Catholic Reads

Amelia Young was like any other girl. After graduating from college, she got a job as the President’s personal assistant at her dream company, DRIVEA; it’s considered the biggest car manufacturing company in Japan and the only one who specializes in high-tech cars. It’s owned by the most influential and powerful group in Japan; the Pearce family. Kael Pearce is the President of DRIVEA and Amelia’s childhood crush. She’s been fantasizing about him for years and now she finally has the opportunity to meet him. But she was quickly dismayed when she found out that her cousin, Natalia Bradley, was dating the President. Not wanting to make trouble, she decided to hide her feelings and confided in a diary which she carefully kept hidden. But an unfortunate event leads Natalia to find the diary. She reads it and is overwhelmed by her cousin’s feelings. Without talking to Amelia first, Natalia breaks her relationship with Kael giving him the reason that Amelia wanted to pursue him and she was forced to break up with him. Enraged, Kael confronts Amelia. Confused, Amelia tried to explain but Kael refused to listen. As his revenge, Kael decides to make Amelia’s life in the company hell. He also refuses to let her resign thus leaving her no choice but to stay and suffer.But Amelia held a secret. A secret she never told another soul. If her secret will be revealed, what could be in store?

When a child mysteriously disappears from a small town and even his mother seems indifferent, it’s time for the new sheriff to step in. Meet Chris Baker, the new sheriff of the quiet Adirondack town of Clifton Heights. As one inexplicable case after another forces him to confront the townsfolk in The Skylark Diner, it’s the furtive Gavin Patchett that hands Chris a collection of not-so-fictional short stories that tumbles him into a world of monsters, ageless demons, and vengeful citizens. As Chris reads through the stories the veil starts to lift, and he soon questions what is real and what’s not, and whether he really wants to know. Nothing will ever be the same again. ©️ Crystal Lake Publishing

Blurb When I was fifteen years old I fell in love, he was a walking wet dream and for a teenage girl that was only learning to control her hormones, he was Death. I grew up in a religious household, my grandfather was a catholic pastor and so we were raised on a biblical perspective but somehow I always galloped more to worldly things. I was taught no cussing, no deception, and certainly no fucking a hot boy you just met two weeks ago, but- I loved him. I wanted to love him in all the ways I could, and I think he too loved me because he always promised forever. Somehow forever lasted short, I ended up in the wrong hands, terrible hands. I saw some bad things and did worse, my perception of life was ruined long ago now I have nothing, nothing but scars and demons. I had long forgotten about him, but years later, he crashes into my life, and he's married. His wife, making me an unwelcome proposal, and him, making me feel like the indistinguishable stupid girl I was seven years ago. However I'm no longer her, and he isn't the same eighteen-year-old I lied to, he breathes power and seduction that can be seen from miles away. All I want is to get my life in order but with my past feelings and demons resurfacing, I know one thing for sure, I am screwed. We both are. Caelum thinks he is the only fiend in my story, yet there's a far bigger demon lurking in the dark, and no matter the times he goes hunting, he won't find it, the demon hides in the most open places and the longer Caelum searches, the more broken he will be when he encounters it.

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

Iris, according to her friends and people around her, is a fashion icon. She grew up loves watching clueless and gossip girls. She was enjoying her stay at the Catholic University of Arts, her previous school until something terrible happened with the scholarship that made her lose it; that made her switch to another school.

Happily married for 2 years, I thought all his grumpiness lately was only temporary. Maybe not the richest man, but he definitely puts his work as his priority, and I want to support him with all I have. I gave all the millions of dollars of my family wealth to him to build up his company, and didn't regret that. I love him. All I wanted was a family with him, a child for me to focus my attention on. But he often says he doesn't want a child before his career is stable. I understand, and I am willing to wait, until last night-- I found out that I had adopted his mistress's child thinking he was mine. On the day of our anniversary, I received a message from an unknown number. It's a picture of him with a woman in bed. And the text reads: he has been mine from the beginning. Three days later when he comes to the house that he shared with me in the past two years for one last time, he sees the divorce paper I left him, together with the necklace he gave the girl who saved him ten years ago! Pain and regret burst out in his chest, but this time he couldn’t find me anywhere. Five years later I came back to Arizona with beautiful quadruplets who have resemblance to the most powerful Alpha King in the world, but there's a problem: he isn't ready to let me go even though he's damaged and causes me nothing but pain.

Olivia has spent her entire life in Bremia avoiding the war and dreaming of a life away from conflict. She reads of times when fighting is not commonplace and wars not a constant. The country of Bremia has been plagued with war for decades with no peace in sight. One day, she finds herself in the midst of an attack with bullets flying and explosions crumbling the walls of the city. In a desperate attempt to save her sister from an oncoming attack, she throws herself at the mercy of the warrior. She finds herself staring at a man whose very existence will change her fate forever. Will the forces of evil keep them apart, or will the forbidden love find a way?

'Zsystem' is where I found myself as the sole survivor of the apocalypse. The system is supposed to be my mother's "in sample" antidote to cure the virus. She was a mad scientist of the base where uninfected humans habitats to survive from the outer world. While she is burying herself with works, I decided to be the useless child and the only one she has. Isn't it amusing! Being treated as the daughter of a crazy woman who is obsessed with antidotes. Even after failing hundreds and thousands of times. She should know my well-being but she didn't. No matter how much of a genius I am, it's worthless! I am still garbage in her eyes...! I tried so hard to make her proud but all she cares about is the antidotes and saving humanity! She even left me under my aunt's care. Not looking back even once...! Well, that is what I thought before the zombies conquer the base and being forced to drink a certain red liquid which is the antidote! Alast, being thrown into a foreign system. ________________________________________________________________________ From the useless garbage to the only human that holds the opportunity to change the world. Will Ava overcome the mission to level up and obtain the honour of saving the people she loves? Or will she abandon it and faced a wrongful death? ___________________________________________ Author: Thank you for reading The Zombie's Leveling... And please share my story with others... To be honest it's not scary at all! This story is more to fantasy because... I want to, so don't complain people.... I will try to update every Saturday so that I will not just do whenever I want...:O And whoever reads this... Do support my work if you like it.

The things we want are so very rarely the things we need. Clifton Heights, a modest Adirondack town, offers many unique attractions. Arcane Delights sells both paperbacks and hard-to-find limited editions. The Skylark Diner serves the best home-cooked meals around, with friendly service and a smile. Every August, Mr. Jingo’s County Fair visits, to the delight of children and adults. In essence, Clifton Heights is the quintessential small American town. Everyone knows everyone else, and everyone is treated like family. It is quiet, simple, and peaceful. But shadows linger here. Flitting in dark corners, from the corner of the eye. If you walk down Main Street after dark, the slight scrape of shoes on asphalt whispers you're not alone, but when you look over your shoulder, no one is there. The moon shines high and bright in the night sky, but instead of throwing light, it only seems to make the shadows lengthen. Children disappear. Teens run away. Hunters get lost in the woods with frightening regularity. Husbands go mad, and wives vanish in the dead of night. And still, when the sun rises in the morning, you are greeted by townspeople with warm waves and friendly smiles, and the shivers pass as everything seems fresh and new... Until night falls once more. Handy's Pawn and Thrift sits several blocks down from Arcane Delights. Like any thrift store, its wares range from the mundane to the bizarre. By daylight, it seems just another slice of small town Americana. But in its window hangs a sign which reads: We Have Things You Need. And when a lonely traveling salesman comes looking for something he desperately wants, after normal visiting hours, after night has fallen, he will face a harsh truth among the shelves of Handy’s Pawn and Thrift: the things we want are rarely the things we need. ©️ Crystal Lake Publishing

This Thanksgiving, Elmer Fuller finally agrees to go on a trip with me. But when I wake up in the hotel, I don't see him anywhere. I spend the entire day desperately searching for him, only to stumble across a social media post from his first love. It's a selfie of her and Elmer having a cozy family dinner with her parents. The caption reads, "Someone's finally meeting the parents on Thanksgiving night. Mom and Dad can stop pressuring me to get married now!" Around her neck is the scarf my mother knitted for me before she passed. I left a comment. "Stop using my things to flirt with my husband. Take the scarf off—you can have him." Not long after, she posts an update. The scarf is shredded into pieces and tossed into a dog bed, with the caption, "What trash—too filthy even for a dog!" Elmer likes the post.