Book reviews, author interviews, and more! Contact me at kellysmithreviews (at) gmail (dot) com for more information!
I also write books as USA Today bestselling author Lily Luchesi.
Unaware of the powers lurking within her, Caitlin
opens a door between worlds, allowing a fallen angel to pass through the veil
of darkness into the light.
Attaching himself to Caitlin, he feeds off her fear to
build his strength, intending to kill her, in order to prevent the door through
which he can be forced back into the darkness from opening.
Aware of Malfeil’s return, Ezriel, the angel who cast
him down by divine order, must be the one to send him back into the darkness.
He appears to Caitlin, calling upon her to ask her to help him. But between his
visits—causing her to have missing time—and Malfeil doing whatever he can to
frighten her, Caitlin begins to question her sanity.
Realizing what she must do, there’s just one problem.
An emergency room doctor, with a penchant for house calls, believes her
unstable and is seeking to have her institutionalized.
Now she must evade the doctor while seeking out
Ezriel…and all before Malfeil kills her.
* * *
Author Bio
E.
H. James has always been fascinated by the unexplained. Wanting to delve deeper
into the unknown, James has read and researched in the areas of parapsychology
and metaphysics, for the past 40 years.
Taking
those first hand experiences, involving the unexplained, James has woven the
real and imaginary together into stories of the strange and bizarre.
James'
stories range from the paranormal and horror, to fantasy and science fiction,
from short stories and novellas, to 100K+ novels.
In this standalone spin-off of the Paranormal Detectives Series, we discover the true horrors during Hitler's reign.
In World War Two, not all monsters were human.
Male siren Sean Wireman was ostracized from his small village in Israel in the sixteenth century, forced to wander the world until he settled in America in the 1920's. Since he doesn't age like a normal person, he was fit to fight in World War Two, to defend the heritage he spent his whole life running from.
Seventy years later, after he has lived a whole other life since Hitler was defeated, from attending law school to becoming a bona fide rock star, the monsters the Nazis released upon the Jews in concentration camps have returned, and he is the only one who can destroy them.
But can he save his people once again, or will this fight take a deadly toll?
I was freezing. As in limbs numb cold. I woke up in a bed, and dread filled me at the sight around me. I was back in Theresienstadt, and all around me were the frozen corpses of the other inmates. Ice and frost formed on their eyeballs and eyelashes. Their hair was frozen stiff, what they had of it, anyway. Lips blue, skin white as the snow the fell outside.
I got up, and had nowhere to walk. Unless I tread in my bare feet over frozen cadavers, I was stuck, trapped there to freeze to death. Taking a breath that burned my lungs from the cold, I took a step, feeling unmoving, frozen stiff limbs beneath my skin. Brittle, frozen bones cracked under my weight and I felt sicker than ever when I reached the end of the room.
The boy, the one I had given my coat to, was standing in the doorway, still wearing my coat. He was dead, but moving nonetheless. His sightless, frozen eyes stared at me and through me. “You didn’t try hard enough to save me,” he said, his voice naught but a whisper.
Fear made me move, and I shoved the ice-covered zombie aside, only to watch his body shatter like glass when it hit the floor. Blood exploded everywhere from the force of impact, so warm it began to melt the ice that was once a poor little Jewish boy, too young to even shave yet.
I let out a cry and ran out the door, not wanting to see anymore. Outside the door was the old man who had had his skull cracked in by the Nazi that night of the inspection. He was also made of ice, but his head was steadily pumping blood, slowly melting his cold exterior.
“You just watched me die,” he said, his voice sounding just like the boy’s.
“There was nothing I could do!” I protested.
The man lunged at me, but he was too slow and he slammed himself into the wall after I moved out of the way. I didn’t stick around to see if he was still moving or not. I needed to find a way out.
Without any more interruptions, I reached the main hall and opened the door to escape. Standing in the way was my old friend Jakob Edelstein. He was emaciated, but not frozen. His bare arm showed the tattoo that was unique to Auschwitz. His eyes were sunken and blackened, his teeth had mostly fallen out. Oh yes, and one side of his head was blown in, just a large crater like a cracked three-minute egg. Instead of yolk and butter and salt leaking from the crater, though, there was splattered gray matter and blood. Off to one side were three people I didn’t know, but I still knew who they were: Jakob’s wife, mother, and son. All three had identical holes in their heads.
“You escaped, Sean. I didn’t,” Jakob said, his voice low and dark, nothing like the man I knew. “Why did you deserve to live and not me?”
“I didn’t!” I said, tears coming to my eyes. “I didn’t deserve it, but I’m not the one who gets to choose who lives and who dies! Don’t you think I would have traded my life for yours in a second if I could have?”
“Not good enough!” Jakob lunged for me, and I grappled with him. He was stronger than our frozen brethren inside the camp walls. I pushed him down to the ground and watched in mute horror as his head shattered like porcelain, splattering his brains all over the pure white snow.
Lily Luchesi is the award-winning author of the bestselling Paranormal Detectives Series, published by Vamptasy Publishing. She also has short stories included in multiple bestselling anthologies, and a successful dark erotica retelling of Dracula. She is also the editor and curator of the bestselling Damsels of Distress anthology, which puts emphasis on strong female characters in horror and paranormal fiction.
She was born in Chicago, Illinois, and now resides in Los Angeles, California. Ever since she was a toddler her mother noticed her tendency for being interested in all things "dark". At two she became infatuated with vampires and ghosts, and that infatuation turned into a lifestyle. She is also an out member of the LGBT+ community. When she's not writing, she's going to rock concerts, getting tattooed, watching the CW, or reading manga. And drinking copious amounts of coffee.
It's Cyber Monday, and I decided at almost the very last minute to do a Cyber Monday sale. Up for grabs is the ebook of my most recent Darren Dash release, An Other Place, a sci-fi novel like no other, that (much to my surprise, because it's a WEIRD little number!) has had lots of great critical reviews and found an ever-growing and enthusiastic fan base. It's a strange, disturbing, darkly funny story about a guy who winds up in a nightmarish, fantastical city, where the rules of our world are turned on their head. Definitely NOT for children!
For 48 hours only, from 00.00amMonday to 11.00pmon Tuesday (PST in the States, GMT in the UK), the ebook of An Other Place will be on sale on Amazon USA for just $0.99 (a third of its normal price), and Amazon UK for just £0.99 (half its normal price). This is the first time I've offered this book at a reduced price, and I don't do sales like this very often, so act quick if you want to nab a bargain! Here are the buying links.
Cover design by Rue Volley using stock art from Bigstock
In World War Two, not all monsters were human. Male siren Sean Wireman was ostracized from his small village in Israel in the sixteenth century, forced to wander the world until he settled in America in the 1920's. Since he doesn't age like a normal person, he was fit to fight in World War Two, to defend the heritage he spent his whole life running from. Seventy years later, after he has lived a whole other life since Hitler was defeated, from attending law school to becoming a bona fide rock star. In 2017, the monsters the Nazis released upon the Jews in concentration camps have returned, and he is the only one who can destroy them. But can he save his people once again, or will this fight take a deadly toll?
EXCERPT:
I have no idea how long I stood there after I screamed, but I imagine it wasn’t long before I could hear voices coming closer and closer to where I knelt by the corpse. Panic began to set in then. It was one thing to have sex out of wedlock. It was safe to assume that it was an entirely different kettle of fish to have murdered your partner whilst you were having premarital sex! Sure, I hadn’t meant to do it, but who the Hell would have believed me? I wouldn’t have, had I been asked to believe something so outlandish.
What was I to do? Where was I to go? We were surrounded by barren land beyond our farm. If I were to run, I would be overtaken immediately. And running would make me look guilty. Even guiltier than sitting here beside a fresh cadaver. Of course, if I dressed, perhaps they’d think it was someone else and I had simply found her body here. It was worth a shot, and teenage me didn’t think that someone had seen me leave the house after her.
Teenage me was an idiot and could go fuck himself, if you ask my opinion.
I dressed, clothes were simpler then and I had no need of zippers and complex belts and shoes. We hadn’t progressed from sandals at that point. Despite my quick thinking, I was still distraught, and as soon as I heard the voices even closer I let out the anguished cry that had been sitting, painfully, in my breast. It was followed by a plea for help.
Now that I think about it, maybe I am evil. To have such deep artifice at such a young age and during such a traumatic moment, maybe Angelica should have killed me when she had the chance.
Anyway…
The doors to the barn were wrenched open and I could see everyone entering, silhouetted by their torches. My dad and her dad were leading them all. No women were present. Which was good, because if things went south, I wouldn’t have wanted my mother to see me like that.
“Dad! Dad, help!” I called. “It’s Gail, something happened…” My panic and confusion didn’t need to be faked: I had no idea what had happened. And I was terrified.
They came closer, and the din was suddenly silenced as they took one look at Gail, laying there with blood and little else on her body. I wished I had covered her: it was shameful to let her body be seen this way, but if I had they would have known right away that I was the culprit. Artifice was not a strong point for anyone back in those days, but I seemed to have a knack for it anyway.
The pure silence lasted for only a moment before there was a tortured scream. It came from David, Gail’s father. Thankfully not dropping his torch, he lunged forward only to be held back by my father.
“Sean, what happened?” my father asked me.
“I don’t know. I—I saw her leave earlier and when I went outside to get a drink I saw she wasn’t around but our barn doors were open so I went to close them and I found her…” I swallowed a large gulp of air, having been talking too fast to breathe while still crying.
“Liar!” David cried. “It was you! It had to be you! Everyone else was inside!”
“No matter who it was...what happened to her?” my father asked, looking at her emaciated corpse. “That’s not normal.”
No, it’s not, I thought, panicking. It wasn’t normal, so what the good fuck was I?
“Monster!” David hissed. “What did you do to my daughter?”
I couldn’t answer even if I did want to, because I knew as little as he did. I was sick inside, and frightened of myself. I wondered if I should go to a rabbi myself, get diagnosed. Was it a demon? Did I need to be purged? Or was I just...a monster?
Trailer:
Lily Luchesi is the award-winning author of the bestselling Paranormal Detectives Series, published by Vamptasy Publishing. She also has short stories included in multiple bestselling anthologies, and a successful dark erotica retelling of Dracula. She also edited and curated the bestselling horror anthology Damsels of Distress, which focused on strong female characters within the genre.
She was born in Chicago, Illinois, and now resides in Los Angeles, California. Ever since she was a toddler her mother noticed her tendency for being interested in all things "dark". At two she became infatuated with vampires and ghosts, and that infatuation turned into a lifestyle. She is also an out member of the LGBT+ community. When she's not writing, she's going to rock concerts, getting tattooed, watching the CW, or reading manga. And drinking copious amounts of coffee.
Once upon a time, there was a girl who didn't believe in monsters.
Until now.
Echo Midnight Navarri has reached her seventeenth birthday--alone.
It's been well over a year since her twin, Midnight, slipped from her hand into a ravine shrouded in blue mist deep in the Brazilian jungle.
The locals refer it to as the veil.
Echo believes it is a nightmare.
One that she can't seem to escape.
Her parents, world-famous archaeologists, Peter and Alice Navarri, stayed behind after sending Echo to live with her aunt in a rainy little town at the edge of the world known as Port Royal.
The search continues, but the mystery remains.
Echo continues to dream as the memories of the events leading up to that fateful night start to reveal themselves to her.
Piece by piece, bit by bit.
Exposing the truth and forcing in the light where once there was only darkness.
Despite everything, she has made friends, even a new boy named Asher Tiberious Westbrook the third, a self-proclaimed warlock who doesn't mind that Echo tends to shy away from anyone who wants to be close to her.
But she fears intimacy after losing her sister, especially with him.
Not Asher.
Thorn Vega.
A boy whose terrifying secrets may outweigh her own.
I received an ARC of this book from the author in exchange for an honest review.
What. The. Fuck.
I just finished 13WTM2 at 9:15 this evening, just three hours before release, so I could make sure to get my review in. Things got busy, so I read 40% in one breathless sitting. And I do mean breathless.
So, please read 13WTM (book one) before reading this, or you'll be hopelessly lost with this book. If you already read book one, you're going to need this book immediately.
So we have our cast of characters from book one (the whole Navarri family, the Vega family, Mattie, Bri, and Daniel, as well as some other minor characters), but we also have a new character to contend with: Asher Westbook the Third. Asher might be the fly in the ointment for Echo and Thorn, or he could be the person Echo needed in her life. Time will tell.
As usual, Persephone Vega (the sexy Thorn's aunt) is a real C-U-Next-Tuesday, and on the opposite end of the spectrum, Echo's aunt Luna is so delightful, she's a ray of bright sunshine in a very dark narrative. She has her own past that's explored a bit more here in this book, and that is just a little heartbreaking. But it was great knowing more about my favorite character! And Eyota...is it sad that I'm kinda crushing on him?
I want to talk so much about Echo and Thorn. But I can't. Because once I get started talking about a book I love I get all spoilery, and I don't want to do that to you. Thorn is so dark, so mysterious, and yet so vulnerable. I still can't figure out if he's a hero or could be Echo's downfall. Or...could she be his?
I like Asher, I hope he sticks around a while. He's kind, childlike, but magical (literally!). I think he'd be a great friend to Echo.
I loved that Bri and Mattie's relationship got some page time, too, and hope to see a lot more of them in the series.
Now, the plot twist. Oh my God the freakin' plot twist! Actually, there are many twists. But THE twist, literally the very last sentence of this book. Just...I don't have words. I'm still processing the book right now, so forgive me if I sound unprofessional at all.
I honestly think that these books are the best things to happen to young adult literature since Harry Potter. I'm invested in each and every character, even the ones I hate (looking at you, Persephone). The emotions are so raw and real, I felt like I had fallen through the book like Alice down the rabbit hole. Rue Volley's words grip you into their spell and don't let you go, even after the book is closed. This world is so real, so tangible, so darkly beautiful, I want to stay there forever.
So beware when you enter Port Royal...you might not be able to escape.
