Crystal Shoes

He pinned me against the wall. "You are nothing but trash from my past", he said. "Just a used toy from the past" a loud sound resonated in his office. Coming to my senses I understood that the devil was slapped. By me. I looked at him with tears in my eyes, afraid of his reaction. But his face was completely blank; he was touching the cheek I had slapped. I opened my mouth to apologize but nothing came out. Instead a pair of soft lips were roughly placed on mine like it was punishing me. Being the ex-wife of a billionaire is not fun. Especially when he promises you the world and in the end leaves you with nothing but just a suitcase of clothes. Claire White is the former Claire Knight, billionaire Adam Knight's ex-wife. Their marriage as well as the divorce was the most gossiped about and favorite topic of everyone in New York. During their marriage the headlines were: New York's most eligible bachelor marries the poor waitress within a week. Is she pregnant? Or just a gold digger who couldn't wait to get her hands on Knight's large fortune? And after divorce: Adam Knight finally confirms divorce with Claire White and states, she was just a gold digger. Now after 5 years Adam Knight is in California, both of them meet, sparks fly. But Claire is not alone now. She has a 5 year old daughter with her who looks nothing like Adam. Now Adam is one hundred percent sure she is a cheater who played with his feelings and his money too. So now he is hell bent on making her pay in every possible way. But secrets are revealed in the most unexpected ways. Is she really a gold digger? Or a victim of circumstance?

It’s Monday and my first day of my new school. I drive my car around to where everyone else is parked, so I find myself a parking spot. Then I find the front office and go in and get my schedule. My first class is math, so I walk into the room and I’m the first one in there so I walk up to the teacher and hand him my paper to sign that I have to take back to the front office this afternoon. “Hello Miss. Billie Green I’m Mrs. Smart. It’s very nice to meet you.” The math teacher says, then sings the paper. You can go find yourself a set. I would try to find one in the front on the left-hand side. The kids pretty much already have the back full.” She tells me, and really it’s okay. I kinda like the front anyway. I make my way to a seat that looks vacant and sit down. Kids start piling in about five minutes later. And walking to their seats, there’s a tiny little girl that comes and seats down behind me. She introduces herself as Shaylee Apple. “Hello Shaylee Apple I’m Billie Green.” I tell her and hold my hand out to shake hers. I turn back around in my seat about the same time as a tall guy that has dirty blonde hair cut into spikes all over, ash gray eyes, so gray I can see the color all the way in my seat. He’s wearing a tight fitted gray shirt, and blue jeans. He has a very handsome face, but then he looks at me and instantly I see hatred in his eyes. What the heck, he doesn’t even know me. .

Natalia was born to obey, raised as a bargaining chip to secure peace between packs. It was the way girls were raised in her family. And within powerful families, being an only child, her father was sure to make her know her place since her fate was sealed when he had arranged her marriage to the brutal Alpha of the Crimson Howl pack. But Natalia refuses to be anyone's pawn. She refused to obey, and most importantly, she refused to be controlled. On the day of her wedding, dressed in white and suffocating in expectations, she runs. By the edge of a forgotten river, she finds a stranger. A man with cold eyes and a darker soul, Alpha Nolan. He mocks her at first, calls her dramatic, tells her she’d drown ugly if she jumps. But beneath his sharp tongue lies a haunted alpha with no love, no mercy, and no reason to care… until now.

My fated mate, Alpha Cullen, fell for the lies of his first love, Donna, and planned to kill me. But in a twist of fate, we were ambushed by rogues and died together. But with his last breath, he whispered another woman's name: Donna. In that moment, I knew the truth—it had always been her, his real love. When the Moon Goddess gave me a second chance, I was reborn on the day I first met him. One look at the hatred in his eyes, and I knew: he had been reborn, too. So before he could speak, I rejected him in front of the entire pack. Years later, when we met again, he sneered that I was nothing more than a pathetic rogue who tinkered with flowers. But he didn't know I had found a new mate: Orton, the Alpha of Alphas. It wasn't until our son ran to me, wrapping his little arms around my leg and crying, "Mommy!" that Cullen's façade finally shattered. He grabbed my arm, his voice cracking as he begged, "This can't be happening! I'm your fated mate! You still love me… right, Juliet?"

She rules her world,she sets the pace. Pretty poison. Driven by revenge and the never quenched hunger for blood and vengeance. She's a one woman army, and the Mafia Bosslady. But will the iron lady ever bend?

Ariana is a young lady who has been trained and taught to hunt down werewolves and kill them, which she had done successfully all through her years, in respect to her Father’s biddings. He assigns her to Ortega’s pack and she thinks it’s going to be a walk in the pack until she meets the Pack Alpha, Liam Ortega. Liam Ortega is the leader of the Ortega Pack. He would do anything to protect his pack from anything and anyone. Although hunted by his past, he prepares his pack for the impending arrival of the prophecy of the blood moon, set to destroy all of the wolf race on earth. When he meets Ariana, he world sort of turns upside down. What happens when Ariana finds out her father is the brain behind all of this, and her whole life a lie? What happens when they begin to fall for each other and the secrets and betrayals rocks their relationship? How would they handle the impending arrival of the blood moon curse?

It’s end of October 1985 and the crumbling river town of Dubois, Iowa is shocked by the gruesome murder of one of the pillars of the community. Detective David Carlson has no motive, no evidence, and only one lead: the macabre local legend of “Boris Orlof,” a late night horror movie host who burned to death during a stage performance at the drive-in on Halloween night twenty years ago and the teenage loner obsessed with keeping his memory alive. The body count is rising and the darkness that hangs over the town grows by the hour. Time is running out as Carlson desperately chases shadows into a nightmare world of living horrors. On Halloween the drive-in re-opens at midnight for a show no one will ever forget. ©️ Crystal Lake Publishing

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

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

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...