Showing results by narrator "Stephanie Willing" in All Categories

In this new collection, Patrick Barb explores themes of family found and lost, media consumption and the dangers of runaway nostalgia, the supernatural in our lives, and the impact of violence in both the long- and short-term. From rural backwoods to Park Slope brownstones, Barb's characters face impossible, awful situations, testing their inner strength and understanding of reality. Covering quiet horror, weird fiction, supernatural horror, slasher horror, topical dark fiction, and more, these stories spotlight supposedly familiar terrors and fears in new and unexpected ways.

As a teenager, for a moment, Ella Fitchburg found love—yearning, breathless love—that consumed both her and her boyfriend, Jude, as they wandered the streets of New York City together. But her life was unexpectedly upended when she was accused of trying to murder Jude’s father, an imperious superior court judge, and sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. When she learns she’s pregnant shortly after sentencing, she reluctantly decides to give up the child. Ella is released after serving six years. While she is desperate to turn the page on a new life, she can’t seem to let go of her past.

When a member of their quiet community is brutally murdered, the Abbotts find themselves prime suspects of the crime. The couple is desperate to prove their innocence, but when a tape is discovered with horrifying evidence, everything changes. With shocking truths beginning to surface, Rachael and Caide must decide just how far they are willing to go to protect those they love. Can they trust anyone around them, including each other?

When you're small in the city, people don't see you, and loud sounds can scare you, and knowing what to do is sometimes hard. But this little kid knows what it's like and knows the neighborhood. And a little friendly advice can go a long way. Alleys can be good shortcuts, but some are too dark. And there are lots of good hiding places in the city, like under a mulberry bush or up a walnut tree. And if the city gets to be too much, you're always welcome home, where it's safe and quiet.

When Claudia accidentally eavesdrops on the epic breakup of Paige and Iris, the it-couple at her school, she finds herself in hot water with prickly, difficult Iris. Thrown together against their will in the class production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, along with the goofiest, cutest boy Claudia has ever known, Iris and Claudia are in for an eye-opening senior year.

New York City, 1950. Viviana Valentine is Girl Friday to the city’s top private investigator, Tommy Fortuna. The clients can be frustrating, and none more maddening than fabulously wealthy Tallmadge Blackstone, who demands Tommy tail his daughter, Tallulah, and find out why she won’t marry his business partner, a man forty years her senior. It sounds like an open-and-shut case for a P.I. known for busting up organized crime—but the next day, Viviana opens the office to find Tommy missing and a lifeless body on the floor.

Two days after the disastrous town meeting, Charlie thinks she might go crazy being stuck indoors. But helping her next-door neighbor Kayla find some diapers for her baby might not have been the uneventful errand she'd planned, and when she takes the trip to her parents’ place out of town, she comes across a sight that will haunt her dreams forever. Grip of Death is the fourth book in this enthralling post-apocalyptic EMP survival thriller featuring flawed, complex characters, and adrenaline-fueled action and adventure.

Santa has it so easy: a workforce of elves to make the presents, a team of reindeer to deliver them, even a hi-tech factory! The Easter Bunny has to make and wrap all the chocolate eggs and deliver them all by himself. Now Bunny has had enough. But will his plan for a Christmas disaster turn into a Christmas delight?

So many secrets in Nespodee Springs…the biggest is revealed when Rhys and Daley track down the second half of the Pendry film and learn the secrets of the clan’s Tesla tower and the catastrophic details of the plan to bring the Visitors back to Earth. But the insidious malady known as “the horrors” remains a mystery, claiming more and more victims every day.

A month of chatting with a survivor whose story eerily mirrors my own: a girl who’s been receiving triggering clues, just like me, and who could help me find the answers I’m searching for. Three days since she mysteriously disappeared and since I’m forced to ask...will my chance to find out what happened to me vanish with her? Will I be next?

It's 1969. Molly is a girl who's not sure she can feel anything anymore, because life sometimes hurts way too much. Her brother Barry ran away after having a fight with their father over the war in Vietnam. Now Barry's been drafted into that war - and Molly's mother tells her she has to travel across the country in an old schoolbus to find Barry and bring him home.

As an award-winning songwriter, Melody Mitchell has no time for distractions - and no time for romance. But when a sudden death in the family calls her back to the hometown she left behind, she’ll find herself questioning the many sacrifices she’s made on the path to success...especially when she learns she’s been named guardian of a newly orphaned infant.

Newlywed Sam has always wanted to be a part of a normal happy family. When her mother-in-law falls ill, Sam dutifully moves her family to Edenic Camillia Island to care for her. The island residents, namely the older women, welcome Sam and her daughter Emma with open arms, endless cocktails, and plenty of superstition. It seems perfect until it’s not. The house next to her mother-in-law’s is creepy—not only that, it’s where Ben’s first wife died. Sam’s teen daughter Emma isn’t interested in spending the summer in Camilia. It gets even worse when Emma starts to see things.

1950, New York. Viviana Valentine—Girl Friday turned partner to New York’s top investigator, Tommy Fortuna—is drawn into a sordid new case when Buster Beacon, a wealthy man of science, beckons them to a party at his mansion north of the city. There, Buster entertains blue-blooded friends as well as investors keen to make a dollar on the many advancements made in his home laboratory, but he’s been hearing strange noises in the night coming from his expansive estate, and he doesn’t know who to trust.

The story of Angela Hanson, a girl from the grim NYC public housing projects, a beautiful, complex woman whose sweetly innocent ruthlessness powers her rise into the billionaire class by her early thirties. She rocketed to the top of advertising with the help of legendary adman Jack Price, her mentor-turned-lover and the married man who dumped her. Returning as the executive charged with firing Jack and hundreds of others, she destroys his career in order to make him a pawn in her high-stakes game with a flighty heiress and her billionaire septuagenarian father.

He sees the world differently than most, and he feels like he has no idea what he’s doing when it comes to raising his fifteen-year-old daughter, Cleo. She also feels like he has no idea what he’s doing, especially now that her mom is gone. They were both better off when Jana was around—Dave's wife, Cleo's mother. But now she's not, and they are left to figure out life on their own.

A poignant and pause-resisting story of three women whose lives are forever changed by war....

High-school senior Riley Ozment is desperate to change her reality after making a fool of herself on social media. She needs to do something drastic to repair her social standing - like trying out for a Survivor-style reality TV show. Suddenly, Riley's dropped onto a deserted tropical island with 19 other teens competing for a million dollars and a rumored treasure lost on the island. But that treasure has a history: A local curse says that seven people need to die before the treasure can be found.

Fuzzy jammies, flower beds, sweet dreams swirling in our heads. Neigh, neigh, neigh, played all day, time to sleep the night away! Unicorns love to prance and dance the day away. But it's exhausting! Now it's time for unicorns to brush their manes, fluff their pillows, and sing the unicorn lullaby in this companion to the best-selling Unicorn Day.

Colton Caldwell is hotter than I remember - broad chest, muscles in all the right places, wavy brown hair, and eyes that suck me in. All private-school perfection. Pity he can’t drive worth a damn. He hit me with his truck, just backed out without looking, leaving me bruised, aching...and well aware of him.