Hemlock Grove

One minute I’m staring at a pre calc textbook, the next I’m tearing through trees with claws I didn’t know I had. My dad says it’s in my blood that I’m a werewolf, part of a line that’s guarded the balance between our world and theirs for centuries. He says Mystic Grove Academy is the only place I’ll be safe. He’s half right. The academy’s full of people who get it …witches who can’t control their magic, shifters who don’t fit in, even a vampire named Kai who looks at me like I’m a puzzle he needs to solve. But it’s also full of secrets. Like how the boy everyone calls Alpha Ryder Blackwood marked me with a silver glow that burns into my skin whenever he’s near. Like how my grandma, who “moved away” when I was little, actually disappeared from this very school. And worst of all? Students have been vanishing again. Just like they did a century ago, when the last girl with my face tried to fix the world we broke. The mark on my arm isn’t just a claim it’s a death sentence. But if I can’t figure out what my grandma started, and why Kai’s great uncle is tied to every secret here… we’ll all be next. Because the door between worlds is opening. And this time, there’s no one to slam it shut but me………

My husband and I spend 50 loving years together. On the day of our golden wedding anniversary, someone pushes me down a flight of stairs. As I drift in and out of consciousness, I miraculously regain my hearing. I lost it in the process of saving my husband when we were younger. I hear my husband say to my son, "You shouldn't have dirtied your hands." "How long more are you going to put up with her, Dad? Calista doesn't have much longer to wait." My husband sighs heavily. After a moment, I feel someone remove my oxygen tube. I descend into boundless darkness. When I open my eyes again, I've been taken back to the 80s—before I married my husband. The only difference is that I can hear this time.

My father loved silence. He believed noise was the mark of lesser people, so he installed a decibel meter in our home. Speaking above 40 decibels meant that we would have to pay him 10 dollars, laughing above 60 decibels meant 50 dollars, and crying or throwing a tantrum was a serious offense at 100 dollars per second. The year I turned four, I fell and broke my arm. I did not make a single sound. I bit down so hard that I cracked two teeth, but I saved thousands in noise fees. He praised me for it and called me a "high-value child," one that was worth the investment. I treasured that compliment and observed the rules carefully, keeping the house wrapped in suffocating silence. Then came the stormy night a thief broke in. He had a knife and was creeping toward my mother as she slept, and I watched it all from the gap in the wardrobe where I was hiding. I wanted to scream. I wanted to shriek and wake my father, to do something, anything. However, my eyes drifted to the decibel meter on the wall, and my hand found nothing but an empty pocket. I did not have enough allowance. One scream would cost hundreds, and I simply could not afford it.

Arllette Kimble was only eight years old when her family was accused of being witches when calamity struck the human village where she grew up. They were condemned. The night before her father's death, she saw her father transformed into a giant werewolf. The same night, she was taken as a sacrifice and placed in a cave where wolves howled each night. But when she was about to escape, she heard a manly voice claiming, "Mine" before she felt a sting on her neck and loss her consciousness. Little did she know that it was the Alpha king who has claimed her and was bound to change her ordinary life. What lengths the Alpha King will go to in order to satisfy his hidden obsession?

On the company's designated monthly day off, Gigi Lott, Donald Hoover's secretary, posted an Instagram story. The caption read, "So what if you're the boss of me when we're at work during the day? At night, I'm the one on top!" In the photo, she was lying atop a water bed covered in rose petals, and the usually stern Donald was kneeling down to massage her feet for her. From his pocket hung a brand new golden necklace. Just that morning, I bought several gold bars and gave them to Donald while beseeching him to make our relationship public. He happily took the locket from me, but when I tried to take a photo of us with our phone, he smacked my phone out of my hands, smashing it into pieces. With a look of pure derision, he declared, "Why don't you take a good look at yourself in the mirror first? You really are a motherless wretch who wasn't raised right. Look at the lengths you'd go to just to ruin me!" Throughout the last five years, I had meekly gone along with his demand that we keep our relationship a secret, claiming it was because office romances were forbidden. But now, I was abruptly hit with the realization of how laughable it all was. The next day, I sent my father a message. "I admit defeat. I'm willing to come home and inherit the family business."

At ten years old, Violet stumbled into the Cedar Grove Pack covered in wounds and malnourished from walking for four days. With her memory shattered, she’s taken in and raised by the pack doctor. Nine years later fate takes Violet across the country, to the wealthiest pack in the world. Soon the walls she constructed around herself, and that harrowing night will be threatened. A face from her past set’s things in motion, his smoky eyes risk sending her to her knees. Flashbacks, blackouts, and secrets steeped in lies, prove to Violet that the past always comes back to haunt you.