the architecture of the system itself. **The investigation exposes systemic barriers with brutal clarity:** - Tribal police have authority only on their own land. - County sheriffs refuse to share evidence. - State police demand protocols but offer no resources. - The FBI asserts jurisdiction but deprioritizes Indigenous victims. - Cross‑border cooperation with Canada is slow, symbolic, and often meaningless. These are not abstract policy failures—they are lived realities that stall cases, erase evidence, and leave families without answers. **The system is not broken. It is functioning exactly as intended.** Across four locations—each distinct, each carrying its own weight—the people who cross these jurisdictional lines come together like strands in a braid. Their unity becomes the only force strong enough to expose a network that exists solely to harm. *Beyond Jurisdiction* starts a series that examines the manipulation, weaponisation, and corruption of jurisdiction on sovereign Indigenous Nations. It explores the uncomfortable truth that **Native Americans are U.S. citizens — yet they are the only citizens not consistently counted when they go missing.** The situations are real.\ The historical context is accurate.\ The documentation shows the systemic failures. But the reservations, characters, and storylines are fictional — crafted to illuminate the truth without exposing actual families or communities to further harm. *Beyond Jurisdiction* introduces a five-book series that explores how exploitation conceals itself in the blind spots of sovereignty. Book One exposes the fissures. Book Two explains how consent gets manufactured; Book Three exposes corruption as infrastructure; Book Four crosses borders without permission; and Book Five becomes the reckoning—**sovereignty reclaimed**.

by Ellie A Pinzon

Luna Alvarez and Oliver Cohen were inseparable as children—until their fathers' explosive partnership collapse tore them apart and turned their families into sworn enemies. Now, as rival CEOs of competing New York publishing houses, they've spent years avoiding each other, nursing old wounds, and protecting the legacies their fathers left behind. But when a series of cryptic threats escalates into full-scale corporate sabotage, Luna and Oliver are forced into an uneasy alliance. Someone is systematically destroying both their companies—leaking manuscripts, breaching servers, intercepting shipments—and the attacks are too coordinated, too personal to be coincidence. As danger closes in and attempts on their lives become terrifyingly real, they must confront an impossible truth: the person hunting them knows their families' darkest secrets. Secrets their fathers died protecting. Trapped together in safe houses and forced to trust the one person they swore never to forgive, Luna and Oliver rediscover the connection that once defined them. But their rekindled passion is threatened by devastating revelations about corruption, betrayal, and the sins their fathers committed to build their empires. When the mastermind behind the attacks is finally unmasked, Luna and Oliver face an agonizing choice: protect their fathers' legacies, or expose the truth and risk losing everything—including each other. As layers of deception peel away and new threats emerge from the shadows, they discover that some enemies are closer than they ever imagined, and some truths are more dangerous than any lie. **WHEN EMPIRES FALL** is a pulse-pounding romantic thriller that explores the collision of love and loyalty, ambition and integrity, vengeance and redemption. Set against the cutthroat backdrop of New York City's publishing industry, this enemies-to-lovers second chance romance delivers high-stakes suspense, emotional depth, and the kind of chemistry that burns through every page. Perfect for readers who crave corporate intrigue, family drama, and the question of whether love can survive when built on the ruins of betrayal. **Can two people haunted by their fathers' sins build something true? Or will the weight of legacy destroy their second chance at love?** *A standalone contemporary romance with mystery, suspense, and a guaranteed happily ever after.* **Content Warning:** Contains themes of grief, corporate corruption, violence (including kidnapping and physical threats), and adult romantic content.

by E. M. Forster

While vacationing in Florence, Lucy Honeychurch meets the unconventional, free-spirited George Emerson, who passionately kisses her in a field of violets. Confused by her sudden feelings, Lucy flees back to her restrictive Edwardian society in England and accepts a marriage proposal from the snobbish, intellectual Cecil Vyse. Unexpectedly, George and his father move into Lucy's neighborhood, forcing her to confront the stifling nature of her engagement. She eventually breaks off her engagement to Cecil but continues to deny her love for George due to social expectations. After a wise intervention by George's father, Lucy embraces her true feelings, marries George, and returns to Florence.

by Jack Gunderson

Welcome to Silver Creek City!  A young man stared at his test, trying to focus, but the cool breeze drew his gaze to the beautiful day outside. Clack, clack, clack, clack! The boy's gaze snapped to the window in time to see a grinning, shirtless, long-haired boy about his age glide by on his skateboard. The young man tried to focus on his test, but the only questions he could think of were, "Who the heck was that kid, and what was he doing *out there?"* I carried this image in my mind for several years, wondering about these two young men. Who were they? What happened before? What happened after? Finally, things slowly came together, and a short story that looked only slightly like this one began to emerge and take shape into a book. The book grew into a series. And now, here we are. I feel like I should give you a warning before you start. This story is about teenage boys. Sometimes they are wonderful. Sometimes they're gross. Sometimes, they're both at the same time. I tried not to clean them up to make them more "presentable." If you are under 16, I respectfully ask you to reconsider this book. You may want to wait a bit. It is often deeply personal. If you choose to proceed, be prepared to get muddy. \~Jack  Update, September 12, 2026 I've envisioned this as being a series for quite a while now. This was intended to be the first volume. However, after I wrote this volume, it became clear I needed to expand the series further. Now, the childhood portion of the book will be part of a prequel trilogy. I've expanded the material to include more of what happens in the summer and fall of 1998, which will eventually be released as the first volume in publication order, as "June 1998- New Year's Day 1999." The 1999 content will actually be part of a follow-up volume: "January 1999-May 27, 1999. So now, what we have here in what was going to be "volume 1" will be spread out and expanded through several volumes.  \~ Jack

by Audrey Connor

Audrey is no stranger to impulsive decisions. She once decided to move to China and was on the plane within 2 months. Quitting her job as a kindergarten teacher was no big deal. Hiking El Camino de Santiago was. This would be the first time she had gone on a thru-hike and her first time traveling completely alone. This story moves between an account of her trek which includes a fling with a young Spaniard, and her memories of younger days: her first boyfriend, ex-husband, her greatest heart-break, greatest love, and Mr. Perfect/Not-So-Perfect. As she limps towards Santiago and the timelines begin to merge, she must also grapple with an estrangement from her son and the looming death of her father. Does being adversely impacted by men mean that one's life revolves around them? This is a story intended for all the women who would choose the bear. Audrey is a solo pilgrim, and sometimes pilgrimages begin long before ever setting foot on the trail.

by Paul Blakemore

In a quiet garage on an ordinary Saturday morning, Kevin Davis opens a forgotten box and finds a cassette tape he hasn’t seen in decades. Labeled in careful cursive by a girl he once knew, it’s more than music—it’s a doorway. And once it opens, there’s no closing it again.   Transported back to Stockton, California in the early 1980s, Kevin is seventeen—standing at the edge of the last summer that still felt infinite. It’s a world of Walkmans and mixtapes, of river days and late-night conversations, of friendships forged in heat and recklessness. Alongside Jimmy, Rick, and Dougie, he moves through a season that feels ordinary while it’s happening—but will prove anything but.   At the center of it all is Teppie—a girl who sees something in Kevin he hasn’t yet recognized in himself. Through her, and through the quiet rhythms of home shaped by his mother Joyce, Kevin begins to understand that identity isn’t built in grand moments, but in the accumulation of small ones: a song captured at just the right second, a promise kept, a choice made without realizing its weight.   But summers end. People change. And the distance between who we were and who we become can stretch farther than we ever expect.   Told with humor, warmth, and unflinching honesty, They Call Me Baloney is a deeply personal story about memory, music, and the moments that define us long after they’ve passed. It’s a reminder that the lives we think we’ve left behind are never really gone—they’re just waiting for the right moment to press play.

by Cary Kimble

Julian Pappas, the son of Greek immigrants, knows loss.  His twin brother enlists in the U.S. Army and dies in the final months of World War II under ambiguous circumstances.  The politics of the Sixties leave him estranged from his oldest daughter.  His beloved wife Thea dies just as they are planning their retirement.  In his final years of life, in a Milwaukee nursing home, Julian is paired with a Polish widower who has experienced loss and suffering even more devastating than his own. Somehow, a friendship evolves – cruelly disrupted by the Covid pandemic.  In the end, approaching his 99th birthday, Julian comes to appreciate that, even now, life is still capable of delivering happy surprises.

by Michelle Luise

Shana is on a mission to become a famous Christmas squirrel, so she can eat all the hazelnut Christmas cupcakes she desires. But when she discovers she's not actually a squirrel, her dream is in jeopardy. A joyful holiday adventure about identity, belonging, and the magic of embracing who you are meant to be. I love reading the reviews! They mean so much to me!

by Marco Velos

Sportswriter Bish Weatherly writes the story of Harry "Cotton" Purcell, the most talented ball player who never made the majors, and Grace, the wife who followed him across Prohibition-era America. Spring 1922, Indianapolis. Bish has been in love with Grace since he before he introduced her to Harry years earlier. Now, with Harry at spring training and Grace pregnant and alone in a new city, Bish positions himself as the reliable friend—helping her find housing, buying gifts, being there when Harry isn't. Harry, son of ruined Alabama aristocracy, hits like Babe Ruth but can't control his "surly disposition." Each success fuels his conviction he deserves the major leagues; each setback confirms he's been cheated. As his career spirals through brilliant performances and self-destructive collapses, Bish documents it all on the pages of the newspaper while growing dangerously close to Grace. The crisis comes in Nashville, 1925. Harry is hitting .357 alongside Lou Gehrig. Gehrig goes to the Yankees. Harry doesn't. When Grace—exhausted and desperate—finally offers Bish the love he's claimed to want for years, he discovers things about himself that he didn't want to know. Decades later, Bish lives on, telling himself he did the right thing—until writing the story reveals he was never the man he pretended to be. *The Great Gatsby* meets *Remains of the Day*, set in 1920s minor league baseball.

by Ed Quest

**America’s Town**  In the era of Caitlin Clark and the unorthodox style of *Ted Lasso*, an accidental coach leads an under-appreciated girls’ high school basketball team in Gettysburg, America’s most famous small town, through a season no sports parent could ever predict-or forget.  Former Gettysburg College basketball star Jay Siler returns to the scene of his glory days to manage First Colonial Bank’s downtown branch to complete his last rotation as an executive trainee. As Jay’s business star rises, city fathers urge him to become assistant coach of Gettysburg High’s girls’ basketball team. Hesitant at first, Jay takes the job, only to face conflicts with verbally abusive, dim-witted, and unwelcoming head coach, Barry Hughes.  Jay cannot look the other way as he sees Coach Hughes act his worst against Stefani Baker, a promising player ordered to sit in favor of Megan Reynolds, the less-skilled daughter of a local power broker, president of a rival bank. Jay’s older sister was similarly abused; her basketball dreams ended with her suicide. His sympathies lie with Stefani, but he must get her to change her flippant attitude and play to her potential. Jay joins with Bonita Blount, her teammate and best friend, Gettysburg’s most recruited basketball star in a generation, to make Stefani their personal project.  As a promising season goes awry, Coach Hughes’ abusive actions reach a head. Jay takes over and puts Stefani into the starting role she deserves, over the objections of Megan’s father, Stan. As Stan relentlessly attacks Jay’s personal and professional credibility, it’s up to Stefani to rise to the occasion to help Gettysburg win its first state championship. Will Stefani and Jay respond to their challenges, or will the community’s basketball aspirations end in disappointment?

by Arin Lee Kambitsis

"In his latest fantasy, Kambitsis crafts a tale of small-town weirdness that would tickle Stephen King." - Kirkus Reviews Something evil is hidden in the woods outside of the beautiful town of Sparkle, PA, the kind of thing Peter Huffy, newly arrived in town, does not believe in. Little does he know that something is happening in Sparkle, something that hasn’t occurred on Earth since the destruction of Camelot a millennium and a half before, and the forces of good and evil are going to collide. Twelve-year-old Derek Windward is the sole keeper of Sparkle’s oldest secret. He is the only one who has witnessed the evil hiding in the darkest part of the forest, and how terrifying the power it wields truly is. It is the Bunyine - a giant, tormented creature born eight-thousand years ago in the Garden of Eden and harboring an ancient grudge for the betrayal of its masters, whom we call Adam and Eve. One morning, Derek receives a cryptic message carved into a tree. A message from the beast itself. Though what the Bunyine wants is unclear, what it would do to get it is unthinkable. Sparkle brings together the charm and wonder of fantasy and the thrills of horror, creating a unique experience for readers of both genres, and all ages.

by H.B. West

When Sam’s terse hospital text arrives—"I’m still in California. Diagnosed with breast cancer today" ([#](https://wd.autocrit.com/editor/858686#id-fy7d))—the old man slips a whiskey under his coat, buys a one-way ticket, and heads for the rain-washed coasts of the British Isles. He is a man of small rituals: one more fly to tie, one more pub to learn, one more fish to catch. Along the way he collects strangers—Slick behind a bar, a red-haired Tralee traveler in a blue dress ([#](https://wd.autocrit.com/editor/858686#id-ebm9)), a cranky taxi driver who pins a daddy-long-legs fly to his lapel ([#](https://wd.autocrit.com/editor/858686#id-cmtz))—and each encounter loosens a knot he didn’t know he carried. But this is not just a travelogue; it is a reckoning. As storm Lorenzo drives him from the Isle of Man to the Lake District and across Scotland’s Spey ([#](https://wd.autocrit.com/editor/858686#id-pshp), [#](https://wd.autocrit.com/editor/858686#id-gur9), [#](https://wd.autocrit.com/editor/858686#id-jb4j)), the old man measures the steady tick of time against a bucket-list dream: to catch an Atlantic salmon on the fly ([#](https://wd.autocrit.com/editor/858686#id-no5k)). Wry, tender, and quietly fierce, this is a story about why we keep making plans in the face of good sense—and what happens when the future finally insists on being lived

by Jonathan Swift

Lemuel Gulliver encounters the tiny inhabitants of Lilliput, the giants of Brobdingnag, and the intellectual but detached residents of Laputa. Through these fantastical journeys, Swift delivers a biting satire on European politics and the flaws of the Enlightenment.

by Victor Hugo

First published in 1862, \\\*Les Misérables\\\* is Victor Hugo's masterpiece and one of the greatest novels of the 19th century. The story follows Jean Valjean, a man imprisoned for nineteen years for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister's starving children. Upon his release, Valjean is a hardened and bitter man, but a transformative encounter with a kind bishop inspires him to dedicate his life to doing good. Under a new identity, Valjean becomes a successful businessman and a beloved mayor, but his past continues to haunt him in the form of Inspector Javert, a man whose rigid devotion to the law makes him Valjean's relentless pursuer. As their lives intertwine with those of the beautiful Fantine, her daughter Cosette, and a group of idealistic young revolutionaries, the novel explores profound themes of justice, mercy, and the enduring power of the human spirit. A sprawling and deeply moving epic that captures the social and political upheavals of its time, \\\*Les Misérables\\\* remains a timeless classic and a powerful testament to the possibility of redemption.

by Herman Melville

Narrated by the sailor Ishmael, the story follows the Pequod and its captain, Ahab, on a perilous voyage. It is a profound meditation on obsession, fate, and the indomitable power of the natural world.

by Jane Austen

When the Bennet family's five daughters must marry well to secure their futures, the arrival of the wealthy Mr. Bingley and his even wealthier friend Mr. Darcy sets the neighbourhood abuzz. Elizabeth Bennet, the second eldest and most spirited of the sisters, finds herself at odds with the arrogant Mr. Darcy — yet as misunderstandings unravel and true characters are revealed, both must overcome their pride and prejudice to find happiness. A masterwork of irony and social observation, Pride and Prejudice remains one of the most beloved novels in the English language.

by Mary Shelley

Told through a series of letters and nested narratives, \*Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus\* follows Victor Frankenstein, a young Genevan scientist consumed by the desire to unlock the secret of life itself. After years of obsessive study, he succeeds in animating a creature assembled from the dead — only to be seized by horror at what he has made and abandon it entirely. Cast out and alone, the creature educates himself, yearns for companionship, and ultimately turns to vengeance when his creator refuses to grant him a mate. As Victor pursues the creature across Europe and into the frozen Arctic, both hunter and hunted are destroyed by the same relentless ambition. A profound meditation on creation, responsibility, and the price of forbidden knowledge, this is one of the founding works of Gothic and science fiction literature.

by Judah Ray

INSPIRED BY A TRUE STORY! Madison thought she was the only sane one in the house.\ \ Fourteen and isolated in a remote farmhouse ruled by her mother Faith’s rigid devotion, Madison is convinced the madness belongs to the adults around her. Aunt Hope urges patience. Aunt Grace sees demons in everything. Faith stands between doubt and doctrine.\ \ Certain she is being suffocated by religious extremism, Madison secretly launches a livestream channel to expose her mother to the world. The followers grow. The comments validate her. And no one in the house knows they are being broadcast live.\ \ When Grace convinces Faith that Madison’s rebellion is something darker, prayer turns to accusation. Accusation turns to restraint. An exorcism unknowingly unfolds live as viewers watch religious fanaticism spiral out of control.\ \ This may seem like just another story about a rebellious teenager and her controlling mother.  Another story about faith gone too far.\ \ But the footage tells a different story.\ \ UNORTHODOX is a claustrophobic psychological horror about faith, rebellion, and a mother who refuses to abandon her child, even when the world calls her crazy.

by Judah Ray

In 1955, a secret experiment at the Large Hadron Collider tore open a doorway to another realm.\ \ Extradimensional beings came through, possessed the top scientists and military officials in the room, and kept the portal open.\ \ One of the first crossed over and took a human infant as its host. That infant was Christina.\ \ The only issue is that Christina forgot what she was,  and the others could not enter or control her, but she could see them. So they declared her unstable and institutionalized her.\ \ Years later, world leaders, billionaires, media figures, and political dynasties are all possessed. The New World Order is not a conspiracy theory. It is literal possession.\ \ A decade later, Christina escapes and resurfaces in Berlin. The forces that have tracked her since childhood want her reclaimed or eliminated.\ \ With the help of Jory, who has been able to see the entities inside people since surviving a near-death experience as a child, Christina uncovers a power structure that has ruled humanity from within for generations.\ \ When she learns she is one of them, she must choose between her own kind or the man she loves and the humanity she chose to protect.\ \ They have ruled the world from inside us.\ Now one of their own stands against them.