Just in time for the upcoming holiday comes this steamy, horror-fueled collection of tingling tales. Keep reading to get a tempting taste of Toil & Trouble featuring an eclectic group of authors, then start counting down the days until Halloween. To entice you even more, visit the other sites hosting this tour and enter the giveaway below for a chance to win a $10 bookstore gift card too!
The brew is hot and bubbling over with romance and terror in this twistedly beautiful anthology that welcomes the darkness of horror and the temptation of love's veiled promises. Six remarkable tales from six incredible authors fill this book of dark shadows and ancient whispers.
Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble - by Jennifer Patricia O'Keeffe: Enchanted pastries and spell-brewed coffee make Esmerelda's sugar-dusted counter the city's most coveted haunt—until a dangerously charming newcomer slips into her shop, immune to her magic and unraveling her carefully guarded world. As his witch-hunter heritage threatens to burn her legacy to ash, Esmerelda finds herself torn between the threat of revenge from the witch hunter's ancestors and the intoxicating truth of the connection that they share.
Silverwood - by Lynn Hubbard: A lonely rancher's daughter finds her isolated Wyoming homestead upended when an amber-eyed stranger ignites a mud-splattered passion that defies reason—until his supernatural secret and the vengeful ranch hands hunting her force her to choose between the man who saves her and the monster who might destroy her. Torn between fierce protectors and forbidden desire, she must trust the very darkness that could shatter her world to survive the wild frontier's deadliest threats.
Ivy, Lichens and Wallflowers - by James Ryan: Marketing executive Hilda finds solace from her stifling corporate life and overbearing past in the quiet companionship of Miriam, a mysterious 19th-century marble statue in a city micro-park, only to discover their connection transcends stone when Miriam begins answering her handwritten notes through cryptic poetry left in return. As their forbidden connection deepens into an intoxicating dream-bound romance, Hilda uncovers Miriam's supernatural secret: she's a cursed thaumaturge sustained by stolen life force, forcing Hilda to confront whether love can survive the devastating cost of keeping her alive.
A Mirror to Die For - by Cindy Lewis Smith: A desperate woman finds solace in an antique mirror that whisks her nightly to 1880s Arizona, where a charming outlaw named Johnny Ringo fulfills every fantasy—until her jealous fiancé shatters the glass and vanishes, leaving her trapped in an asylum screaming that he is the real monster, a man who shouldn't exist: Dr. John Henry Holliday, the gambler who killed Ringo a century ago. Now, with "MPR" carved into her cell walls and time itself unraveling, she'll stop at nothing to prove her sanity by proving time travel is real—even if it means unleashing the very darkness that destroyed her.
Flight 1031: Cosmic Turbulence - by Julian Christian: Diplomatic courier Sarah Martinez boards Flight 1031 expecting routine turbulence, not a Halloween dimensional rift that strands her at Germania International Airport—where the Greater German Reich has ruled since 1943 and perfected technology to harvest souls from parallel realities through consciousness-scanning machinery that pulses with seventeen-beat rhythms. Now trapped in a terminal that breathes like a living organism, Sarah must navigate a world where every passenger hides a secret and her resistance could either save her timeline or doom infinite versions of humanity to eternal enslavement in a Reich that spans all dimensions.
Dream a Little Dream - by Jae El Foster: After a near-death car crash rewires her brain, Sarah's nightmares bleed into reality: sugar on the counter forms glyphs, bats appear out of nowhere in broad daylight, and her own hands betray her—while the velvet-eyed stranger from her dreams appears in her waking hours, his urgency growing as Halloween's veil thins. Now, with her reality twisting into something surreal and an ancient language hijacking her voice, she must confront a dark truth: her soul isn't hers to keep, and the man who saved her in death is the very entity hunting her in life.
EXCERPT:
From ‘A Mirror to Die For’ by Cindy Lewis Smith....
"May I have a glass of water?" I asked.
I'm just so uncomfortable. These clothes I am wearing are itchy and stained. I have no recollection of purchasing this outfit. It's definitely not mine nor my style. My hair feels gritty and needs to be washed and brushed. Any day now my fiancé John Henry, some people call him Doc, will be bringing me my own clothes and makeup, and a new hair brush too. I know he will. I can't wait to see him. It's been so long.
In fact, I don't know where he could be. The last time I saw him we argued, but that was the way it was for us. I'd forgive him and we would go on as if nothing happened. This chair is uncomfortable. The seat is worn out and the softness of the padding has long gone. I have to keep squirming and readjusting my body just to be able to endure the sitting.
I noticed the clock on the wall directly in front of me. It's one of those large heavy clocks, probably weighing fifty pounds or more. There's a picture of the Eiffel Tower in the face of the clock. The word Paris is written in a pretty script over the tower. I doubt anyone in this place has ever been to Paris. It's on my bucket list. John Henry and I may honeymoon in Paris once we're married, although he's been talking about going back to Georgia instead.
To distract my thoughts in the silence of this morbidly uncomfortable room, I envision the clock falling and crashing to the floor, leaving a giant hole in the wall where the nail would be. I imagine that the glass in the clock has broken into thousands of tiny pieces. Sharp pointy shards of glass are scattered throughout the room, glittering like diamonds on velvet. Aren't they so pretty?
"I'm sorry, I lost my train of thought."
"Go on," he said, "Tell me more about what happened to John Henry"
I love talking about John Henry. My story, it's all true, you know. Every single word. I wouldn't have believed it myself if it didn't happen to me.
I readjusted myself one more time in the chair and continued.
"It all started the day I purchased the mirror," I explained.
"You see, I hadn't slept but maybe four or five restless hours the entire previous week. My life had become mundane and boring. The excitement was gone between me and John Henry. His demeanor had changed. He said it wasn't him, it was me who had changed. But, I knew he was lying."
He never told me any truths. Not anything about his past or what he did when he left me. Sometimes, I felt like he was only using me. Like I was a mysterious link or something between what he used to be and what he wanted to be now. It's hard to explain, it was probably nothing more than my imagination.
John Henry was just so ruggedly handsome, I couldn't help myself, so I forgave him often when we argued. Maybe because of our fighting and torrent relationship, the headaches were coming more and more frequently. And, more intense.
I refused to take the prescription medication I was given. Those pills... those little pink and red pills! NO! No, not those pills again. I couldn't take it anymore. I tossed the prescription bottle into the trash can and grabbed the keys to my car on my way out the door. I heard the door slam behind me and I didn't look back. I was not going to think about John Henry, if only for one day.
"My old Chevy was stuttering and in need of some repairs, but it didn't stop me from driving wherever I wanted to go. And that day, I wanted to go across the border. It was a warm day in late September, with barely a breeze moving through the dry air. I was wearing a big straw hat, the same kind the Chiquita Banana woman wears on the TV commercials, a pair of dark sunglasses and shoes that flipped back and forth on my feet."
I was getting low on gas so I coasted into an old, mostly deserted town in southern Arizona. It was just a few miles or so, maybe thirty or forty minutes across the border. I didn't want to take a chance on stalling out the car. Service stations out there are few and far between. I parked my car on a dust covered side street and strolled to the downtown area of this dusty little town.
Some old-timers were outside sitting on benches that lined the wooden sidewalks of the streets. Their wrinkled cheeks were swollen on one side from a wad of chewing tobacco. A dirty brass spittoon was centered on the sidewalk between them. I could feel them staring at me. You know that kind of stare implying that I didn't belong there, that I'm out of place.
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