But Ebenezer doesn’t feel like celebrating. Her girlfriend of ten years has just left her, her job as a debt collector is slowly killing her, and worst of all, she hasn’t truly acted in years.
But when three spirits representing the places and ambitions closest to her heart pay her a visit, Ebenezer just might find a reason to end her life—or a reason to keep going.
Set during the global recession, this retelling of Charles Dickens’s immortal classic A Christmas Carol explores the vagaries of growing up and exchanging old dreams for new meaning.
Strange creatures begin to appear in the normally dull Graysland after Rupert digs up a mysterious bell in his backyard. He sets off with his best pal Squeem to discover the secret of a mysterious haunted mansion, its creepy occupant, and their connection to an all but forgotten old holiday called Winter Joy.
Locked in, a prisoner of the mysterious owner of the mansion, Rupert is rescued by Pie O’Sky, who gives him a key that opens a door on a dangerous journey where he will come face-to-face with the Ghost of Winter Joy.
Ivy Peterson is Less-Than-Ordinary. She’s so very Less-than-Ordinary that sometimes she feels invisible. She is also Not Very Brave.
But part of her wishes she could be something More, that something Extraordinary and Completely Unusual would happen. What she forgets about wishes is that they do sometimes come true.
Ivy accidentally falls into Zandria, a magical world that exists just outside her own. And she’s trapped there because someone has stolen the Talisman of Zandria, a magical amulet that controls the five gates the worlds. She and her new friends—the wizard Arden, his young apprentice Connor, and a pair of fairies—set off on a quest to recover the Talisman, a journey of discovery that will change Ivy in ways she never could have imagined.
A young woman is killed by a hit-and-run driver, and when Ardis learns she knew the victim neither her heavy workload nor her husband’s disapproval keeps her from agreeing to help with the investigation.
The more she and Detective Larry Hopkins learn, however, the less they know; and when the man Ardis considers the prime suspect also ends up dead, the mystery just gets murkier.
Who was the mystery man Lori had known who suddenly appeared in her life again? The answer is not only surprising but deadly.
Ali Caldwell figures her fifteen minutes of fame have expired, and she is ready to ditch the TV cameras. That’s hard to do when she has to spend Thanksgiving with her mother in Malibu, where they’ll be filming the Christmas special for their reality show.
Then her little brother disappears while she’s in charge of him, and and everyone in the world is watching and blaming her, including her mother. Ali is determined to find him and make everything right, but life is ever that simple.
Bio-terrorists release a plague in the United States that spreads to kill most of the world’s Caucasian population. As the deadly virus mutates, Tzu Shin, a renowned medical doctor and biologist, defects from China to help develop a cure. His only daughter, Lin Kwan, is left behind in Hong Kong with her aunt.
Then Kwan’s father summons her from across the sea to bring him Chinese medicinal herbs he needs to develop a cure. Lonely and missing her parents, she accepts the challenge, traveling with her sensei Li Zhong to the New World.
But a Chinese assassin is on her trail, determined to kill her and Li Zhong, and when Kwan discovers her father has disappeared, she sets out on a journey to find him and deliver her precious cargo, a quest that she may not survive.
Jordan Lake discovers an ancient bracelet in her grandmother’s house and uncovers a family mystery that links her favorite actress, Audrey Hepburn, a romantic movie, and an aunt she never knew. Jordan hopes the bracelet will bring her love. Instead, it brings one nightmare after another, unleashing Hathor, the Egyptian love goddess, who decides it’s fun to mess with the McKnight High School social scene.
Jordan holds the key to vanquish Hathor, but will she figure out what it is in time to save her school, one of her best friends, and get a date to the Valentine’s Day dance?
Halvar Danske, known as the Hireling, has come to Manatas to determine whether there’s fraud afoot in the Feria. His master, the Al-Andalusian Calif Don Felipe, has had a letter from an old friend named Leon di Vicenza claiming part of the calif’s share of the Feria’s revenues is being funneled into unauthorized pockets.
It’s more than an omen when Halvar stumbles on a brutally murdered man his first morning in Manatas, and the day goes downhill from there. Is the corpse really Leon di Vincenza, or is someone staging a gigantic hoax? And what does Halvar’s childhood love Dani Glick have to do with it?
In this first pair of novellas, filk-artist and author Roberta Rogow introduces a world where Spain rules North America and a Danish soldier turned investigator is thrust into a place where the primitive nature of the surroundings is a sharp contrast to the sophisticated intrigue that plagues the island of Manatas.
It’s wintertime in Foggy Point, Washington, and tourists are as scarce as gold-plated thimbles at a thrift store. The denizens of the town decide that a colorful 1960s-themed festival is just the event to bring people out and get them moving and, hopefully, spending their money in the community.
Clad in bellbottom jeans, granny dresses and afro wigs, the Loose Threads quilt group is excited to participate in the associated quilt display. All, that is, except Jenny Logan, the only member who has an authentic quilt from that era. Reluctantly, she agrees to display and talk about her quilt.
A costumed participant is shot in front of Jenny’s quilt. Coincidence? Or is the quilt’s past endangering its owner’s future?
How’s a girl supposed to stay single with the entire town wants her married?
Alessa Lombard has a plan to avoid the marriage trap. It’s not that she’s opposed to marriage—wedded bliss is fine…for other people. All she needs is the help of the town’s newest bachelor to help pull off a fake romance, and the family curse won’t have a chance to ruin her life.
Determined to fall in love, Sloan Dugan immigrates to the magical town of Amores. Surely, in a town devoted to love, he’ll find a woman who doesn’t use trickery and deceit.
But Cupid has other plans. Alessa and Sloan will find themselves playing the game of love whether they want to or not. Will winner take all? Or lose everything?
Tales from Zumaya 