Michael Forster is the stalled wunderkind of gritty, urban fiction; just as he thinks that he has the panacea to his chemically induced writer’s block, indecision clouds his vision. Is art imitating life? Or is it the other way around?Could it be the drugs, the alcohol, and the bingeing have created an alternate world clouded in amnesia and just out of reach?And just who IS Desiree?Michael Forster is the wunderkind of gritty, urban fiction - a Tarantino-esque rise to literary fame that has taken him down a dark road to excess, debauchery and expectation. And now, as the pressure of continuing to keep the bright white burn of street-cred relevance increases, Michael is facing his biggest crisis yet. New writers are emerging, threatening to over-take him as he faces the demons that success has brought him.He starts to write again but, just as he thinks that he may just have the panacea to his chemically induced writer’s block, indecision clouds his vision.Is art imitating life? Or is it the other way around?Could it be the drugs, the alcohol, and the bingeing have created an alternate world clouded in amnesia and just out o reach?Or is it all in his head?And, more importantly, who really is Desiree?

An aspiring writer finds sudden inspiration for his latest project after watching a documentary on government corruption. After working tirelessly to complete the story, he becomes paranoid that his fiction tale may turn out to parallel his own life.I was asked to be a guest speaker at an elementary school and this idea came form the kids from Mr. Barnhurst's 5th grade class.John is a farmer but after a distant relative died he was asked to attend the reading of the will. He was bequeathed a house, land and treasure! But there's a catch. Gypsys want the treasure and there will be consequences if they don't get it. Read what happens in this short story.

A relaxing Saturday morning turns into a gunfight for a young college student when one man steps in looking for his father; but when an unknown assailant kills this man, the student must survive the next wave of men along side his sister in order to learn the secret of this breach.Living an adventurous and suspenseful winter in the middle of the Colorado Rockies was the last thing Ian expected from his student merit award. Missing his best friend, Zack, and all his other friends was what he thought about most. That apprehension would soon be replaced with danger,intrigue, new friendships and an unbreakable bond with his Colorado host family and their daughter, Katie. He would soon become involved in discovering secret rooms, old mines, underground waterfalls, and the secret of French Pete and the Ghost of St. Elmo. What secret did the hidden room hold and would the underground waterfalls hold the answers to many of the mysteries that had long been unanswered in these haunted mountains? The strange flickering lights that would appear mysteriously in the high hills behind the ranch would only add to the intrigue and suspicions. Someone or some thing definitely wanted Ian to go back to where he came from. But, who and why? Could it be worth his life? In his latest book, "The Ghost of St. Elmo," L.Parks Sanford weaves this suspense and action filled novel with more twists and turns than the young characters involved can possibly believe. The true mystery takes place in and around the old mining town of St. Elmo. Would their lives in constant danger, force them to ask the question....Do ghosts really exist? With their lives hanging in the balance, the answer may haunt them, forever. This is a novel not to be missed. Can you solve the mystery before they do? This is the second book in the series with the adventures of Ian and Zack, the first one being, "The Mystery of Falcon Falls Lake."

On the last day of the Tipton County Fair, young Billy Slater waited outside as his older sister and her boyfriend entered the haunted house. He glanced up and examined the faded mural painted on the outer wall. The monsters depicted were cheesy and hopelessly outdated. He shook his head, wondering why anyone would pay good money for such a lame ride. His sister and her boyfriend never returned.Robert Alphonse Moore was ill and told he would die within six months. The only way that he could continue to live would be to have his brain transplanted into the body of a healthy person. Benny Harris, was willing to provide his body - at a price. procedure was illegal but money talked. Robert had been told that hew would still be Robert with the except that his brain would reside in a healthier and younger body. But did Robert remain Robert after the operation?

The Dead Student follows a young man set on avenging his uncle, no matter the consequences. Timothy Warner, a PhD student who goes by the nickname “Moth,” wakes up on his ninety-ninth day of sobriety with an intense craving for drink. He asks his uncle Ed, a former alcoholic and now successful psychiatrist, to meet him at an AA meeting later that day. When Ed doesn't show up, Moth bikes to his office and discovers a grisly scene—his uncle lying in a pool of blood, shot through the temple. The police pronounce the death a suicide, but Moth refuses to believe that his uncle would take his own life. Devastated and confused, he calls on the only person he thinks he can trust: Andrea Martine, an ex-girlfriend he has not spoken to in years. Each battling their inner demons, Moth and Andy travel into dark, unfamiliar territory, intent on finding out the truth about Ed’s death and circling ever closer to a devious mind that will flinch at nothing to achieve his own goal of revenge.

Ron and Jessica Stahl are a power couple from Southern California, on a Christmas driving holiday in the Colorado mountains. When they stop for the afternoon in sleepy Lone Cone (Pop. 317), they’re charmed by the quaint tourist town which is filled with B&Bs, candy stores, and gift shops. But the folksy hospitality will vanish as the sun drops behind the mountains. A winter storm is approaching, and the Stahls couldn’t have picked a worse night of the year to get snowed into this perfect little town with a dark, dark secret.

Unknown

Coming home from war can be hell.ll Jimmy Dalton wanted after fighting for his country was a quiet life. But a notorious gangster has other ideas and Jimmy finds himself in a war of a different kind.Jimmy Dalton is a man haunted by horrific events in Afghanistan, coming home,all he wants is to get his head together, and spend time with hisfather.Phil Duggan, notorious boss of one of the biggestunderworld crime families in London has other ideas. He is in troublewith the Russian Mafia, who are trying to muscle in on his territory,they have kidnapped his daughter in order to force him to do theirbidding.Dalton is persuaded it would be in his best interests touse his talents to rescue Duggan's daughter, the fact Duggan washolding his father, left Dalton no choice, and so he steps back into aworld he tried to leave behind when he joined the Parachute Regiment.Events spiral out of control, leaving Dalton set on a pathof revenge that may turn the streets of London red with blood, a paththat may not only destroy those he cares about; but also his sanity andhis very soul.But one thing is for sure Duggan will learn, to his cost, the true meaning of family loyalty.

Your future is in play and you have not been asked to join the game. In the Origin Point, a future tech cyber novella, a secretive world-class alliance is creating a global surveillance and online tracking system of sweeping control. Can an intrepid journalist and a determined underground cyber technologist stop them before they take total control of your physical and digital life?WITHOUT THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED two American federal government cabinet ministers join a secretive world-class alliance to create a global surveillance and online tracking system of sweeping control. But when a ubiquitous flash drive with shocking content falls into the hands of an intrepid journalist, a new threat emerges to release the story to an unwary world. When global cyber security is the prize in the race for our online future, can the defiance of two master operators backed by a clandestine global team outpace the vaunted skill of America's free press and an underground cyber defense team with their own agenda?Welcome to Washington, D.C., a city where life is a deal and secrecy is holding the cards. The Origin Point is a future tech cyber novella taking you into the untold plan to create the most intrusive global surveillance and online data system ever envisioned. This is the first prequel novella to the Life Online book series. Secretary of State Julia Davenport the electric diplomat with a global network made of unbendable steel, and Marco Manuel, the director of the almost unknown Federal Security Commission join Global Cyber Security to construct an international cyber operation uniting all surveillance, satellite images and everyone's online data into one controllable space. Taking full advantage of dysfunction in D.C. politics and a billionaire class awash with cash, they manipulate federal government departments, big business and global law enforcement into implementing their project. But a mysterious underground technologist named Apex has insight into their operations and her own plan for stopping the project designed to control everyone's identity. Using sophisticated tech skill, she launches a targeted investigation into the security operation, and sets up a galvanized global team set to risk their lives in a counter cyber attack. As GCS battles to accelerate its implementation timeline, and independent technologists mobilize to stop them, those caught in the middle debate the most decisive issues of our times: Do you want individual privacy or do you want global security? What is the responsibility of business to protect consumer data? What is the role of government in managing progress? Can we prevent the technology from taking control? From the law-making halls of D.C. to the free-wheeling tech economy in San Francisco, the forces making these decisions are already in the game and your life is in play. Learn who is bracing to advance and who is in retreat as the brightest minds lay the foundation for a future that may have already arrived. Start the Life Online book series with this novella about how today's national security operations become tomorrow's total control over you and everything you do. Meet the machine in the middle whose intelligence is all human beings can program at this moment, but not all the programming to come. The Life Online books are speculative science fiction thrillers for thinking people imagining the unintended consequences of our dependence on technology.

Jack Ryan always wanted to play pro ball. But he couldn't hit a curveball, so he turned his attention to less legal pursuits. A tough guy who likes walking the razor's edge, he's just met his match -- and more -- in Nancy. She's a rich man's plaything, seriously into thrills and risk, and together she and Jack are pure heat ready to explode. But when simple housebreaking and burglary give way to the deadly pursuit of a really big score, the stakes suddenly skyrocket. Because violence and double-cross are the name of this game -- and it's going to take every ounce of cunning Jack and Nancy possess to survive . . . each other.

The New York Times bestselling author of Firestorm, Iris Johansen, returns with a psychological thriller so terrifying, so relentlessly paced, it won’t leave you time to catch your breath before the next shock comes. A forensic sculptor is locked in a deadly duel with a serial killer determined to destroy her—one life at a time. Eve Duncan’s job is to put a face on the faceless victims of violent crimes. Her work not only comforts their survivors—but helps catch their killers. But there is another, more personal reason that Eve Duncan is driven to do the kind of work she does—a dark nightmare from a past she can never bury. And as she works on the skull of a newly discovered victim, that past is about to return all over again. The victim is a Jane Doe found murdered, her face erased beyond recognition. But whoever killed her wasn’t just trying to hide her identity. The plan was far more horrifying. For as the face forms under Eve’s skilled hands, she is about to get the shock of her life. The victim is someone she knows all too well. Someone who isn’t dead. Yet. Instantly Eve’s peaceful life is shattered. The sanctuary of the lakeside cottage she shares with Atlanta detective Joe Quinn and their adopted daughter Jane has been invaded by a killer who’s sent the grimmest of threats: the face of his next victim. To stop him, Eve must put her own life in the balance and question everything and everyone she trusts. Not even Quinn can go where Eve must go this time. As the trail of faceless bodies leads to a chilling revelation, Eve finds herself trying to catch a master murderer whose grisly work is a testament to a mind warped by perversion and revenge. Now she must pit her skills against his in a showdown where the stakes are life itself—and where the unbearable cost of failure will make Eve’s own murder seem like a mercy killing. From the Hardcover edition.

It's early April of 1945 and the bloodied days of World War II. The Nazi regime is being slowly throttled by the oncoming Russian and Allied armies and Hitler rages uselessly in his Berlin bunker. But the high command have one more throw of the dice to make. An audacious plan is hatched to save the Fatherland and beat off the oncoming apocalypse. All it will take is a hodge-podge squadron of escort fighters, a captured U.S. bomber, and one brave but suicidal pilot to fly it over the Atlantic into the beating heart of America. Half a century later, a rusting plane is discovered, sunk with its crew, off the coast of New York—a relic from a bygone age. Chris Roland, a brilliant young photographer, is sent to take photos of this time capsule. But it is only when he discovers that the fragments of Nazi uniforms on the decaying corpses that he realizes that he has come across a secret so terrible that even 50 years later it could still kill him.

New version Nov 01 2016. Canadian bookstore owner Paul Sirenne heads to the town of Etretat, France, on the trail of a hundred year old mystery hidden in the pages of 'The Hollow Needle', by Maurice Leblanc. Together with Leblanc's great-granddaughter, Sirenne unearths puzzles, codes and historical mysteries, exposing a secret war for control of a cave fortress in Etretat's chalk cliffs.Canadian bookstore owner Paul Sirenne is thrust into a quest for answers when his parents are found murdered, their bodies cut up into the letters H.N. A note sent before his father's murder drives Sirenne to seek out the roots of a long-forgotten family secret.He heads to the town of Etretat, France, on the trail of a hundred year old mystery hidden in the pages of 'The Hollow Needle', by Maurice Leblanc. Together with Leblanc's great-granddaughter, Sirenne unearths puzzles, codes and historical mysteries, exposing a secret war between Leblanc and Adolf Hitler for control of a cave fortress hidden in Etretat's chalk cliffs. 'THE CAVES OF ETRETAT' is the first in a four-book epic action-adventure series, replete with real historical mysteries, codes, puzzles, and dozens of conspiracy theories. Each book raises the stakes to a higher level, increasing the pace, the scope, and the questions. This series ,unlike any other, will appeal to conspiracy-lovers and answer-seekers alike. Try to solve the mystery before the end. What is really going on? Inextricably woven into history, the series re-writes everything we know into a non-stop rollercoaster where nothing is ever as it seems.Though written as fiction, the 'Caves of Etretat' series presents an allegorical tale, somewhat like the "Celestine Prophecies" but on steroids. It is intended to take the reader on a journey unlike any other. In fact, the author challenges you to figure out where this story will take you before you get there. He is confident you will not succeed.

A late night knock at a door starts a ‘Kafkaesque’ tale of confusion and frustration in this latest 4,000 word short story from British writer Colin Marks.A late night knock at a door starts a ‘Kafkaesque’ tale of confusion and frustration in this latest 4,000 word short story from British writer Colin Marks.This story came to me when I was at the bedside of my girlfriend who had just had a hip replacement only hours earlier. She explained she hadn’t been nervous before the operation as the doctor had come 'out of the blue' and told her they were ready for her. It was hours before she was expecting the operation to take place so she hadn’t had time for the anxiety to build! I’m sure the story is influenced by Dino Buzzati Traverso’s 'Seven Floors' or Franz Kafka’s 'The Trial', both of which I’d read a decade before, and are highly recommended. If you enjoyed this story, please try my others. And for those who are interested, the new hips are doing great!