Novels by chisom202620

I had thirteen hundred cases of noodles and no weapon."A crossbow," I told the man behind the counter at Dunn's Outdoor & Surplus. "Four hundred bolts. Two hatchets, paracord, and a medical kit."His name tag said GREG. He had a red face and a ponytail, and he looked me up and down."Honey, hunting gear is for hunters.""I'm a customer.""You're a girl with a list. Where's your husband?""Divorced.""Figures." He raised his voice. "Calder! Take care of her. And don't oversell. She'll bring it all back by Friday."A man came out of the back room. He was in his mid-thirties, with buzzed dark hair and a faded medic's patch on his jacket. He read my list and looked at me."What are you hunting?""Plot holes."His mouth twitched. "The crossbow's the quiet option."Rhys Calder. In chapter thirty-nine, the author gave him one paragraph. He held the pharmacy door on Alder Street so the others could run, and he was never seen again. I had read that page twice, hoping somebody would hold a fun

Nobody at Tri-County Wholesale had ever seen a woman order six hundred cases of instant noodles and smile about it."Ma'am," Mack said, squinting at his clipboard. He was the dock manager, with a bad knee and a good pen. "Six hundred cases of noodles. Two hundred cases of canned corn. Are you opening a chain?""Something like that.""Where's it all going?""I have a lot of cousins."He shrugged. "The check cleared. You can have a hundred cousins."His crew stacked the first pallets on the dock. I put my palm flat on the shrink-wrap and thought in.The pallet vanished.Mack dropped his pen."Union break," I said, and walked to the next one.By the end of the afternoon, I had learned the rules of the Pantry, and there were only two. Anything I touched could go in and come out, and time stopped inside, so nothing ever spoiled. After my fifth big load, the dock tilted and I had to sit down on a crate with my head between my knees."You okay, lady?" Mack asked."Low blood sugar."I wrote o

I had two dollars, twelve days, and exactly one plot hole worth exploiting."Seven, fourteen, twenty-two, thirty-one, thirty-eight, forty," I told the clerk.He frowned at the slip of paper in my hand. "You don't want a quick pick?""No.""Those are very specific numbers, ma'am.""I'm a very specific person.""You know the odds are one in three hundred million?""Then I'll be a rounding error." I slid my last two dollars across the counter. "Please hurry. Sales close in four minutes."He sighed and printed the ticket. "Good luck."I almost laughed. The last voice to say that to me had come with a survival rate of 0.03 percent.I checked the ticket twice. The author had used these numbers in five different chapters and never once let anyone claim the prize. Tonight, somebody would. I had thirty-seven cents left in the world.I spent the evening in the diner next door, nursing a coffee that the waitress had put in front of me without asking. Her name tag said DEE."Rough day?" she asked

Good luck."Sign it, Vera."A pen clicked against a table near my hand. I opened my eyes. My cheeks were wet, but I wasn't crying.I was sitting at one end of a long dining table under a crystal chandelier, and six people were staring at me."Vera." A silver-haired woman in pearls tapped the tablecloth with one finger. "We don't have all day. Sign the papers and spare us the scene.""Sorry," I said. My voice came out lower than it should have. "I think you've got the wrong person.""Vera, don't," said the man sitting beside her. He looked about thirty, and he had one hand resting on a folder. "Don't make this harder than it has to be.""Make what harder? I don't even know where I am. Is this a murder mystery dinner? Because I never RSVP'd."Nobody laughed. A young woman in a white dress, who was clinging to the man's arm, sniffled. "Damon, she doesn't look well."Damon.The man pushed the folder across the table. The top page read Petition for Dissolution of Marriage, and a signature

"You'd be dead in a day," Brett typed. "You wouldn't last one chapter.""One chapter?" I typed back. "I'd be at the hardware store buying water while your heroine's in her closet."I hit send and grinned. An hour earlier, I'd posted a one-star review of Dawn of Ruin, the biggest zombie romance on the planet, and four thousand strangers had come to burn me for it.The review had taken me eleven minutes, which was ten more than the author seemed to have spent on Vera Lockhart's personality.She stocks the pantry. She locks the doors. She writes the list. Then she dies in one paragraph. Cannon fodder with a clipboard. Would not mourn.My name is Nell Hartley. I review books for a living, if forty dollars a review counts. Online I'm NellNoMercy, forty-one thousand followers, and my whole brand is saying what readers think at chapter thirty and are too polite to type. I read the last page of every book first. I hate surprises.That morning, my editor had laid me off. Budget cuts. So tonigh