This holiday season, join two of today’s most popular paranormal authors for a special look into their worlds, where creatures are always stirring and no one sleeps through the night.... The Bite Before Christmas The Gift by Lynsay Sands Teddy Brunswick knows about the immortals among us. He’s worked with them, called them friend — but he never counted on being snowed in with one over Christmas. Katricia Argeneau is a tasty little bundle and she seems to feel the same way about him. Problem is, he’s not sure she feels quite the same way. After all, the snowstorm has derailed her blood delivery, which leaves him the only available meal on the menu.... Home for the Holidays by Jeaniene Frost Cat and Bones are looking forward to a normal holiday — at least as “normal” as it gets for the combustible vampire couple and their otherworldly friends and family. But their yuletide plans are shattered when a stranger shows up and reveals long-buried family secrets that threaten to take a bite out of their holiday cheer...and lives.

Connor is sure his best friend, Branwell, couldn't have hurt Branwell's baby half sister, Nikki. But Nikki lies in a coma, and Branwell is in a juvenile behavioral center, suspected of a horrible crime and unable to utter the words to tell what really happened. Connor is the only one who might be able to break through Branwell's wall of silence. But how can he prove Branwell didn't commit the unspeakable act of which he's accused — when Branwell can't speak for himself?

After narrowly surviving two harrowing tragedies, Jules now fully understands the importance of the visions that she and people around her are experiencing. She’s convinced that if the visions passed from her to Sawyer after she saved him, then they must now have passed from Sawyer to one of the people he saved. That means it’s up to Jules to figure out which of the school shooting survivors is now suffering from visions of another crisis. And once she realizes who it is, she has to convince that survivor that this isn't all crazy—that the images are of something real. Something imminent. As the danger escalates more than ever before in the conclusion to the Visions series, Jules wonders if she'll finally find out why and how this is happening—before it's too late to prevent disaster.

Sandy Huntington-Ackerman's life becomes increasingly complicated when his bungling, moneygrubbing uncles try to shanghai the family fortune by poisoning a birthday cake. Luckily, those conniving uncles prove yet again that they can't do anything right. Instead of bumping off the whole family, they put Sandy's mom and dad and their pet chicken into mysterious comas. Sandy joins forces with his loyal butler and a wise and wacky nurse to save his parents and squelch his uncles' felonious high jinks.

At the age of 14 Georg Koves is plucked from his home in a Jewish section of Budapest and without any particular malice, placed on a train to Auschwitz. He does not understand the reason for his fate. He doesn’t particularly think of himself as Jewish. And his fellow prisoners, who decry his lack of Yiddish, keep telling him, “You are no Jew.” In the lowest circle of the Holocaust, Georg remains an outsider. The genius of Imre Kertesz’s unblinking novel lies in its refusal to mitigate the strangeness of its events, not least of which is Georg’s dogmatic insistence on making sense of what he witnesses–or pretending that what he witnesses makes sense. Haunting, evocative, and all the more horrifying for its rigorous avoidance of sentiment, Fatelessness is a masterpiece in the traditions of Primo Levi, Elie Wiesel, and Tadeusz Borowski.

This gripping debut of the Kate Martinelli mystery series won the Edgar Awardfor Best First Mystery, generating wide critical acclaim and moving Laurie R.King into the upper tier of the genre. As "A Grave Talent" begins, The unthinkable has happened in a small community outside of San Francisco. A string of shocking murders has occurred, each victim an innocent child. For Detective Kate Martinelli, just promoted to Homicide and paired with a seasoned cop who's less than thrilled to be handed a green partner, it's going to be a difficult case. Then the detectives receive what appears to be a case-breaking lead: it seems that one of the residents of this odd, close-knit colony is Vaun Adams, arguably the century's greatest painter of women, a man, as it turns out, with a sinister secret. For behind the brushes and canvases also stands a notorious felon once convicted of strangling a little girl. What really happened on that day of savage violence eighteen years ago? To bring a murderer to justice, Kate must delve into the artist's dark past -- even if she knows it means losing everything she holds dear.

Seventeen-year-old Jayna wishes she could spend every second of the day with Andrew. He's her first love, and he understands her like nobody else can. Jayna just wishes Andrew's prejudiced family could accept her - but when they're alone together, it hardly seems to matter. But something strange has happened to Andrew. He looks . . . different. Pale and drawn, as if he hasn't been outside for days, with mysteriously cold green eyes. He won't go out in the sunlight, and he's unnaturally fast and strong. And now he wants Jayna to join him. Now she has to make the choice: to lose Andrew forever, or to be with him always - no matter the cost.

Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny used to live alone in a boxcar. Now they have a home with their grandfather, and they are about to discover a mystery in a fortune cookie! When the Aldens go to dinner at a local Chinese restaurant, Benny can’t wait for his favorite part of the meal: dessert. He loves breaking open the delicious fortune cookies and reading the messages inside. But when Benny opens his cookie, he is in for a surprise. Instead of a fortune, Benny’s cookie contains a handwritten riddle! One cookie leads to another, and the Aldens soon realize they’ve bitten into another mystery. Who is leaving the Aldens the mysterious cookie clues … and why?

THE duhr, or noonday call to prayer, had just sounded from the minarets of the Mosques of Kalaûn and En-Nasîr, and I was idly noting the negligible effect of the adan upon the occupants of the neighboring shops—coppersmiths for the most part—when suddenly my errant attention became arrested. A mendicant of unwholesome aspect crouched in the shadow of the narrow gateway at the entrance to the Sûk es-Saîgh, or gold and silver bazaar, having his one serviceable eye fixed in a malevolent stare upon something or someone immediately behind me. It is part and parcel of my difficult profession to subdue all impulses and to think before acting. I sipped my coffee and selected a fresh cigarette from the silver box upon the rug beside me. In this interval I had decided that the one-eyed mendicant cherished in his bosom an implacable and murderous hatred for my genial friend, Ali Mohammed, the dealer in antiques; that he was unaware of my having divined his bloody secret; and that if I would profit by my accidental discovery, I must continue to feign complete ignorance of it.

Locked Room Mystery is dead! Can you work out the culprit in this witty short story?

Myra Bailey is living the dream she’s had for years—opening her coffee shop bakery, Dessert First, and leaving her good for nothing husband in the dust. She couldn’t be happier to finally be on her own and proving her success one scone at a time.Myra Bailey is living the dream she’s had for years—opening her coffee shop bakery, Dessert First, and leaving her good for nothing husband in the dust. She couldn’t be happier to finally be on her own and proving her success one scone at a time.But that dream is short lived when it’s suddenly morphed into a nightmare. Barbara, the owner of Dessert First’s biggest competitor in the small town of Fish Creek Falls, is found dead, and Myra is top on the list of suspects thanks to her famous Death by Chocolate cake at the scene of the crime—poisoned and half eaten. She refuses to idly sit by and let the hunky Detective David Bentley run the show, so she and best friend Lizzy do some of their own investigative work.Armed with their smart phones and natural wits, Myra feels the heat and knows she has to clear her name to keep her bakery operational to save her future. She can’t let the hunky detective distract her from her mission, or she could be behind bars instead of the real killer.== > Death by Chocolate is approx. 30K words and is volume 1 in the A Dessert First Cozy Mystery Series.

Ella Reynolds knew from the first moment she walked into the old house someone or something was watching her. Waiting.Ella Reynolds knew from the first moment she walked into the old house someone or something was watching her. Waiting. Her husband's violent murder sent her spiraling into a world of grief and isolation, but Ella isn't alone. Who or what is responsible for her husband's death is still with her. Darkness has engulfed the past year of Ella's life. Everyday reality slips a little more between her fingers as she struggles to break free from her memories. She must look deeper into her past as well as the present to discover truth of her husband's homicide. A string of uncanny events takes place and practical explanations run thin as Ella follows the terrifying road to closure. As the past and present come to a head, Ella must decipher who or what the murderer is before it takes her as well.

Ed Valenti is stuck in a loop of booze and gambling, constantly losing track of time and happily numbing his memories whenever possible. One night he wins a car at a game of poker. That car will bring to his doorstep a worried father looking for his son and from that moment on Ed's life won't be the same.Changing your life for the better is never an easy task, but most of the time, it's the only way to make sense of it all.Set during the Prohibition Era - more precisely, in the winter of 1927 - on the backdrop of Maverick City, a fictional city akin to Chicago, this story will take you to dark places but not without also giving you meaningful rays of light to look forward to in the distance.Ed Valenti is stuck in a loop of booze and gambling, constantly losing track of time and happily numbing his memories whenever possible. One night he wins a car at a game of poker. That car will bring to his doorstep a worried father looking for his son and from that moment on Ed's life won't be the same.

A beautiful forensic engineer hiding a tragic past reluctantly teams up with a troubled cop to stop a serial arsonist targeting churches.A beautiful forensic engineer hiding a tragic past reluctantly teams up with a troubled cop to stop a serial arsonist targeting churches. Dr. Anja Toussaint believes that her own dreadful youth foretells who the arsonist is and the shocking motive behind the fires. But Detective Gil Dolan stubbornly sets his sights on a white supremacist previously convicted of arson and just released from prison. Unfortunately, when Anja blocks his efforts the arrogant cop sets his own plan into motion that leads them both into a fiery trap.* Please note: Fire Sign is a novella and about one quarter the length of regular novel.For more info on upcoming books in this series check out https://www.mapetterson.com