2022 Watty Winner || At the age of ten, Sanford Crow discovers the worst secret of all--his father is a serial killer. It was the year 1969. Sanford's dream was to grow up to be a detective. Putting his intuitions to the test, he conducts an investigation into his father. The discovery he makes brings his whole world crashing down, and to the culmination of one terrible Christmas morning. Twenty five years later, it's 1994. Sanford is a divorced and a recovering alcoholic, with an eight-year-old daughter named Sadie. His dreams of becoming a detective never came to fruition. Instead, he lives vicariously through his job of being a crime scene cleaner. As therapy begins to open up doors to his past that he'd rather keep shut, the same string of murders that his father committed when he was a child are happening again all around him. Sanford starts questioning his grip on reality. The answers he finds brings his past rushing back, and has him doubting everything he thought he knew about himself, his past, and his own sanity.

Penn Romero is a smart girl. Smart girls don't get involved with their professors. ***** It begins with a casual meeting at a speakeasy. It begins with a drink. It begins with a stolen stare. It begins with the not-knowing, the secrecy, the sneaking around. Penn Romero hardly knew what she was getting into when she was drawn in by Chase Steele's magnetism, and she hardly knew he'd be her new Film Theory professor. Against everything she's ever known, against everything she should do, she stills falls into a dark spiral of manipulation that keeps her trapped in a spider web, losing sight of who the real Penn is--all that's left is what he has made of her and all he's taken. It ends with him taking and taking. It ends with the should've-knowns. It ends in ruin. ***** THIS IS NOT A ROMANCE. DON'T ADD THIS TO ROMANCE READING LISTS, PLEASE. [[THE AMBYS 2024 TOP PICK IN CONTEMPORARY]] © 2021 caterina george // all rights reserved

☆☆ Watty Award Winner 2020 ☆☆ Cooper Daniels lives next door to a psychopath. He just can't prove it...yet. When the most popular girl in high school is murdered at a Halloween party, Cooper's suspicions become a reality. He knows exactly who did it. But how is he supposed to prove his charming neighbor is a killer? Meanwhile, Calla Parker is waking up with blood under her nails, and she has no idea why. Unable to remember the night before, Calla begins to suspect herself of murder. She's relieved to find out the police have zero evidence to go on. Yet she can't help but shake the feeling she's being watched - very closely. And she knows why. Cooper Daniels knows her secret. ☆ Cover by @CarKann ☆

#1 ADDICTIVE ❤️ #1 SEXUAL ASSAULT ❤️ #1 RECOVERY ❤️ #1 DEPRESSION ❤️ #1 MUSIC ❤️ #3 TRAUMA ❤️ #2 ADDICTION ❤️ #9 MENTAL HEALTH ❤️ If you were to ask Ivy what she thought of her neighbour, her response would be simple. Isaac West is a reckless, dangerous, criminal. And if you were to ask him the same thing, his response would be the exact opposite. Ivory Ferrari is a spoilt, boring, prude. On the surface, you wouldn't believe these two have anything in common. They've lived completely different lives on opposite sides of the social spectrum, with Ivy in a secluded private estate, and Isaac drifting between drug-filled homes and the empty walls of a jail cell. But not everything is at it seems. Through a series of class debates, anxiety attacks, and bar fights, the two realise that there's more to the other than meets the eye, and they may just be more alike than either of them expected. They've both been through hell and back. They've both suffered at the hands of another, they both struggle to get through a single day, and most importantly, they both share the same wish-to avoid their darkness and live in the light.

★ NOW PUBLISHED! ★ Hookup Culture Noun The idea that casual sexual encounters are the best or only way to engage sexually in college, a set of practices that facilitate casual sexual encounters, and an organizational structure that supports them (Lisa Wade, American Hookup 2017). As a sociology major researching nightclubs, Laney Emerson finds hookup culture to be just another socially constructed phenomenon that is worth questioning, analyzing, and concluding about. As a twenty-something college student, Laney also finds herself immersed in the culture of hooking up, in which physically getting naked is often easier than admitting how you feel. © 2020 ℓαℓαℓαℓαwriting |ORIGINALLY A Short Story One-Shot (Walk of Shame) that received an HONORABLE MENTION in Romance Contest #12: Songspiration| *This story contains explicit language and implied sexual content*

Three Men in a Boat, published in 1889, is a humorous account by English writer- Jerome K. Jerome of a two-week boating holiday on the Thames from Kingston upon Thames to Oxford and back to Kingston. The book was initially intended to be a serious travel guide, with accounts of local history along the route, but the humorous elements took over to the point where the serious and somewhat sentimental passages seem a distraction to the comic novel. One of the most praised things about Three Men in a Boat is how undated it appears to modern readers - the jokes seem fresh and witty even today.

Lord Tarquin was the lethal war lord ready to take over King Samuel's kingdom. Jza was the determined princess fighting to save her father's kingdom and her half sisters' honour. The two shall finally meet when one becomes the captor and the other becomes the captive.

After having her heart broken by the boy she'd been in love with her whole life, Brimmy Somell decides to take a little...vacation. Little does she know, it turns out to be much more permanent than she had originally thought. After meeting tall, sexy, and mysterious Marcello Pietro, Brimmy finds herself having to make a life-changing decision and putting herself in a dangerous position she'd never imagined to be in. °•°●°•°●°•°●°•° "I love you." He says with no hesitation. It takes a moment for my hazy mind to catch up. I'm still in a daze, mesmerized by his perfections, and the deep dimple set in his cheek. I blink, "What?" "Don't make me say it again." He says, sounding frustrated, but I catch the hint of embarassment in his voice as he runs his hand through his hair and takes a step back. I grab a hold of the neckline to his shirt and yank him back within close proximity of me. "What if I want you to say it again?" I ask, studying his eyes. "Isn't it enough that I said it once?" He scowls, trying to pull back, but I restrain him from doing so. "Nope. Just say it one more time and I'll be satisfied." I state bravely, feeling a boost of confidence I didn't have earlier. He glances down, then looks back up into my eyes, allowing me to spot the vulnerability and uncertainty he feels. "I love you." He says, putting more strength in his voice than he looks to have. I grin, pulling him in for a kiss, but right before I do, I say the one phrase that will seal my fate, "I love you too, big, bad mafia boss." ••••• The story may be rough but the comment section makes up for it. ••••• Word count: 51,173 ••••• Written and published 2018-2019

[UPDATES ON FRIDAYS] It's been three years since Luz Melo left Portland, Maine... and Drake Medina. ☽ When her "borderline" alcoholic lifestyle in NYC falls apart, leaving her girlfriend in rehab, her grades trashed, and her scholarship revoked, the only thing left for her to do is admit defeat and head back to her hometown, to a shared apartment with her brother (and his roommates) in a sleepy port city that she swore she'd left behind forever. Enroll at MECA. Sober up. Forget Jess. Her hopes for normalcy (and recovery) sink quickly, when a body surfaces off the Maine State Pier, only a few blocks from her campus, ruled as a drug-related death. It becomes a pattern, and if Luz looks deep enough, it becomes a coded chase through cold, dark nights with a shotgun passenger: Drake Medina. Because she knows Drake knows something, but if there's anything she... really... knows, it's that Drake has been (and always will be) a liar. It doesn't take long for Luz to understand why: if they keep digging, it only gets darker and darker... and closer to home.

In six months the Earth will stop on its axis and the world will end. For Gabe, a once talented pilot in the EDEN program, it ended years ago with the death of his brother. Since that day, imminent annihilation has been eased by menial work, his eccentric friend, Jaibles and canteen bacon sandwiches. However, all is not lost. A mysterious god named Alan has appeared as the pet budgerigar to Susan, an unassuming woman exasperated by patriarchal injustice. Promising paradise and the technology to evacuate Earth, all god wants in return is for her to start his own religion - or at the very least, generate 50% of humanities undivided worship - whichever comes first. Gabe may yet get the adventure he always dreamed of, but only if he can survive EDEN, a vengeful God, a holy war and a paradise constructed of his own subconscious memories. God has returned to save us all, but who will save us from God? Paradise Awaits!