Showing results by narrator "Heather Masters" in All Categories

I never was a badass. Or a slut, a junkie, or a stoner, like they told me I was. I was just a kid looking for something good, something that felt like love. I was a wannabe in a Levi's jean jacket. Anybody could see that. Except my mother. And the staff at Straight. I was 13 when I ran away from my abusive home. After a month in a shelter for kids - the best month of my childhood - my mother heard about Princess Di and First Lady Nancy Reagan's visit to this place that was working miracles with troubled teens. Straight Inc., it was called.

Hannah Hickok is at a crossroads in her life. She’s single, out of a job, and living in an apartment she absolutely hates in a suburb of Detroit. All that changes when she receives a registered letter and finds out she’s inherited a performance town. Casper Creek is located in Kentucky, on top of a small mountain, and is fashioned after notorious towns from the old west. Workers dress up, man the saloon, and put on a variety of performances several times a day. A city girl, Hannah is out of her element. She’s determined to give it a shot, though.

Some people bomb auditions. Sadie Ramirez throws up during her tryouts on TV show America's Top Talent. Her performance is so bad, it earns her a fairy godmother through the Magical Alliance's Pitiful Damsel Outreach Program. Enter Chrysanthemum Everstar: a gum-chewing, cell-phone-carrying, high-heel-wearing fairy godmother in training.

This genre-bending debut collection of stories constructs eight eerie worlds full of desire, wisdom, and magic blooming amidst decay. In stories that beckon and haunt, Fruiting Bodies ranges confidently from the fantastical to the gothic to the uncanny, as it follows characters—mostly queer, mostly women—on the precipice of change.

Holly Cross is counting down the hours to the moment her foster brother’s trial begins. Collin has haunted her footsteps - and her dreams - for 15 years, and she wants nothing more than to put that pain and fear behind her and build a new life. But before that can happen, she has to confront the man who tried to destroy her. DA Shannon Marx is known for her skill and force of personality in a courtroom, and she's determined to put Collin Wells where he belongs: behind bars and away from everyone she loves. But Collin Wells is unlike any defendant she's ever come up against in court.

Pranking mastermind Doe and her motley band of Weston girls are determined to win the century-long war against Winfield Academy before the clock ticks down on their senior year. But when their headmistress announces that The Weston School will merge with its rival the following year, their longtime feud spirals into chaos. To protect the school that has been her safe haven since her parents’ divorce, Doe puts together a plan to prove once and for all that Winfield boys and Weston girls just don’t mix, starting with a direct hit at Three, Winfield’s boy king and her nemesis.

Hannah Hickok didn’t know she was a witch, but life is certainly wickedly delightful for her now. As the owner and proprietress of Casper Creek, a cosplay western town, she’s found her niche in life...and love in Cooper Wyatt. It’s not all smooth sailing for the couple, though, because Casper Creek was built on a magical nexus. That means evil of all kinds is drawn to the property...and Hannah in turn.

Eight-year-old Joon has no time to grieve her parents’ sudden death. Ripped from the security of a loving family, she endures horrific abuse in a system intended to protect her. After four years of torture and her foster brother’s attempt to steal her innocence, she runs away to Philadelphia’s poverty-stricken streets. Coming of age while homeless, Joon must fight just to stay alive. Despite the danger and desperation that surrounds her, she clings to her dream of offering the world something positive. But kind acts don’t put food in her belly as she searches for love and a place to call home.

"I should have tried harder." Those final words are scrawled across a note that’s been pinned to a man's remains. Pulled to a crime scene in the middle of the night, Detective Marx struggles to unravel the mystery behind a message written by the victim. A suicide note...or an admission of guilt? Before he can discover the truth, what seems to be a random act of violence becomes something far more dangerous. With very little evidence and even less time, Detective Marx searches for the common thread between the victims, but his efforts might put him directly in the killer’s path.

Collin Wells is no ordinary foster brother. He is evil wrapped in human skin - a living, breathing nightmare, and when he steps back into Holly's life, she's faced with a choice: trust the people who claim they can keep her safe, or trust the instincts that have kept her alive for the past 14 years. As the threads of her life begin to unravel around her - leaving her terrified, displaced from her home, and caught in the middle of a drug battle - she can't help but wonder if she made the wrong choice.

He’ll get what he came for, no matter how many bodies he has to step over. Collin Wells is relentless and ruthless, and he’ll stop at nothing to get what he wants: his foster sister, the girl who always manages to slip through his fingers. Holly’s foster brother has haunted her footsteps for years - taunting her, toying with her - and until recently, she never dared to stop running and build a life for herself. Now, everyone she loves is in danger. How can she protect the people she loves when her foster brother comes to collect?

Tess Eckhart isn't crazy. She's not suffering from psychosis. She and Luka Williams are part of The Gifting. Before they can find out what that means, the man with all the answers turns up dead. The only thing he left behind? A few patient files that lead to the nation's most lawless city.

I'd been living on the streets for around eight months before I lost count. It wasn't easy, but it was still preferable to what I had to deal with at home. In all that time, unable to trust anyone, I had been alone (I knew from experience that people always failed you). Then one day, while out searching for food, I stumbled upon this mangy dog being attacked. It wasn't a big deal to help him, but then he ended up saving my life which is when I realized there was something special about him: Muttface wasn't a normal dog - he was crazy intelligent. I'm talking Mensa levels. And he wasn't an accident either, having recently escaped from a mysterious lab.

Luka isn't dead. He's not beyond saving. Tess knows because she saw him with her own eyes. After what she saw, she's sure of one thing: If they don't rescue him soon, Luka won't be Luka anymore. If only she could convince the other members of the hub. They're not sure Tess saw what she claims she saw. And they're preoccupied by the fact that their kind is being systematically eradicated. Answers lie in an ancient prophecy, one that revolves around a 17-year-old girl who never asked for any of this.

In a world where nothing supernatural exists, Tess Eckhart is positive she's going crazy. After her complete freak-out at a high school party, her family is too. So much that they pack their bags and move across the country, next to a nationally-renowned facility for the mentally ill. Tess is determined to fit in at her new school, despite the whispers and stares. But when it comes to Luka Williams, a reluctantly popular boy in her class, she's unused to a stare that intense.

A leather-bound journal. A single father. A woman in pursuit of freedom. Garner Bradford, heir to the troubled Bradford Shipping empire, doesn't know much about babies. But he's going to have to learn fast, because he's just become a single father to his newborn daughter. As he confesses through his journal entries, he's not entirely sure how to keep a newborn alive, whether or not he'll ever patch together his shattered heart, or how to forgive himself for his mistakes.

Hannah Hickok thought she knew what to expect from life…and then she moved to Casper Creek. She didn’t know what she would find in the cosplay western town. Turns out, she found herself. Hannah is a witch, and she’s learning more every single day.

It feels like a fairy tale when Alberta ”Bert” Monte receives a letter addressed to “Countess Alberta Montebianco” at her Hudson Valley, New York, home that claims she’s inherited a noble title, money, and a castle in Italy. While Bert is more than a little skeptical, the mystery of her aristocratic family’s past, and the chance to escape her stressful life for a luxury holiday in Italy, is too good to pass up.

Spring has hit Casper Creek. That means construction on Hannah Hickok’s future home with her fiancé Cooper Wyatt is finally commencing, and work on the new restaurant in town is getting close to completion. Everything should be perfect in her world.

Holly’s quiet evening at the investigative agency takes a curious turn when a frantic woman shows up on the doorstep after closing with a tale about a missing prostitute.