Reluctant Hero

**HOW WE SURVIVE: THE FALL** **Book One of the How We Survive Saga** The world does not end in a single moment. It begins with warnings. Tensions rise between nations. Russia mobilizes. China conducts military exercises. Markets become unstable. Governments increase readiness. Rumors spread faster than facts, and beneath the ordinary rhythm of American life, something is moving into place. Most people never see it coming. John is one of them. On an ordinary Saturday morning, John is home with his wife, Jessica, and their three children—Amanda, Sean, and baby Layla. Their morning is filled with the kind of chaos that only a family can create: children, noise, arguments, laughter, and the small frustrations of everyday life. Nothing about the morning suggests that their world is about to disappear. Then everything changes. Across the country, attacks begin striking critical infrastructure. Power grids and treatment facilities are targeted. Communications and essential services begin failing. What first appears to be a series of isolated disasters quickly reveals something far more deliberate. America is under attack. As the country struggles to understand what is happening, John watches the destruction unfold. California suffers a catastrophic disaster, with massive waves overwhelming portions of the coastline. Television broadcasts show Americans fleeing, praying, and trying to understand how their country could have been struck so severely. For a brief moment, something unexpected happens. People stop fighting with one another. Churches open their doors. Christians pray. A synagogue and a nearby mosque in Chicago hold joint prayers. Political arguments and cultural divisions become meaningless in the face of catastrophe. But the unity does not last. John begins to understand that the attacks are not random. They are coordinated. Someone planned this. Someone understood America’s weaknesses and knew exactly where to strike. Then John receives his activation notice. His military instincts immediately recognize what many civilians cannot: this is not simply a disaster. It is the beginning of a war. While John prepares to face whatever is coming, another story is unfolding inside the military. Jeffery Scott is an Army National Guard soldier, an E-5 and later First Sergeant, accustomed to responsibility and pressure. In civilian life, he drives trucks across the country. In uniform, however, his world is defined by his soldiers. When the military is activated, Jeffery and his unit are thrown into a rapidly deteriorating situation. At first, there is still humor among the soldiers. Jeffery and his friend Scayes joke with each other over the radio, using humor as a way to keep fear at a distance. But the joking becomes harder to maintain as the reality of their mission becomes clear. Jeffery’s unit moves toward California as the country struggles with flooding, destruction, and widespread chaos. Hundreds of soldiers from Louisiana are being moved into the crisis, with buses carrying dozens of men at a time. Then the mission changes. The devastation is too severe for normal operations. Roads are blocked. Flooding has transformed entire areas. Boats are needed where vehicles once traveled. Jeffery is no longer simply a soldier following orders. He becomes a leader trying to keep people alive. And leadership comes with a price. During one of the military engagements, Jeffery’s unit is attacked in darkness. Suppressed gunfire tears through the night. Soldiers fall. Confusion spreads. Jeffery has to make decisions while knowing that every order could determine who lives and who dies. Scayes is among those lost. Jeffery survives, but survival does not feel like victory. He carries the weight of the men he could not save. That burden follows him into the disaster-relief operation that comes afterward. Jeffery becomes increasingly organized and relentless. Search grids are mapped. Day and night crews are established. Survivors are processed. Medical transfers are coordinated. The operation becomes almost mechanical. But Jeffery is not a machine. The stress eventually catches up with him. He clashes with another First Sergeant who questions his methods. Later, accumulated anger erupts into a physical confrontation with Adume’. There are no ranks in that moment—only exhausted men who have watched their world collapse and have reached their breaking point. Eventually, they reconcile. Jeffery emerges from the experience changed. His men begin calling themselves **Iron Will**. They are not simply responding to the disaster anymore. They are becoming something harder—soldiers who understand that the old world may not be coming back. Meanwhile, John’s world is collapsing in a much more personal way. His family disappears. When John returns home, there are signs that something happened, but there are no bodies. No blood. No definitive evidence that his family is dead. That uncertainty becomes its own kind of torture. John refuses to believe Jessica and the children are gone. He believes they may have been taken. And if they are alive, he intends to find them. John’s brother Aaron is experiencing a similar nightmare. His own family has vanished, leaving him with grief, anger, and questions that have no answers. John and Aaron are forced to confront the possibility that their families may have been swallowed by something much larger than the collapse itself. Their search eventually brings them together with Charles. Charles is a husband, father, and correctional officer whose ordinary problems—money, frustration, responsibility—suddenly become meaningless. His priorities become brutally simple: keep Melanie and their son alive. At a gas station, Charles discovers just how quickly civilization has changed. Money means almost nothing when people are desperate for food, fuel, and protection. When Derek and Reggy threaten Charles and his family, Charles is forced to act. He takes Reggy’s pistol, shoots Derek in the shoulder, and makes it clear that he will protect his family by whatever means necessary. When Melanie tells him, “You saved us,” Charles realizes that the man he used to be may not be enough anymore. The three men—John, Aaron, and Charles—begin moving through a country that no longer resembles the one they knew. They travel through Denham Springs and Florida Street. They search homes, gather supplies, look for information, and try to understand the new rules of survival. But the danger is not limited to foreign forces. Something is wrong inside America itself. There are signs of collaboration. People are being manipulated, recruited, or offered opportunities to switch sides. The enemy does not simply want to defeat America militarily. They want to break its people. The infrastructure continues to fail. Communications become unreliable. Power disappears. Water becomes difficult to obtain. Businesses close. Authorities struggle to maintain control. And then the occupation begins to become unmistakable. Foreign forces are no longer something seen on television. They are becoming part of everyday American reality. John realizes that hiding will not be enough. Survival requires movement. It requires intelligence. It requires trust. Most importantly, it requires people willing to fight. John’s military instincts begin resurfacing. Aaron becomes the brother willing to stand beside him even when fear and grief threaten to overwhelm him. Charles brings his own toughness and practical experience. None of them are prepared for what comes next. But they are learning. As they move toward John’s home and uncover more pieces of what happened to their families, the story shifts from simple survival to resistance. The question is no longer whether America has fallen. It has. The question is what happens after the fall. John, Aaron, and Charles begin taking the first steps toward something that will eventually become much larger than the three of them. At the same time, Jeffery and the soldiers of Iron Will represent another side of the same struggle. While civilians fight to survive and find their families, soldiers are fighting to understand what remains of their country and what their duty means when the normal chain of command is breaking down. Their stories are moving toward the same inevitable collision. The old America is disappearing. The new world is dangerous, fractured, and unforgiving. Yet humanity has not disappeared with it. People still pray. Families still search for one another. Soldiers still protect their brothers. And ordinary people discover that they are capable of extraordinary things when everything familiar is taken away. By the end of **The Fall**, John, Aaron, and Charles are no longer simply three men trying to survive. They are beginning to become resistance. They move forward knowing that the enemy is organized, the country is occupied, and the people they love may still be somewhere out there. John does not know whether he will ever see Jessica or his children again. Aaron does not know what happened to his family. Jeffery does not know how many more soldiers he will lose. Charles does not know how long he can protect the people he loves. But none of them have surrendered. The world they knew has fallen. Now they have to learn **how to survive what comes next.**

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.

After enduring endless torment and forbidden experiments at the hands of sadistic mages—who sought to forge him into a living vessel for a Daedric Prince—Verrick claws his way back from what he believed was death. His mind is a furnace of pure rage. His body hungers with a bottomless, feral craving for flesh.  \ \ Now he stalks the lands of Nirn, driven by one purpose: to uncover why this nightmare was forced upon him… and to hunt down every last architect of his ruin, leaving only blood and silence in his wake..

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.

Victoria Armstrong is running for senate on a promise she can't keep. Something in Kins City's water finds the para gene and turns it into a death sentence, and proving it means going after the men who own the labs, the insurance companies, and the ballot. Winning means becoming the thing her wife and best friend may no longer respect, but if it keeps her alive... does it matter? October Sky reads tarot for a living and insists that's all it is. When a fourteen-year-old slips her a note about the people going missing, she lands in a vigilante crew run by a detective and starts seeing disasters her cards deliver just late enough to watch. Dannika once hunted paras for the government. She was sent to infiltrate a youth center, and now the man who runs it is helping her with her own para abilities, and she has no idea how to tell him what she came there to do. Everyone standing in their way believes they're the hero. Before it's over, one of these women will erase a mind to save a life. One will erase a nation's records to save a people. And one will ask to have her own gift taken from her. *For readers of M.L. Wang, J.D. Evans, and Krystle Matar.*

Aurelia Greenlaw is a twenty-two year old Captain in the 13th Recon Division, and she is a Radio. In Palvera, the nation built on the ruins of North America, that word means something specific. Centuries ago an experiment on the human mind produced a mutation that never went away. Now there are six kinds: Builders, who rearrange matter with their hands. Washers, who put thoughts in your head and let you believe you thought them. Shifters, who change what you see. Sensatives, who read what you feel and can turn the dial on it. Nets, who move what they can see without touching it. And Radios, who read the world in waves, who hear a signal a mile out and can put a voice inside your skull. The Centre calls this humanity, perfected. Everyone born without it is a Blank, and the Centre has built a country on that distinction. Arra has spent her whole life on the useful side of the line. Then a bomb takes her unit apart on the mountain and leaves her the only one breathing. The Centre searches forty-eight hours for a missing soldier. After that, she’s a name on a list. She wakes on day three, strapped to a gurney in a stronghold carved into rock, listening to the people who found her argue about whether she’s worth the water it would take to keep her alive. They’re Blanks. They’ve also done the one thing no Blank should be able to do. They’ve blocked her. The waves are gone. The world has gone flat and quiet, and the part of her that made her worth keeping has been cut out. Arra is going to get home. She’s willing to be patient about it: count the turns in the tunnels, memorize the faces, learn who can be used and who can be turned. What she doesn’t account for is how long it takes, or what months of it do to a doctrine that was never meant to survive contact with the people it was written about.  *Radio* is an adult dystopian novel about inheritance, indoctrination, and what’s left of a person when the thing that defined her is taken away.

Seventeen-year-old Luna has never wanted to be anyone’s savior. She would rather understand the world around her than be placed at the center of it. But when long-buried secrets surrounding her family begin to surface, Luna discovers that the strange power awakening within her is tied to something far older—and far more dangerous—than she ever imagined. Drawn into a hidden world shaped by lunar magic, ancient enemies, fractured loyalties, and a history no one seems willing to tell her completely, Luna is forced to question everything she thought she knew about her father, her past, and the role others believe she is destined to play. As the darkness closes in, the people around her carry secrets of their own. Some want to protect her. Some need what she can become. And some may already know how her story is supposed to end. Luna must decide who to trust while learning to control a power she barely understands—one that could protect the people she loves or make her the very thing their enemies have been waiting for. Dark, atmospheric, and character-driven, *Luna Lumina* is the first book in a planned young adult fantasy trilogy about family, identity, sacrifice, and a reluctant heroine caught between the life she wants and the destiny others have chosen for her. For readers who enjoy mysterious magic, hidden histories, dangerous fantasy worlds, strong family bonds, and heroines who refuse to accept easy answers.

A broken-down van. A hollow that's not on any map. A family that doesn't let strangers leave. When their van breaks down deep in the Appalachian mountains, five electricians stumble into Craggy Dean Hollow looking for nothing more than a spare hose and a way back to the road. What they find instead is a wedding, a shotgun, and a father who's decided one of them is about to become his son-in-law - whether they want to or not.   New Chapters Saturdays at 4pm EST.

Kieran Ashford embraces a new body and destiny as he discovers to master his magic and become known as one of the greatest wizards of Valterra

It was a normal life for Starlene and her little sister Sierra when they learned that their estranged sister had disappeared. It was then that they uncovered a letter from their late great-grandfather that revealed a dangerous legend surrounding a magical artifact known as the Starstone. Determined to complete their great-grandfather's unfinished quest, the sisters embark on a perilous journey filled with unexpected challenges. As they search for their missing sister and her kidnapped friend, they must confront the shadows of betrayal and loss. Will they find the truth behind their sister's disappearance? Who are the mysterious hooded figures following them? And can they recover the Starstone before it falls into the wrong hands?

***THE DEEPER THE SECRET, THE DARKER THE SHADOW***  **The Secrets and Shadows Series** is a gripping four-book thriller series where deadly hunters, clandestine societies, buried conspiracies, and enemies hiding in plain sight collide. Each mystery pulls the characters deeper into a web of secrets where nothing—and no one—is exactly what they seem. In **The Deadly Hunter**, the hunt begins when a deadly predator emerges from the shadows, leaving behind a trail of violence and unanswered questions. Someone is watching, manipulating the investigation, and protecting a secret powerful enough to destroy lives. **The Secret Society** takes the mystery deeper when evidence points toward an organization that has operated in the shadows for generations. Its members are powerful, connected, and willing to do whatever it takes to protect their secrets. The closer the truth comes to the surface, the more dangerous the investigation becomes—and escaping the society's reach may be impossible. In **The Buried Truth**, long-hidden evidence begins to surface, exposing connections no one expected. The past refuses to stay buried, and the truth reveals a conspiracy far more complicated than anyone imagined. But uncovering the truth comes with a price, and someone is determined to make sure it stays buried—even if it means silencing everyone who gets too close. Finally, **The Danger Within** brings the series to its explosive conclusion. After everything they've uncovered, the greatest threat may not be waiting outside the walls. It may already be among them. Trust fractures, loyalties are tested, and the final secrets begin to unravel as the characters race to uncover who is really behind it all. Across four heart-pounding mysteries, **The Secrets and Shadows Series** explores the dangerous intersection of deception, power, obsession, and betrayal. With every revelation comes another question, and every answer leads deeper into the darkness.

Alex Carter has always understood games better than people. At Ridgewood High, he’s the quiet kid with his head down, his best friend at his side, and an RPG waiting for him when he gets home. But when a mysterious interface suddenly appears before his eyes—complete with stats, quests, skills, and experience points—Alex discovers that reality has rules he was never supposed to see. And he isn’t the only one playing. Beneath the ordinary world exists the Nexus, a hidden realm of magic, monsters, secret factions, and ancient powers struggling to maintain a fragile balance. The Guardians want to protect that balance. The Rogues want to break free from it. And something buried far deeper has begun to notice Alex. As his abilities grow, Alex is forced to confront enemies who were once classmates, secrets hidden within his own power, and a corruption capable of turning fear, anger, and ambition into weapons. Every new level makes him stronger—but every choice threatens to pull the people he loves deeper into a world they were never meant to see. Because Alex is beginning to realize that his strange new power isn’t simply turning reality into a game. **It may be preparing him for one.** *Nexus: Balance of Shadows* is a LitRPG urban fantasy about friendship, identity, family, hidden worlds, and discovering that true strength isn’t choosing between light and darkness—it’s learning how to carry both without losing yourself.

For generations, hunters have protected the world from the things hiding in the darkness. They know the rules: salt for spirits, silver for werewolves, iron for certain creatures, and a well-placed bullet when nothing else works. But there are things even hunters aren't supposed to know. When an ancient black book resurfaces after decades of being lost, its pages reveal detailed accounts of supernatural creatures, forgotten rituals, secret hunter societies, and cases that were deliberately erased from history. Every entry seems to predict a new series of brutal supernatural deaths occurring across the country. As hunters race to uncover who wrote the book and why it was hidden, they discover that the stories inside aren't simply records of the past. They're warnings. Something ancient is using the book to manipulate events in the present—and the closer the hunters get to the truth, the more they realize the book may not be a weapon at all. It may be a prison. And whatever was sealed inside is beginning to wake.

*Sprites are small magical beings with delicate, fairy-like features and a deep connection to nature and the elemental forces of the world. Their appearance often reflects the environment in which they live, from the colors of their clothing to the shape and shimmer of their wings. Though they are tiny, sprites possess keen senses, ancient knowledge, and magical abilities far greater than their size might suggest. Most prefer to remain hidden from larger folk, revealing themselves only to trusted friends or creatures in need.* *Air Sprites make their homes among the highest branches of the forest, where sunlight touches the leaves and the wind moves freely through the canopy. Their villages consist of small houses made from bark, curled leaves, woven grass, and flower petals. Narrow rope bridges connect their homes to nesting grounds, gardens, gathering platforms, and hidden watch posts. From these lofty settlements, the Air Sprites tend the trees and protect the creatures that shelter beneath their leaves.* *Through gentle winds and whispered songs, Air Sprites carry pollen between distant blossoms and guide falling seeds toward fertile ground. They direct fresh air into the deepest and darkest parts of the woodland, clearing away smoke, rot, and harmful vapors. During dry seasons, they gather morning mist upon their wings and carry precious droplets to young plants. Their work is rarely noticed, yet much of the forest depends upon their quiet care.* *Air Sprites are playful, curious, and fond of harmless mischief. They may hide a traveler’s hat among the branches, braid flowers into the mane of a sleeping deer, or imitate birdsong from an unseen perch. Their laughter sometimes drifts through the leaves upon a warm breeze, though few outsiders ever discover its source. Those who show kindness to the forest may occasionally catch a glimpse of silver wings flashing in the sunlight.* *Despite their gentle nature, Air Sprites are fiercely protective when their homes or woodland companions are threatened. Their rangers patrol the outer canopy upon trained wrens, carrying tiny bows, thorn spears, and slender needle swords. They use speed, teamwork, and knowledge of the branches to overcome enemies many times their size. Anyone who mistakes an Air Sprite’s small stature for weakness may quickly learn that even the smallest blade can turn the tide.*

To save her dying queen, an elven princess seeks a rare leaf—only to discover her kingdom's reckless policies caused the monsters hunting her.

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.

Apollo Knight is the most talented producer nobody's heard of — and he prefers it that way. Raised by his jazz-legend grandmother in Berkeley after his mother abandoned him at age five, Apollo poured everything he couldn't say out loud into his music. Now twenty-five, he runs BeatBoxx Studios out of his grandmother's garage, producing hits for street rappers while quietly dreaming of something bigger. His partner, Grimey, is everything Apollo isn't — loud, ambitious, and willing to cut any corner to get paid. When Grimey starts pushing Apollo toward Street Lyfe Records, a label with a reputation for stealing beats and dodging the IRS, Apollo's instincts tell him to walk. But walking away from Grimey was never simple. Set against the gritty, soulful backdrop of Oakland's music scene — from the recording booths of Berkeley to the jazz clubs of West Oakland's Seventh Street — Bullets & Ballads is a story about talent versus hustle, loyalty versus survival, and one man trying to protect the only thing nobody can take from him: his music.

Codey Hall is an exhausted twenty‑two‑year‑old scraping by in East Tennessee when a roadside ambush awakens the impossible: he is the prophesied “boy‑good witch,” born once every thousand years, the only soul who can keep the Veil between worlds from shattering. His power surges just as factions close in—warlocks, blood mages, werewolves, and vampires—some desperate to use his storm, others determined to tear the Veil open and unleash Hell’s triad. Thrown into a hidden war of ancient magic, coven betrayals, and buried family secrets, Codey must learn to control his will‑fueled mana before the forces hunting him rip everything apart. At his side stands Lucian, a rogue vampire protector whose cold devotion becomes the one anchor in the chaos, even as a charismatic blood mage sparks a dangerous love triangle. When Codey discovers he has a twin sister whose blood can break the Veil forever, survival turns into a race against destiny, betrayal, and the storm inside him that refuses to die. With vampire politics, coven sieges, and a cursed sword that chose him, Codey’s fight for love and power becomes the last barrier between Earth and ruin.

\*\*SYNOPSIS: BORN INTO DESTINY: LUCIFER'S FOLLY\*\*   Rabbitt works as an errand runner for Jimmy Ray, a small-time Dallas operator who humiliates him for sport. When Jimmy Ray smashes Rabbitt's Gibson underfoot and mocks him for it, three years of degradation reach a breaking point. The next day, sent out with Jimmy Ray's Cadillac and a sealed package he's told not to open, Rabbitt keeps driving north instead of coming back.   Outside Tulsa he picks up a hitchhiker, Jessie, headed to see family in Lincoln, Nebraska. He has nowhere else to be, so Lincoln becomes the destination. Jessie brings him to a house party, where a guy named Greg — magnetic, vain, impossible to read — needles him in front of a crowd, then abruptly claims he can get Rabbitt a record deal. Ten minutes later Greg returns with a burned CD and plays "Happy Together" — the first song Rabbitt ever learned on guitar, a fact Greg has no way of knowing. It's the first of three signs that convince Rabbitt he isn't dealing with an ordinary person.   Rabbitt moves in with Dave and Sarah, the couple hosting the party, and spends weeks orbiting Greg's world. Greg asks him for a ride and, in the car, produces the exact knife Rabbitt carries — same make, same warning Rabbitt uses to describe it — before returning it to his pocket without menace, just proof he already knows everything. The ride ends at a brownstone reached by fire escape, where a woman in lingerie greets Greg at the door and a room of more than twenty beautiful women lie in a trance across six canopy beds, reaching for him and going still the instant he's out of range. He retrieves something from the last bed and leaves without explanation.   Back at the house, the second sign arrives: Greg brings home a leather-bound book with a blank final page bearing Genesis 28:15 in Rabbitt's mother's handwriting — the same verse from a letter Rabbitt tore up and buried in the trash an hour earlier. Separately, Greg's two oldest friends, questioned alone and days apart, give Rabbitt the identical unprompted answer about why they stay near him despite hating him, word for word. Rabbitt decides to run to his aunt's in Bettendorf, Iowa. Before he can leave, Greg shows up asking for a ride and unfolds a map with a pentagram already inked over Bettendorf — the third sign, and confirmation that nowhere he picks is his own idea.   Snowed into Lincoln for two weeks with no way out on the highway, Rabbitt finally starts the Cadillac and drives anyway. The snow that should have buried the car parts in front of him. He makes the six-hundred-mile run to his mother's house in Tulsa on half a tank of gas, and somewhere along the way the stolen package disappears from the seat beside him without explanation. He tells his mother he's met the devil, that God is real. She isn't surprised; she already knew.   Days later, driving back through Oklahoma, he's pulled over and arrested. A three-month jail stretch follows — a legal non-event, except for one night in the group shower, where another inmate slashes both arms open at the elbow in a suicide attempt. Rabbitt takes charge in the emergency with no authority to do so, directing strangers to press towels, twist tourniquets, and hold the man's head off the concrete until paramedics arrive. The man survives. Rabbitt sleeps that night without dreaming of the amber-eyed visions that had followed him since Lincoln — not because they're gone, but because, for the first time, he answered them.   The book closes without resolving whether what happened was destiny or coincidence, divine or demonic — Rabbitt leaves that verdict to the reader, the same way he was left to reach it himself.   \---

Alanis August went to bed on the night of her 18th birthday and awoke to a battle between her pack and Alpha Raymond. Her parents were both murdered by the ruthless Alpha, and Alpha Raymond takes her prisoner. Alanis is terrified after being kept in a small cage for over two years until Alpha Sebastian defeats Alpha Raymond and rescues her. After being caged, alone, and afraid for two years, she has no idea what the new Alpha will do to her or what awaits her outside her cage. Alanis embarks on a journey of finding herself with the help of Julian, the Alpha's sister. Alpha Sebastian takes an interest in helping Alanis find herself as well. As the two spend time together helping her put her life back together, they find themselves falling in love.

An Ongoing Saga Following the exploits of Zakary Sevendust and his found family on a hostile violent world known as Jistoa.

It's 1959, and humanity is entering a new age of cosmic exploration. Four ships with crews of two are sent out into the unknown to see firsthand what lies beyond the stars. Over a year into the mission, the crew of the Silent Horizon, Dex Prullen and Lacy Carradine, have joined each other in marriage and are content living out their days just floating through space. But on the day of their anniversary, the Empire finds them. Swiftly pulled apart, Dex and Lacy are thrown headfirst into a new world led by a god-like being and his imperium of theocratic zealots. And it is only a matter of time before one of them is delivered to the Emperor himself, dooming all of humanity with them, unless they can be reunited and escape the Empire of the Void.

March 1864. The American Civil War is reaching its agonizing twilight, but for the citizens of Shreveport, Louisiana, the horror is just beginning. Captain Douglas Ivey, CSA, starts his morning with a quiet cup of coffee on his mother's front porch, unaware that an unstoppable Union juggernaut—30,000 soldiers of the Army of the Gulf—is marching straight toward his home with devastating intent. Tasked with a high-stakes, borderline-suicidal reconnaissance mission, Douglas is ordered down the Red River Road to locate and count the invading enemy. What begins as a strategic military assignment quickly spirals into an intimate nightmare. The mission thrusts Douglas, his closest friends, and members of his own family directly into the path of an oncoming war machine, fracturing loyalties and putting everything he loves in mortal danger. Spanning the massive, 565-page canvas of a nation tearing itself apart, the narrative follows the explosive fallout of Douglas's discovery. As the Union army advances, the Ivey family is split across ideological and physical battle lines. From the gritty, tactical tension of deep-reconnaissance scouting to the grand, visceral chaos of major military campaigns, the story explores the brutal realities of 19th-century combat through the eyes of those forced to fight it. As General George S. Patton famously observed, "Compared to war, all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance." For Douglas and his kin, this insignificance becomes a tragic reality. They are stripped of their peace, their security, and their innocence, forced to endure the absolute limits of human endurance. Ultimately, the story builds to a gripping climax where survival is just the first step. As the smoke finally clears over the blood-stained soil of Louisiana, the surviving members of the Ivey family face an even greater challenge: how to heal, how to forgive, and how to reconstruct their shattered lives from the ashes of a war that changed them forever.

**One ordinary night changed the world forever.** When a mysterious meteor shower lights up the sky, fourteen-year-old Derek watches as the impossible becomes reality. Dragons awaken, ancient powers stir, and the world he thought he knew begins to unravel. As fear spreads and civilization struggles to understand the mysterious changes, Derek discovers he has become part of something far greater than himself. Alongside unexpected allies, he must navigate a dangerous new world where courage, friendship, and sacrifice may be humanity’s only hope against a growing darkness. Filled with unforgettable characters, breathtaking adventure, and the timeless battle between hope and evil, **Meteor** is an epic fantasy that asks one question: *What would you do if the impossible suddenly became real?*

When the Time Comes is a grounded dystopian epic exploring how control is maintained not through open tyranny, but through comfort, fear, and gradual compliance. Following the collapse of traditional governance, the United States is reorganized into 9 centralized authoritarian districts under the Continuem of America. A regime promising stability and survival in exchange for obedience, surveillance and erasure of the old world. Behind the Continuem operates a technocratic cabal leveraging artificial intelligence, institutional capture and predictive modeling to shape outcomes rather than rule openly. The story centers on siblings Rose and Maurice, divided by ideology yet bound by blood, whose choices force them into irreversible defection and collision with resistance networks, nomads, and defectors-all making understandable but incompatible choices. Each book in the series is titled by the consecutive era's that occur within them.

Titus Wolfe - high school music teacher by day, and DJ extraordinaire by night, becomes a wolfman. But not your typical wolfeman. Not the vicious, brutal and savage man-eating killer, but a savior. Titus's love for music is his saving grace, and also for his alter-ego wolfman. Music calms this savage beast, and along the way he meets the woman of his dreams and befriends those he saves. Romance, humor, adventure, music & dancing ensues. The ride is just beginning....

Jasper Van Terra and her team of superpowered criminals seek revenge on the governor of city-planet Kronos.

"What is going on with me?" Jazmyn Wolff felt a wave of panic wash over her. It was her 21st birthday, and she had no idea what the future held for her. All she knew was that the word 'magic' was about to play a big role in her life. She was gifted with a special power, and it was up to her to unlock it with help from a group of witches, a healer, and her own strength of will. She had to learn to become her true self and use her powers to stop a deadly demon from ruling the world. Jazmyn must trust in her ability to overcome this daunting challenge and her determination to succeed. She was allowed to make a difference, and she was determined to take it. With courage and bravery, she set out to learn all she could about her magical powers and use them to save the world.

The empire of Valdris runs on dragon blood. Every three years, the Conscription comes — and the lower wards of Oakhaven know better than to hope their names won't be called. When Elara Voss watches her younger brother Corvin chosen for the Wyrm Corps, she does the only thing she can: she steps forward in his place. What waits for her at the Rookery is worse than she imagined. The Initiates are not trained — they are broken. The Wyrms are not mounts — they are weapons, half-mad with pain, bonded to soldiers through a process that kills as many as it saves. And the bond Elara forms with a dying Wyrm named Obsidian is unlike anything the Corps has seen before. Obsidian should not have survived. Elara should not have bonded with him. And the things he shows her in the dark — the memories buried in his marrow, the truth about where the empire's power really comes from — should not exist. truth in a world built on beautiful lies. For readers of epic fantasy with horror undertones, morally complex characters, and a bond between woman and dragon that neither of them asked for — and neither of them can survive without.

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

In the unseen war between Heaven and Hell, some of the most dangerous warriors are neither angel nor demon—but something in between. **Jovias and the Exiled Seven** is a dark supernatural thriller series that explores the fate of a group of fallen angels exiled to Earth after the ancient rebellion in Heaven. Stripped of their wings and their place in the celestial order, these beings walk among humanity for centuries, hidden in plain sight. Each exile carries the burden of their fall, struggling with pride, guilt, and the lingering pull of darkness. Among them is **Jovias**, once a formidable warrior in Heaven’s ranks. Unlike the others, Jovias believes exile is not merely punishment—it is a test. A chance for redemption. But Hell has not forgotten them. As demonic forces begin manipulating human history from the shadows, the Exiled Seven discover they are pawns in a much larger plan. A hidden hierarchy within Hell is working to weaken the spiritual boundaries protecting Earth. Cults rise, false doctrines spread through influential churches, and ancient demonic entities move closer to breaking through the veil separating realms. To stop it, the exiles must confront both **their enemies and their pasts**. Each member of the Seven faces a personal crossroads: - remain trapped in bitterness and condemnation - or fight for humanity and reclaim their purpose. Along the way they form fragile alliances with humans—detectives, scholars, believers, and skeptics—who slowly uncover the terrifying truth about the spiritual war unfolding around them. The conflict builds toward an apocalyptic confrontation in **Jerusalem**, where the forces of Heaven, Hell, and the exiled must collide. There, the final choice will be made: redemption… or permanent damnation. Some will fall. Some will be restored. And the fate of humanity will hinge on whether the exiles can prove that even those who once rebelled against Heaven can still choose the light.

Ten years after escaping a life of servitude behind the Veil, Wren is dragged back into the shimmering, cruel world of the fae. Her captor is Fionn, a silver-tongued bastard prince from her past who remembers the magic in her blood better than she does herself. Fionn is crafting a masterpiece of manipulation to usurp the throne, and he needs Wren’s rare, touch-based mind-reading to harvest the secrets of his treacherous brothers. Forced into a secret coven of gifted women, Wren must master forgotten, ancient magic to survive a world where every smile is a snare. Caught between her hatred for the monsters who stole her life and a growing, dangerous desire for the prince who promises to change everything, Wren must decide if she is Fionn’s greatest weapon, his equal partner, or merely the latest sacrifice in his climb to the crown.  *For fans of ACOTAR and The Cruel Prince.*

**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?

***Harry Potter meets Sorcery of Thorns.*** *For fans of dark academia, magical university, and rivals-to-lovers.* Gwen O'Dorchaidhe thought her life was going to plan as the perfect heir to a pureblood line of sorcerers. Until the ordinary, untaught, *American* Chosen One entered her life, challenging everything she was raised to believe about potential. Breaking curses and challenging the outdated rules of sorcerer society is just another year at Cairn-Gait Conservatory.

On a fictional Greek island, Anastasia Livanitis solves murders and other crimes with her ghostly sidekicks, and her journalist best friend, Nikos.

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.