Is The Laughing Skull A Horror Or Mystery Novel?

Mariam, a woman from a deeply religious background, begins to unravel when a masked stranger discovers her secret desires and exploits them. Her life with James, her possessive and emotionally distant husband, is already strained. The blackmailer slowly introduces Mariam to sexual submission, forcing her into erotic, humiliating tasks. Mariam is terrified, but deeply aroused. She obeys, not out of love or loyalty, but because something inside her has been craving this. Her body begins betraying her beliefs. As her marriage begins to crumble, a shocking twist unfolds: the blackmailer doesn't just want control. He wants her completely and he’s watching everything.

One night a young boy unable to cultivate falls into a cave and changes his destiny forever. Orphaned, unable to cultivate, ridiculed by all, the boy who fought with bones has a bone to pick with all those who wronged him and a mystery to uncover.

Meet Esmerelda Sleuth. Sleuth is her name and investigating is her game. (Paranormal Investigating, that is.) Esmerelda makes a good living as an investigator in a rather progressive firm. She lives a stable and sensible life until she meets Lance; an old money "hottie" who works for a real estate firm next to her building. After accepting an invitation for a weekend getaway party, she quickly discovers that Lance has a secret. He is wealthy. That part is true. And, yes, he's procured a job as a realtor in the building next door. His secret is that he belongs to an underground society of humans who didn't abandon their connection to magic centuries ago when religion declared it evil and he has traveled through time specifically to find her and bring her back to his time to marry him. If that isn't enough of a far fetched tale to absorb, he informs her that she was born in his time to a family belonging to that same secret society and was promised in marriage to him as an infant. When enemies who didn't want to see the union of families take place made attempts on her life, her parents sent her into the future and erased her memories of them as a precaution. Possessing virtually no belief in magic, ghosts, psychics, time travel, etc., it takes some doing on Lance's part to convince her to believe his story and go back with him. When she does, the lies, deceit and attempts on her life start all over again. Will she escape emotionally and physically unscathed? "The Other Side Of the Mirror" is a steamy-paranormal-romance- mystery-thriller and book one of the Esmerelda Sleuth series.

10 years earlier, Jason drives down a dark deserted road on his way home from a birthday party, when he sees a red haired woman walking along side the road. Picking her up, he finds out that she is not what he thinks she is. Instead, he ends up losing his soul. Spending the next 10 years of his life looking over his shoulder, he eventually comes to the realization that the only way to get his soul back is to kill her. Does he find and kill her or does she haunt him for eternity. Find out in The Soul Eater.

With her enemies in pre-civil war Virginia still seeking her death, Esmerelda is forced to return to the future only days after wedding Lance. Because it was necessary to fake her death in order to stop her enemies from following her to the future, her new husband, Lance, was forced to stay behind. He’d placed a magic box for them to communicate until he found a way to safely be with her beneath the floorboards of the house. Now, she must find it. A task that is easier said than done! “The Magic Box” is book two of the exciting paranormal-romance-mystery-thriller Esmerelda Sleuth Series

There are monsters in this world. And they used to be us. Now it's time to euthanize to survive in a hospice where Emily, a woman haunted by her past, only wants to do her job and be the best mother possible. Post-infection Chicago. Christmas. Inside The Hospice, Emily and her fellow nurses do their rounds. Here, men and women live out their final days in comfort, segregated from society, and are then humanely terminated before fate turns them into marrow-craving monsters known as ‘Smilers.’ Outside these imposing walls, rabid protesters swarm with signs, caught up in the heat of their hatred. Emily, a woman haunted by her past, only wants to do her job and be the best mother possible. But in a world where mortality means nothing, where guns are drawn in fear and nobody seems safe anymore – at what cost will this pursuit come? And through it all, the soon to be dead remain silent, ever smiling. Such is their curse. It won't be long before that snow-speckled ground will be salted by blood. ©️ Crystal Lake Publishing