Showing results by author "C.A.L." in All Categories

Constance is a fiercely independent high school senior living in rural James City County, Virginia. After their father abandons the family, she and her sister Abigail move into their late cousin's home with their mother, Delilah. Constance quickly becomes frustrated by her new life and her mother’s obsession with their family’s legacy. In defiance, she aspires to make a new life for herself and leave this place forever.

Follow-up to the successful debut, Amara's Calling (Revised and updated January 2019)! Mya McIntosh is attending the wedding of the year as the maid of honor to her best friend Amara Davis, the former employee and wife of billionaire social media mogul Grayson Davis. A dazzling destination wedding in Spain seems like the perfect setting for Mya to finally lose this pesky virginity of hers, but her prospects don't look promising. Amara has high hopes that Mya could land one of Grayson's billionaire best friends but Mya isn't so sure, especially when it comes to Grayson's obnoxious business ...

Survivors trapped in a sunken vessel find themselves hunted through the depths by a deadly adversary. A skeptical journalist discovers the sinister inhabitants of a fake haunted house are all too real. And a husband commits murder to protect his wife, only to learn he has created something even more dangerous....

Everyone is ecstatic when a pro windsurfing competition comes to the posh enclave of SeaBreeze Island, Florida. Maud Baxter, the owner of Sand Puppies bookstore, is looking forward to a weekend of tourists and all the dollars they will spend. Unfortunately, the windsurfing competition is marred when the top windsurfer goes missing. Turns out, she's been murdered. Maud and the local sheriff find her body in the dunes on the island. Maud’s desperate to find the killer and bring them to justice because, frankly, having an outstanding murder is bad for the tourist trade. She enlists the help ...

Zuri finds herself in the hands of a Zargonnii warrior after she and her shipmates are extracted from a strange world. Hunted by the heinous Tonan and sought after by the deadly Gorgano, Zuri is mortified when she realizes humans, especially female humans, are considered a rare, exotic novelty. She has no intention of being put on display for massive warriors to gawk at. She plans her escape.

You might be the kind of person who stands up to online trolls. Or who marches to protest injustice. Perhaps you are #DisabledAndCute and dancing around your living room, alive and proud. Or perhaps you are the trans mentor that you wish you had when you were younger. Maybe you call out false allies or stand up to loved ones. Maybe you speak your truth and drop the mic, or maybe you take it with you when you leave. This anthology features fictional stories—in poems, prose, and art—that reflect a slice of the varied and limitless ways that listeners like you resist every day.

Daniel had been a mercenary longer than his soul could take. On that final job, looking down at the face of an angel whose death he'd been responsible for, he knew he was done. And although he hadn't pulled the trigger on the bullets that took her life, he felt like he had. He'd buried her in a hidden grave in the Canadian woods so no one would desecrate her lovely body.

If any of the following behaviors sound like you or someone you work with, beware! In Why CEOs Fail, David L. Dotlich and Peter C. Cairo describe the most common characteristics of derailed top executives and how you can avoid them.

When Knight Alaric von Mertz loses his family to a ravenous zombie horde, he swears revenge on the necromancer responsible. But a quest for vengeance is no easy matter in a world overrun by the walking dead. Joined by a rogue, a witch hunter, a novice wizard, and a dwarf demolition master, Alaric's journey leads him from fire moats to the zombie-ridden catacombs of the witch hunters to uncover a spell book of insurmountable power. As zombies claw and bite, Alaric fears he will never avenge his family. For in this age of the undead, betrayal and magic lurk around every corner.

Some abuse is dangerously obvious, while other types of abuse creep into our family DNA in covert ways. Keeping family secrets, intimidation, the “silent treatment” and “cyberbullying” are just a few examples of many forms of abuse with troubling outcomes. Often victims ask, “Why did this happen to me?" Or “What can I do?”. While abusers will excuse their behavior asking, “Why do you make me do this"? Victims and abusers can rewrite their stories, improve their relationships, and break the cycle for their future generations.

Time may heal all wounds, but time stands still for the dead. Twenty years have passed since the horrific night in the Whispering House. Now, Abigail lives a relatively normal life as an independent bookstore owner while her sister, Constance, struggles to navigate crippling physical and psychological damage. But when Abigail inherits the house, old memories and childhood traumas are awoken.

Disputes between Kharadron Overlords sky-captains are common - and some lead to outright conflict. Such is the case as the Black Eagle is bombarded by its sister ship of Barak-Zilfin, the feared Skarskorr's Glory. But this is more than just a battle of arms. The wits of the skyvessels' captains - and their knowledge of the obscure tenets of the Kharadron code - will be tested, and only the most knowledgable, determined and, perhaps, willing to cheat will see victory....

Even while avoiding all the wedding nonsense and coddling Willodean, Bubba feels the need to support a friend, be he a loony or not. There's folks disappearing, murder, and mayhem at the Dogley Institute for Mental Well-Being. Armed with Precious, his faithful Bassett hound, and Ol' Green, his faithful Chevy truck, Bubba aims to do what he does best, and amble on through the mystery before someone goes to jail, or worse, gets themselves murdered most foully.

From terraformed outposts to magical realms, journey to worlds where deadly plants, rampant biodiversity, or failed colonies have created irresistible opportunities for those brave enough to seize them. New worlds, found family, mystical secrets, and deadly science weave together in this lesbian-centric anthology focusing on a very different kind of first time - a first encounter with a world, or being, entirely unlike our own.

Ferocious storms, winged beasts, and falling angels are just some of the dark tales locked within these pages. Discover a world where carnage falls from the sky, and delve into the frenzy of a world gone mad as Heaven opens and all Hell breaks loose.

When Mercy Maddox makes a spur of the moment decision to pretend she is the fare of a man holding a name card at Savannah Airport, she doesn't suspect she's about to climb into the back seat of a hit man hired to kill his passenger—nor find herself on an Antebellum plantation a hundred and eighty years in the past.

It's ten years after the end of WWII when Camille Winters accepts a position as the only colored secretary in the office at Hargrove and Chase, an advertising agency on Madison Avenue in the mid-1950's. As the dashing young owner and senior partner Kenneth Hargrove secretly becomes more obsessed with Camille, he calls in a favor to find information about Camille's long-lost love who died in the war. But instead of the gesture bringing closure, the ghosts from the past suddenly come back to haunt her, putting her hard-won successful career in jeopardy.

Jack has a lot of sex - and he's not ashamed of it. While he's sometimes ostracized and gossip constantly rages about his sex life, Jack always believes that "it could be worse". But then, the worse unexpectedly strikes: When Jack starts writing a teen sex-advice column for an online site, he begins to receive creepy and threatening love letters that attempt to force Jack to curb his sexuality and personality. Now, it's up to Jack and his best friends to uncover the stalker - before their love becomes dangerous.

An anthology of short stories based upon/inspired by, and in loving homage to all of those great gore-fest movies and books of the 1980s (not necessarily based in that era, although some do ride that wave of nostalgia), the golden age when horror well and truly came kicking, screaming, and spraying blood, gore, and body parts out from the shadows.

Cherise wanted a quiet, normal life... something she had never had. After a traumatic loss, she decided she needed serenity, so she moved halfway across the world to the American states, to a beautiful, quaint village in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. And there, with fresh air, tall trees, and lovely neighbors, she opened a little patisserie, and settled into a wonderful, normal life. Her family had already told her she couldn't run from her destiny. Turns out, they were right.