Reading Street: Grade 3, Level 1

A month before the SATs, I, Jenny Reid, could see my score. Literally. It was just floating right above my head. But there was a catch. Every time I cracked open a prep book, my score would drop by ten points. But if I skipped a day of school? It jumped right back up by ten. So, I played the system. For a whole month, I barely lifted a finger. And on the day of the test, the number glowing over my head was a solid 1560. When the scores finally dropped online… I'd scored a 500. And the 1560? That was my little sister Patricia's score. My parents lost it. As punishment, they got me a grueling night-shift job at a local electronics factory. That first night, a bunch of guys I'd never seen before cornered me in the parking lot and beat me half to death. Fading in and out of consciousness, I heard my sister's voice right by my ear. "You just had to one-up me, didn't you? Thought you were so smart… but you never figured out I was the one controlling that number over your head." The truth hit me like a physical blow. The score had been her trick all along. I opened my eyes—and I was back. One month before the SATs. The number above my head read exactly 1300. "Hey," my sister said, all fake sweetness. "Want to study together tonight? We can go over the practice tests." I looked at the stack of papers in my own hands. Without a word, I pulled out my lighter and set them on fire right there in the driveway. "Exams are coming," I said, watching the flames. "I'm not studying." My score ticked up to 1310. My sister's face was this perfect mask of disappointment, but the second I turned away, I caught the sly smile she couldn't quite hide. She had no idea… the real performance, the one I'd been rehearsing just for her, was finally about to begin.

Clara Sterling is twenty-seven, polished, and on the move. After being wrongly blamed for a student’s breakdown at her previous school in Boston, she accepts a mid-semester teaching position at Blackwood, a prestigious private academy known for its reputation and the secrets. She hopes for a fresh start. Instead, she encounters Gabriel Vane. At nineteen, Gabriel is sharp and carries an unexpressed grief. He is the student who resists management and demands attention. After losing a year to his father’s death, he returns to Blackwood feeling incomplete but more unpredictable. When Clara steps into Room 14 on her first day and meets his intellectual challenge, something inside him stirs for the first time in a long while. What starts as a battle of wits over a poetry anthology evolves into a connection neither can put into words or control. Gabriel hacks into her private file, and instead of reporting it, Clara replies to his note. The distinction between teacher and student blurs gradually until one rainy Tuesday afternoon in a locked classroom, it vanishes completely. Yet Blackwood is keeping an eye on them. Someone has reported their interactions to the headmistress. Even worse, someone removed pages from Clara’s file before her arrival, indicating that she didn’t get the job despite her scandal in Boston. She was chosen because of it. As their relationship deepens and threats converge, both Clara and Gabriel must confront the same question: what does it cost to want something you were never meant to have? The Lesson Plan is a dark, slow-burning forbidden romance about desire, grief, and the precarious space between authority and intimacy.

Eidolon Avenue: Where the secretly guilty go to die. One building. Five floors. Five doors per floor. Twenty-five nightmares feeding the hunger lurking between the bricks and waiting beneath the boards. The sequel to Eidolon Avenue: The First Feast (“a great read...powerful and jarring” - Cemetery Dance) returns to the voracious Eidolon as it savors The Second Feast. A narcoleptic man in apartment 2A battles a vengeful past determined to rob him of everything as he runs from the barbaric disaster of a delusional love. A woman in 2B, reinventing herself to please a callous boyfriend, discovers the horrors that wait in the shadows of her self-renovation. The man in 2C, a teacher at the nearby Catholic girl’s school, collapses beneath the brutal consequences of his lecherous desires. An older woman in 2D, after decades dedicated to the church, is cornered at last by the grisly carnage beating at the hollow center of her faith. And a college student in 2E, hungry to escape an ignored life of invisible anonymity, finds herself captured between the pages of a ravenous book. All thrown into their own private hell as every cruel choice, every drop of spilled blood, every silent, complicit moment of cowardice is remembered, resurrected and relived to feed the ancient evil that lives on Eidolon Avenue. ©️ Crystal Lake Publishing

Taking a shortcut through a dark and remote alley on Halloween night proved to be a life changing decision of research scientist, Jasper Greene. Bitten by a zombie and brutally attacked by a group of werewolves, he was left for dead only to be discovered and rescued by a vampire king who took him home to heal. Delighted to discover that Jasper's research was on genetics with a focus on elongating life (for which he often used himself as a test subject due to lack of money), the vampire king assigned him the task of shifting the vampire DNA so that it was less obvious what they were when in the company of humans. With his assistant, Lila, in tow he was provided a lab and set to work. With toxins from werewolves and zombies mingling with the vampire blood he was provided during his healing time, Jasper struggled to adjust to his new body while he did his best to accommodate the vampires until the opportunity to escape presented itself. But, where does a man who has vampire, werewolf and zombie traits go? "The Beginning", is book 1 of the Jasper series.

A nerdy girl with a sordid past. Three more months in Uni and she is done. She can move on to a happier and better life. What if a certain professor says hello and turns her world upside down? Is she willing to be seduced by him and damn the consequences? Teaching is his passion. He has never wanted to take on his papa's business especially when he bumps into a certain girl that he swore to wait until the time is right. One look is all it takes. Let the tension and waiting game begin.

"Our heart beats only with their permission." For as long as she can remember, the bookworm Synecdoche Rochet, 23, has lived a simple life in Maharlika Nation—hiding in the grasses and grains of District G to avoid the terrifying power of the Embassy and its ruthless Ambassador. In a dystopian world that is controlled with surveillance, Synecdoche Rochet embarks on a mission to get back their rights on their district's valuable resources—the grains. When she discovered her intellectual ability, she found herself drawn to the charismatic Giovanni, the long-lost Ambassador's privileged son together with other intelligent students, Ulap, Token, and Keithwarth. They found themselves being the tributes on the 2nd Maharlika Spelling TwistBee—trapped in the Word Arena. An annually commemorated game where each district will represent one letter in the Alphabet, spell the given English words not verbally, but by beating other competitors who have letter tattoos on their arms. The rules are to Spell and beat them. Within the competitor's reach, the team-up of Synecdoche, Giovanni, Ulap, Token, and Keithwarth isn't a coincidence, it's a conspiracy. What if Synecdoche's age will be reversed? Will they use their intelligence for vengeance? Will they compel love and trust to survive the competition? Is their life the price or the prize? "Even the shortest word has the longest meaning."