Title	The Wages of Sin
Author	Alex Beecroft
ISBN#	978-1-60820-125-9 (ebook)
Release Date	January 2010
Paperback:	230 pages
Available At:	MlrBooks (ebook)

Charles Latham, wastrel younger son of the Earl of Clitheroe, returns home drunk from the theatre to find his father gruesomely dead. He suspects murder. But when the Latham ghosts turn nasty, and Charles finds himself falling in love with the priest brought in to calm them, he has to unearth the skeleton in the family closet before it ends up killing them all.

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Moonlight sucked the colour from damp grass and silvered rising wisps of dew. The deer-park lay dim and still to Charles’ left, receding to a black horizon. To his right, the Latham family chapel loomed dark against the lead-colored sky.

Sultan’s hooves whispered across the verge as Charles rode past the private graveyard’s wrought iron gate and averted his eyes from the white glimmer of Sir Henry’s mausoleum. It was one thing to laugh together over newspaper reports of vampires in Prussia while reclining in the comfortable lewdness of an actor’s garret—lamps blazing, the magic revealed as greasepaint, squalor and hard work—quite another to think of it here, beneath a slice of pewter moon, in a silence so huge it annihilated him.

A fox cried. Sultan snorted, ears flicking. His own heart racing, Charles gentled the horse over the gravel drive that swept up to the white Grecian pillars of the mansion. They turned towards the stable-yard—coach houses, stalls and groom’s quarters arranged about an enclosed square, entered by a short cobbled tunnel beneath the stable-master’s rooms. Both of them balked at the darkness beneath the arch, Sultan sidestepping as Charles dismounted. He wrenched his wrist, landed with a slap and slither loud enough to conceal the footsteps of a thousand walking corpses and stood propped against the horse’s strong shoulder, gathering himself. Sultan’s warm, straw-scented breath spiralled up comfortingly into the pre-dawn sky.

“Easy there, Sultan. Nothing to worry about.”

Thanking God that no one was watching his folly, Charles slung an arm about Sultan’s neck, took the hilt of his sword in the other hand. Emboldened by the feel of it, he urged Sultan forwards, towards his own stall and rest. (continue reading…)

Can ghosts influence the living? Can they make a man fall in love? Help him see things in different lights? William Maltese, AM Riley and Lex Valentine weave four tales that pose these questions and answer the question, LOVE ME DEAD?

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Ghost Hunters

Long Beach

AM Riley

“Ri-i-i-i-i-ta! Ri-i-i-i-i-ta!”

The voice echoed, disembodied, in the dark room. My hand tightened on the theater armrest, and something icy cold and damp touched me.

“Ah!”

“You want another beer?” whispered Rick, leaning toward me and touching the back of my hand again with the bottle. (continue reading…)

Through snow, storms and fire, love is strong and protects.  These three stories tell tales of lasting love, old love, family love and new love through it all.

Victor J. Banis, Patric Michael and P.A. Brown bring us three tales of love that endures and protects.  LORIN’S BACK by Victor J. Banis has a self-centered ghost that shows his past love that old friends can burn fire bright as lovers.  Family love and a new love conquer the glowing hell during a storm in A LIGHT OF DIFFERENT MOON by Patric Michael.  And P.A. Brown’s ghost shines his love through the snow to protect and guide a new love to his partner left behind in ANGEL LIGHT.  Through snow, storms and fire, love is strong and protects.

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The first time, he came for cocktails. I suppose that should not have seemed too surprising. After all, there were a dozen other people there for the same purpose and, also, ostensibly to meet my fiancée, Margo Sellers, although most of them had known her longer than I had.

So the addition of another male guest, even an unexpected one, shouldn’t have been altogether alarming. There’s usually at least one uninvited guest at every such function. However, there is nothing quite so likely to create a sensation at a cocktail party as the appearance of a male guest in the raw.

For one thing, there is the breach of etiquette to consider. It implies either a gauche ignorance on the part of the guest, or inadequate information on the part of the host. For another thing, it tends to discomfort the other guests who, at the very least, are certain to feel overdressed.

“Of all the nerve,” I thought angrily, staring in astonishment at the naked body posed in the doorway. Granted, it was quite a spectacular body, lean and hard and deliciously hung. It was annoying nonetheless. “And just like Lorin, too,” I thought. (continue reading…)