Showing results by narrator "Erin Spencer" in All Categories

"But Sol, it ain't haunted like you thought," Marty argued cautiously. It wasn't a good idea to get Sol too angry. "We've tried everything, séances, Ouija boards, mediums - everything. This place is just an old, empty house. A creepy, old house." Sol shook his head, disregarding Marty's words, and started up the tall staircase to the second floor. "It just has to seem like a haunted house," he said.

He continued singing it, "Who will wipe away my tears? Who will chase away my fears? Who will sing me to sleep at night? Who will tuck me in real tight? Now that Momma's dead and gone, now that Momma's dead and gone."

Monica can't stand his crisp white shirts or his staunch views on women. But she can't help counting every freckle on his face and wondering what it would feel like to have him stop talking politics and kiss her. A class debate project forces the unlikely pair to work together, and the political lines are blurred in late-night make-out sessions. But despite their fiery chemistry, Trey's politics threatens to smother their relationship for good.

Eighteen months after Sara's terrifying encounter with a demented kidnapper, life has finally returned to normal. Almost. Her memories of the game still haunt her dreams, and every day, society appears to go a little bit crazier. Around the world, from London to Rio to Moscow, a small terrorist group known as The Clan eliminates targets one by one. Are they really connected in some way, as the media claims, or is it simply coincidence?

A traumatic experience in the line of duty forces thirty-year-old Avery Rogers to abandon both her relationship and her position as a Kentucky State Police officer. She retreats to a college town where she works an unfulfilling job as a security guard, breaking up fights between drunken frat boys. But a frantic phone call turns Avery’s life upside down.

In the fall of 1942, the United States is still reeling from the attack on Pearl Harbor. While the US starts sending troops to the front, the March family of Concord, Massachusetts grieves their own enormous loss: the death of their daughter, Beth.

In Girl at the Grave, debut author Teri Bailey Black unearths the long-buried secrets of a small New England town. This is a richly atmospheric Gothic audiobook about murder, guilt, redemption, and finding love where least expected. A mother hanged for murder. A daughter left to pick up the pieces of their crumbling estate. Can she clear her family’s name if it means facing her own dark past?

She survived Earth's worst global pandemic. In the city she learned how to cope with the roaming dead. Tucked away in the mountains she struck down the living who tried to kill her. Now Riley fights a new battle - the one within herself. Wracked with survivor's guilt and an almost crazed sense of duty that takes her out of the solitude of the Southern California mountains and into the heart of Orange County, she makes a series of choices that can lead to the destruction of everything she's managed to save.

In 1965, 17-year-old Victoria, having just escaped an unstable home, flees to the ultimate place for dreamers and runaways - the circus. Specifically, the VanDrexel Family Circus where, among the lion tamers, roustabouts, and trapeze artists, Victoria hopes to start a better life. Fifty years later, Victoria's 16-year-old granddaughter Callie is thriving. A gifted and focused tightrope walker with dreams of being a VanDrexel high wire legend just like her grandmother. Callie can't imagine herself anywhere but the circus. But...Callie is forced to leave her lifelong home behind.

When N. West Moss finds herself bleeding uncontrollably in the middle of a writing class, she manages to drive herself to the nearest hospital. Doctors are baffled, but eventually a diagnosis—uterine hemangioma—is rendered and a hysterectomy is scheduled. In prose both lyrical and unsparing, Moss takes us along through illness, relapse, and recovery. And as her thoughts turn to her previous struggles with infertility, she reflects on kin and kinship and on what it means to leave a legacy.

When tragedy strikes, Cassidy, a cam girl living in Southern California, must return to the small West Virginia town she left behind. Cassidy likes her job getting naked for men on camera, though she prefers sex with women. She never came out to her family or friends back in her home state - not about her sexuality and certainly not about her sex work. Now, she must figure out how to hold on to the life she’s built for herself while picking up the pieces of her fractured family.

A short-story magazine that assembles a thrilling new mix of stories from genres including horror, science fiction, comedy, and suspense. Buried at the heart of every story in the magazine is a unique artifact, an object that has inspired our storytellers to create a big idea, an irresistible question, a new immersive world, or a sense of wonder. Unearth your next great story with Assemble Artifacts.

On November 27, 2013, Kat Savage’s life forever changed. Her little sister, Angela, was brutally murdered, and Savage has been searching for the strength to write her grief down ever since. Finally, just shy of six years later, and one year after justice finally rained down upon the man to blame, Savage found the courage to try.

When Wulfric needs the season's hottest toy, he turns to the only person who can help: Tammy's new boyfriend, who might not be human. Between pizza dinners, helpful Fae, and stacks of waffles, join the crew of Halfway as they solve a Christmas mystery and find out that sometimes, what you can't see can really hurt you. This humorous paranormal short is for fans of witches, waffles, and Christmas. Listen with a cup of tea, and beware - there are spoilers ahead if you've not visited Halfway before.

"Chase your dreams and follow your heart, no matter the cost" is the call of the world today. The opposite extreme, often advised by well-meaning Christians, is to lay down all of our dreams and passions, avoiding all self-interest. One narrative says to follow a passion, and the other says to lay it down. Both claim to offer happiness and purpose on the other side. But what does the Bible say about dreams, goals, and passions?

The notion that some might have it better than others, for no good reason, offends our sensibilities. Yet, until we talk about privilege, we’ll never fully understand it or find our way forward. Amy Julia Becker welcomes us into her life, from the charm of her privileged southern childhood to her adult experience in the Northeast, and the denials she has faced as the mother of a child with special needs. She tells us how a life behind a white picket fence can restrict even as it protects and how it can prevent us from loving our neighbors well.

After her grampa dies, the last place Libby expects to see him is sitting on the edge of her bed. But that's what happens the night after the funeral. Even more surprising is that Grampa has three important things to tell her: first, that she isn't alone or forgotten - "The dead ain't never that far from the living", he says; second, that she has "the Sight" - the ability to see family members who have died; and third, that there is something special just for her in the lake. Something that could help her and her father - if she can find it.

For as long as Alice can remember, she has dreamed of Max. Together they have traveled the world and fallen deliriously, hopelessly in love. Max is the boy of her dreams - and only her dreams. Because he doesn't exist.

The Sisters of the Crescent Empress is the second book in Leena Likitalo's Waning Moon Duology, a fabulous historical fantasy based on the lives of the Romanov sisters. We all think we know how the story ends...with the Crescent Empress dead, a civil war has torn the empire asunder. No one seems able to stop the ruthless Gagargi Prataslav. The five Daughters of the Moon are where he wants them to be, held captive in an isolated house in the far north.

It's time to stop trying to be the perfect mom. You long to be the mom your kids need, but often you're convinced you come up short. The label "not enough" seems to be stamped across everything you do - and yet parenting is the one thing you want most to get right. What if the solution is simply to embrace the truth that you are not enough - but God is?