*Yes, I am working on a short story. Now shush. Yes, some of these are repeats from yesterday. But some AREN’T. – SAH*

FOR CYBER MONDAY, BOOKS FOR 99c!

FROM C. CHANCY: A Net of Dawn and Bones

Blood rituals, black magic, and broken masquerades. Names to run away from really fast. And maybe the end of the world….
Welcome to Intrepid, North Carolina. Where autumn brings leaf season, tourists, and bloody sacrifice.
Twenty years have passed since the Dark Day brought creatures of horror onto the evening news. Now vampires run nightclubs, alchemists deal potions on the street corners, and werewolf gangs lay claim to shady alleys. The honest cops of Intrepid enforce human laws on supernatural evil, and pray. Because the turn of the leaves brings Halloween, tourists… and the return of a serial killer who’s plagued Intrepid for over two decades.
Yet the night holds darker secrets than even the best detectives have unearthed. Somewhere in Intrepid, a demonic sorcerer plans to bring Hell on earth. And the Demongate is almost complete.
In the midst of a stakeout gone wrong, two mysterious wanderers drop into Detective Church’s life. Aidan, who moves like flames and holds secrets in his shadows… and Myrrh, a holy warrior born of ancient Alexandria. Enchantress. Heretic. Hell-raider.
Welcome to Intrepid.
Evil’s in for a hell of a night….

FROM C. CHANCY: Tell No Tales

Some nights it just doesn’t pay to rise from the grave….Corbin wants to uncover the truth behind her death at a demon’s hands. But her memories have been shattered by the grave, and even with footloose Sighted mechanic Devon Fortunato helping her search for answers, a restless ghost is up against the darkest spells and lies of the living. If they can’t unravel who sabotaged the Cunning Folk circle’s spellcast defenses, the child Corbin meant to protect will suffer a fate worse than death. Corbin’s notes hold clues, but the broken circle would rather die than admit the truth….

FROM C. CHANCY: Oni the Lonely

A grieving mountain cove doctor. A pair of wayward oni. A curse borne on the black wings of crows.

The Rivertown Shopping Village has seen a lot of strange proprietors. An oni painter on the run from a bad breakup is a new one. Maple Leaf Studio opened with blazing color, but will a haunting end Kyosai Momoji’s dream before it begins?

At the south end of Rivertown, Rain McKee delivers soap and perfume with a hint of mountain blessings, picking up her life in the wake of her grandparents’ deaths. Deaths that may have been from a firstborn curse….

Kyosai’s a firstborn, and oni attract trouble like lightning strikes. If either of them want to survive, they’ll have to face haunts, monsters, and a curse so ancient no living mortal knows its name.

The Appalachians are old; the evils lurking there, older still….

(If you want ancient folklore, modern magic, and a love story that prioritizes friendship first, this is the slow burn for you!)

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Bite Sized (Liquid Diet Chronicles Book 1)

Meg Turner has been a vampire for twenty years. Her favorite food is rapists. Which is how she met Andi Donahue, her new best friend/ girl Friday.

And then the nightmares start. And the bodies start showing up–bled out and raped. Just like Meg was. They don’t have a whole lot of time to stop the killer before he strikes again, and only one way to stop the killer.

But how can Andi help Meg stop a killer she can’t even see?

FROM CAROLINE FURLONG: Theophany

Ten years ago the Savients took over Niban, forcing the independent inhabitants into poverty and despair. Bass White saw the careless cruelty of the Savients kill his mother and his father. When a resistance cell is discovered in his city bloc, the Savients seek to make everyone pay.

With his wife Amie, Bass races into the caverns to escape the Savients’ brutal enforcers: the Atrasai. The couple barely make it to the limits of known territory outside their underground city, however, before the Atrasai catch up with them. It would take a miracle to save them…

…or a combat medic robot.

Join Bass and Amie in this sci-fi story of healing, hope, and wonder. After a decade of fear and pain, even a little light can bring out the best in man and machine. But will the best be enough to heal?

FROM BECKY R. JONES: Academic Magic

Zoe O’Brien has found her dream job at a small liberal arts college teaching the history of Medieval witchcraft and magic. Academic life is exactly what she expected it to be…until the squirrels stop by to talk with her and her department chair and best friend turn out to be mages.

Zoe discovers a world of magic and power she never knew existed. She and other faculty mages race to stop a coven from raising a demon on the winter solstice while simultaneously grading piles of final exams and reading the tortured prose of undergraduate term papers. Can Zoe master her new-found powers in time?

FROM TIMOTHY WITCHAZEL: Joshua and the Battle of Jericho: A Poem in Alliterative Verse

From author and poet Timothy V. Witchazel comes the story of Joshua and the Battle of Jericho in alliterative verse. Tracing the story of the Israelites from the parting of the Red Sea to the fall of the walls of Jericho, the story is retold in the style of Beowulf, Piers Plowman, and other Anglo-Saxon poems.

FROM TIMOTHY WITCHAZEL: Noah and the Great Flood: A Poem in Alliterative Verse

From author and poet Timothy V. Witchazel comes a retelling of the story of Noah and the Ark in the alliterative verse, the style of poetry used in Beowulf, Piers Plowman, and other Anglo-Saxon works.

FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: The Cross-Time Kamaitachi

I did not land here as a warrior, but a warrior I so soon became . . .

One moment, Dr. Yukiko Yamaguchi was in her high-tech singularity research lab in California, busily adjusting an electronically-leaky fitting playing hell with her instrument readings.

The next moment, she was falling through space, and landing hard in a wilderness area she would quickly discover was her family’s ancient stomping grounds in Japan – but with an apocalyptic twist.

A hundred years later, there would be legends of a great yōkai, a demon, whom some called a kamaitachi – a sort-of whirlwind, weasel-like creature with blades for claws, which catches up unwary humans and slices their skin. But this kamaitachi is no ordinary yōkai – rather, she is

The Cross-Time Kamaitachi

FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: The Lion of God (Timelines Book 1)

John Wolff has been handed a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Again.
He’s already saved the love of his life from an early death – thirty years after she died.
Now, a beautiful young woman, who is clearly his daughter, has appeared from the timeline branch where that same love of his life survived and married his counterpart.
She says they need his help fighting off invaders from the far future. Who, by the way, are looking for him. Why? Because they want the starship drive he and a friend invented, the precursor to their time machine. Problem is, in her timeline, it hasn’t been invented yet.
What man can resist a cry for help from his own daughter?
Particularly when the invaders think she’s a saint. Or possibly, a devil wearing saint’s clothing. And they’re looking for her, too.
Thus begins the Timelines Saga, and the story of the Lion of God.

FROM JAY MAYNARD: Reflections in Crystal (The Crystal Therapy Chronicles Book 1)

Magic fixes people the world cannot touch.

Alex Sullivan isn’t crazy — just angry. Angry enough to get arrested. Angry enough to be given a strange choice: prison, or an experimental magical program at a private facility in rural Missouri.

They claim to fix broken people not with medicine or therapy, but with silence, service, and a skintight suit of latex.

Inside the suit, Alex is cut off from the world — unable to speak, eat, or even cry in the ordinary way. Inside the crystal, time flows differently. There, guided by someone who seems to know him better than he knows himself, Alex must face his deepest wounds… and either heal, or shatter.

But this is no simple treatment. Alex finds himself on a journey into a hidden world where redemption is earned, the broken are made whole, and some choose never to leave the suit again.

Previously published as Foundational Laminate.

“One of the rare novels I hope becomes reality—a hard look at how to turn the antisocial into good neighbors.”
— Karl K. Gallagher, author of The Fall of the Censor and Torchship

UPDATE, BECAUSE THE WRITER IS AN IDIOT AND FORGOT SHE’D DONE THIS:

FROM SARAH A. HOYT: Christmas In the Stars: A collection of Christmas Short Stories

This is a collection of four Christmas short stories.
It starts with a star-explorer stranded in unknown coordinates listening very hard for sleigh bells. Then there are two deserters of a doomed planetary war, in a forsaken planet, trying to do the right thing to secure peace and good will, even if one of them happens to be dead. And did you know there was a small, sweet robot at the nativity? Also, sometimes, all you need for a Merry Christmas is a cat.
This is a short collection, but it’s heartwarming and cozy, and the sort of thing to read on a snowy afternoon, by your fireplace, with a cup of eggnog nearby.

FROM SARAH A. HOYT: A Few Good Men (Darkship Thieves Book 3)

Ladies and Gentlemen, we declare the revolution!

He spent 14 years in solitary. Now he’ll ignite a revolution.
Born a prince among Earth’s fifty tyrants, Lucius Keeva emerges from imprisonment with a fractured mind and a deadly purpose. When assassins hunt him, fate delivers him to the USAians—secret keepers of America’s forgotten beliefs.

For 500 years, this underground faith has preserved the Constitution while awaiting their prophesied leader. In Luce’s madness, they recognize their messiah.

Now the son of tyranny becomes liberty’s champion. As the USAians rise from the shadows, their weapons of war finally unleashed, a broken mind and a fallen prince prove the perfect weapon against an unbreakable regime.

One madman. One ancient faith. One last chance to restore the republic from legend.

A FEW GOOD MEN —where belief becomes the ultimate revolutionary tactic.

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY BAEN BOOKS

FROM ELISE HYATT (SARAH A. HOYT): Dipped, Stripped and Dead (Daring Finds Book 1)

DEAD MAN’S REFINISH

Some people find antiques. Dyce Dare finds trouble.

Ever tried fishing a Victorian sideboard out of a dumpster only to hook a dead body instead? Welcome to Dyce Dare’s life, where nothing goes according to plan—and never has.

At six, she wanted to be a ballerina (until gravity repeatedly suggested otherwise). At ten, she dreamed of lion taming (until Fluffy the cat staged a mutiny). Now at twenty-nine, she’s just trying to keep her furniture refinishing business afloat so she can upgrade her son’s diet from “pancakes” to “anything else, please.”

But when her latest dumpster dive yields a half-melted corpse instead of salvageable furniture, Dyce reluctantly adds “amateur detective” to her lengthy resume of career failures. Because nothing says “responsible single mom” like poking around a murder investigation, right?

Between dodging danger, dealing with her quirky neighbors, and trying not to embarrass herself in front of a certain handsome police officer, Dyce is about to discover that her talent for refinishing furniture might just extend to refinishing crime scenes.

Dipped Stripped And Dead – Sometimes the best way to clean up your life is to solve a murder.

(Warning: May contain splinters, sarcasm, and one very determined single mom who definitely didn’t plan on any of this.)