Erchius Crystal Starbound

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...

When Sidney travels to the mountains to attend a horror film festival, she is flattered to find that one of her followers has come to meet her. But he might not be the only one who has gone out of his way to get up close and personal with her. When Sidney is attacked on the way back to her hotel late one night, she learns that real-life horror is not a game, and being stalked isn’t flattering—it’s terrifying, and it could get her killed.Believing the incident to be a fluke, Sidney decides to forget the attack and focus on her life again. Only this might not be so easy. Because Sidney—and her loved ones—are in serious danger. This stalker isn’t just your average stalker. He knows her every movement, and he knows each step of her routine. In fact, he’s right behind her…and when he gets close enough, he won’t take no for an answer.©️ Crystal Lake Publishing

There are monsters in this world. And they used to be us. Now it's time to euthanize to survive in a hospice where Emily, a woman haunted by her past, only wants to do her job and be the best mother possible. Post-infection Chicago. Christmas. Inside The Hospice, Emily and her fellow nurses do their rounds. Here, men and women live out their final days in comfort, segregated from society, and are then humanely terminated before fate turns them into marrow-craving monsters known as ‘Smilers.’ Outside these imposing walls, rabid protesters swarm with signs, caught up in the heat of their hatred. Emily, a woman haunted by her past, only wants to do her job and be the best mother possible. But in a world where mortality means nothing, where guns are drawn in fear and nobody seems safe anymore – at what cost will this pursuit come? And through it all, the soon to be dead remain silent, ever smiling. Such is their curse. It won't be long before that snow-speckled ground will be salted by blood. ©️ Crystal Lake Publishing

Welcome back to Clifton Heights. Sheriff Chris Baker and Father Ward meet for a Saturday morning breakfast at The Skylark Diner to once again commiserate over the weird and terrifying secrets surrounding their town. Sheriff Baker shares with Father Ward the story of a journal discovered in the ruins of what was once an elaborate koi pond and flower garden, which regales a tale of regret, buried pain, and unfulfilled debt: “Sophan” – Jake Burns has always been a bit...off. Rude, awkward, sometimes brutish, he's tolerated by Nate Slocum and his friends because he hits a mean line drive, and because they all know but don't discuss the abuse he faces at the hands of his troubled father, a Vietnam veteran consumed by his demons. But Jake is suffering something far worse than domestic abuse, and when Nate discovers what, he faces an impossible choice: help Jake and put himself in the path of evil, or abandon him, only to damn himself in the process. ©️ Crystal Lake Publishing

There are a lot more truths in the books we read, than we’d like to admit. What if a book delves into the lives of the very town you live in? Reveals to you some personal stories of people you know? Or thought you knew. Bookstore owner Kevin Ellison faces this truth when a mysterious book shows up in Through a Mirror, Darkly by Kevin Lucia. Through a Mirror, Darkly is a Supernatural Thriller collection masked as a novel. With elements of mystery, suspense, and otherworldly horror, Through a Mirror, Darkly successfully delves into the worlds of Lovecraft, Grant, and the mysterious Carcosa. ©️ Crystal Lake Publishing Arcane Delights. Clifton Heights' premier rare and used bookstore. In it, new owner Kevin Ellison has inherited far more than a family legacy, for inside are tales that will amaze, astound, thrill...and terrify: An ancient evil thirsty for lost souls. A very different kind of taxi service with destinations not on any known map. Three coins that grant the bearer's fondest wish, and a father whose crippling grief gives birth to something dark and hungry.

An Epic Fantasy tale of action, adventure, heroism, horror and sorcery… Beyond Night is a Dark Fantasy Horror novel that pulls back the veil of nearly two thousand years of jaded history. Come tread in the bloody footprints left by monsters, soldiers and wizards and behold what lies hidden Beyond Night itself. It’s Bigfoot War mixed with Lovecraftian horror on the edge of the Roman Empire. How could Rome lose a Legion? What could’ve happened to blot out the existence of over five thousand men not only from history but the Earth itself? As the Legion moves north to engage the forces of Pictdom, a dark horror emerges from the bowels of the Earth. Thought to be random attacks by hulking monsters, Decurion August soon learns a dire truth, that these bloody events are directed by opposing the wizards of the Picts. While one side assembles all tribes in a confederated army to battle the Legion, the other pulls these Greyman beasts from the depths of the Earth. August fights not only these creatures and workers of magicks, but internal passions in the Legion itself. ©️ Crystal Lake Publishing

In an East London lock up, two film makers, Jimmy and Sam, are duct taped to chairs and forced to watch a snuff film by Ashkan, a loan shark to whom they owe a lot of money. If they don’t pay up, they’ll be starring in the next one. Before the film reaches its end, Ashkan and all his men are slaughtered by unknown assailants. Only Jimmy and Sam survive the massacre, leaving them with the sole copy of the snuff film. The film makers decide to build their next movie around the brutal film. While auditioning actors, they stumble upon Melissa, an enigmatic actress who seems perfect for the leading role, not least because she’s the spitting image of the snuff film’s main victim. Neither the film, nor Melissa, are entirely what they seem however. Jimmy and Sam find themselves pulled into a paranormal mystery that leads them through the shadowy streets of the city beneath the city and sees them re-enacting an ancient Mesopotamian myth cycle. As they play out the roles of long forgotten gods and goddesses, they’re drawn into the subtle web of a deadly heresy that stretches from the beginnings of civilization to the end of the world as we know it. ©️ 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

Barry Ocason, extreme sportsman and outdoor travel writer, receives a magazine in his mailbox and opens to an ad for an adventure in the Bavarian Alps. Initially dismissing the invitation, which seems to have been meant specifically for him, he soon finds himself involved in a larger plot and seeking answers to why an individual known only as the elephant man is terrorizing his family. Barry and his daughter Kristen, who survived a twin sister taken from the family at a young age, travel from Juneau, Alaska to the sinister Spider Festival in Rio Tago, Brazil, before he ultimately answers the call to Bavaria, where the puzzle begins to come together. Amid tribulation, death, madness, and institutionalization, a document emerges describing a scientist’s bloody bid to breed a theoretical “third twin,” which is believed to have the potential, through its connection with its siblings, to bridge the gulf between life and afterlife. The godlike creature that soon emerges turns out to be Barry’s own offspring, and she has dark plans for the world of her conception that neither her father nor any other mortal can stop. ©️ 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