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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.
Read an Excerpt From ‘Flight 1031: Cosmic Turbulence’ by Julian Christian
“Mommy, I can hear them singing,” he whispers, and his voice carries an accent that sounds distinctly Germanic. “They’re singing in the clouds.”
Sarah presses her face to the window and feels her diplomatic clearance for Project Looking Glass become a curse. The clouds outside aren’t moving with the wind—they’re arranging themselves into patterns that she recognizes from the most classified files in her briefcase. Thule Society symbols. Vril energy matrices. Geometric formations that the SS spent millions researching during the war, convinced they could reshape reality itself.
The turbulence hits at 11:47 PM like the fist of something vast and patient and hungry.
But this isn’t turbulence—this is reality hiccupping.
The Boeing 777 doesn’t drop; it phases, existing in multiple positions simultaneously before snapping back into a single dimensional coordinate with a sound like reality tearing. Sarah’s coffee doesn’t spill—it levitates in perfect amber spheres that hang in the air for seventeen seconds (she counts), forming runic patterns that burn afterimages into her retinas before gravity remembers its job and sends them crashing in spirals that spell out words in languages that predate Christianity.
Her phone’s digital clock pulses 11:47 PM, but the numbers flicker between scripts—English, German, something that might be ancient Norse written in characters that hurt to look at directly. The time begins counting backward, then forward again, then sideways in dimensions that shouldn’t exist.
The cabin lights don’t just dim—they begin pulsing in perfect synchronization with something outside, something that breathes in frequencies just below human hearing. Emergency lighting casts everything in blood-red shadows that writhe independently of their sources, reaching toward the windows like fingers testing the strength of glass that separates this reality from whatever lies beyond.
Outside, lightning doesn’t flash—it breeds.
Tendrils of electric purple and bile-green twist through clouds that contract and expand like living tissue, like something’s breathing apparatus spread across miles of sky. The storm didn’t develop—it materialized, swallowing their aircraft in a wall of impossibility that presses against the fuselage with curious intelligence.
Sarah watches the lightning form perfect zigzags that burn for exactly thirteen seconds before transforming into other symbols—Vril runes, Thule sigils, mathematical equations for reshaping the fundamental constants of physics. Each formation pulses with light that doesn’t just illuminate the clouds but seems to rewrite them, transforming water vapor into something that follows different laws.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Captain Morrison’s voice cracks through the intercom, and Sarah can hear him weeping between words, can hear something else in the background—his instruments singing in harmonies that shouldn’t be possible from electronic equipment. “We’re experiencing unprecedented atmospheric phenomena. Our navigation systems are showing locations that don’t appear on any charts. Please remain seated with your seatbelts secured.”
The captain doesn’t mention that their GPS is showing coordinates for a city called “New Germania” or that their radio is picking up transmissions in languages that died out in 1945—except they’re being broadcast with technology that won’t exist for another fifty years.
Buy the Book
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FS7DXSXX
Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1849875
Barnes and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/toil-and-trouble-jae-el-foster/1148244179
Apple:https://books.apple.com/us/book/x/id6752260026
Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/toil-and-trouble-17
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