Fantasy-Urban

Cursed: Out of Ash and Flame

Dying every day sucks. As a phoenix, I’m no stranger to the cycle of death and rebirth, but there’s nothing normal about this curse. It sure does make bounty hunting a bit easier though. If I die on the job, I come back after just a few seconds good as new, something I’m definitely going to need now that I’ve taken on this new mark. Max is charming, smooth, and like all bounties, insistent on hi ...

Once Upon a Time

A sword-wielding Cinderella. An enchanting Beauty. A villain who might not be so bad after all… Once upon a time, before the Brothers Grimm, when fairytales were romantic fantasies for entertaining adults and frightening children… Three twisted tales inspired by the classic fairytales…for adults who still love reading fairytales, though they're a little darker now, making that happily ever after ...

The Ascendant Path - Scholar

The Ascendant Path: Scholar is the first book in a new series by award winning author Joshua C. Cook. Generations have passed since the Unsundered god, Sartum destroyed the City in Blue, the center of mortal use of magic. The betrayal of Sartum by William Reis and Myriam VolFar in the waning hours of that conflict has shaped the world of Alos and continues to do so. In the south, magic runs free. ...

Dark Skies: Order of the Anakim

Time is running out on Elysa and The Order of the Anakim. A gathering gloom hangs heavy over their mystic realm as the demon hordes measure a final deathblow in their age-old struggle. Step by step, the demons murder, capture, and conjure their way to a realm unified by utter darkness. Their ruthless queen Ashtaroth, guided only by ambition and her voracious thirst for carnal pleasures, mastermind ...

No Promises

I used to be a hero. Then I grew up.

I’m Kieran Thorne, the world’s only living half-fae. The gig comes with a few perks—immortality, magic I can’t control, fae assassins constantly on my heels. And the chance to protect the good and the powerless against those who are neither.

For hundreds of years, that’s what I did. Until I got tired of the humans I saved repaying me by ...

Phoenix: The Rise

She wants justice. He wants to make things official. But for a demi-god and vampire there are bigger battles. Demi-god Carissa Alkippes has fought her equal share of demons and Olympian gods, when one battle ends another begins. Only this one may destroy the thin veil between supernatural creatures, gods and humans. To make things worse Zeus offers her a ‘get in and out of Olympus’ card, which pai ...

the CULL - Blood Demon

Katie and the team take on an ancient preternatural threat that far exceeds their own abilities while seeking to prove one of them is not a murderer; Amy is assigned a case which lies squarely in Katie’s area of expertise but has to tackle it alone. A treacherous new conspiracy surfaces with deadly consequences.

Valkyrie Love

Valkyrie love never comes easy. Brenna left Asgard with a curse on her name and a broken heart. A Valkyrie now free and independent, for millennia her life had been great. Just great. Then a bleeding Elf knocks at her door holding a baby.

Alexander Reed left the Marines and lost the wheel of his life. A soldier without a worthy fight, he became everything he despised. Until he ends up i ...

Eleanor, The Unseen

It was a gamble for Eleanor to rejoin humanity, but she was driven to it. She’d been too successful forgetting. The last vestiges of her family hung by a thread in her transformed brain and drove her to be reckless. Ten years later, Eleanor hides in plain sight. She is an average girl getting average grades in a small Wyoming town: poor but happy, lonely but loved. Her mother, Tabitha, is ther ...

Uprising (Children of the Gods #2)

Elyse has done everything she can to protect her friends from The Council's reach. As long as they believe she's dead, she has time to rest and train for war. And war is inevitable. When Kara arrives with the news that Anna and Chloe have been captured, Elyse is faced with the realization that no one is safe until The Council is stopped and Christoph is destroyed. She doesn't need a prophecy to te ...

Destiny

After making a shocking discovery about herself, Lucy must embrace her destiny or follow in the tragic footsteps of the women who came before her. Lucy Owens was your average eighteen-year-old with overprotective guardians until an ancient Prophecy sent an army of Gifteds (humans with supernatural abilities) after her. Still haunted by her last encounter with Donovan’s Army, Lucy looks forward to ...

Her father had superpowers . . .

Pamela does too . . .

And life ain’t easy.

A self-imposed outcast, Pamela struggles with her psychic abilities. She yearns to be herself without jealousy or fear from her friends or acquaintances.

How did her father cope with his powers? Pamela will never know, as twenty-seven years ago Arthur disappeared with the ...

The Wolves of Kanta Series

Mercy wants to become a werewolf hunter like her father, but Kanta has other plans. Enter a world of mad scientists, dangerous love, and werewolves with The Wolves of Kanta series, now completed.

 

The Influencer

A mysterious Romanian monk arrives in New York. He brings with him a strange offer for social media influencers: In exchange for hundreds of millions more followers, the influencers must surrender their soul. But, there is an ancient evil that must be fed. And a merciless vigilante who will stop at nothing to prevent the monk's plan.

Oppression (Children of the Gods #1)

Elyse knows what it means to keep a secret. She's been keeping secrets her whole life. Two, actually. First, that she ages five times slower than average people, so that while she looks 18 years old, she's closer to 80. The second is that her blood has a mysterious power to heal. For Elyse, these things don't make her special. They make life dangerous. After the death of her parents, she's been ca ...

Allergic to Mistletoe: Neighborlee, Ohio Book 10

FREE ON BARNES & NOBLE, iBooks and KOBO!

Christmas in Neighborlee means magic. This year more than ever. The Fae have come to visit. And hide. And seek true love. Lori is allergic to mistletoe, thanks to a traumatic encounter with Dickens. She comes to Neighborlee to hide from matchmaking relatives. Bethany just wants a quiet Chr ...

How to Hunt a Menacing Magical Shadow

Magic is unpredictable, some would say even dangerous. So is Adrian Cotter and his ability to make magic do just about anything - except what its supposed to. That doesn't stop Adrian from trying to make something of himself, though. He's determined to prove he can still be a hero despite everyone telling him otherwise.

That is, until hes framed for murder. Now, he's running for his lif ...

The Court of Monsters: Sequel to The Monster Hunter

It’s only been one week since Stela killed the son of Dracula and uncovered her destiny as the heir of Van Helsing. Because of her newfound power, chaos begins to unravel the Romanian province. Disputes arise from foes and friends alike as the question hangs in the air… who is the rightful heir to the Romanian crown? However, Stela realizes that her troubles run far deeper when she is mysteriously ...

Port City (An Alec Winters Series, Book 3)

An Alec Winters Series is a dark-fiction, vengeance-driven 4-book thriller series, beginning with Prelude, a behind-the-scenes look at Alec’s life as a New Orleans teen-jock. In Crescent City, Alec redeems the innocent and exterminates those responsible for their suffering. Now, Alec’s job takes him to Mobile, Alabama in Port City (An Alec Winters Series, Book 3). There, Alec hunts down and mercil ...

Prelude (An Alec Winters Series, Book 1)

Prelude is a prequel to Crescent City (An Alec Winters Series, Book 2). Get a behind-the-scenes look at sixteen-year-old Alec Winters, a New Orleans teen-jock, before his strange, supernatural transformation. Discover little-known facts about the cultural differences of the deep-south and a good-ole-boy society where ‘right’ is often seen as ‘wrong’ and the prevailing attitudes might surprise you. ...

The Hound of Hell: Book One

Description He is Renault, Merlin’s unofficial leader of his spy network. Refined. Loyal. Tenacious. Cunning. He’s as complicated as he is cruel and sadistic. He’s also the only hope Merlin has when it comes to doing the impossible. His current mission: rescue General Crixus of the Sandanistas aboard a train that has been commandeered by about seventy Sene-Gaulian soldiers. For him and his deadly ...

A, B, C's of Witchery Box Set

A young witch, Gillette Hart, is a Texas Ranger and uses her talents to hunt down serial killers. A job she became an expert at after she married Sonny Hart, The Carnival Killer. Teaming up with her teenage brother, Ardal, her dog Pete and the rest of her unique family, Gillette is assigned cases that take her across many state lines. With her magical powers becoming stronger every day, Gillette H ...

Infinity's Doorway:

A Paranormal Thriller: “Find me…” The words uttered by the mysterious woman he’d swerved off the road to miss, echo continually in Dallas policeman Arren Blaine’s head as he fights to get back into the world of the living, after the almost fatal car crash. A Paranormal Romantic adventure: “Find me…” So begins an odyssey of discovery that takes him far from the Dallas P.D. forensic labs ...

Godhunter

I hunt his kind, but he swears he's on my side. Thor is at my back, guiding me through the crowd, his hand pressing intimately against my spine and his breath brushing my cheek. We're here to stop a crazy Aztec god, but we can't see him. He's hiding behind magic and the men whose minds he's taken. The men raise their guns, aiming for their target. I act without thinking, dropping my enchanted claw ...

Spells Salt and Steel series

By day, Mark Wojcik can be found elbow-deep in engine grease, making cars and trucks safe for the highway. By night, he can be found traipsing through the wilds of Pennsylvania, making the world safe for humans fighting weresquonks, ningen, selkies, ghosts, and…gnomes? Includes Spells Salt and Steel Season 1 and Season 2

The Secret of Excalibur (Excalibur Saga Book 1)

The world is changing . . . . . . and no one sees the danger. However, one man – accidentally imbued with extraordinary powers – could be the answer to it all. As visions compel him on a journey involving the legendary Excalibur and The Lady of the Lake, Arthur finds himself in England. The irresistible call brings him to the famous London Institute of Psychic Research, where he meets Rut ...

The Faceless Moon

Luminous spawn of the Moon Father creep across kingdoms. Yet neither Mei nor Iggy, still separated, realise the depth of the threat – nor their role in stopping it. One, however is aware. Thorn, the imposter seated upon Nasaru's throne, moves his pieces to manipulate them. Thankfully, not all who take an interest in the siblings harbour such dark intent, and as their paths start to conver ...

Sin Eater (The Aria Knight Chronicles #1)

Aria Knight has an unusual set of skills: she will hold back the hounds of Hell so that you can fly toward the Pearly Gates, and she will wipe your slate clean so you don't become karma's bitch…for a price. A Sin Eater has to make a living in today's world somehow. But when she's called in the dead of night to perform her rite for a recluse billionaire, she stumbles upon a murder scene, and the ev ...

The Vampire of the Prophecy

A choice was made. Now it’s time to reap the rewards…or suffer the consequences… It was all happening according to plan. Rori chose power over love, and as a result, put himself in the running to be the next emperor of all vampires. Then someone threatened to expose his witch (along with all other paranormal creatures) to humans…unless he gave up his claim to the throne, that is. That’s when every ...

A Lead Pill

My Gran used to say, “There are times when the only way out is a lead pill.” These are stories when things got that bad. A Lead Pill is the second collection of short stories from a HARD PLACE. Stories of loneliness and betrayal, of false hope and shattered dreams, of gifts and regrets, of love and accidental kindness. Each story follows separate paths that lead to the understanding that sometimes ...

Inheritance: A Deadly Curiosities Supernatural Mystery Adventure

Stolen magic. Infernal creatures. A cursed heir to a warlock dynasty. Supernatural suspense. Caribbean ghosts terrorize Charleston and rack up a body count. Then Beckford Pendlewood, the heir to a powerful family of dark warlocks, shows up raving about a bound demon locked in a lost box and begs sanctuary. Cassidy Kincaide can read the history of objects by touching them. She and her allies us ...

The Upside Down of Nora Gaines

Nora has visions of horrific things. Things that lurk in the shadows and feast on bones. After moving with her mother into an old farmhouse, Nora discovers a blank journal that fills itself with an ominous warning. A cursed beast is coming for her, and time is running out. When the lunar blood moon rises, so shall the beast. Local teen, Rebel, has his own trepidations about the house. His parents, ...

The Automaton's Wife

Jane Austen meets Lara Croft: Beatrice Knight has enough to contend with: a zebra is dead on her lawn, her horse is possessed and a gentleman has arrived with the temerity to propose to her. To top it off, her dead husband Gideon has absconded with an automaton, threatening to return for his wife. The wife in question however ...

The Vampire Secret (The Amarant Book 1)

Fans of Twilight and A Shade of Vampire are sinking their teeth into this exciting new vampire romance!
A fictional world brought to life, a dark romance that promises eternity, and a secret that threatens to end it all.

Crimson Wilkinson is a teenage girl who, having survived a dark childhood, finds her escape in reading a pop ...

Path Unchosen

She'd rather be a normal eighteen-year-old … but not much chance of that, when she can raise the dead.   When Judy discovers she's a necromancer who can raise the dead, she does her best to deny this unholy gift. But after leaving the orphanage for a mysterious manor house, she learns that not only have the dead started walking again, her power means she's the only one who can stop it.   ...

Graves' Anatomy

Los Angeles tattoo artist Luna Graves' world turns upside when her estranged father dies and she discovers that it's her destiny to be a doctor to monsters in this urban fantasy that is "E.R. meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer."

Cursed: The Girl Who Shook the Earth

I’m just another girl who survived foster care. Nothing special. Oh yeah, except for my earth-shaking magic… But I’ve kept it under wraps, working in a restaurant, minding my own business. Until a frightened boy runs into the dinner shift followed by three fanged psychos. Imagine my surprise when I find out I’m not the only one at the restaurant with magic. Together, we save the kid and send the ...

Keeper of the Unicorn

Unicorns aren’t real. Everyone knows that. Mike doesn’t believe in them either. Why should he? Then, one day, a mysterious woman appears, riding on the back of a cat and declaring she’s the Keeper of the Unicorns. What Unicorns? As if that wasn’t looney enough, the cranky lady instructs Mike to tell her story to the world. Baffled, the young man refuses. He’s not crazy, after all ...

The Union of Lies

Valeyn - daughter of the last two gods in the world - has abandoned all she loves in hope of starting a new life. Yet enemies relentlessly hunt her, determined to force the new god to choose a side in the escalating war between her mad parents.

The Iron Union has crushed the weakened defences of the Outland Alliance and Valeyns friends now face death at the hands of an old ally.

...

Playing with Fire

"What do you get when you mix gorgons, an incubus, and the Calamity Queen? Trouble, and lots of it. Catering to the magical is a tough gig on a good day, but when Bailey's sexiest enemy's ex-wife angles for revenge, she's tossed into the deep end. Warning: This novel contains excessive humor, action, excitement, adventure, magic, romance, and bodies. Proceed with caution."

Dante's Road (Dark Fantasy Romance) (Demons of Eden #2)

A love triangle in hell. Gods and demons at war. Hot dark fantasy and reverse harem romance. The portal to hell lies open, and the Vatican is ground zero for an unholy alien invasion. Ashley Rowan, the only woman capable of activating the portal key, is trapped in Tartarus, a cesspit heaving with demonic mutants. Ashley, Aaron, and Nicholas face demon hordes commanded by the fearsome Hades ...

Demons and Shifters and Me. Oh My!

Moondrift isn’t your ordinary town. With resident shifters, werewolves, and vampires, harboring a secret is easily snuffed out. But when Aria flees to Moondrift with enigmas of her own, slain witches drained of magic pile up in her new safe haven. An entity seeks Aria’s gifts. With no one to turn to but the local pack leader, Alpha Rafe Mendoza, and his diligent Omega wolves, she finds herself t ...

VENGEANCE BE MINE

Megan is a typical university student trying to figure out her place in the world, except she's studying to become a licensed vengeance demon.

Nineteen-year-old Megan Aequitas is the only vengeance demon and trickster hybrid ever born. In a world where vengeance demons are respected guardians of the Cosmic Balance, and tricksters are carefree engineers of chaos, being half and ha ...

the CULL - Bloodline

Amy Bree’s reckless actions result in death and her dismissal from the FBI. A visit from a mysterious priest propels her back into the fray, as she is partnered with an ex-spy and tasked to hunt down and kill the serial killer known as the Blood Sucker. Their quarry is not what they expect! The body count rises and the hunters become the hunted!

Gargoyle Huntress

My name is Harlow, and I am the loser who got suckered into the worst job in history. I am a gargoyle huntress. Thanks to a tiny bit of vandalism, I now wrestle wayward bitey devils back to their perches at way-too-early o’clock. But lately, something has gone wrong. Gargoyles all over the country are flying the coop, if you will. When a handsome stranger blows into town trying to convince me that ...

Rock's Dogs

Rock's Dogs is a collection of twelve stories set in Mudflat, many featuring Rock Decko and a new girlfriend and her dog, and including other characters in the neighborhood.

Dragonseer

Secicao. A powerful drug of immeasurable power and value, but one that's also destroying the planet. Pontopa Wells is an uncompromising entrepreneur with a dragon and a secicao operation in the Southlands. When she is contracted by King Cini, to incorporate her business with that of the conceited Faso Gordoni, she is initially unsure of her one-time rival. Then, a meeting with her much-loved autho ...

The Luck Thieves

First someone stole Aurelian's luck. Now they were coming for his life.

NIGHTSHIFTER: A Werewolf Thriller

Even shapeshifters have something to fear.

A moonlit stroll introduces Liam to a terrifying new world.

While defending his dog, he gets bitten by a vicious predator. Soon, Liam burns with fever, and the animals at his vet clinic start acting oddly around him. He sees creatures that howl in the night, and thinks he’s losing his mind. Are they wolves? Or something ...

The Cargo: A Shifter Space Opera

A forgotten hero desperate for work. A lost love reincarnated in a shapeshifting alien. What could possibly go wrong? An outer arm of the Milky Way, 2420. Cliff Crane is just trying to get by with nothing. Four hundred years after saving the human race during the Vampire Wars, the legendary werewolf finds himself far from Earth with only the ghost of his ex-lover as company. Taking a lucrative ...

Memory and Malice: A Badlands MM Psychic Detective Romance Novella

Psychic medium Simon Kincaide and his fiancé, homicide detective Vic D’Amato, planned a relaxing Christmas and New Year’s at a romantic castle in England. But when Simon encounters a man possessed by a malicious ghost, he fears that a spirit with an ancient grudge intends to disrupt the holiday festivities. Can Simon and Vic prevent a disaster and protect the Earl, or will a ghost from the past de ...

The Games Monsters Play: a novelette of The Chosen

When corporate spy Colin O’Neill receives a personal invitation from his target’s CEO to join an elite high stakes game, he fears his cover blown. But Katarina Habsburg’s interest in him is superseded by deadly intrigues with her partners and she’s forced to focus on her own survival. With his time running out, Colin must choose between finishing his mission and making his escape before the game's ...

Regen

Regen is a YA urban fantasy. Life is finally shaping up for Trisha. For the first time, she's with a foster family she doesn't hate. Her new school is decent, and she even has a boyfriend. Until the night she finds herself waking up in the woods covered in blood, a bullet hole in her dress. Without her fae abilities, she'd be dead, but now the Faerie Council has given her an ultimatum. She has to ...

Demon Kissed

Becs was born with a symbol on the inside of her wrist called the Kiss. It marks her as a summoner, a person who can call forth entities of power and negotiate with them on behalf of a client who needs answers to a problem or is requesting a favor. When a demon summoning goes south, she fixes it, but winds up owing the demon a favor. She's now hiding out, bartending in a fae bar, staying away from ...

Harbor City (An Alec Winters Series, Book 4)

Some see Alec Winters as a breathtaking, amazing angel, a savior. Others see him as a mind-blowing nightmare, the most terrifying demon their minds could ever conjure. An Alec Winters Series is a dark-fantasy, vengeance-driven 4-book thriller series, beginning with Prelude, a behind-the-scenes look at Alec’s life as a New Orleans teen-jock. In Crescent City, Alec rescues innocent victims and crush ...

The Rising : Awakening

What’s buried in the sand has slept for centuries. Some things should never be exhumed... When Egyptologist Samuel Clayton inherits a gold talisman with unusual markings, he’s driven to uncover its secrets. Where did it come from? What do they mean? And why when receiving it did a flood of forgotten memories and the ethereal red-headed beauty—who had seduced him in his youth—return with malice? Hi ...

The Temptation of Dragons

Bishop Nigel smiled at me. ‘Holy water doesn’t harm vampires. Which is just as well, as it would make it impossible to baptise them.’

When I was asked by a dragon to give him the last rites, I never dreamed it would lead to negotiating with his cannibalistic family or running from snail sharks. Life as the priest of a small English village is quite tame in comparison. At least I have Mo ...

Etta

All Loretta wants is to move to Paris, find love, and raise a house full of children. Preferably with someone kind, strong, and handsome. Everything changes when she is brutally murdered by someone she trusts, only to wake up the following day, unscathed. As Loretta struggles to make sense of her new lease on life, she builds unexpected friendships and meets the man of her dreams...but none of it ...

The Sidhe Princess

In the rural Northern Ireland of the 1960s, sixteen-year-old Moira Mullins is newly released from her second stay in a mental institution. Her problem is that she can’t seem to escape the notice of the other-worldly inhabitants of the wild lands bordering her family’s farm. Creatures nobody else can see or hear. When one of these beings, a fairy princess called the Maid of Ulster, offers to forete ...

Legacy--Book 5 in the Deadly Curiosities series--A Supernatural Mystery Adventure

A dark witch dynasty. A malicious, immortal undersea place-spirit. Eternal guardians who wagered their souls to protect Charleston. Omens of impending disaster have the city on edge. Tremors warn of earthquake risk, while a potentially catastrophic storm gathers strength over the ocean and heads for land. A last-man-standing promise among elderly veterans creates a dangerous inheritance involving ...

Guardian, The Quest: Magical Beasts Book Two

A golden dragon. A hidden enemy. Blackmail. A secret group of smugglers blackmail Sam and Jake. The two young guardians must find the golden dragon, or Jake dies. Their friend Uncle Biggie and his chimera crocle-lion pledge to help them. Yet everyone wants the golden dragon, including the powerful Evil One, who has been hiding for millennia and has sworn to destroy all of life. No one can be trust ...

Excalibur Saga: The Complete Series: Books 1 to 4

His superpowers made him invincible. Or so he thought. Ever since his head injury, Arthur has become fearless – arrogant even

Book One - THE SECRET OF EXCALIBUR

Book Two - THE REVENGE OF EXCALIBUR Her father had superpowers . . . Pamela does too . . . And life ain’t easy. A self-imposed outcast, Pamela struggles with her psychic abilities. She yearns to be herself without jealou ...

Welcome to Mayhem, Baby

From an EPPIE Award-winning author: Claire escaped a Seattle killer and landed in an Otherworld of worse disasters, plus a guy. Well, there is always a guy, isn't there? Now he has left his world to follow her back to Seattle and the terror escalates. This is the second novel of eight in the MUDFLAT MAGIC SERIES. The first novel, Tyrant Trouble, is currently free.

Green Sunday

When TJ, a fat neckbeard small time youtuber living with his mom met a strange girl in his one note town, he thought his luck was changing. What he didn’t know, on her heels, a deepweb gameshow bent on bringing his hick mountain town to its knees, just for sport.

Unleashing flesh hungry zombies, feral survivors and monstrous abortions of science onto his once peaceful town. TJ is forced ...

Scattered, Smothered, and Chunked: Bubba the Monster Hunter Season 1

He's the guy you want beside you in a bar fight, so why wouldn't you want him saving the world? He's Bubba the Monster Hunter, and he's here to save the day! Scattered, Smothered, & Chunked collects ten hilarious short stories and one origin novel about Robert "Bubba" Brabham, ex-Georgia Bulldogs football player and now the official Southeastern Regional Monster Hunter for the Holy Roman Catholic ...

Wickedly They Dream

Evil never rests. Jordan hoped her life would change after the fiery death of the devious sorcerer, Asa Trebane. She was wrong. The Black Order of the Cult is gearing up to select a new Supreme Leader, and Lucifer will be judge and jury. Seeley, Jordan’s mother, is possessed with a curse, and even the priests can’t find a solution to defeat the evil devouring her. Jordan must dig deeper into the S ...

The Vilokan Asylum of the Magically and Mentally Deranged Omnibus Collection: Books 1-9

Welcome to the Vilokan Asylum of the Magically and Mentally Deranged. I'm Doctor Cain. I'll be supervising your treatment plan. Yes, before you ask, I am that Cain. I've come a long way since I became the world's first murderer. I'm now a licensed psychiatrist. What is it you just asked? You heard that I was cursed? Yes, I'm also the world's first werewolf... But don't worry. I have it unde ...

Sleeper

A fresh new blend of dystopian urban fantasy, for fans of The Hunger Games, Divergent, or The Mortal Instruments. 16-year-old Daria Grayson is tired. Which doesn’t make sense. She’s taking her daily dose of miracle-drug Sendrax, just like everyone else. And she’s sleeping a full 45 minutes every single night, just like everyone else. So why is the rest of the world enjoying the most active and pro ...

Gypsies, Tramps and Weeia

Sworn to protect the secrets of their race, marshals are trained to police Weeia hiding among humans. After completing her advanced marshal training, Danni is blown away by her new plum assignment to Paris. But, all is not well in the City of Lights; the offices are a shambles, her boss is apathetic, and her predecessors died under mysterious circumstances; it’s almost like somebody doesn&rs ...