How Long Is 520 Fifth?

On their third anniversary, Finley had all their friends over to celebrate. Claire walked in to find him on one knee, proposing to his childhood friend, Renee. "What is going on?" she asked. He shrugged like it was nothing. "It's just a game of truth or dare." But it wasn't until he shoved her down the stairs, causing her to miscarry, that she finally woke up. She'd given him five chances. Now? She was done. "Finley, it's over. Let's get divorced."

When I was five, Mom and Dad took my little brother to the city for kindergarten and left me in a mountain village with my grandfather, who had dementia. Before they left, Dad told me to take care of Grandpa, watch the house, and protect the yard. Mom said I was the older brother, so I had to be sensible. They said that once they made enough money, they'd bring me to the city too. I didn't want to let go. I clung to Mom's leg and begged through tears, "Mom, please. I don't want to be separated from you." My tears and snot smeared across her expensive dress. She scolded me for being difficult, slapped my bottom until it swelled, and struck my face hard enough to break the skin. In the end, they didn't soften. They left and never came back. Three months later, when I was close to starving, I called Mom and begged her to send me something to eat. She snapped, irritated, "A boy who talks about being hungry every day? Why don't you just starve, then? How can there be nothing to eat in the countryside? "Your father and I are under so much pressure in the city. Can't you be sensible for once?" Her words came true. That winter, I starved to death. Five years later, Mom pushed open the rotten door. "Miles," she called. "Mom's back."

Eidolon Avenue: Where the secretly guilty go to die. One building. Five floors. Five doors per floor. Twenty-five nightmares feeding the hunger lurking between the bricks and waiting beneath the boards. The sequel to Eidolon Avenue: The First Feast (“a great read...powerful and jarring” - Cemetery Dance) returns to the voracious Eidolon as it savors The Second Feast. A narcoleptic man in apartment 2A battles a vengeful past determined to rob him of everything as he runs from the barbaric disaster of a delusional love. A woman in 2B, reinventing herself to please a callous boyfriend, discovers the horrors that wait in the shadows of her self-renovation. The man in 2C, a teacher at the nearby Catholic girl’s school, collapses beneath the brutal consequences of his lecherous desires. An older woman in 2D, after decades dedicated to the church, is cornered at last by the grisly carnage beating at the hollow center of her faith. And a college student in 2E, hungry to escape an ignored life of invisible anonymity, finds herself captured between the pages of a ravenous book. All thrown into their own private hell as every cruel choice, every drop of spilled blood, every silent, complicit moment of cowardice is remembered, resurrected and relived to feed the ancient evil that lives on Eidolon Avenue. ©️ Crystal Lake Publishing

I had broken up with Lorenzo five times, and Gianna had always been the reason. Lorenzo had used our wedding fund to buy Gianna a penthouse in Tribeca. Each time I made up my mind to leave him, he would break down in tears and beg for another chance, promising that it would never happen again. Staring into his love-struck eyes, I always gave him another chance. Today was the day I would pick out my wedding dress and set our wedding date. I waited in the bridal shop from noon until dark, but Lorenzo was nowhere to be found. At ten that night, his friend, Marco, called me. “Naomi, Lorenzo’s in the emergency room. Come quickly–” I cut him off. “Is it because of Gianna again?” Marco stammered an explanation, but exhaustion washed over me. I closed my eyes before uttering in a flat tone, “I won’t be there. Tell him that it’s over between us.”

Estela Bridge is a reserved, perfectionist young woman. Fresh out of university, she lands her first job as a sales manager at the prestigious luxury car company “Plus One.” There, she must work directly with the CEO, Sam Hill—a dangerously sexy 28-year-old notorious for his charm… and hiding a dark secret: he’s a werewolf, a beta fighting to claim the alpha title. After a curse binds her fate to his, Estela is thrust into his world—a realm of shadows, power, passion, and forbidden desire. Mark, the reigning alpha, wants her as well. And though Estela’s heart wavers at times, deep down she knows who it truly belongs to. Yet Estela carries a terrifying secret of her own… one she hasn’t discovered yet. And when it awakens, no one will be ready. Includes explicit spicy scenes.

I could see the countdown above a person’s head when they had already decided to leave their partner. The day my father’s countdown hit zero, he slapped a lawyer’s letter on the breakfast table and walked out on my mother and me. The day my best friend’s countdown hit zero, she finally threw her parasite of a boyfriend out of her apartment and changed the locks before sunset. That was why I’d always been terrified of seeing a countdown above my fiancé, Lucian Bellandi. Luckily, for seven years by his side, the space above his head had stayed clean. Lucian was the youngest Don the Bellandi family had ever seen. He owned the docks, the casinos, and half the South Side’s dirty money, yet he saved every soft part of himself for me. Until last month, when he picked me up after a family auction. I looked up and saw blood-red numbers stabbing into my eyes. [702 days, 14 hours, 22 minutes.] Less than two years. My heart tightened like a cold hand had closed around it. I started searching for an answer like a woman losing her mind. Had I done something wrong? Then, during a blizzard by the lake, we ran into Mia Crane at the back entrance of the Bellandi Hotel. Lucian had just brought her into his charity foundation as a new assistant. Snow clung to her hair and lashes. She was shivering from head to toe, but her smile was bright and painfully innocent. Lucian pulled a black silk handkerchief from his breast pocket and handed it to her. His face was calm. There was nothing openly improper in the gesture. But in that exact second, the countdown above his head jumped. [327 days, 4 hours, 47 minutes.] More than three hundred days, gone. And I knew I had found the reason.