Is There A Lightness Motif In 'The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle'?

She felt like a caged bird. A bird that was meant to fly the high, blue skies, but was trapped like a prized possession for her master to impress others with. Ava is the daughter of a very powerful man in the underworld. Her blood, her family name makes her a tool for others to gain more power. Greedy men want her for her name, not for who she is. Being locked up all her life in her father's house makes her naïve and ignorant of the outside world. Meaning the greedy men have an easy game to play.

There is no Prince Charming in my world. Only beasts who claw and fight their way through the masses to get to the top. I was always told that I was a prize. A treasure to be cherished. My lineage was a desired treasure, a prize worth spilling blood for. Many would stop at nothing to claim the honour of being the one to leave their mark upon me, to impregnate me and forever intertwine our fates. A child born from me would possess a level of power that surpasses anything they have ever experienced or witnessed. I could never fully comprehend it until Ace Ripley came into my life revealing secrets that would forever alter my way of life. He was a man whom I believed to be our sworn enemy and when he takes my virginity, that's when everything changes and this brutal, ruthless man decides that he wants to keep me for himself. His to worship. His to pleasure. His to corrupt. Even if that means going to war with his best friend. My father. --- "She is mine, Nathanial. If you want to keep up this bullshit engagement to my son for her, fine. But come Saturday, I will be the one putting my ring on her finger. I'll be the one who gives you grandchildren, and it will be my name she takes. I will also protect her from everything and anything in this life that tries to fuck with her or hurt her. You've been warned, now you need to accept that is happening and there is no way in hell I am backing down from this.”

Charlotte is a traveling historian with a specific interest in old towns, which is what brings her to the forgotten Willow Creek. Her research takes a drastic turn when she discovers that the place is harboring a mysterious castle that belongs to an even more mysterious vampire Lord. She will do anything to unlock the secrets of the little town, even offering up her blood. However, Charlotte soon finds out that she may have bitten off more than she could chew. *** “So, what is it that you think you’re offering me that isn’t what you’ve already agreed to?” “If you can answer the simplest difficult questions for me, then I’ll offer you a living taste,” Charlotte said. Silently, he closed the distance between them. Charlotte’s eyes closed while he neared her neck, his lips just above her skin. “Drinking so savagely from anyone is just not the way I do things.” In The October Wind is created by Rachelle Keener, an eGlobal Creative Publishing signed author.

Sienna Lewis had been with Sea City’s cold and distant CEO, Zayden Scott, for four years, but he still refused to let his guard down. So, she called her mother. “Mom, you can go ahead and arrange that pilot interview for me now.” On the other end, Helen Bennett sounded shocked. “Really? Didn’t you want to stay in Sea City and get married? You even gave up your dream of becoming a pilot.” Sienna looked at Zayden under the dim lights. He was madly obsessed with that girl and terrified of losing her. She smiled self-deprecatingly. Once she returned to Helmswick, her career would pick up again. From then on, nothing would hold her back. She would be Sienna Lewis, the pilot, again, not some pathetic woman—trapped in a forbidden love affair.

Miles Landry is trying to put violence behind him when he takes up work as a private detective focused on humdrum adultery cases. But when a Tibetan monk hires him to find a missing person, things get weird fast. Charged with tracking down the reincarnation of a man possessed by a demonic guardian from the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Miles is plunged into a world of fortune-tellers, gangsters, and tantric rituals. The year is 1991 and a series of grisly murders has rocked New York City in the run up to a visit from the Dalai Lama. The police attribute the killings to Chinatown gang warfare. Miles–skeptical of the supernatural–is inclined to agree. But what if the monster he's hunting is more than a myth? ©️ Crystal Lake Publishing

What if you were held captive by your own family? Emma Rawlins has spent the last year a prisoner. The months following her mother's death dragged her father into a paranoid spiral of conspiracy theories and doomsday premonitions. Obsessing him, controlling him, they now whisper the end days are finally at hand. And he doesn’t intend to face them alone. Emma finds herself drugged and dragged to a secluded cabin, the last refuge from a society supposedly due to collapse. Their cabin a snowbound fortress, her every move controlled, but even that isn't enough to weather the end of the world. ©️ Crystal Lake Publishing Everything she knows is out of reach, lost beyond a haze of white. There is no choice but to play her father's game while she plans her escape. But there is a force far colder than the freezing drifts. Ancient, ravenous, it knows no mercy. And it's already had a taste...