After two years of marriage, Sharon and Max are contemplating divorce. She's a perfectionist. He's not. She's mature and responsible. He's childish and carefree. A little vacation to Sharon's home country and an intervention from a jovial uncle help reignite their spark, until Sharon's little accident causes her to develop amnesia and Max is forced to grow up and be the adult in the relationship. When Max's doubts resurface and Sharon's absentee mother comes into the picture, things are about to get a whole lot worse-or just maybe, a whole lot better. *** 🏆Ambys 2024 favourite: Contemporary Lit category

Li Xiang is the Priestess of the Moon, she can see read the stars and fortune as well as misfortune to her people. However, the life of a Priestess consists of nothing but loneliness: she can neither leave the palace nor meet with anyone but the Emperor and his advisors. One day a mysterious servant boy named Rui sneaks into her room, daring her to go outside if he wins against her in a game. Upon meeting him, she also befriends a female warrior and a scholar, and realizes life is much more than the palace. When the day comes she can either choose to go down the road her heart truly desires but bring ruin to the kingdom, or ignore the one chance she will ever have to leave this life? *** "My fate has been decided for me." "There's no such thing as that," he said. "We all make our own fate." "But the stars tell me--" I stopped talking when he holds my face in his hands, warm hands cupping my cheeks, brown eyes looking into my eyes. "Then stop looking at the stars. Look at me." A love story about fate, finding one's identity, stepping out of your comfort zone, and, most of all, choosing between your happiness or the happiness of others... [[Word Count: 80,000-90,000]] Wattys Fantasy Winner 2021

**Sequel to THE BRIGHT AND THE LOST** A YA Historical Fantasy set in 1922 that mixes romance, magic and mystery! Following the upsetting events that disrupted her London Season and changed her life forever, eighteen-year-old Vita is ready to spend a quiet winter at her country estate with her fiancé. Newly wed to the handsome son of a Hong-Kong businessman, Vita's best friend Izzy can't quite believe all her dreams are finally coming true: she's escaped her ruined family and she's traded the horrid English weather for the Californian sunshine. However, when an unexpected event disrupts Vita's routine at Weatherly, she has no choice but to leave behind her home and go in search of Holden - the stranger who turned her life upside down during the summer and knows the answers to all of her questions. Her quest leads her to New York, where new dangers lurk in the shadows of the city's skyscrapers and speakeasies. From Hollywood to Manhattan, darkness soon engulfs the lives of both girls, who find themselves in a race against time to locate Holden, unravel the mysteries surrounding Vita - and avoid getting caught in a thousand-year-old secret war that threatens to destroy them all. Copyright © 2017. All works posted here are the property of EM Castellan. Please do not use without permission. Any duplication or reproduction of all or part of the work without explicit permission by the author is illegal. Cover artist: Amalia Chitulescu

"It is your choice," he said, stepping so close to me that our lips were almost touching. "Either do what I say - or get another job." My heart stood still as I gazed up into his deep, dark, dangerous eyes... In a world where women's only role in life is to sit at home and look pretty, Lilly is determined to fight for her freedom. There's only one problem: a powerful man blocking her way.

Seven brothers trained in the art of exorcism face a demon determined to cling to its host. ............................. Historical-Thriller *Four-page short story*

A pack of thieves ransack a witch's home, stealing her deck of tarot cards. Unbeknownst to them, these tarot cards hold the most infamous criminals ever known. And little do they know what they've unleashed onto the world when these prisoners escape their binds to the cards and scatter across the stars. It'll take a powerful kind of magic and a special kind of witch to find them. Cage is NOT that witch. In fact, she's not exactly a witch at all. She's a Lavender and lives in a world where women are the only ones with magic. With flowers that grow in amongst her curly hair, Cage is dragged into the hunt for the prisoners and must travel across the cosmos with a band of unlikely heroes. A witch of the winds and another of the stars. A boy who has magic when he shouldn't and another with the sun in his blood. Cage learns that the lines between heroes and villains can blur on their journey to stopping something far more evil than any of them could have ever imagined.

Shah Jamshid al-Hassan, king of the Sazian Empire, is dead. He is succeeded by three heirs: Esfandar, the crown prince; Soraya, the forgotten daughter; and Roshani- the one who killed him. Roshani felt no remorse shoving her sword through her father's heart. Nor does she have any doubts about imprisoning her cunning grandmother in the depths of the royal prison, where she can't cause any more trouble. The tyrannical tendencies in the young empress only seem to be tempered by Kasra, her infant half-brother born shortly before the coup. To protect Kasra, Roshani is determined to kill her other siblings and end this conflict once and for all. But spies and betrayers abound in the palace, and Roshani may have more enemies within than without. Esfandar's mind has always been more attuned to war than to the politics behind it. Shocked and outraged by his sisters' betrayals, he seeks to reclaim the throne that is rightfully his. His troops rally in support of their emperor, retaking the north from Roshani's forces. Yet doubt soon creeps into the young prince's mind. As his armies forge ahead, Esfandar will discover that governing and conquering are not one and the same. The large personalities of Esfandar and Roshani have always outshone Soraya in the palace. Neither the shah nor the other palace lords ever concerned themselves with the quiet girl hiding behind her mother's skirts. But now, having escaped Roshani's coup, the empire has been forced to consider Soraya a threat. Protected by the priests and magis of the fire temple, Soraya's claim to the throne is the weakest. Her only hope is a strange power from the gods, one she's not even sure she can control. Three siblings. Three armies. One crown.

Here you will find a vast collection of story type riddles. These stories are "scary when you know the meaning". Can you find the creepy hidden meaning in each one? welcome to the unknown...Detective. May the odds be ever in your favor. HAHAHAHAHA

Being stuck in the past takes on a whole new meaning... What if your worst enemy sent you on a one-way ticket to the past? Worse, later he shows up and tries to play match-maker with a dominant historical figure while all of history and the future are on the line? Survival is just one problem, but then add your friends into the mix... Following an intense battle between the Indians and the Crackedskulls, Neiko and her comrades enjoy victory while her enemies suffer a crushing defeat. Victory is short lived for Neiko when Francesco pays her a visit at her home and sends her away in order to collect on his threat of revenge. She is banished into the ancient world of ancient Egypt during the reign of Ramesses II the Great on a one way ticket. Lost and trapped in this ancient world, it doesn't take very long for trouble to find her. Taken by a rich man, she is reunited with three her friends that had been missing, and an eleven-year-old mystery is finally solved, but one of Neiko's friends is still unaccounted for. After escaping from the rich man and journeying to Thebes, Neiko and her comrades have actually jumped from the pan and into the fire. Things go horribly awry when Pharaoh finds out about Neiko and becomes infatuated with her. Francesco comes to Egypt on orders to bring her back, but he has other plans. Can Neiko and her friends thwart Francesco, return to the 21st century, and escape from the past and one of the greatest kings that ever lived?

Jezebel, a Sidonian princess, is feared and worshipped for her ruthless ways. When she marries King Ahab, she sees an opportunity to control him and his kingdom. But as war breaks out between Sidonian gods and angels, Jezebel's true intentions are revealed. She will stop at nothing to gain power, even if it means sacrificing those she claims to love. *Based on biblical records of Queen Jezebel and King Ahab. *Supernatural aspects are purely fictional.