Descendants of the Big House C. Vonzale Lewis
(A Horde of Dead Poets)
Publication date: October 14th 2025
Genres: Adult, Contemporary, Fantasy, Mystery
Beatrice Monroe is still getting used to the knowledge that she was born a champion for Good and Evil. She spends her days combing through her great grandmother’s journals trying to find answers to what this newfound ability means for her as a member of law enforcement.
When a woman walks into her precinct claiming her aunt was murdered, Beatrice discovers a link between their families that may just have the answers she needs. But those answers are not easy to find. Because this mystery’s roots are buried in the past with five young girls and what they gave birth to…in The Big House.
Descendants of the Big House is a standalone installment in A Horde of Dead Poets collection featuring seven authors and their stories inspired by famous literary poems. If you often find yourself steering toward a dark, mysterious, isolated location; if family curses haunt you and unreliable narrators keep you in suspense, you won’t want to miss a single volume in this gripping collection.
Perfect for fans of T. Kingfisher, Simone St. James, Stephen King, and Shirley Jackson.
“I think somebody did something,” Mr. Taylor announced suddenly, voice raised. “My wife, my children. Not right. Not right at all.” He started crying. “I can’t convince anybody to listen to me.”
I got up and kneeled by his chair. “I’m listening, Mr. Elijah.” It didn’t dawn on me that I might have overstepped. The pain in his plea just pulled at me. I understood the feeling of being lost so well, growing up in a home filled with abuse and no one listening to my own cries for help.
He looked down at me. “I appreciate that. You find ’em. You find the one that took my Mary. She was the only woman I ever loved. And our children. Godsend. No matter what that man told her at the crossroads.”
“What man?” I asked, my blood running cold. Of course, I knew what man he was referring to, but I didn’t dare say it out loud.
He flapped his hand in the air again.
I looked at Gautier and dipped my head toward my bag. I didn’t want to upset him further, but I needed to confirm what I already suspected. Mary had met Papa Sin at the crossroads.
Gautier pulled out the book Odette gave us, still in an evidence bag, and came over and gave it to me. I pulled it out and Mr. Taylor gasped.
“Get that evil book out of my house!” He tried to get to his feet and ended up falling back in the chair. I straightened and, after thrusting the book at Gautier, helped Mr. Elijah right himself.
“What’s wrong, Daddy?” Cherie asked, rushing over. “What evil?” She looked at the book. “I don’t understand what’s going on, but it’s upsetting my daddy.”
“I’m sorry about that, ma’am. But your sister Natalie sent this book to Odette along with a letter claiming she was going to…” I looked down at Mr. Taylor. His eyes were wild.
“She swore she’d gotten rid of that book. She swore.” He let out a sob. “That man told her she’d birth evil. That twins were broken.” He caved in on himself, chest heaving as he cried.
“I better take him to his room,” Cherie said, her face filled with concern.
Gautier got up and helped her take him in the back. I stood there berating myself for upsetting him. I shouldn’t have asked about the book. But I had to get answers, right?
Author Bio:
Carla Vonzale Lewis likes her martini’s shaken…never stirred. Though she was born in Georgia, please don’t mistake her for a Georgia peach. She’s more like a prickly pear. Speaking of being born, someone asked her recently if she remembered her birth, and all she had to say was, “Yes, I do remember that handsy doctor pulling me out into the cold. Right Bastard!!!”
Despite being born in the South, she grew up in the North. California to be exact. And every once in a great while, she gets to experience all four seasons. But mostly, it’s just heat.
Her debut novel, LINEAGE, was released July 16, 2019 and she fully intends to ride that joy for the rest of her life.
When she’s not concocting her next contemporary fantasy story, she enjoys reading, binge watching shows on Netflix, and trying to convince her husband that getting a dog is a wonderful idea.
Maeve Drakos and Hazel Fischer continue their college journey, moving back to the city and starting the peace officer training program at the community college. They pick out their first apartment, and everything seems awesome. Until they meet the neighbors.
Members of Oakley University’s men’s lacrosse team live in the big house behind them. After many late-night parties and several instances of vandalizing the girls’ apartment, Maeve has had enough. She decides to confront them on their own turf. Except while there, she discovers team secrets far darker than broken windows and spray-painted walls. Yet they all insist it’s nothing—just tradition. The captain’s a nice guy; they’re all good guys. Yeah, no.
Maeve thought she and Hazel were supposed to be the perfect team—in more ways than one. But when she approaches Hazel about reporting the guys, Hazel doesn’t necessarily see what’s happening next door the same way. And she’s hardly ever home anyway, because she’s been spending loads of time with her friend Doug. All this leaves Maeve doubting herself and questioning everything she thought she understood so clearly their freshman year.
Yet there’s no time to figure anything out before Maeve and Hazel find themselves embroiled in another murder mystery. Who has time to care about a crush when there’s a rotting corpse in the basement?
Cool blasts of April air blew her hair around the car, swirling around her head, whipping against my cheek every now and then. It had grown longer, the weight of it suppressing some of her natural wave. We were headed to Indy—just the two of us. Behind us had been hours and hours of nothing but long, straight road, pumping music, those crispy, fried, onion-flavored chips, and countless cigarette butts streaming out the windows as I drove full throttle across I-70. Acres of farmland surrounded us, mounded rows extending beyond the horizon, prepped for corn or soybean seed, until a new city emerged with tall buildings cutting through a span of sky and a falling orange sun. As we navigated through downtown, through the maze of asphalt and concrete, the open fields fell away as if they ceased to exist.
Hazel flicked the radio off and lit another cigarette. She’d started smoking again, and I wasn’t going to complain about it. That probably made me a shitty friend, but I was glad to have a smoking buddy.
“I brought you something.” I reached into the backseat blindly, keeping my eyes on the road, and felt around in my bag until my fingers grazed the thin pages of the city newspaper. “Check out page three.”
Hazel unfolded the Ledger Dispatch and found our story, the one Gayle Jackson had interviewed us for, detailing last autumn’s campus murder of Ryan Newsome (asshole and sexual predator, although most media outlets left those bits out) and how we’d pieced it all together…not totally unscathed.
“Good for her. She said she wasn’t going back to the Echo after they canned her last year.” Hazel carefully refolded the paper along the creases as if it contained nothing more than the crossword.
“You’re not gonna read it?”
“I know how it ends.”
Hazel hadn’t gone back to school after Newsome’s murderer attacked us. She needed time to heal—physically and emotionally. We all did. But I couldn’t escape the feeling something else was keeping her away, distant. Before today, I hadn’t seen Hazel since October, the morning I’d followed her into the police station to give a statement. We’d been emailing back and forth, but neither of us ever mentioned what had happened all those nights ago—what it had been like seeing her blood soak through her clothes, fear as thick as fog, a death so close you could taste it on the air like the salt and sand of a new shore. No, we’d skirted around all of that.
It didn’t stop me from wondering how she felt or what she thought about it. Hazel could be a bit of a mystery to me. Most folks I could see right through, not her. She kept everything wrapped up so tight inside herself, I didn’t think I’d ever break through. And maybe that was okay. Maybe even better than okay.
“I haven’t been in a real city for months. I forgot how pretty they can be,” she said. “All the bustling around. Life, I mean, you can see it happening.” Her cigarette bounced with the motion of her lips. She tucked it between her fingers and blew out a long, lingering exhale as though she’d been born knowing how to do that.
“Have you been here before?” I asked.
“As a kid, we hit up the children’s museum.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, when my parents… We used to live right on the border of Illinois and Indiana.”
I still couldn’t believe it took her so long to tell me what she’d lived through. But knowing the ways people have been hurt changed relationships—sometimes for the better, sometimes not. So I got it; she didn’t want pity anywhere near us.
“You’re a regular child of the corn, then, huh?” And this seemed to be how we handled the big traumatic things, poking fun around what caused the most pain. Joking. Deflecting. Sidestepping anything that hurt.
“I told you my middle name, didn’t I? It’s Malachi.”
I laughed and pressed the cigarette lighter. Hazel instinctively reached for the pack in the cup holders and got one out for me. I rolled down my window just as the lighter popped back up, its coils burning orange and hot.
“Do you know where we’re headed?” she asked.
“Not really. I printed out a MapQuest for it though. It’s in the glovebox.”
She took out the directions and spread the folded papers over her lap. “What street are we on?”
“Ohio.”
“We’re close. If you can find a place to park, do it.”
Brake lights glowed red in front of us. I slowed down and watched the last of the sunset, streaking pink and purple behind the high-rise buildings of the Midwestern city. The air smelled of exhaust. I followed the inching traffic into a parking garage.
“You think all these people are going to the same place we are?” Hazel asked.
“Maybe? She has a following.”
By the time I parked, night had fallen. Streetlights clicked on and cast the sidewalks in a tangerine glow. Hazel folded the directions and tucked them in her hoodie pocket.
We ended up not needing the map. A decent-sized crowd of mostly women seemed to all be going in the same direction. We just fit in and followed. As we got closer, a line had already formed, and we waited, stuck behind a rowdy group of college-aged kids with dark lipstick and short flowery dresses. They were probably the same age as Hazel and me. They seemed so much younger, though, with all the laughing and the squealing.
Hazel surveyed them; her right eyebrow cocked the way it always did when she tried to puzzle out someone’s behavior. I handed her the silver flask I’d slipped in my jacket pocket. Elbowing her, I told her to relax.
“I’m relaxed,” she said and took a swig of the peppermint schnapps.
Spring flowers and just…joy scented the air. Yeah, that was it. Joy. After such a dark year, I barely recognized the feeling. The line shuffled forward. Ani DiFranco’s name, in black block lettering, stood against the marquee’s glow.
“I can’t believe you scored tickets,” Hazel said.
“I told you we should go.”
Hazel’s expression lightened whenever I pressed Play on Living in Clip, and in the middle of all the shit that had gone down at school last fall, there’d been a notice in the paper about this tour. I figured right then and there I’d pay whatever price to get Hazel to this show if we made it out of that mess.
“I didn’t really think it would happen. Especially, in the middle of…everything.”
“So, how’ve you been dealing with all of that?” Asking was a risk, but I wanted to take it. While I gave her a pass on talking about her family, I needed to know about this because the nightmares hadn’t stopped for me. I still woke up in a sweaty panic, Shirlee’s glowing glasses disappearing and reappearing like pieces of the Cheshire cat.
Hazel shoved her hands into the pockets of her hoodie and stared at her feet. “Honestly, I don’t know that I am.” Her eyes met mine. “I just ignore it mostly.”
“Me too.” Time heals all wounds. Unless it didn’t.
She fiddled with her hair, braiding the ends absentmindedly. We moved forward a few more steps. At the double doors, security guards shined flashlights in purses and patted down coat pockets.
Hazel pushed her hair back from her face. “I feel kinda frozen in place, ya know?”
“I do.”
“Aunt Liddy says not to rush anything. That everything will settle back to normal in time. But what if it doesn’t?”
“Maybe this is the new normal.”
“Exactly.”
“They haven’t filled your space in our dorm yet. You could always come back.”
“No. I withdrew.”
“You did?”
She laughed in that self-mocking way she had sometimes. “You know I’m not meant to be anybody’s teacher.”
The thought of her surrounded by little kids made me laugh too. “There are other programs.”
She shook her head. “I don’t belong there. I knew it on day one. The only good thing that happened was meeting you and Doug.”
Jessica Cranberry lives in the Sierra Nevada foothills and spends most days striking a balance between parenthood, teaching, and writing suspense novels or eclectic short stories. Learn more on Jessica’s website.
Academic Clare is in a rut. She is in her forties, her job is stressful, and she feels worn down by the personalities and politics in the university department where she works. She has also just broken up with her latest boyfriend.
During one of their regular get-togethers, Clare’s oldest friend shows Clare a newspaper article, pushing her into an exploration of what it means to be asexual.
As Clare figures things out, she meets homoromantic couple, Tristan and Matt, nonbinary Ollie, student Jack, aromantic Janice, and Matt’s cousin, Natalia.
Follow Clare and her new friends through a series of misadventures as they road trip, take part in Pride, suffer a series of misunderstandings, and forge new relationships.
Clare keyed a quick ok, pressed Send, and dropped her phone into her bag. No matter how much she liked Louisa and how much she usually enjoyed their Tuesday evening get-togethers, Clare wasn’t looking forward to tonight. Only three days before, Clare had broken up with her long-term, long-distance boyfriend, and Louisa was sure to want details.
Clare took a fortifying breath and jogged up the steps that led to the pub’s front door.
The Quill and Scholar, a favourite hangout of postgraduates and lecturers, buzzed with the after-work crowd. Although the pub appeared older than the university, it had opened less than thirty years before when it had capitalised on a fashion for bottled lagers. Since then, the Quill had moved with the times, catering for fashions for real ales and craft beers and, most recently, craft gins.
When she had been a student, Clare had eschewed the Quill’s designer labels in favour of happy hours, Boddington’s, and flavoured schnapps served in test tubes by the chain pubs a couple of hundred yards down the road. Although Clare had never developed a taste for bottled beer and she hated gin, she liked the Quill’s ambience and décor. Plus, nobody could go wrong with the house Chardonnay. Besides, these days, the kinds of places marketed to undergraduates made her feel old.
Clare loosened her scarf, shoved her hat and wrist warmers into her jacket’s pockets, and fought her way through the crowd towards the bar. The room was full of people, many of whom she knew by sight and some by name.
Mikey, an astrophysics postgraduate who moonlighted as a barman, greeted Clare, and said, “The usual?”
“Please.”
He sighed theatrically. “One of these days I’ll get you to branch out. Some of our botanicals are amazing.”
Clare nodded and, not meaning it, said, “One day. Not today.”
While she waited for her drinks, she waved at Sam, an occasional drinking buddy, who was in the throes of writing up her doctoral thesis.
Clare exchanged notes for drinks and change, and then, holding her glasses aloft, she set out to find Louisa.
Clare and Louisa had nothing in common beyond a host of shared memories from their undergraduate days and a friendship that had endured across the years. Clare’s dad had once described Louisa as having more neck than a giraffe. On another occasion, he’d said, “That lass has got more front than the esplanade at Blackpool!” Given that Louisa had, when eight and a half months pregnant, worn a white dress as she headed down the aisle for her second marriage, seeking a blessing in the church of a god she didn’t believe in, Clare supposed Dad might have had a point.
Clare had taken an excessively long time to realise that Dad had a crush on her best friend. Mum thought it was hilarious. She had tried to explain it more than once, but Clare still didn’t get it.
Even though he’d only met her a dozen times over the years, Dad often asked after Louisa. Clare would say that she was fine, and Mum would laugh, kiss the top of Dad’s balding head, and say, “You can dream so long as you don’t trade me in for a younger model or buy a motorcycle!” Then Dad would colour slightly and answer that he was only being polite and that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with the mother of his children.
Clare slalomed her way through the crowd and up the wide, wooden staircase that led to the first floor, where the rooms of the converted Victorian villa were smaller, quieter, and cosier. Her favourite, a former bedroom with a large bay window that offered good views along the busy street and thus afforded great opportunities for people watching, was at the front of the building.
Today, Louisa hadn’t been able to bag seats at the window and, instead, had parked herself at a table pressed against a wall, where she was now frantically working the screen of her smartphone.
In her business suit and heavy bling, her overcoat and accessories neatly arranged on a neighbouring chair, Louisa stuck out like a gemstone among pebbles. She had allowed her knee-length skirt to ride up slightly, thus emphasising her long, slender legs, and revealing kneecaps along with a hint of thigh. Thanks to genetics, a lot of self-discipline, soft lighting, and hair dye, Louisa passed for a good decade younger than her forty-and-a-few years. Louisa also dyed her eyebrows and eyelashes; Clare hadn’t known people did such things until they’d shared a flat in their second year at uni.
Even this late in the day, Louisa’s makeup appeared flawless. She wore matching vermillion lipstick and nail polish, the latter almost certainly the result of a mani-pedi, and her eye shadow and eyeliner looked as though they had been applied by a draughtsman.
Clare slid Louisa’s usual in front of her. Louisa glanced up and gave her the barest of acknowledgements as she continued working her phone.
The immaculate nail polish glittered with reflected light as she finished typing and sent a message. “There. Done. I’m all yours.”
“Everything okay?”
“Oh, yes.” Louisa brushed Clare’s concern away. “Just a teensy crisis at work. All sorted now.”
Knowing Louisa and the general nature of her job, Clare was certain that, whatever the crisis had been, there would have been nothing teensy about it. Only major crises got escalated as far as Louisa, who had always been able to make light of the most catastrophic emergencies. Clare envied her insouciant self-confidence.
There was a pattern to their evenings together. Glass one would carry them through an exchange of war stories and a sympathetic hearing of each other’s colleague-related character assassinations. Sometime during drink two, having got all their work angst out of their systems, they would move onto subjects of greater mutual interest. Glass three was when they got to the difficult topics, the ones that laid souls bare. Today was going to be at least a three-glass evening. They wouldn’t get to—let alone through—the interrogation otherwise.
Sure enough, when there was barely an eighth of an inch of liquid at the bottom of Clare’s second glass, and Clare’s perception was blurring around the edges, Louisa asked, “How were the in-laws?”
“The…what?”
“You know. Gavin’s parents. The people you went to visit at the weekend? The parents of your SO?”
SO. Significant other.
“My insignificant other, you mean,” said Clare, doing her best to copy Louisa’s style of banter. “We split up.”
“Oh.”
There was something in the way Louisa said, “Oh,” that made Clare bristle. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well. You and Gavin. You’ve always struck me as a couple more in word than deed.” Clare tried to hide her shock at Louisa’s astute observation by gulping the dregs of her drink. “Did you even do it with Gavin? Ever?”
Clare’s silence spoke volumes.
“What was wrong with him?”
“With…him?” Clare asked. “You tell me. You set us up.”
“I don’t know him that well. So, tell me. What’s wrong with him?”
“Nothing, as far as I know. We went out a few times. We didn’t click.” She stood up. “I’ll get the next round.” If they were going to have this conversation, she was going to need that third glass, and maybe another after that.
I lived in five different cities, spanning two continents, before leaving crowds and commuting behind and settling somewhere that official statistics describe as “Very Remote Rural”.
I have made up stories for as long as I can remember, and I have been writing them down for almost as long. I cut my creative writing teeth on fan fiction in the days of paper fanzines and, later, online. I had fun but eventually grew tired of playing in other people’s sandpits. Turns out, it’s more fun to create sandpits of my own.
I have worked in the public, private, and voluntary sectors, with roles ranging from number crunching and lecturing to mucking out cowsheds and toilet cleaning. I currently hold down a day job while daydreaming of writing full time. Find Evelyn on Twitter.
Giveaway
One lucky winner will receive a $50.00 NineStar Press Gift Code!
When all goes dark, they’re left alone. As starvation provokes chaos, can one man defend all he holds dear?
Sunspots, Al-Qaeda, North Korea—no one knows why the power goes out in sleepy little Harpursville, how much of the world is affected, or how long it will last. In one instant virtually every modern convenience stops working, leaving the townspeople scrambling.
For Kevin Barton, the problem is compounded by the presence of his sixteen-year-old daughter’s best friend, Dina, who’s been stranded at the house after yet another sleepover. When Kevin’s attempt to escort Dina home ends in robbery and humiliation, their “second daughter’s” overnight visit becomes a permanent stay. Kevin doesn’t really mind. Dina helps with everything from hauling water to digging a garden, and she does it with a smile. But with food scarce and hunger eating away at reason, her large appetite and constant presence sets the household on edge, causing a rift between Kevin and his wife, Monica.
Help is offered by the man who stops Harpursville from sliding into everyone-for-themselves chaos but then he gives Kevin an unthinkable ultimatum. With the peace of the town and Kevin’s own family hanging in the balance, he faces a two-front war. Can Kevin find the power in himself to protect everything he holds dear?
Buy Powerless to shine a light on darkness today!
“A poignant, elegantly written, gripping book that delves deep into an all-too-possible future. You won’t be able to put this down. O’Handley is brilliant and masterful. One of the best books I’ve ever read.” – Lisa Regan, USA Today & Wall Street Journal best-selling author
Jeff O’Handley has been a science and technical writer as part of his job since the late 1980’s, but fiction is his passion. This talented and insightful author provides depth to his characters and explores their stories in a way that can be related to on a very personal level. Jeff can often be found ‘butt-deep in a swamp’ removing invasive species, leading a nature walk in the woods, or promoting recycling as part of his work for a boots-on-the-ground conservation organization. Jeff is a die-hard Boston Bruins fan who loves the outdoors and has a resistance to tech, but grudgingly admits to the usefulness of smartphones and computers. Jeff grew up on Long Island, NY but has embraced the rural life of central New York, where he lives with his wife and two daughters.
In the Echo of this Ghost Town C.L. Walters
Publication date: October 12th 2021
Genres: Contemporary, Young Adult
When everything in your life unravels and the future you imagined disintegrates into dust—how do you decide which way is forward?
Griffin Nichols has lost everyone close to him. Unhealthy choices rooted in unmet expectations have him feeling like he’s failing at being a man. Everything he thought he knew about being a good son, brother, and friend has him feeling as substantive as an echo.
He’s lost.
Then Maxwell Wallace walks into his life and teaches him that sometimes in the weakness of the echo is where he can claim his strength.
I look up at the sound of a voice, grateful to be jerked from the train of my thoughts.
The girl. She’s standing on the other side of the table in her dark t-shirt and cutoff shorts, her back to the gas pumps and road. The light from the store illuminates her, and I think she’s cute, but obviously not all there if she’s talking to a stranger.
“Yeah?”
She sits down with a Slurpee, and I look at it longingly but also wish I had some vodka to spike it with. I conjure Danny’s words from the night before. I’d told him I’m always drunk. What had he said back? “Yeah. Maybe that’s the fucking problem. It’s time to grow up, Griff.” What if I do have a problem? Then I’m annoyed by the stupid thought—of course, I don’t. What the fuck? Can’t this weird girl tell I’m busy sulking?
My face must screw up because she says, “I’m not carrying any diseases.”
I take a sip of my water, not sure what to do about this stranger who’s sat with me at a table outside of Custer’s. I glance to check if someone is playing a joke on me, but all my friends have abandoned me. So yeah, there’s that. I look at her. She’s got a round face, but it’s smooth and pleasant looking. Brownish hair, I think, because it’s pulled back in a bun or something off her face. Black eyeliner. Black T-shirt with the words Def Leppard inside a Union Jack.
She pinches the straw and moves it around the slushy. It squeaks. “Decide I’m not a serial killer?” She smirks, and my eyes are drawn to her blunt black nails at the end of her long fingers holding the red straw.
“Jury’s out.” I look away and take a sip of my water, annoyed but kind of curious.
“Why’s that?”
I shrug. “What if I’m the serial killer?” I can’t look at her, though I’m not sure why. It isn’t like I’m nervous, even if she’s a little unnerving. Why have I said that? The idea of being compared to a killer takes me backward. Griff Nichols, son of a murderer, when I’d been alone, but I’d shed that persona with my crew. I shove the reminder aside.
“It’s a distinct possibility.”
My eyes connect with hers, the curiosity revving up a notch. “Why’s that?”
“Guy sitting outside of a convenience store on a Monday night looking all moody. Definitely sending shady vibes. You spike that unassuming water bottle? Use the innocence of water to lure in your victims but in reality, you’re just setting the trap?” She smiles, and I see that she’s joking around even though I don’t know her; it’s the squint of her eyes.
“You’re weird.”
“I get that a lot.” She pauses and leans forward to take a sip of her drink and looks over at me. Her eyes sparkle with mirth, but it’s hard to tell what color they are even in the light. Lightish. “So, what do you do in this town for fun?”
“Get drunk. You new?”
“Yes. Why aren’t you doing that?”
“It’s Monday.”
“So, a drunk six days a week? You have standards, I see. So that must be real water.” She pauses and raises a single eyebrow—which bugs me for some reason. “You don’t look much like the type with standards.”
I’m not, but I don’t say it. “Neither do you.”
“Touché, serial killer. So, you don’t drink on Monday for other reasons, then?”
“I didn’t say I don’t drink on Monday. I just said it was Monday. You made the assumption.”
She laughs, but it’s mostly air. “Fair enough.”
This conversation could die. I could stand and walk away. I don’t. I blame it on my lack of being alone, which I’m going to have to reestablish. “So, you’re new here?”
“Yep. Just moved. Only here for the summer.”
“Why’s that?”
“Why what?” She takes another sip of her slushy.
I watch her swallow it. Then I look back at my water bottle to resume plucking the plastic label. “Only for the summer?”
“The band I play with is going on tour.”
“Really?”
She laughs. “No.”
“You’re weird.”
“So you’ve said.” She stands. “Well. Thanks for sharing the table.”
“There were two other ones you could have chosen.”
She glances at the other two and then leans forward. “But then I wouldn’t have gotten to talk to a serial killer.” She smiles, offers me a nod, and with her hand wrapped around her cup, she walks away. She’s wearing jean cutoffs, tight, and the strings of the cut denim hang against her long and shapely legs.
I scoff, looking away because I don’t want to notice her. A serial killer. Stupid.
As I watch her—the nameless, weird girl—walk away, I realize I forgot what I was sulking about.
My Review – 4 1/2 stars
In the Echo of this Ghost Town is a hard, yet rewarding, read. It will make you angry, make you cry, and still give you hope for a better tomorrow.
The opening of the book was a bit of a struggle for me to read. I wasn’t invested in the characters and didn’t much care about the fight between the friends. But I kept reading, and I’m so glad I did.
Griffin is all kinds of messed up. He’s taken all of his pain and shoved it down deep, letting it fester so that he lashes out not only at those around him, but even attacks himself. Drowning his pain in alcohol and parties, he didn’t realize how far he’d fallen, until he had nowhere to go but up.
Enter “Weird Girl.”
The moment Griffin met Max, I knew something was about to happen. She sparked his interest, intrigued him unlike anyone ever had, and didn’t let him get away with being a complete jerk. With Max, Griffin realized he needed to become a better person. Not only to ever have a chance at a true friendship, but also for himself.
In the Echo of this Ghost Town isn’t about the end destination so much as the journey… Isn’t that what life really is? A journey? I enjoyed seeing Griffin grow as a person, loved how patient Max was with him while remaining tough and telling him what he needed to hear and not always what he wanted to hear. The dynamic between the two was amazing. The book touches on some hard topics, but life isn’t easy so why should a fictional character’s not be just as messy and screwed up?
Definitely worth the read!
*Disclaimer: I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review. The review above is only my opinion.
Author Bio:
As a kid, my world revolved around two things: stories and make believe. I have built a real life around those two things as well: I am a teacher of stories and a writer of make believe.
While I went to high school in a small town in Oregon and college in a smaller town in Oregon – both gifted me with treasures to fill my creative reservoir and most importantly, my husband. We got married, I followed him from Oregon to Hawaii (it was that or forgo the marriage).
When Sutherland Bio buys up the little bio research firm Human Resources specialist Angela McCormack works for, she tries to adapt. Even though her shady new boss’s smarminess and sexism makes her stomach turn. She sticks it out through the verbal abuse, and through the benefit cuts and layoffs.
But when her boss, George Sutherland Jr., tasks her to recruit replacements for the people he laid off—and lets it slip that the layoffs were just part of a regime change strategy—she’s ready to throw in the towel. As much as she hates the idea of shoveling manure again, she’d rather return to her family’s farm and petting zoo than stay with Sutherland Bio.
Then George Jr. takes a particularly bad day out on her. And Angela decides she’s tired of the humiliation. She’s going to fight fire with fire. She makes it her mission to fill George Jr.’s team with the worst possible candidates she can find.
But she didn’t take into account falling for one of the new hires. All of a sudden, she’s not sure she wants to leave. Not yet.
And that’s just the first chicken to come home to roost. Little does she know, George has plenty of secrets of his own. And when one of them turns deadly, Angela will have to rely on her handpicked sabotage crew for survival. She might just wish she was back home shoveling manure after all.
You don’t piss off the person making your food. You don’t piss off the woman who gave birth to you. And you don’t piss off the HR lady. Everyone knows that.
Everyone, it seemed, except George Maxwell Sutherland, Jr. As with most memos, George Maxwell Sutherland, Jr. had missed that one. Along with the one about manners. And treating employees with respect. And showering every day instead of wearing a bucket of cologne to work.
Angela McCormack wrinkled her nose and stared at her boss’s feet. They were at eye level since he had them propped up on his desk. The sight made her stomach turn a little. It wasn’t so much the untrimmed talons on the ends of his toes, or the hobbit-like growth of untamed hair. It was the fact that she could see them at all. And the no-feet-on-the-furniture and don’t wear flipflops into work when you’re the CEO memos.
Yes, there were quite a few memos George Maxwell Sutherland, Jr. had missed. But at the moment, it was the one about not downsizing people out of their jobs just to recreate the same position two months later that weighed the heaviest on her mind. Because, unless she’d misunderstood everything he had just said, that’s what he was doing here. And despite George’s propensity to torture a simple sentence into a longwinded monologue for the sole pleasure of hearing himself talk, she was pretty sure she hadn’t got it wrong.
“Excuse me, Mr. Sutherland,” she said, “just to clarify, we’re refilling the positions we just downsized?”
He cocked an eyebrow up at her. “No, not at all. These are different positions, Angie.”
God, she hated when he called her Angie. “Yes sir, I heard you say that. But if I’m understanding you, the titles will be different, but the positions will fill the same basic function as before. We’re looking for an IT team lead to replace Dawn. You need a Director of Business Services to pick up where Mark left off, and so on?”
He flashed her a toothy grin that, she supposed, he assumed was charming. It wasn’t. It was the kind of smile she’d expect from someone selling a car that probably wouldn’t make it out of the lot. “Now you’re getting it. You know how it goes. New era, new regime. If I’m going to do this right, well, I need people I can trust.”
He studied her for a long moment with keen blue eyes. “That’s why I kept you on. I had a good feeling about you. And you know what I say—I’m a man who goes with his gut.”
Angela McCormack forced a smile and lied through her teeth. “Of course, sir. You can always trust me.”
“Don’t call me sir. Call me George.” He smiled again. He smiled too much for her liking. Grinning CEO’s, smiling politicians, and gas station sushi: she reserved the same measure of trust for each of them. “Now, I’d like these listings up by Friday. Is that something we can do?”
We. As if he’d lift a finger to help.
“I’ll get the drafts to you by the end of the day tomorrow. If the revision process goes smoothly, I don’t see why not.”
He nodded. “Excellent. Excellent. Well, that was all I had, then. Oh, my dry cleaning’s not back yet, is it?”
“No sir. I mean, no, George.”
He winked and clicked his tongue as a kind of sound effect to match the finger guns he aimed her way. “That’s better. I don’t like a formal workplace. I’m all about casual. I think it builds better morale. Don’t you?”
Angela smiled and lied again. “Oh, absolutely.”
She had nothing against casual, as long as it wasn’t the kind of casual that involved dirty hobbit feet on the desk. But George had come into Fenwood Bio like a whirlwind, laying off staff, axing benefits, and implementing draconian cost reduction programs within his first two weeks. The turnover rate was already higher than the layoffs. Which was one of several reasons why she was currently filling the role of the entire HR department, as well as admin, IT department, and supply requisitions. All for the same salary as before, of course, but with a much slimmer retirement package, and no life insurance benefits.
No, Angela McCormack didn’t want to hear the word “morale” pass his lips. He’d personally shredded every last bit of it and flushed it down the toilet.
“Me too. You might say, it’s one of my core philosophies.” He nodded, to himself it seemed, then added, “Well, I’ll let you get to work, then.”
She didn’t mind the dismissal. Hell, it couldn’t come soon enough as far as she was concerned. “Right.”
Retreating to her office and closing the door after her, Angela breathed out a long sigh of relief. She hadn’t been afraid he’d called her in to lay her off. He’d gotten that out of his system within the first few weeks. Still, she’d seen so many come and go, she would have been lying if she said the thought hadn’t occurred to her.
Mostly, she detested him. And she had the kind of face that didn’t know how to use its inside voice. When someone tripped her BS trigger, well, her face broadcast it loud and clear before she even realized it.
George Maxwell Sutherland, Jr. lived in the BS zone. And Angela McCormack needed her job. She had a mortgage and a house she loved. Sure, she could have found a job elsewhere that would have paid as well, or maybe a little better. But she didn’t want to give up her house. Not after all the years she’d spent restoring it, a room at a time.
Nor did she want to leave Fenwood. She’d grown up here, and she planned to grow old here. Older, she thought with a sour glance at the calendar. She’d be thirty-five in two days. She didn’t want to have to start over at thirty-five.
And that’s exactly what finding a new job in human resources would be. Fenwood Bio—now Sutherland Bio Research—was the biggest employer in the area, and those companies that did have HR departments weren’t hiring.
She knew because she’d checked. So, if she was going to find another job, it would mean leaving the area. It would mean moving a hundred miles south, or seventy-five miles north, or even farther east and west.
Fenwood was one of those smack-in-the-middle-of-nowhere towns, with more cows and horses than people. You either loved it or hated it.
Angela loved it, and she didn’t want to leave.
So, she pulled open her archaic software suite and started filling in the job listings they’d talked about. Did it make her a modern-day Judas Iscariot, helping this son of a bitch after he’d fired so many of her friends on the pretense that their jobs were redundant, now that Sutherland Bio Research had acquired them?
Maybe. Then again, Judas didn’t have a mortgage. Angela stared at the screen, trying to focus on the work. But the work didn’t—couldn’t—make up for the feeling in the pit of her stomach. The feeling of betrayal that left her a little sick. God, I hate this job.
She started as her messenger application dinged. Glancing at the clock on her desktop, she frowned. Somehow, half an hour had already passed.
Angela brought up the messenger window and groaned. It was George, and he’d flagged the chat as a high priority.
Can you come to my office?
Grimacing, she typed, On my way.
Angela practiced her fake smile on the way. It probably wouldn’t have convinced anyone who wasn’t as obtuse as George, but at least it wouldn’t be scary. Or, so she hoped anyway.
She knocked on his closed door and immediately heard, “Come in.” She did, and Sutherland smiled at her. “Ah, Angie. Thank goodness. We’ve got a situation.”
Oh no. “Oh?”
“I forgot I had an appointment this morning.”
“Really? I didn’t see anything in your schedule.”
“Oh, I forgot to tell you about it. I would have had you add it to the calendar. But that’s not the issue. Point is, we don’t have anything for them to eat.”
Now, she did grimace. So far this month, he’d sent her on eighty-some dollars’ worth of coffee runs, lunch pickups, and pastry runs. For a millionaire, Mr. Sutherland was chronically short of cash. It had all gone on “the tab.”
The tab didn’t exist, except as a figment of his imagination. Angela had her doubts that it would ever be settled. He’d pay off ten or twenty bucks here and there. But it always seemed larger than whatever cash he happened to have on hand.
“What did you have in mind?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Whatever you can find.”
“When are they going to be here?”
“Nine-thirtyish. Maybe ten. I’m not really sure. They were going to be here when they could. They’re flying in from Philly. Shit.” He shook his head. “I need to have something here for them. They probably haven’t eaten yet.”
Despite herself, Angela felt his tension get to work on her mind. “Well, I can put a call into Tealeaves & Coffeecake. I’m sure we can get a breakfast tray.”
He nodded. “Good. Good, their stuff is good. For Fenwood food anyway. See if you can get one of those breakfast quiches, and pastries.”
“Will do.”
“Nothing with mushrooms though. I can’t stand them.”
“Got it.”
“Oh, and what are we going to do about coffee?”
“I’ll make sure we have a pot freshly brewed by nine-thirty.” It wasn’t her job, but if it quelled a panic? Well, Angela would do it.
But George wrinkled his nose. “I’m not going to force them to drink that crap.”
She blinked. “You mean, the office coffee?”
He nodded as if she was agreeing with him somehow. “You’ll have to get one of those jugs of coffee. French roast. You know how I like it.”
“All right,” she said, then added, “I’ll let you know how much it costs.”
He nodded absently. “Sounds good. Thanks, Angie, you’re a lifesaver.”
“Anytime,” she said, leaving his office before the scowl set in.
Award-winning author Rachel Ford is a software engineer by day, and a writer most of the rest of the time. She is a Trekkie, a video gamer, and a dog parent, owned by a Great Pyrenees named Elim Garak and a mutt of many kinds named Fox (for the inspired reason that he looks like a fox).
Worn Out Places R.H. McMahan
Publication date: September 1st 2021
Genres: Contemporary, Young Adult
I can’t answer that question. I can’t tell him I’ve spent my whole life trying to disappear. I can’t tell him that I was born a drug addict. Or that I’ve been in foster homes so terrible I wished I didn’t exist. And I can’t tell him that last year ended any ambition I had to make it somewhere better in this world.
Drug addict parents. The foster care system. Living on the streets of New York City.
Zoie Cruz is used to an unflinching world that takes without giving back. But at seventeen she isn’t used to Northern Michigan, a family that wants her to succeed, and sobriety.
Everything changed on Christmas morning last year. Her social worker calls it a tragedy and her weekly Narcotics Anonymous meeting wants her to open up. All Zoie wants is to be left alone to get high.
When she meets local golden boy Dean, he’s determined to pull Zoie out of her darkness. And she’s determined to keep her walls sealed shut.
In a whirlwind struggle to stay clean, Zoie’s secrets can only stay hidden for so long.
R.H. McMahan a.k.a. Mickie is a Puerto Rican and Irish YA/NA author. She was born and raised in Chicago – and yes she thinks it’s important that you know that. In June of 2020, she graduated with a BA in English Lit and Creative Writing and is currently pursuing her MFA in Creative Writing.
Mickie dreamt of becoming an author since she started telling stories on the playground in first grade. Ever since then it is rare to find her without a notebook and a pen. Her book baby, Worn Out Places, debuts on September 1st and she cannot wait to share it with the world.
If she’s not writing she’s doing other creative things like singing, dancing, and drawing.
A Shot at Normal Marisa Reichardt
Published by: Farrar Straus and Giroux (BYR)
Publication date: February 16th 2021
Genres: Contemporary, Young Adult
Marisa Reichardt’s A Shot at Normal is a powerful and timely novel about justice, agency, family, and taking your shot, even when it seems impossible.
Dr. Villapando told me to get a good attorney. He wasn’t serious. But I am. I’m going to sue my parents.
Juniper Jade’s parents are hippies. They didn’t attend the first Woodstock, but they were there for the second one. The Jade family lives an all-organic homeschool lifestyle that means no plastics, no cell phones, and no vaccines. It isn’t exactly normal, but it’s the only thing Juniper has ever known. She doesn’t agree with her parents on everything, but she knows that to be in this family, you’ve got to stick to the rules. That is, until the unthinkable happens.
Juniper contracts the measles and unknowingly passes the disease along, with tragic consequences. She is shell-shocked. Juniper knows she is responsible and feels simultaneously helpless and furious at her parents, and herself.
Now, with the help of Nico, the boy who works at the library and loves movies and may just be more than a friend, Juniper comes to a decision: she is going to get vaccinated. Her parents refuse so Juniper arms herself with a lawyer and prepares for battle. But is waging war for her autonomy worth losing her family? How much is Juniper willing to risk for a shot at normal?
Now that the new school year has started and my parents have reached out to other local homeschoolers to plan field trips, I’m hoping I’ll make some new friends.
Until then, I’ll remain on the outside looking in.
Like this morning, in my room, where I spent from seven forty-fi ve to eight a.m. watching through the window as bright yellow buses pulled up to the curb in front of Playa Bonita High School. The bus doors opened and students spilled onto the sidewalk. Others rode up on bikes and skateboards. The older ones, the juniors and seniors, arrived in cars crammed with passengers, two in the front seat and three in the back. Everyone wore shorts or sundresses, because it’s still the last week of August and the heat of summer hasn’t let go of this town yet.
I could feel that heat in my armpits and the sweat marks collecting along the edges of my tank top when I woke up. I slathered on deodorant from the half- empty mason jar on my dresser like I do every morning. It’s sticky and lumpy and leaves behind a white, oily residue that stains my shirts. I’ve asked my mom for real deodorant. Or at least something from the natural health section at Whole Foods.
“Tapioca starch and coconut oil take care of things fine,” she says. I’m sure that’s not true, because if I notice the stink of my mom’s BO, then surely I have it, too.
The girls at PBHS probably smell like strawberries and freedom. I bet they spent all morning soaking themselves in those scented body washes from that store at the mall that always smells like a fruit stand. I also bet my mom can recite the exact paraben levels in each bottle. Because that store, like the mall itself, is not a place my parents would ever let me spend money.
That’s why those girls across the street are there and I’m here. The chemicals and the toxins and the mercury levels and the melting ozone layer made my parents take a big step back from the real world. Everything from our deodorant to our food to our cleaning products to our furniture is organic. Important things, I know. But there’s such a thing as too much. My parents are rabid in their beliefs.
She operates in a rose- colored version of history, which is also why my sister, my brother, and I don’t get vaccinated. This makes us ineligible to enroll in schools in California. Not that I haven’t tried. When we moved, I thought maybe this was finally it. The public high school was right across the street. I’d practically still be at home. I begged to go. But couple the strict California vaccination requirements with the fact that my parents think homeschooling creates lifelong learners as opposed to kids who simply regurgitate multiple- choice information for state tests, and it was easy for them to say no. “We decide what goes into our children’s bodies and minds,” they said. So here I sit at the kitchen table, digging into my putrid pancakes, trying to figure out if selling baled herbs and essential oils this summer made me a better person.
My guess is no.
Author Bio:
Marisa Reichardt is the critically acclaimed author of the YA novels UNDERWATER, AFTERSHOCKS (2020), and A SHOT AT NORMAL (2021). She has a Master of Professional Writing degree from the University of Southern California and dual degrees in English & American Literature and Creative Writing from UC San Diego. Before becoming a published author, Marisa worked in academic publications, tutored high school students in writing, and shucked oysters. These days, you can probably find her huddled over her laptop in a coffeehouse or swimming in the ocean.
