Novel & Cerita Greyhouse 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

Richard Franklin has left his Midwestern roots behind to live on the coast of Maine with his family. But in the autumn of the year 2000, he must return to his Illinois birthplace on a sorrowful journey. His wife Michelle has been killed in New England by a hit-and-run driver who is never found, so back home he comes with her cremated remains, to fulfill a final wish and on her birthday scatter her ashes in the park along the river in Blackwater Valley—simply Blackwater Val to locals—the small town where they both grew up and fell in love. With him he brings his six-year-old daughter Katie who still grieves for her lost mother: Katie, who can sometimes guess who’s going to be on the phone before it rings. Who can stop all the clocks in the house, and break up clouds in the sky with her mind, and heal sicknesses, and who sometimes sees things that aren’t there...people who are no longer alive. All gifts she inherited from her mother. Only something isn’t quite right in the Val. Sinkholes are opening up, revealing the plague pits the sleepy hamlet was built over in the 1830s, when malaria and cholera outbreaks ran riot. Mysterious bird and fish die-offs begin to occur, and Katie can see ghosts of the dead gathering all around. But what she can’t see is the charred, centuries-old malevolence which has been waiting for her, and wants her for its very own. Or the pale Sallow Man who haunts the town’s nighttime streets...or the river witch—another Blackwater Val, of sorts—each of whom will be drawn one by one into the nightmarish bloodletting about to take place. ©️ Crystal Lake Publishing

I spend three torturous years in a dark underground cell after taking the fall for Cole Greyhouse, a member of the nobility. He once held my hand tightly and tearfully promised that he would wait for me to return. Then, he would take my hand in marriage. However, he doesn't show up on the day I'm released from prison. I head to the palace to look for him, but all I see is him with his arm around another woman. He also has a mocking smile on his face. "Do you really think a former convict like you deserves to become a member of the royal family?" Only then do I understand that he's long since forgotten about the three years he was supposed to wait for me. I'm devastated, and my heart dies. I accept the marriage my family has arranged for me. On the big day, Cole crashes my wedding with his comrades and laughs raucously. "Are you that desperate to be my secret lover, Leah? How dare you put on a wedding gown meant for a royal bride to force me into marriage? You're pathetic!" Just then, his uncle, Fenryr Greyhouse, the youngest Alpha King in Lunholm's history, hurriedly arrives. He drapes a shawl around my shoulders and slides a wedding ring onto my finger. That's when Cole panics.

Stanley Edwards, people claimed he mirrored a Russian man and had the heart of steel. He was an executioner who mercilessly took the lives of twenty women over a period of eight years. He is released from prison, can he get a whole new life? After he meets the love of his life, how will he protect their love? Is he still the grim executioner?