SPOTLIGHT - HORROR - SIX AND TWISTED

Six and Twisted

D. Thomas Jerlo, David Boiani, Jenna Greene,

Simon Parker, Phil Thomas, Char Baker

Date of Publication: February 2nd 2026

Publisher: Vitality House

Cover Artist: Dawné Dominique / DusktilDawn Designs

Genre: Horror / Speculative Fiction

ISBN-13: ‎ 978-1970504002

ISBN-10: ‎ 1970504005

ASIN:  B0GL3ND4CR

Number of pages: 360 Paperback

Tagline: Six macabre, supernatural, fanatical, and dystopian tales all brought to you by the minds of six brilliant authors, each bringing their version of spellbinding storytelling in one anthology. Prepare to be fascinated by their unique perspectives, as they weave intricate stories that blur the lines between reality and the surreal.

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Six visions of horror, each more unsettling than the last.

In Something Neighborly by D. Thomas Jerlo, a gremlin’s mischievous tricks twist everyday life into a nightmare.

In The Breezy Ridge Inn by David Boiani, an idyllic Vermont getaway hides sinister secrets behind its prayers.

In Consumed by Jenna Greene, the tolling of bells marks the countdown to sacrifice in a dystopian world.

In The Year of the Dead by Simon Parker, one man faces his last Christmas as humanity falls to the plague of the undead.

In The Clairvoyant Connection by Phil Thomas, a psychic on the 1986 boardwalk foresees a death she cannot stop.

And in Fortune Favours by Char Baker, a team of supernatural agents uncovers a deadly conspiracy of demons, shapeshifters, and betrayal.

Together, these stories explore mischief, faith, fate, and apocalypse — six doors into terror, each waiting for you to step through.

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SPOTLIGHT w/EXCERPT - COZY MYSTERY - CRITTER CRIMES (Magical Cozy Mystery Book Club, #11) by Elizabeth Pantley

A quaint riverside town holds many secrets ... 

and the only ones who’ve seen it all are the critters.

Critters and Crimes
Magical Cozy Mystery Book Club, #11
by Elizabeth Pantley
Genre: Paranormal Cozy Mystery 

A quaint riverside town holds many secrets ... and the only ones who’ve seen it all are the critters.

This book club dives (literally!) into the pages of a cozy mystery. The quirky group must solve the mystery to get out of the book. It’s so much fun - you’ll wish you had a book club like this!

In this journey, they choose a book set in a lovely riverside town. They land in a charming neighborhood and find they are part of a local book club. They are having a great time – and then a dead body shows up. (Of course it does!)

The clues to what happened come to them in a unique way – via the critters in the house.

As usual, the club finds plenty of time to enjoy the unique setting of their journey, as they solve the mystery – one critter at a time.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

This book is part of a magical cozy mystery series of 11 books and growing.

Each book can be read as a standalone, but are much more fun in order.

Available in eBook, paperback, Kindle Unlimited, and audiobook.

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Chapter 1

  

“Hey!” Frank shouted the word as he landed with a thump on the deck right in front of me.

“Ack!” I jumped and grabbed the pillow beside me for protection. I nearly fell off the porch swing. “Don’t do that!”

Frank snickered. His tail flicked back and forth and his ears twitched.

“You startled me!”

“Really? It was so hard to tell.” He snorted with laughter.

I peeked from behind the pillow and shook a finger at him. “Bad cat!”

That just made him laugh harder. He rolled over on his back and waved his paws in the air.

He looked so silly that I relaxed and began to laugh, too.

“Good morning to you,” I said, as I smoothed out the pillow that had been my so-called protection.

Frank finally caught his breath and sat up. “What’cha doing out here all alone, Paige-o-roonie?”

“I was having a quiet, reflective morning. Did you catch the definitive word there? I ‘was’ having a quiet morning.”

“Are you implying that I interrupted you?”

“Not implying. Stating a fact.”

“For good reason.” He chuckled. “I see you have some coffee there.” He pointed his nose at my cup. “Want to go get this kitty a bowlful?” He crossed his front feet, tipped his head to the side and widened his eyes. Then to up his cuteness quotient, he batted his lashes. “Please?”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” I laughed, getting up from the swing. “I’ll be right back.”

I went into the kitchen to exchange my coffee for a cup of tea. Frank had jump started my heart, so I didn’t need any more caffeine. I fixed Frank a bowl of his favorite morning beverage: half-coffee, half-creamer. Any normal cat would be sick from the brew, but our magical library cat was not anything resembling normal.

The house was quiet as I grabbed our drinks and returned to the porch. I set Frank’s bowl on the table and sat on the swing. I took a big sip from my cup.

Frank took a leap over to the table and inhaled the aroma wafting from his bowl. He slurped greedily then gave a moan of delight. He tipped his head at me. “What were these reflective thoughts that I interrupted?”

I tapped a finger to my lips in thought, and glanced at my book, which lay quietly on the table beside me. For once, I didn’t have my nose in a cozy mystery. Instead, I had been rocking back and forth on the porch swing, enjoying the sounds of the birds and the quiet whisper of the wind through the trees as I had let my mind wander, until Frank had disrupted me.

“I’d been cycling through many topics, one after the other.”

“Maybe you were clearing your mind’s way for the upcoming new book adventure?”

“That’s probably true. Once we get inside a book, I won’t have time to ponder anything but the mystery we need to solve.”

 

Don’t miss the rest of the series!

Find them on Amazon

 

Join Elizabeth’s mailing list and get a free book from her Magical Cozy Mystery Book Club series! https://elizabethpantleyauthor.com/mailing-list

Elizabeth Pantley is a bestselling author of fiction and non-fiction books. She writes two well-loved cozy mystery series: The Magical Mystery Book Club, and the Destiny Falls Mystery and Magic series. She has also written the international bestselling No-Cry Solution parenting book series that is available in over twenty languages.

Elizabeth lives in the majestic Pacific Northwest and spends winters in the sunny desert of Arizona. While neither location is home to any paranormal beings (that she knows of) the vastly different yet equally lovely locations are the inspiration for the settings in many of her books.

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SPOTLIGHT w/E$XCERPT - HISTORICAL MEMOIR - TO CLIMB A DISTANT MOUNTAIN: A Daugthter's Triburt to her Diabetic Mother by Laurisa White Reyes

One woman's inspirational tale about expressing joy amid loss and suffering.

To Climb a Distant Mountain:
A Daughter’s Tribute to Her Diabetic Mother
by Laurisa White Reyes
Genre: Historical True Memoir

In 1974, at the age of twenty-six, Cynthia Ball White was diagnosed with Juvenile Diabetes. Today, it is estimated that 1.25 million Americans suffer from what is now referred to as Type I diabetes, compared to 38 million who have Type 2 (adult onset) diabetes. It is a merciless disease that often leads to blindness, neuropathy, amputations, and a host of other ailments, including a shortened life span.

Despite battling diabetes for forty-five years, Cyndi beat the odds. Not only did she outlive the average Type I diabetic, but until her last week of life in 2021, she had all her “parts intact”. Her daughter often called her a walking miracle. But more impressive was Cyndi’s positive outlook on life, even in the midst of tremendous loss and suffering.

The author hopes that in sharing Cyndi’s story, others may be inspired to face their own struggles with the same faith, courage, and joy as her mother did.

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I’m going to tell you about my mother. Yes, that is the story I will tell. No other story really matters. I know that now. Funny, how you can spend a lifetime conjuring up magical tales of dragons and enchanters and heroes who will never exist except in your own head and on sheets of paper, when the stories that matter most happen every day all around us. I’ve spent most of my life making up stories. It’s what I do. But now that Mom is gone, I have no stories left. At least none that I care about more than hers.

My first distinct memory of my mother (I was five or six) was in the hospital. I’d come to know that hospital well. It’s in Panorama City, half an hour from where I live now, half an hour from where I lived then, two different cities—two points on the circumference of a circle with the hospital at its center. It’s where all five of my children were born, where my youngest brother was born—and died. It’s where Mom would spend too much of her life. But not yet. That would come later.

I remember the elevator doors opening and Dad pushing Mom out in a wheelchair. She wore a yellow robe that a friend had bought her when she got sick. She had crocheted me a hat. It was yellow too, criss-crossed strands like a spider’s web, with a green band. She gave it to me there. I wore it often as a child. Somewhere, I have a picture of me wearing it. The hat is in my mother’s hope chest now, the one she passed on to me when I got married. Been in there for years. Decades. It’s still a treasure.

I remember her disappearing back inside the elevator, waving, the doors sliding shut, swallowing her. I still feel sick, tight and hollow inside, when I think of that memory.

In the weeks leading up to that hospital stay, which would be the first of dozens, she’d been sick. She’d lost weight and felt very ill. She thought she was dying of cancer, but she postponed seeing a doctor because she had recently enrolled in Kaiser Permanente medical insurance through Dad’s employer, and she thought they had to wait for their membership cards to come in the mail. By the time she walked into the ER, she was on death’s door.

Her doctor smelled her breath, which Mom thought was an odd thing to do. And then he called in other doctors to smell her breath. It smelled sweet, like decaying fruit. Mom was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, which they used to call Juvenile Diabetes. It meant that her pancreas had completely malfunctioned, and she would be insulin-dependent the rest of her life. She learned how to give herself insulin by injecting oranges. She was twenty-six years old.

Mom actually felt relieved because it wasn’t cancer. There was no way to know then what diabetes would do to her, how it would shape not only her life but the lives of her husband and children and grandchildren, how it would gradually destroy her body a little at a time until it finally robbed her of life itself.

 

Last Summer in Algonac
by Laurisa White Reyes
Genre: Fictionalized Family Biography

From the Spark Award-winning author of The Storytellers & Petals...

The summer of 1938 is idyllic for fourteen-year-old Dorothy Ann Reid. She’s spent every summer of her life visiting her grandparent’s home on the banks of the St. Clair River in Algonac, Michigan. But unbeknownst to her, this will be her last. As Dorothy and her family pass their time swimming, fishing, and boating, they are blissfully unaware that tragedy lurks just around the corner.

Last Summer in Algonac is a fictionalized account of the author’s grandmother and her family’s final summer before her father’s suicide, which altered their lives forever. Inspired by real people and events, Laurisa Reyes has woven threads of truth with imagination, creating a “what if” tale. No one living today knows the details leading to Bertram Reid’s death, but thanks to decades of letters, personal interviews, historical research, and a visit to Algonac, Reyes attempts to resolve unanswered questions, and provide solace and closure to the Reid family at last.

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That last summer in Algonac, there was little water play for Father, who was now fifty-seven. Alberta, who had married less than two years earlier and had recently given birth to her first child, had opted to stay in Cleveland. She and Charles had been my grandest playmates while I was growing up, but now they both had new adult lives and families of their own. Even Charles, who was eleven years my senior (Alberta fourteen years), would prove too occupied with his wife Alice and their baby to venture into any games with me. I supposed Father might have played that role with me when I was young, but I was thirteen now, practically a woman, and neither he nor I dared suggest something so childish as to jump into the river for a splash—except for that one last wonderful afternoon.

Looking back, I wish that I had done it every day—that I had taken his hand and walked with him along the bank under the trees, or sat in the grass and taken off our shoes, letting our feet dangle in the chilled, meandering water. I wish that I had had the courage to ask him more about that old rowboat, whether he had ever taken it all the way across the river to Ontario, Canada, where he and his family had come from originally. I would have liked to have been in that boat with him rowing, his muscles taut under his shirt, his sleeves rolled to the elbow.

We wouldn’t have talked much. Father was a man of few words. But I would have listened to the ripples of the St. Clair lapping against the boat, the gentle cut of the oars through the water, the calls of birds overhead. It would have been enough just to be with him, to see his face turned to the sun, the light glinting off his spectacles, and to have seen traces of a smile on his lips.

1939, the year Father died, was a big year for America. It was the year the World’s Fair opened in New York, and the first shots of World War II were fired in Poland.  The Wizard of Oz premiered at Groman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood, California, and Lou Gehrig gave his final speech in Yankee Stadium. Theodore Roosevelt had his head dedicated on Mt. Rushmore, and John Steinbeck published The Grapes of Wrath. All in all, it was a monumental year, one I would have liked to have shared with my father. He did live long enough for Amelia Earhart to be officially declared dead after she disappeared over the Atlantic nearly two years earlier, but otherwise, he missed the rest of it.

No child should have to mourn a parent. And if she does, at least things about it should be clear. Unanswered questions that plague one for the rest of one’s life shouldn’t be part of the picture.

Death is normally simple, isn’t it? Someone has a heart attack, or dies in a car accident, or passes away in their sleep from old age. Everyone expects to die sometime, and they wonder how it will happen and why. And when it does, as sad as it is for those left behind, the wonder is laid to rest.

Most of the time.

1939 was a blur. I’d prefer to forget it, quite frankly. But 1938 was worth remembering, especially that summer we spent in Algonac with Grandmother Reid and the family. As long as I could remember, we’d spent every summer on the banks of the St. Clair. As it turned out, it would be my final summer in Algonac. Our last summer together. Of course, I didn’t know it at the time, and I’m glad. If I could have seen seven months into the future, if I had known then how the world as I knew it would all come crashing down, it would have spoiled everything.

Laurisa White Reyes is the author of twenty-one books, including the SCBWI Spark Award-winning novel The Storytellers and the Spark Honor recipient Petals. She is also the Senior Editor at Skyrocket Press and an English instructor at College of the Canyons in Southern California. Her next release, a non-fiction book on the Old Testament, will be released in August 2026 with Cedar Fort Publishing.

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SPOTLIGHT w/EXCERPT - PNR - PRIMAL DESTINY by Dania Voss

Fate that refuses to be ignored

Primal Destiny
by Dania Voss
Genre: Steamy Paranormal Romance

The secret is out. Shifters exist and live among humans.

Humans fall into two camps: Those who consider shifters monsters but manage to co-exist with them, and those who want to get close to them, relishing their power.

Tessa Cooper, a single mother devoted to her three-year-old daughter, is firmly in the first camp, doing her best to keep her biases to herself. But one look at Dario Kingston Renzetti, a wealthy lion shifter, and she senses her life will never be the same.

The moment Dario sees Tessa in his bar, he knows he’s found his fated mate – age difference be damned. Learning she wants nothing to do with shifters – especially romantically – is another matter altogether. But nobody said he wasn't determined.

Can Dario’s persistence convince Tessa he’s not hiding dark secrets that would reinforce her opinion of shifters, or will she deny them their primal destiny?

Pick up this steamy, age gap, rejected mate paranormal romance today and find out.

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Tessa was impressed by Dario’s and Fabrizio’s generosity. She now understood why Emelia had sung Dario’s praises since she’d started at the magazine two years ago.

Over delicious and filling appetizers, they helped Emelia calm down and organize what needed to be done in the next couple of hours before she and Fabrizio flew to Boston.

“I hate leaving you in the lurch for so many weeks though, Dario,” Emelia lamented. Then she glanced at Tessa with excitement in her eyes. “I know! Tessa should fill in for me while I’m gone. The idiots she worked for laid her off two days ago. That job was beneath her anyway. It would be perfect.”

Tessa’s head was spinning. In a matter of minutes, she had all of Emelia’s magazine system login credentials, had hugged her goodbye, and was now alone with Dario.

Who had removed his costume cape and was now gloriously shirtless.

She bolted out of her chair, needing to put some distance between them, and leaned against his desk. “Surely you can find someone else to fill in for Emelia. Someone already at the magazine? I appreciate her confidence in me, but I can’t work for you.”

Dario raised a brow from his seat at the conference table. Hunger flared in his hypnotic blue eyes. “Because of your shifter bias, as Emelia put it?”

A flush crept across Tessa’s cheeks as he called her out on her shifter issues. “I… I’ll admit shifters make me uncomfortable. I mean no offense to you and yours personally.”

Dario regarded her compassionately before he stood and walked toward her. He stopped in front of her, leaving some much-needed space between them. Still, she felt his body heat and her pulse ratcheted up.

“I appreciate that. Think of the practicalities, though. You’d be helping your friend when she needs you and finally getting work experience worthy of your Columbia MBA.”

Dario was right of course, but he did strange things to her emotions. Tessa felt out of control around him and that scared the shit out of her. “I could get that work experience anywhere. I don’t need to get it from your magazine. Why are you so insistent?” He stealthily got closer, making her tremble against her will, his unique scent driving her insane with desire.

He twirled a lock of her hair around his fingers, and Tessa’s body lit up with awareness. How did he do that?

“Because you, per sempre mio, are my mate.”

Tessa couldn’t bring herself to resist when Dario captured her lips in a hungry kiss. Their tongues tangled greedily, and her head swam. Their connection was electric. He tasted like heaven and sin, and she was hopelessly hooked.

They were both panting when they broke apart. “No. I can’t be your mate.” She whispered, but in her heart, she believed Dario was probably right.

“I know it doesn’t fit with your shifter bias narrative, but I and my lion knew the moment we saw you; the moment we smelled your delectable scent that you were our destiny. Our primal destiny.” Dario didn’t stop her when she moved away from him and rubbed her arms, nearly in a panic.

“You might be mistaken.”

“I’m absolutely certain and I think you are too. You feel the mating bond just as I do, don’t you?

If that’s what she felt toward him was called, she did. “No, I don’t. I’ll help Emelia out because she needs me, but we can’t ever kiss again. I mean it.”

The deep timbre of Dario’s laugh sent chills down Tessa’s spine.

“Oh, my sweet mate, but we will. Many more times. Because you’ll want to. You can count on it,” Dario declared as a wicked grin spread across his face.

Int’l bestseller and award-winning author Dania Voss writes compelling, sexy romance with personality, heat, and heart. Born in Rome, Italy and raised in Chicagoland, she creates stories with authentic, engaging characters. She loves anything pink and is a huge fan of 80s hair bands.

A favorite with romance readers, her debut novel “On the Ropes,” the first in her Windy City Nights series, became an international bestseller. Dania’s books have won multiple awards, and her work has been highlighted on NBC, ABC, CBS, and FOX. She has been featured in the Chicago Tribune, Southern Writers Magazine, and Chicago Entrepreneurs Magazine (selected as the #8 Top Chicago Author in 2021).

When she’s not writing, you can find Dania at a sporting event, a rock concert, or the movies (preferably a comedy).

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COVER REVEAL - ROMANTASY - BURN HER THEY SAID (The Anomalies of Ampara Deicra, #1) by Cherish Wright

Burn Her They Said

The Anomalies of Ampara Deicra, #1

by Cherish Wright

Publication date: June 26th 2026

Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Romance

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What would you endure for those you love?

Imperial Grand Witch Tasch was born with emotional influencing magic stronger and stranger than any other witch—an Anomaly the Emperor requires to manage his temper and that of those he interacts with under threat of harm to those she cares the most. He assigns five sorcerers–all Anomalies–each the strongest in their magical form. After years of enduring the hardship of serving the Emperor, they form an alliance intending to free every citizen.

One sorcerer changes everything.

Until a sorcerer named Varic is found to have magic surpassing Tasch’s Lead Guard, to which the Emperor sends him to serve in the Imperial Army, diverting from his claim to have assigned only the strongest sorcerers in the Continent to Tasch’s detail no longer being accurate.

Varic is made to strengthen his magic until even he cannot contain it, resulting in the worst magical catastrophe in history. Wielding power the Emperor covets, he sends Tasch to rehabilitate him with the false belief her magic alone can make him want to live. Tasch soon discovers Varic is another survivor of the same corrupt system and they forge a strong bond, free from the Emperor’s prying eyes for once in her life. In the months Varic requires for healing, they fall in love—a love so forbidden, the consequences are too dire to mention.

Oppression forms unbreakable bonds.

Increased attacks on the Imperial Palace require drastic measures, prompting the Emperor to assign Varic over Tasch’s detail. The problem being now that bordering lands are escalating their efforts to reclaim necessary resources the Emperor hoards, Varic’s presence makes it impossible for he and Tasch to hide their feelings for one another, as well as the signs her magic is fading drastically. And with no heir apparent due to the Emperor’s belief he will discover the answer to immortality, they need to be more careful than ever.

In an Empire where Dragons are revered like Gods, one power-hungry tyrant rules it all, while Tasch and her Guards .

Dragonfall meets A Discovery of Witches in this dark fantasy forbidden romance between Imperial Grand Witch Tasch whose magic is fading, and Varic, the sorcerer she saved years earlier who will stop at nothing to return the favor. Family, power, and Empire collide in the first of this series as everything Tasch has ever known begins to change. Will they find a way to save her without major consequence to the citizens, or will her magic fade entirely?

 

 

Author Info

Writer of Dark Romantic Gothic Fantasy with character driven stories with MC’s in their 30’s

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