The rain hammered against the corrugated iron roof of the decommissioned train shed, each drop a staccato note in a symphony of urban decay. Inside, nestled amidst the shadows cast by skeletal cranes and rusted tracks, sat Alex Pierce, hunched over a flickering laptop screen. The worn leather jacket did little to shield him from the biting Sydney winter, but the chill that truly consumed him emanated from the digital abyss before him.
When Tatyana meets Nick, he is polite, charming, and handsome. There are only two problems. First, Nick is a ghost. Second, the spirit of his wife, Kathleen, is consumed by jealousy and a dark, demented soul fuels her powers. Tatyana will have to face Kathleen in a struggle between good and evil. Does the young, inexperienced ghost hunter stand a chance against a malevolent spirit?Grab your salt, your sage, and your candles because this book is going to make you question every creak and groan you hear at night.
Once upon a time, there lived a girl named Fallon, who was taken far away from home shortly after she was born. A home that held more than strange traditions and bizarre superstitions.Twenty-four years later, she returned to Weeping Hollow, a haunting town she'd only heard about in stories during restless nights under a marble moon, to meet her last living relative.They called her a freakshow--a ghost. They said I couldn't go near her. Still, there was this aching pull to Fallon Grimaldi that I couldn't escape. A nostalgic pull as if we'd been here before. Once upon a time, there lived a mysterious man named Julian with a curse as old as centuries wrapped around his soul. He was one of the four Hollow Heathens, the very dark creatures who caused the town's people to live in fear. And the Blackwell name was stained with darkness and death. They called him a monster. Cold and hollow. They said I shouldn't go near him. Still, there was this aching pull to Julian Blackwell that I couldn't escape. A nostalgic pull as if we'd been here before.
We walk on fire or air, so Daddy liked to say. Basement floors too hot to touch. Steaming green lawns in the dead of winter. Sinkholes, quick and sudden, plunging open at your feet. The underground mine fires ravaging Pennsylvania coal country have forced eleven-year-old Brigid Howley and her family to seek refuge with her estranged grandparents, the formidable Gram and the black lung stricken Gramp. Tragedy is no stranger to the Howleys, a proud Irish-American clan who takes strange pleasure in the "curse" laid upon them generations earlier by a priest who ran afoul of the Molly Maguires. The weight of this legacy rests heavily on a new generation, when Brigid, already struggling to keep her family together, makes a grisly discovery in a long-abandoned bootleg mine shaft. In the aftermath, decades-old secrets threaten to prove just as dangerous to the Howleys as the burning, hollow ground beneath their feet. Inspired by real-life events in Centralia and Carbondale, where devastating coal mine fires irrevocably changed the lives of residents, The Hollow Ground is an extraordinary debut with an atmospheric, voice-driven narrative and an indelible sense of place. Lovers of literary fiction will find in Harnett's young, determined protagonist a character as heartbreakingly captivating as any in contemporary literature.
“A poignant, necessary entry into the children’s literary canon, Root Magic brings to life the history and culture of Gullah people while highlighting the timeless plight of Black Americans. Add in a fun, magical adventure and you get everything I want in a book!”—Justina Ireland, New York Times bestselling author of Dread Nation Debut author Eden Royce arrives with a wondrous story of love, bravery, friendship, and family, filled to the brim with magic great and small. It’s 1963, and things are changing for Jezebel Turner. Her beloved grandmother has just passed away. The local police deputy won’t stop harassing her family. With school integration arriving in South Carolina, Jez and her twin brother, Jay, are about to begin the school year with a bunch of new kids. But the biggest change comes when Jez and Jay turn eleven— and their uncle, Doc, tells them he’s going to train them in rootwork. Jez and Jay have always been fascinated by the African American folk magic that has been the legacy of their family for generations—especially the curious potions and powders Doc and Gran would make for the people on their island. But Jez soon finds out that her family’s true power goes far beyond small charms and elixirs…and not a moment too soon. Because when evil both natural and supernatural comes to show itself in town, it’s going to take every bit of the magic she has inside her to see her through. Walter Dean Myers Honor Award for Outstanding Children's Literature!
Twelve-year-old Eden, on a visit to her late mother's birthplace of Safina Island, Georgia, discovers a creepy sketchbook that leads her to Everdark--a spirit world ruled by an evil witch who Eden must defeat in order to make it back home.
It is the hot prairie summer of her twelfth year and Elsie is at a crossroads. Her beloved mother who is mentally ill has been hospitalized, and Elsie thinks that the breakdown is all her fault. Mental illness is simply not discussed in Elsie’s close-knit Mennonite community and she is rudderless. Nothing Elsie does seems to go right: there’s no pleasing her bossy older sister; she forgets to feed the cat, so her father gives it away; she’s supposed to watch out for her younger sister, but she lets her come home alone from the swimming pool (despite the lurking menace of a weird stranger around town); and she bargains with God to make her mother well again — to no evident avail. Elsie’s conversations with God, her struggle to overcome guilt, and her honest desire to prove herself are laced with a wicked wit and clarity of vision. Almost Eden is a beautiful portrait of a town, a family, and a young woman willing to challenge the things that don’t make sense to her, and to fix the things that don’t seem right.
Recluse Braeden Van Brunt is not happy to be the Headless Horseman...until he meets Katrina Van Tassel, owner of the Sleepy Hollow Inn, whose allure bewitches him from the front desk into the bedroom. When he discovers Kat and the village of Sleepy Hollow are cursed to exist only in the present day for one weekend a year, he realizes the sacrifice he must make if he wants to keep her. Katrina Van Tassel lives between slivers of time. She thought she was through grieving her betrothed's death, but her dreams flare to life when his mirror-image arrives requesting a room. Drawn to Braeden, she is taken to more erotic heights of intimacy than she ever imagined, but she can't be sure if her heart is with him or with the love from her past. Knowing he must conquer both time and ghosts to keep the only woman he's ever loved, Braeden must put the past to rest. But the dead won't rest in Sleepy Hollow. Author Note: Passion of Sleepy Hollow was previously published by Ellora's Cave in 2014.
New York Times bestselling author Margaret Coel explores the nature of evil in this “outstanding entry” (Booklist) in the Wind River Reservation Mystery series. Father John O'Malley comes across the corpse lying in a ditch beside the highway. When he returns with the police, it is gone. The Arapahos of the Wind River Reservation speak of Ghost Walkers—tormented souls caught between the earth and the spirit world, who are capable of anything. Then, within days, a young man disappears from the Reservation without a trace. A young woman is found brutally murdered. And as Father John and Arapaho lawyer Vicky Holden investigate these crimes, someone—or something—begins following them. Together, Vicky and Father John must draw upon ancient Arapaho traditions to stop a killer, explain the inexplicable, and put a ghost to rest...