Troubled Sleep Bookstore Novels & Stories

"Let us go meet her." Chicago was a five hour drive. Liam drove. Anna sat in the back. I navigated. The rain followed us the whole way. Grey skies. Grey roads. Grey everything. The bookstore was called "Pages." It sat on a corner between a coffee shop and a flower store. The windows were full of bestsellers. A sign on the door said "Open." We walked in. Bells jingled. The smell of paper and old wood wrapped around me. Shelves stretched to the ceiling. A cat slept on a pile of romance novels.

The moment I stepped inside, the familiar smell of books wrapped around me—paper, dust, ink—comforting in a way nothing else had been lately. I made my way to the back, my favorite spot. Quiet. Hidden. Safe. Which was why it caught me off guard when I found someone already there. Sleeping. I pulled out a chair on the opposite end, leaving a careful distance between us, and sat down. I slipped my pods in and played “Full 180” by Luminati Suns on repeat at full volume. Two hours later, my eyes ached, my focus gone. I hadn’t even gotten through much. Frustration built quickly. I slammed my book shut. The sound cracked through the silence.

The grand library glowed with the soft amber light of floating lanterns and a roaring hearth fire that cast long, dancing shadows across towering shelves. Guests had retired for the evening after another lavish solstice supper, but the manor refused to sleep. Enchanted books rustled faintly on their own, pages turning as if reading scandalous secrets aloud. Elara slipped inside after midnight, telling herself she only wanted a quiet moment with a novel to calm her racing mind. In truth, her body burned.

"You were all cozy in bed, with Ara in the middle. I swear, if Ara wasn't there to put a boundary. I swear the both of you would have been yet again child making. The sexual tension was just so tense." Leona let out a gasp at how absurd that sounded. "Laura, we were trying to get her to sleep and Eric had said he read a book were it said if the parents slept on both sides. It radiates warmth for the—" "Yeah right... and you believe that!" "He showed me the highlighted paragraph." Leona defended. "But still I saw what I saw."

Tristan's voice soothed as he relaxed back onto the bed beside me, his hands never losing contact with my skin and the feeling of him beside me was more comforting than any words he could speak, knowing that I wasn't alone in this was the thought that allowed me to drift back off into a dreamless sleep. I woke with the birds the next morning, the remnants of the nightmare still plaguing my memory and I shuddered at the image of the black wolves. I had a few meetings scheduled with vendors that were going to be assisting with setting up the Christmas festival this morning, but my afternoon was mostly clear, and I resolved myself to reading as much of that book I found as possible after I had

Klark, ‘Tribid Greed’ by Steve Reynolds, and a lot of other books. One by one Trisha returned all the books she'd picked. When she was beginning to get tired and unmotivated, the corner of her eyes perceived a strange book on a shelf not too far from where she was. Its spines were tattered and appeared like spiky wires beneath the poor lighting.

Sometimes, I wonder if she’s the one I am feeling in this room. I don’t believe in ghosts or that shit. I grab a blue hardcover, with the name, ‘Herbs for healing sleeping sickness’. I flip the pages, leaning on the bookshelves, as the pages flip, a paper falls out. I grip it, the paper is nearly old, the edges almost torn off. The writing is legible.

Chapter 2: She Tasted Like Trouble And Felt Too Familiar II They fell into an easy rhythm after that. The store was narrow, shelves leaning a little too far with secondhand fiction, occult guides, poetry chapbooks, and oddly specific memoirs no one asked for — but somehow, they sold. Aria loved it: the smell of aging paper mixed with dust, the hush that seemed to settle like a blanket, and the way time warped in corners where lives were stacked so densely on shelves you could almost hear their echoes.

Did he feel guilty about what he did with me and couldn’t face Leticia because of it? How long was I going to do this for? I tried to sleep. Shut my eyes for a whole five seconds before I snapped them open and groaned,tossing around in my bed. Sleep eluded me and I feared it would be that way for as long as I do not know what is going ok with the Alpha in his room. I stopped trying to force myself to go to sleep. My eyes caught the self-help book on the reading table in my room. Its pages were open and it was laying face down on my table beside the broken mirror from the MoonBorn Pack.

When they were out of the main drinking area, where the nightclubs and bars were located, Lucas allowed himself a small, satisfied smile. Ema would be pleased. After weeks of failure, they were positive that they would receive exactly what they had been looking for. Astor followed the smell to a little, independent bookshop nestled in between a thrift store and a vegan café. Over the door was a sign that proclaimed ‘Bookmark Haven’ in finely chipped gold paint. Indeed, the bookstore was closed, and all the windows in it were blind, but Lucas was convinced the individuals were still alive in the building.