Quiapo Stories

‎In the heart of Quiapo, Cielo Ramirez reads cards for the desperate and the grieving. She has one rule: seven cards, never more. It is the only rule her grandmother ever left her, and Cielo has followed it for seventeen years. Then, one stormy night, a stranger named Lucian Reyes walks into her parlor and demands the one thing she has never given anyone: a full ten-card spread. What begins as a reading becomes something far older and more terrifying. The cards are not simply predicting the future. They are opening a door, and Cielo is being pulled toward a binding that has haunted her family for generations. Seventeen years ago, her grandmother broke the same rule and disappeared. Now Cielo is being forced to finish what Rosario started. But the truth behind the cards is not what Cielo expects. The binding was never about fate, and it was never really about sacrifice. It was about fear. About what people surrender when they believe they have no choice. And if Cielo wants to survive, she will have to learn the one lesson her grandmother was too afraid to teach her: A choice made in fear is not a choice at all. In a place where the dead still keep their promises and monsters know how to wear human faces, Cielo must decide what she is willing to give, what she is willing to keep, and whether mercy can finally be something she gives herself.

A network of lies and deceit exists in the center of bustling Manila, where brave journalist Emma Cruz sets out on a risky quest to learn the truth about her colleague Marco Santos' disappearance. Emma finds herself navigating the dark alleys and secret meetings of the city when she comes upon a diabolical conspiracy involving strong personalities and hazardous connections. Emma is committed to bringing attention to the corruption that threatens to take over the country, so with every new discovery, she digs deeper into the shadows.

A deaf-mute Filipino beggar boy dreams of a better life. Will an American photographer give it to him?