Showing results by publisher "Crossroad Press" in All Categories

When you first enter The Halloween Store, things seem normal. Fun and frightful decorations, ghastly costumes and masks of the season, and bags of candy galore. Then, as you travel farther into its shadowy depths, things begin to change. The air smells of damp autumn leaves and candle-scorched pumpkin. The shelves of All Hallows’ Eve fare grow darker and more disturbing. Strange and unsettling things of Halloweens past and present lurk amid the cobwebs and dust....

Dead Lines is about a young writer and artist type named Jack Rowan, who lives in NYC and whose career never took off. His life is in the toilet. He's broken up with his girlfriend and is crashing on the couch in the loft of his more successful photographer friend, Glen, while Glen is off in LA on a shoot.

PI Truman Smith has become a loner after failing to find his sister Jan during a recent search of Galveston Island. He jogs on the Seawall, plays with his cat, and reads lots of Faulkner books. He is pulled from his self-imposed retirement when his old high school football buddy Dino asks him to find a young girl named Sharon. As Tru begins his investigation, dead bodies begin to appear and Tru himself is attacked.

TM has managed to fall into a comfortable routine as the (acting) Supreme Archmage of Earth. More hero than villain these days, he’s recruited to a shadowy black ops team with a shocking mission: assassinate Helios: The Sun King, ruler of Tomorrow Island. Gary immediately twigs to the fact he’s the fall guy even as he has his own score to settle with Helios. Joining him will be a number of fan favorite characters as well as several new additions to the surreal world of the Supervillainy Saga.

Meet Selena Goode. She's an herbalist, she runs a small museum in Salem, and she's a practicing solitary Wiccan. She likes her life, quiet as it is. Then Brian Gottschalk comes barreling into it with the force of an Atlantic storm. He works for a ghost-hunting TV show, and he's in Salem to find a story. He's witty, charming...and a total jerk. Selena has no problem with ghosts. She does, however, have a problem with big-city Brian. It will take all his charm, plus the silent advice of a caring ghost, to make Selena realize that maybe, being big-city isn't so bad after all.

Rick's Diner is owned and run by four long-time friends, Rick, Rachel, Logan and Macy. It's a dream life for them, until a mystery comes along. That's when Rachel's sleuthing senses kick in, and when that happens, all heck breaks loose.

In the AUTUMNCROW HIGH series, author Cameron Chaney takes you back to a town where every night is Halloween, while paying tribute to the young adult horror boom of the 1990s.

He promises them his love, then kills without mercy. Each seduction ends in death—each victim, murdered in bed. Detective Jack Cordesman has vowed to unravel the demented mystery, to enter the heart of a maniac's temptation...where desire demands the ultimate price.

His touch can heal or harm. His fate is solitary. His agony belongs to us all…He was born on a day of pain: November 22, 1963. He came of age in agony: that moment of tragedy when fun-loving rock-and-roll deejay Paul Handler discovered the inexplicable power in his own hands. It is the power to make the wounded whole again. The power to make the lame walk and to heal the sick. It is a power that will sap his soul and plunge him into the world of a famous faith healer. It is a power that can turn to rage, even murder. It is a gift that makes Paul Handler a living, breathing human sacrifice. For thousands of years, a secret cabal has guarded the lineage to which Paul is heir — scapegoats who have been forced to bear humanity's anguish upon themselves. Now, while the cabal searches for him, and one man seeks to destroy him, Paul makes a lonely, frightening journey to the core of his identity and to his destiny … to all the pain his soul can bear, to all the redemption he can give, to the freedom that is death.

They've been with us forever - prowling the smoky roadhouse dives that are their watering holes and hunting grounds. Predators, lurking amidst the human herd. Changing shape at will. Lusting for blood and meat they are gods in the wild. Gods in disguise. And they feed on the spark inside each of us. Syd was just another lonely working class guy singing the steel-town blues. Then he met Nora. She's sensual, Erotic. Amoral.

San Francisco stunt double Darcy Lott specializes in creating the illusion of serious danger. But when her lawyer brother calls and asks her to wine and dine a mysterious client, the danger is no illusion. Darcy takes an instant liking to the client, Karen Johnson, but there are too many unanswered questions. Karen claims to be getting a divorce, but Darcy’s brother Gary doesn’t handle divorces.

Donovan DeChance is a collector of ancient manuscripts and books, a practicing mage, and a private investigator. He is also a very private man, and he is in love. When he invites his partner and lover, Amethyst, for a quiet dinner, she has no idea of his true intention. Donovan has planned a sharing - a vision that will give her the keys to his early life - the origins of his power - and a lot more than she bargained for. The story leads to the town of Rookwood in 1842.

1888, Whitechapel. Jack the Ripper terrorizes prostitutes and baffles Scotland Yard; 1888, London. Annie Oakley thrills audiences of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show with her expert marksmanship. The Ripper may have picked the wrong target in this fascinating retelling of Jack the Ripper's reign of terror...with a western twist. This blend of fact and fiction will keep you resisting to pause long after bedtime as the story unfolds in gaslit, Victorian London.

Circling high over Rockefeller Center is a peregrine falcon, the most awesome of the flying predators. She awaits a signal from her falconer. It is given: The bird attacks, plummeting from the sky at nearly 200 miles an hour, striking a young woman and killing her instantly. By chance, newscaster Pamela Barrett witnesses the slaying. Her impassioned account of it on television that evening thrills the falconer - a brilliant madman who identifies with his deadly bird and, through her, seeks catharsis. He becomes fascinated with Pam and enmeshes her in a bizarre and deadly scheme.

Earth is home to us, but to others it is a prison planet, where alien convicts are imprisoned in human bodies. Four tales by veteran Cthulhu Mythos authors explore the collisions between humans and unwilling visitors among us.

There have been several editions of this book. Now it comes to you with five additional poems that have been found in recent years. It is believed there is only one poem that remains lost. In the Acrostics section you will find: “Fantasy Crossroads”, “Pesh-Tlen”, “The Skull of HPL”, and “Maggot”.

When an evil artifact offers you the power to turn into a monster, agreeing would be stupid. Mirabelle isn't stupid. She also doesn't have much choice. Her friends all have superpowers that let them go on exciting adventures. Mirabelle's superpower is to be made of glass, and walking across a room is dangerous enough.

Lucas dreams it every night: the rock show, flashy, ear-pounding, chaotic. The frothed-up mob that storms the stage. The death of his daughter Kristen, trampled in a sudden surge of tribal frenzy. In Lucas Ellington's eyes, the audience is blameless. His child was murdered by the main event - Whip Hand, the ultimate party band. The arena disaster in which Kristen was killed causes Whip Hand to disband, but the individual musicians are still out there, alive and kicking. Not for long.

Jonathan Kendrick's grandmother lives in the upstate New York village of Felicity Grove. And whenever something of a criminal nature occurs, Grandma Anna is right in the thick of it. This time, the senior sleuth needs Jonathan's help to clear an innocent man's name. Zebediah Crummler, the cemetery caretaker, has been arrested for killing a member of the powerful Harnes family.... Because of his childlike nature, Crummler is placed in an asylum, where his inconsistent tales and ramblings prove difficult for Jonathan and Anna to decipher. But they must be careful.

Award-winning author Nancy Kilpatrick's first collection of her vampire stories is an eclectic mix that presents the undead in all its various manifestations. Chelsea Quinn Yarbro says "Nancy Kilpatrick creates mosaics," and this compilation reflects that scope in stories exposing the dark side of the desire for passion, longevity, power, creativity and control.