Nearby Synonyms

"Mrs. Gardner, are you sure you want to hire our team to stage a fire and fake your death in ten days?" Camellia Shaw paused for a moment. Just as she was about to reply to the message, a video call suddenly popped up. "Camellia, look! Andres is spending a fortune on you again!" The video was of an auction in progress. At the front, a man of striking elegance and charm was decisively bidding on several antique collectibles worth hundreds of millions. The crowd was already abuzz with excitement. "Mr. Gardner is so good to his wife! He bought all these antiques just to make her smile!" "$400 million is nothing! I heard Mr. Gardner even built her a private estate and named it Eterna Haven. Just the name alone is proof of how much he loves her." A wealthy businessman nearby sneered. "It's all for show. Who knows what he's really like behind closed doors?" That comment immediately sparked a wave of backlash. Many argued back, talking about how devoted Andres Gardner was to his wife. As she listened to their murmurs, Camellia forced a bitter smile.

While visiting a property development with my fiancé to buy our first home, I ran into a two-faced real estate agent.   She showered my fiancé with compliments, praising him for being young and successful enough to afford a Rolls-Royce.   Then, she suggested I was a fake socialite with a knockoff designer bag, implying that I was just using my charms to snag a free house.   When she found out the property was meant to be a marital home, her voice grew loud enough for everyone nearby to hear.   “I just think the sugar daddy who bought you those two properties last time treated you pretty well!” “Oh, wait. Miss Gwen, don’t you have several sugar daddies? Do they all know about each other?”   I chuckled. What she didn’t know was that my “sugar daddies” were my godfathers and I really was a socialite.   The kicker, though, was that my so-called wealthy fiancé wasn’t rich at all. In fact, he was just a scholarship student I had been financially supporting!

Crescent Moon and her mother never settled in a pack. They moved from one pack to another every time her mother noticed people lurking nearby, earning them the name ‘The Rogues.’ Crescent harbored hatred towards her mother for forcing her to disguise as a boy since she was three years old and the constant moving never allowed her to have a life of her own, unlike other she-wolves. As usual, after three months, they were on the run but ended up in the den of their enemies. Her mother was killed, leaving behind a notebook containing words written in a foreign language, while Crescent was forced to flee into the Storm Bringer Pack, posing as a slave brought from another pack. However, she never expected to be chosen by the ruthless Lycan Prince, Anton Storm Bringer, heir to the Lycan throne, as his servant. Crescent was chosen to serve the cursed Lycan Prince, whom everyone feared and prayed to the Moon goddess never to cross paths with. But what happens when the cursed Lycan Prince discovers that his mate, whom he was cursed never to have, is actually his pretty male servant with a sharp mouth and bratty attitude?

Tantalizing crimson eyes and jet black hair were all Lily could remember in the features of the enigmatic young man who saved her ten years ago when she was kidnapped. One day, she accidentally saw him again after ten years in the middle of a busy street in an unexplainable situation. Time froze for few seconds, people around her stopped moving, and in his snap of finger defreezes time, as the car in front of him lose control and crashed with the nearby truck. She was left dazed by what had just happened in front of her. The scene shocked her and triggered her memory of him. "The guy who saved me was no human," she murmured staring blankly, remembering their uncanny encounter a decade ago. "Grim Reaper?" Confusion was written on her face. He shook his head. "Non, I am Doom, and I bring death to people." After the street incident, she couldn't forget his face and his lines kept replaying in her dreams like a broken tape which made her wonder if this was part of the after-effects of her trauma or if it was destiny that aligned their stars to collide.

Blurb: Paige Rimestone never got to choose her fate. She wakes up inside a book she once loved, cast as a girl who dies too soon. Her future husband wants riches more than he wants her alive. Survival means turning to someone feared by everyone. The cold Duke Noah Wingknight. He might be cruel, but he’s also the closest thing to protection in a world that already wrote her off. From memories of who she was before, she pressures the Duke into agreeing to a half-year fake engagement. He gives her protection under his name. In return, she follows his hidden plans without question. He looks nothing like the monster she expected, his charm slipping under her skin before she can stop it. While pretending to be the woman on his arm, someone else lingers just out of sight, eyes fixed and unblinking. A second player waits nearby, fingers tracing blade edges, patience wearing thin. Death was supposed to be outsmarted by Paige. Yet love arrived, carried in the arms of someone meant to ruin everything she built.

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

Raine has lived her entire life in a small town with her mother. Her human father lived nearby and saw her everyday. The only things she knew about being a werewolf came from her mother. But as she approaches her 18th birthday her mother begins to change. Until the day her entire world came to a halt. The day her mother hit her. Within 20 minutes after her father walked into the policestation they were in a new car with new identities headed east to her mother's old pack. According to him it was time for her to go home. Her mother would only get worse. But what was waiting for them? What about the secret her dad was keeping? And what if the mate her mother had always told her would save her, actually destroys her? Follow Raine on her adventure halfway around the world to find herself and learn to embrace her rain gift before the time comes that she needs to use it. With a second chance at love waiting for her, will the imminent war she was made to fight be too much for them or will they conquer all the awaiting obstacles?

I was in the middle of hosting an important international meeting when my younger brother’s sudden call interrupted me. On the other end, his voice was low and trembling. "Matt, someone took my spot for the exchange student program." I rushed to his school right away, only to find him cornered in an office, his eyes slightly red. A cocky-looking boy was pointing at Tim’s nose, his face full of arrogance. "You want to compete with me? I’m the heir of the Smiths in Ardenford. My mom just donated an entire lab building to the school! Who do you think you are?" Even the teacher nearby spoke up in support of him. "Timothy, the Smiths are one of our school’s major benefactors. You’d better be sensible and not cause any trouble." I was about to step forward and confront them when those words—the Smiths in Ardenford—made me stop cold. The Smiths in Ardenford? Since when did my mom have a third son besides me and my brother, Timothy? I immediately dialed her number, a cold laugh slipping from my lips. "Mom, when did you have another son behind Dad’s back?"

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

Twenty years ago, Thantos Abraxas, The Alpha of the Crescent Shadow werewolf pack went on a powerfueled rampage. Leaving every other pack with just one choice, bow down or die. He ripped through pack after pack, slaughtering it's members and forcing many others into hidding. Even worse, he destroyed every pack's wolfsbane plants, forcing them to lose control of their wolf selves during the full moon. Luckily the packs that hid were able to escape with some, but only enough for their own. Now, the Crimson River pack's wolfsbane is nearing complete depletion and the werewolves wont survive for long without it. The vicious killings of so many humans from nearby towns are beginning to draw hunters to the packs location. But luckily, there is still one hope left. Their Alpha, Grayson Sinclair, sends his nieces Malia and Iselyn to try and reason with Thantos in his old age for some of his wolfsbane. But will the girls be willing to compromise with the monster that put them in this situation to begin with? With the hunters closing in on their family, do they even have time to think about it? Will they even have a home to go back to? One thing's for sure. Grayson will never bow down to another. And neither will they.