"There is, alas!" Mr. Wadham replied, "no next step." "Exactly what do you mean by that?" the Marquis demanded, knitting his brows slightly as he sipped his sherry. "We have reached the end," the lawyer pronounced. "The decision given by the Court to-day is final." The Marquis set down his glass. The thing was absurd! "Surely," he suggested, "the House of Lords remains?" "Without a doubt, your lordship," Mr. Wadham assented, "but it is of no use to us in the present instance. The judge of the Supreme Court—this is, by-the-by, our third appeal—has delivered a final decision.

In a quiet English seaside village Sue and her colleagues at the Parish Council think life is fun but boring, until they are shocked out of complacency when murder is discovered literally under their noses. The arrival of police and reporters alarms the unlikely new Parish Clerk, who has good reason to seek obscurity. Worse is to come, as a 200-year-old crime produces modern consequences.The Parish Council of a pretty seaside village are struggling to keep their little corner of England thriving and autonomous. Wrapped up in the mundane and often hilarious business of organizing village life, Sue Cheam and her colleagues at the Council are shocked out of their complacency when horrifying secrets are uncovered beneath the respectable surface.James Goswell begins to wonder if Pebbleton is the best place to be Parish Clerk, if you want to live a long and healthy life. And he has already taken drastic steps to guarantee that……As the police begin to investigate, the self-interest of powerful men two centuries ago brings consequences that make a mockery of the Council’s finest hour. But someone in this century knows the facts, and means to keep them hidden at all costs. Amid the chaos and suspicion, is it possible for romance to blossom? And will Sue ever finish the filing before the chocolate biscuits run out?

Jimmy Slade is a broken old man looking to solve the eighteen-year old murder of his ten-year old son.Kiethara is a descendant from a long line of powerful guardians who have been charged to protect a magical forest since the dawn of time. She prematurely took the place of her mother—the previous guardian—after she was defeated by a man known as Gandador; now, young Kiethara is forced into a position of power and danger. The Spirit of Aaron, the forest's first guardian, awakens to train her legendary powers, all the while hiding unknown truths and secrets of her past. When Gandador returns to destroy the reign of the guardians and rule the forest himself, he brings into the forest a whole new world, and Kiethara must keep in check her overwhelming emotions and experiences in order to control her magic and save the forest.Wickedly dark yet extremely moving, The Guardians of the Forest explores the burdens of responsibility and the prospects of failure. Kiethara must protect the world's source of power while developing her own, but guarding it becomes difficult when she finds herself kidnapped and taken out of the forest she is bound to protect. This YA novel draws true-to-form parallels with a normal fifteen-year-olds life. Readers experience how Kiethara bears the weight of an entire world on her shoulders in a humorously sarcastic tone, relying on the friends she makes and the love she discovers to ease the fear of failure to deliver what she has been born to accomplish.

Thea Campbell goes out for revenge when the one person who is simultaneously the most likely and least likely candidate for thief steals her horse. But Thea is wrong. As close to dead wrong as she ever wishes to get.INSIDE — Is Victoria Rowell Headed Back to Y&R? Did Missy Reeves Go Too Far? Inside Report! Plus: Reaction From the Daytime Community! Is A Y&R Spin-off In The Works? Exclusive: Inside the Sony/CBS Cast and Crew Meeting On Set This Past Week! Update on Hogan Sheffer’s Y&R Status! Eileen Davidson Back to Y&R? Latest Deets on THE GROVE! New Contract Role on B&B! GH’s Kirsten Storms Speaks! ABC Releases Quarterly Earnings Report! Last Week's Reviews, Unbelievable Blind Items, and Next Week's Cheat Sheet!

/MEGA-BOOKS Nancy's weekend at the former estate home of the late, great mystery writer Dorothea Burden turns out to be much more than an innocent exercise in fictional felonies when several jewel-encrusted figurines are stolen and the author's long-time edit

Clarity Nice and her friend, ethnographer Flower Parkwood, work in a village in Campeche, Mexico, where Flower´s boss, egyptologist Akhris Zephairi, hopes to find authentic Mayan archaeological ruins which will stand along a gambling resort sponsoring his work. When Flower stumbles upon the Mayan site, Clarity helps the head of the village, in stopping the presence of the new gambling resort.Teleoperator Clarity Nice and her friend ethnographer Flower Parkwood, reach the picturesque village of Miradorcito in the state of Campeche in Mexico. Brought to Campeche in a colorful guagua after a brief vacation in Cancun following the exposure of alcohol traffic in the British Virgin Islands (The Sugar Baby), Clarity works alongside Flower in an archaeological site to make some pocket money, using Flower's 'permiso de arqueologia', an observation and archaeological dig permit granted by Flower's boss, Egyptian egyptologist Akhris Zephairi. Zephairi's Alabastriah Foundation, funded by the Museum of Cairo, and its partner, a shady real estate developement company from Belize, Mangrove Barrier Resorts, are looking for new areas to dig in Miradorcito, and are out to invest a pile of cash.In agreement with Zephairi, the man behind the strategy to throw out of the village all the inhabitants of Miradorcito, the head of the real estate company, his accomplice Lever Fahibian, makes an offer to the elderly head of the village, Ms. Morales, to buy the land of her ancestors, in order to let Zephairi seek an obscure assortment of Mayan ruins buried under Miradorcito for centuries. Using a local authorization from the governor of Campeche, which grants Zephairi a permit to dig under Miradorcito, the egyptologist razes part of the village, insisting on building on the village site a gambling resort similar to those found in Belize. Backed by Zephairi, Fahibian uses the permit granted to build a Mayan historical village along the gambling resort, that will bring new tourist business to the area. Ms Morales can count on no one except Clarity and a toucan which has been passed on by her ancestors, to save the village from the jaws of Zephairi, who wants ownership of Miradorcito's land as a source of revenue for the Museum of Cairo, and has agreed with local politicians to get the traditional Mexican village relocated to Egypt.

HOUDINI HEART harkens back to the masters of suspenseful supernatural horror: Poe, Lovecraft, Shirley Jackson, but speaks with a wholly fresh voice. Once caught in its pages, there's no escaping Longfellow's terrible tale. Weeks ago, she was one of Hollywood's biggest writers, wed to one of its greatest stars. The doting mother of their golden child. But now? She's alone, tortured by a horrifying secret no woman could bear. Pursued by those she can't outrun, anguished by a guilt she can't endure, and driven close to madness, she flees to the one place she's ever called home: a small town in Vermont where River House still stands. To a child, the splendid hotel was mysterious and magical and all its glamorous guests knew delicious secrets. Cocooned in its walls, she will write one last book. Her atonement? Or her suicide note? But life is never as you dream it, and River House isn't what she'd always imagined it was. Intense, literary, and harrowing, Houdini Heart is a tale of bone-chilling horror, emotional torment, and psychological terror. Gripped by River House, trapped in an aging hotel of mirrors only Houdini could escape, how much can haunt a mind before it too is only a thing once imagined? "A haunting and disturbing journey through the psyche."-Erika Mailman, Author of "The Witch's Trinity"

Chloe Marin was lucky. She was just a teenager when a party at a Florida beachside mansion turned into a savage killing spree, and she was one of the few to survive. Bloody handwriting on the walls pointed to a cult whose rituals included human sacrifice. Chloe's sketch of one of the killers linked two dead cult members found in the Everglades to the massacre, closing the case as far as the cops were concerned. Ten years later Chloe works as a psychologist specializing in art therapy to help traumatized victims, and on the side she finds release in her passion for the martial arts. Police who hire her as a consultant know she's a literal kick-ass advocate for victims who can't always speak for themselves. The current disappearance of a young swimsuit model ranks low on the cops' priority list. Everyone assumes the girl has run off for some fun in the sun, instead of getting ready for a photo shoot. Everyone but Chloe, who suspects a killer is using the modeling agency to stalk his prey. When the ghost of the model appears, asking Chloe for help, she knows that she has to do everything she can. So does Luke Cane, a British ex-cop-turned-P.I. investigating the disappearance of the model on behalf of her father. Chloe and Luke have trouble trusting each other, but they can't help their strong attraction for one another. Luckily they agree on the important things: someone needs to find those missing girls, and if a few laws have to get bent so lives can be saved, too bad. When Chloe arrives late for an appointment at the modeling agency, she discovers a gruesome mass murder eerily similar to the one she witnessed a decade ago—and can't help thinking that if she hadn't run late, she would have been there when the killer arrived. Ten years ago she hadn't been convinced the police had identified the real killers, and now she's sure of it. The same evil mind is behind the current murders, and she's afraid she's the target— and terrified that she won't be able to cheat death a third time. She has no choice now but to trust Luke on every level, because with a killer closing in, he's the only one who's willing to do whatever it takes to keep her alive.

It’s been twenty years since Western State Hospital was closed down and the last of its inmates reintegrated into society. Francis Petrel was barely out of his teens when his family committed him to the asylum, after his erratic behavior culminated in a terrifying outburst. Now middle-aged, he leads an aimless, solitary life housed in a cheap apartment, periodically tended to by his sisters, and perpetually medicated to quiet the chorus of voices in his head. But a reunion on the grounds of the shuttered institution stirs something deep in Francis’s troubled mind: dark memories he thought he had laid to rest, about the grisly events that led to Western State Hospital’s demise. It begins in 1979, when twenty-one-year-old Petrel descends into the state-run purgatory of an overcrowded, understaffed Massachusetts mental hospital. Surrounded by inmates roaming the halls like drugged zombies and raving behind locked doors, well-meaning orderlies, jaded nurses, and patronizing doctors, Francis finds friendship with a motley assortment of fellow patients: a would-be Napoleon, a wise ex-firefighter, and a man obsessed with battling imagined devils. But there’s nothing imaginary about the young nurse found sexually assaulted and brutally murdered late one night after lights-out. The police suspect an inmate, while patients whisper about visions of a white-shrouded “angel.” But the striking and mysterious prosecuting attorney who arrives to investigate has her own chilling theory—about the grim, telltale “signature” left on the victim’s body, a string of unsolved sex killings, and a very real devil who, by chance or design, has come to turn a madhouse into a slaughterhouse. Now, with the past creeping back to haunt his thoughts, and nothing but a pencil and the bare walls of his bleak apartment, Francis surrenders to the overwhelming need to tell the story of those nightmarish days. But because the crime was never solved, it’s a story doomed to remain unfinished. Until, like Francis’s long-buried recollections, the killer resurfaces . . . with a vengeance. A tour de force narrative journey through the eerily unpredictable mind of an utterly unusual hero, The Madman’s Tale will keep even the most astute thriller reader uncertain, unnerved, and unable to resist the tantalizing twists and turns of this fiendishly suspenseful shadow show. From the Hardcover edition.

Let's not die today. Not even to make things easier for our parents. When a building collapses around five teenagers--and they just barely escape--they know something strange is going on. Little by little, the group pieces together a theory: Their parents are working together to kill them all. Is it true? And if so, how did their parents come together--and why? And, most importantly, how can the five of them work together to save themselves?

In the harsh wilderness of colonial Massachusetts, Martha Allen works as a servant in her cousin's household, taking charge and locking wills with everyone. Thomas Carrier labors for the family and is known both for his immense strength and size and mysterious past. The two begin a courtship that suits their independent natures, with Thomas slowly revealing the story of his part in the English Civil War. But in the rugged new world they inhabit, danger is ever present, whether it be from the assassins sent from London to kill the executioner of Charles I or the wolves-in many forms-who hunt for blood. A love story and a tale of courage, The Wolves of Andover confirms Kathleen Kent's ability to craft powerful stories of family from colonial history.

Fergus Hume was a 20th century American author who had many works adapted into screenplays and movies, such as The Top Dog. Popular titles like The Silent House are still widely read today.

This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

Mary Roberts Rinehart was a prolific writer that is often referred to as the American Agatha Christie. Rinehart's mystery novels are still treasured by millions of readers today and she is the source of the famous phrase "The butler did it." Rinehart's most famous books include The Circular Staircase, The Bat, The Case of Jennie Brice, and The Door. Sight Unseen, published in 1921, is a thriller that centers around a mysterious death. The book also features much humor throughout.

Wizard-for-hire Edward Red Mage discovers his reputation is growing faster than his waistline, as he's called away from breakfast to prove the death of a Baron was no accident.A little gift to my readers, this short mystery was inspired by, of all things, an entry in a food history text. Wizard-for-hire Edward Red Mage discovers his reputation is growing faster than his waistline, as he's called away from breakfast to prove the death of a Baron was no accident. This story takes place between the full-length novels Cloak of Obscurity and Queen Isabeau's Book.