Showing results by author "Kathryn Meyer Griffith" in Literature & Fiction

Midnight. Some call it the witching hour. Others call it the devil’s hour. Here in the graveyard, midnight is a very special time. It is a time when ghostly spirits are at their strongest, when the veil between our world and theirs is at its thinnest. Legend has it, that while most of the world is asleep, the lack of prayers allow the spirits to communicate under the cover of darkness, among the headstones, their whispers rustling in the leaves of the old oak trees. But if you’re here in the graveyard, you can tell yourself it’s just the wind....

Ex-cop Henry Shore has been Chief Park Ranger at Crater Lake National Park for eight years and he likes his park and his life the way it's been. Safe. Tranquil. Predictable. But he's about to be tested in so many ways. First the earthquakes begin, people begin to go missing, then there's some mysterious water creature that's taken up residence in the caves below Crater Lake and it's not only growing in size, it's aggressive and cunning and very hungry.

That’s what 27 writers want you to consider, here in this collection of the strange and terrible, the shocking and amazing, the frightening and awe-inspiring. Assembled here for easy perusal are some of the finest tales of ghosts, zombies, witches, cryptozoological freaks, monsters, and aliens of the past year.

Chief Park Ranger Henry Shore has dealt with and fought real live dinosaurs at his beloved Crater Lake National Park for over six years. With the help of his rangers, a few brave FBI friends, and army soldiers, he'd been victorious over a prehistoric lake creature and years later some particularly fiendish, and clever, specimens of the flying variety. He and his newspaper publisher wife, Ann, thought their park was finally rid of the monsters and they could reclaim their tranquil life in a place they cherished. Not so.

Maggie Owen is a beautiful, spirited Egyptologist...but lonely. While staying in Egypt on a grant from the college, she searches for an undiscovered necropolis she’s certain lies below the sands beyond the pyramids of Giza. Even this discovery doesn’t give her the happiness she had hoped it would. There has always been and is something missing. Love.

Prehistoric creatures have again invaded Crater Lake National Park - and this time there's more than one. Henry Shore has been Chief Park Ranger at Crater Lake National Park for thirteen years now and thought the days when he'd had to fight a rogue dinosaur that lived in the caves below the lake were long over. Until one of his park rangers, to save a visitor's life, is in a deadly struggle out in the woods with a new breed of dinosaur worse than the last one.

Discover 23 tales of terror, flavors of fear. Here for your twisted culinary delight, we present some of the best horror fiction of 2018. We sincerely hope you survive it.

Twenty years ago psychic Sarah Summers fled from the evil that lurked in the woods behind her childhood home after it killed most of her family, but a nasty divorce and financial hardships forced her back when nothing else could have. With her son, Jeremy, she returns to her grandmother's dilapidated house and tries to begin a new life.

Amanda Givens is careful how she uses her benevolent powers. She doesn't want the people of Canaan, Connecticut to know they have a witch among them…even a good white witch. For years, she's lived quietly in a remote cabin with Amadeus, her quirky feline familiar. At first with her husband, Jake, the love of her life, until a car accident; but now alone after his death. But when she's wrongly blamed for a rash of ritualistic murders committed by a satanic cult, she knows she can no longer hide.

Ten years ago Frank Lester, a Chicago homicide detective, thought he had rid himself forever of the Mud People Killer who'd kidnapped and murdered six people. Frank had shot him as he'd fled through a snowy night; had killed him, he believed, though a body was never found. But the killer wasn't dead. He'd only been waiting to take his revenge on Frank and those he cares about now...10 years later. Frank retired early and is living back in his hometown of Spookie when the killer resurfaces to take up where he left off.

For seven long years, chief park ranger Henry Shore has been dealing with and fighting anachronistic dinosaurs in his beloved Crater Lake National Park and in the surrounding town of Klamath Falls. It began with one lone leviathan, the one he tongue-in-cheek called Godzilla. Henry and his band of heroes defeated it but others followed: the flying varieties he named gargoyles, the mutant t-rexes and roaming velociraptors that were so much smarter than their ancient ancestors.

Jenny and Jeff Sanders become the victims of a bizarre crime, leaving Jeff dead, Jenny in a temporary coma. She returns to her children. With Jeff's death she must move back to her childhood home in Summer Haven, Florida, where once they destroyed a family of vampires. Her brother, Joey, a local diner owner, helps them.

For years, the vampire family lived in the shadows, hidden by the night and people's disbelief; feeding on animals or throw away people who would never be missed. But as the family moves into an old theater, and uses it to cover up their crimes, the youngest of them are restless and determined to live as they like. Recklessly. Killing and feeding when and where they want. Feeding on who they want. Only the parent vampires have managed to keep them in check. But no longer.

Amanda has been told her 10-year-old witch child, Lizzy, is fated to someday become one of the planet’s most powerful witches. If she lives. If the world survives. Because the world is being threatened by an Antichrist called Reuben who is prophesied to bring the end of the world by destroying everyone and everything good - including the white witches and warlocks of the world - unless he can be stopped.

The eccentric, and sometimes lovable, characters of Spookie have returned for another series of mysterious adventures. Frank Lester, ex-Chicago homicide detective and mystery author, after his and Abigail’s long-awaited vacation is over, and they’re home again, has once more come out of retirement this time to take the position of sheriff of Spookie, because of Sheriff Mearl’s murder.

Since Cassandra Graystone was a child and her family perished in a fire she knows and sees things other people don't… when someone will die or that a demon lurks beneath a human skin. She sees phantoms. Yet she craves a simple life singing out with her musician brother, Johnny, and caring for her elderly aunt and uncle; to be with her friends, Sarah, a psychic, and Walter, a clown in a carnival circuit.

Someone is terrorizing the elderly and vandalizing their homes in a certain neighborhood in Spookie. As usual, Abigail Sutton, a freelance artist, and her boyfriend, Frank Lester, a retired homicide detective, are called in to help find out who's doing these awful acts. The two seem to have an uncanny knack for unraveling mysteries and getting to the bottom of such strange happenings. Some of the old people think it's ghosts in their basements, in their homes, doing these destructive deeds, but Frank doesn't believe in ghosts while Abigail isn't so sure.

The usual eccentric characters are here for their fourth murder mystery and the case is one which really hits close to home this time for Myrtle, the town's Perry Como singing and wagon-pulling bag lady. Her sister Evelyn, the local animal hoarder, is missing. Strange miniature figures fashioned of twigs are found hanging from one of Evelyn's trees as warnings. Because of them, Myrtle fears a coven of wanted-to-be witches she once knew, and escaped from, could be behind the kidnapping because she stole their ancient black grimoire - and they want it back.

Sometimes revenge can only be achieved with magic. Laura and Julian Bennet are husband and wife Egyptologists who're looking for the ancient tomb of a lost Egyptian lesser wife… one who'd been so evil and destructive her tomb has no name, she has no name. She was a stunningly beautiful and sensual sorceress who once had her lover, Rameses II, under her evil love spell… until the more powerful Priests of Amun captured and locked her into a magical sarcophagus for all eternity.

A beautiful Civil War era bed and breakfast called Willowwind is cherished and run by a loving couple, Adrian and Caroline Stone. But it’s also haunted by a long-dead Civil War era ghostly vampiress called Lilith who believes the man, Adrian, is her reincarnated soldier/lover and she will do anything to have him, body-heart-and soul, for her own again, no matter how many she must kill. Yet Adrian’s wife, Caroline, along with the spirit of her dead father, will do anything to make sure that doesn’t happen. For true love is far stronger than any evil obsession.