Antique store owner Liz brings home a Victorian taxidermy hound from auction, unwittingly unleashing dark forces on her wife and son. ***** Nat Loman has finally married the love of her life, Liz, and is getting used to her role as stepmother to Liz's 5-year-old son, Liam. The Loman family runs a bustling antique business so they attend a sale where a striking, black taxidermied hound is up for auction. Liz picks it up for the business, but it ends up being stored in their home, where Nat notices strange things occurring. She quickly discovers the past residents had died violently. Then she hears from a friend about the myth of "the devil's dog", a hound that perches in the shadows, tearing families apart from the inside. Soon, people around the Lomans are dying, and Liz is changing, darkening. It's up to Nat to save the woman she loves from the darkness closing in, and to save Liam from danger no matter what she has to sacrifice. [[Winner of the 2018 Wattys "Hidden Gems" category]] [[word count: 60,000-70,000 words]]

After Li Meixing is executed by her lover alongside her family, she wakes up four years earlier and searches for a way to survive the coming conflict. ***** Li Meixing is living the perfect life. Her father is a powerful politician in the Qi Kingdom, and she is engaged to the charismatic new Emperor, Huang Siming. But at the Emperor's coronation, Li and her family are framed as traitors by and ruthlessly executed. When Meixing wakes up, she finds that she has returned to the day when she first met Huang Siming. Now no longer naive and knowing what is to come, Meixing must dive into the world of politics that she has always avoided in order to save her family from their terrible fate. If she fails, she won't have a third chance.