Hell to Pay: A House in the Woods 1 and 2
M.A. McNease
Now in one volume! A House in the Woods, and its sequel, A House in the Woods 2, bring the story of Laurel and Jeremy Calloway full circle. The couple decide to trade their life in New York City for something much quieter, calmer, and ultimately terrifying. In A House in the Woods, they happen upon a small, charming house on a New Jersey back road, almost hidden by the trees. They think it could be the house of their dreams, only to discover that it’s the house of their nightmares instead. Who is the old woman who takes care of the house? What happened to the owners? And who are these strange townspeople who all seem aware that a new young couple has moved into the house in the woods? Laurel searches for the truth of what’s happening, and why, only to find herself needing desperately to escape.
In A House in the Woods 2, Laurel and Jeremy are enjoying their life in Strickland, New Jersey. Everything is perfect, including their daughter who is about to celebrate her first birthday. Everyone is happy, especially Eileen, the old neighbor and one-time caretaker of the house they used to live in, before Laurel’s success as an author and Jeremy’s corporate accomplishments made their dream of a bigger house come true. The townspeople insist on a birthday party for the child. But what do they really want? And why has Laurel been having nightmares since the birth of her daughter, troubling dreams that she comes to believe are really memories? The more she uncovers, the more she knows she is in the fight of her life … but who is she fighting against? The stakes could not be higher, as A House in the Woods 2 concludes this supernatural chiller.
I, Warlock: The Warlock Wars Book
M.A. McNease
I, Warlock tells the story of Julius Tide, born part-vampire, destined to be all warlock. Julius is an almost accidental warlock, born into a family of witches. He meets the beautiful Charlotte one day at a country fair, and proceeds to dedicate his life to marrying her. Keeping his witching ways a secret, he becomes the night to her day, the guilt to her innocence, as he rushes to solve a mystery that has her family in danger and their futures in doubt. Good confronts evil several times over in this epic battle to save or sacrifice the world, set to the backdrop of a love story for the ages.
I, Warlock is the first of three books in the Warlock Wars series, and a spectacular introduction to a cast of characters the reader will come to know, love, and in some cases loathe. It’s a page-turner guaranteed to keep readers up well past the witching hour.
Double Trouble: 2 Maggie Dahl Mysteries
Mark McNease
Triple Threat: 3 Marshall James Thrillers
Mark McNease
Tundra: Short Fiction 2000 – 2022
Mark McNease
Tundra is a collection of short fiction that cuts close to the human bone, exposing the most hidden parts of ourselves as it reveals us in the characters we encounter on this journey through the pages. We may not always be them, but they are always us: joyful, hesitant, loving, hating, wanting, regretting, and above all, living.
Dreamshaping: On Shaping Reality and Living Our Dreams
Mark McNease
Begin to hear your body. Be quiet with it and let yourself learn its language. You are its first and truest friend. You are the one it longs to communicate with. And when it asks you to pay attention, let nothing be more important than understanding what it has told you. When we become the best interpreter of our body’s language, we begin to live in partnership with it, and to trust it will never lead us astray. We may not always like what it has to say, and sometimes what it tells us will be devastating, but we will listen carefully. The answers are there, and in those answers is the opportunity for peace, acceptance and change.
From When the Body Speaks, Listen (Chapter 15)
Discover this and many other ways we inhabit the dreams we call our lives, how we create them day by day, and how we can begin to experience them as the ultimate lucid dream. No supernatural assistance is required, no surrender to powers outside ourselves.
Dreamshaping is not wishful thinking: it is wishful doing. In this collection of observations and suggestions, this dreamshaper’s guide, you’ll find chapter after chapter of simple insights: how the body speaks to us, how we make choices that determine our experiences, how we act, often unknowingly, as the architect, landscaper, set designer and director of our own existence.
One Thing or Another: Life, Aging, and the Absurdities of It All
Mark McNease
‘One Thing or Another’ is a collection of humor columns that take a look at life, aging, and the absurdities of it all. From our culture’s refusal to use the word ‘old,’ to the sometimes comical consequences of aging in body and mind, if not always in spirit. Collected from the author’s personal columns, these short essays will make you chuckle, recognize yourself, and sometimes grimace at the not-always-funny price we pay for simply staying alive.
Open Secrets: A Maggie Dahl Mystery
Mark McNease
Maggie Dahl returns in ‘Open Secrets.’ It’s been six months since the media circus surrounding the last murder Maggie solved, and a year since her beloved husband David died. The dust seems to have finally settled. Then one morning a customer walks in and asks Maggie to do her a favor.
Soon a body is discovered on a rural New Jersey road. A body Maggie is sure belongs to a local author whose next book was rumored to reveal secrets not everyone wanted known. But were they enough to kill for? And who murdered the woman found in the woods? Maggie is determined to find out, even as her life continues its road back to normal, complete with the possibility of new love. Can she find the answers she seeks in the death of a local celebrity? And will love be part of her life once again when she least expects it?
Reservation for Murder: A Kyle Callahan Mystery
Mark McNease
It’s been several years since Kyle Callahan sought the help of a New York City therapist to overcome the trauma of his encounter with a serial killer, and just as long since his investigation into a teenage girl’s murder brought down the Manhattan District Attorney. He and his husband Danny Durban have decided to move away, to start a new life in the idyllic river city of Lambertville, New Jersey. They have friends there. They’ll have peace and quiet. They can leave the hustle and bustle and stresses of America’s biggest metropolis behind.
They open a bed and breakfast, and soon discover that murder and mayhem are waiting to check in. There’s a writers conference in town, with big names and big egos heading for a clash—and a killing—of titans. No sooner has the ink dried on the guest registry than Kyle finds himself pursuing another murderer, this one closer to home than they’ve ever come. He enlists the help of his old friend and local resident Linda Sikorsky, once a detective on the New Hope, Pennsylvania, police force. The two of them follow one lead after another in a race against time until the shocking truth is exposed.
Beautiful Corpse: A Marshall James Thriller
Mark McNease
It’s been over a year since Marshall James first became intimately familiar with murder. He’s six months sober now and happily living with the love of his life, LAPD Detective Mac McElroy. Despite the coming storm of AIDS and its devastating toll on the world Marshall knows, his dark days seem to be behind him. Then one night he says the wrong thing, storms out in anger, and walks straight into a nightmare. Someone is setting him up to take the fall for a beautiful corpse. But who would do something so evil, and so planned? Within hours he finds himself running from the police and the mob, and running toward a killer he must apprehend before the only chance left is no chance at all.
Mark McNease
Laurel and Jeremy Calloway have longed for a new life away from the chaos and confusion of New York City. Driving along a country road in New Jersey with a young real estate agent in the back seat, they almost miss it: a small house in the woods for sale. Stopping to take a look at the property, they meet the house’s caretaker, Eileen, and within a few weeks they find themselves the very lucky owners of their ideal home. But who are the mysterious old couple who’d put the house up for sale, having moved out months ago? Who are the townspeople they meet, who all seem aware of the young couple now living in the house in the woods? And is it the house of their dreams, or of their nightmares?
Black Cat White Paws: A Maggie Dahl Mystery
Mark McNease
In Black Cat White Paws, recently widowed Maggie Dahl finds herself faced with challenges on all fronts: life alone in a new town, running a business she and her husband had dreamed of and started together, and now pursuing a killer. Her sister Gerri moves from Philadelphia to Lambertville, New Jersey, to support her sister and start a new life of her own. Together the women search for a murderer, helped in critical ways by their neighbor’s cat. A black cat with white paws. A cat whose independence sets it all in motion and sees it through to the end.
Murder at the Paisley Parrot
Mark McNease
Time waits for no one, including Marshall James. Now 58 and living in New York City, Marshall has outlived the expiration date he was given with a cancer diagnosis three years ago. He beat the odds but he knows he may not beat the clock. So he’s decided to tell a story or three about some murders he was involved in back in the day.
Lovers and Loners: Stories
Jean Ryan
In Lovers and Loners, Jean Ryan’s new collection of short stories, we meet a richly varied group of women struggling for footholds in a shifting world. Each story in Lovers and Loners reveals a craftsmanship that Publisher’s Weekly compared to “a scientist’s observant eye” in their review of her previous collection Survival Skills. Here Ryan continues examining the human experience, one woman at a time.
Strange Company
Jean Ryan
In Strange Company, a delightful collection of short essays, Jean Ryan brings us closer to the natural world. From lizards to lady bugs, from the inscrutable sloth to the resplendent quetzal, Ryan reveals some of our commonalities with earth’s creatures and hints at the lessons we might learn from them. Do lizards fall in love? What do sloths think about all day? Why is the blood of a horseshoe crab so valuable? Ryan invites the reader on a wild journey through land, sea and sky. With her precise, elegant prose, Ryan draws us into the tantalizing world of animals and their oddities and our place among them.
Lost Sister
Jean Ryan
A sauté cook at a Berkeley restaurant, Lorrie Rivers is weary of her job and tired of the dating circuit; she needs to make some changes in her life. More than anything, she wants to visit her estranged sister Bett, for whom she feels tremendous love—and guilt. When Ginger, Bett’s look-alike, appears, Lorrie instantly bonds with the girl and enjoys a second chance at being the older sister. But joy turns to fear as Lorrie begins to understand not only what happened in her own family, but the peril surrounding the young girl.
Outer Voices Inner Lives
A Collection of LGBTQ Writers Over 50
A Lambda Literary Award finalist for anthology, this vibrant collection of stories and personal reflections by 16 LGBTQ writers over 50 offers understanding and experience. With a foreword by iconic author Patricia Nell Warren, this collection will resonate with older readers. And younger readers will find inspiration, imagination, and the resiliency of the creative spirit. Edited by Mark McNease and Stephen Dolainski.
Last Room at the Cliff’s Edge: A Linda Sikorsky Mystery
Mark McNease
Retired homicide detective Linda Sikorsky and her wife Kirsten McClellan head to Maine for a long weekend. Bad weather alters their plans, forcing them to stop for the night at the Cliff’s Edge, a motel known for secrecy and indiscretion. Something murderous goes bump in the night, sending the women on a search for justice when a young reporter’s body is found dumped and violated on a back road.
Kill Switch: A Kyle Callahan Mystery
Mark McNease
Kyle Callahan finds himself in therapy after ending the life of the Pride Killer. Joined once again by his friend Detective Linda Sikorsky, Kyle takes on his first cold case, the murder of a teenager three years ago. Come along as Kyle delves into the murky undercurrent of New York politics, pursues a crime boss who kills as easily as she breathes, and seeks justice for the father of a murdered child.
Death by Pride: A Kyle Callahan Mystery
Mark McNease
It’s Gay Pride weekend in New York City. Partygoers arrive to show the world how to have a good time while a serial killer stalks the party, claiming his victims in threes. Detective Linda Sikorsky comes to visit Kyle Callahan and his husband Danny Durban. Harmless fun turns to terror in a frantic effort to stop the killer. This time it’s personal, and this time one of them might not make it out alive.
Death in the Headlights: A Kyle Callahan Mystery Featuring Detective Linda
Mark McNease
Kyle Callahan and his partner Danny Durban head to rural New Jersey for a relaxing week with their dear friend, Detective Linda Sikorsky, recently retired and newly in love. Driving back from dinner with Linda and her fiancée Kirsten, they discover the body of Abigail Creek, run off the road on a bicycle wearing only her nightgown and slippers. Come along as Linda and Kyle make their way into the shadows and enter the spider’s web called CrossCreek Farm, determined to find out who in this family of spiders is the deadliest one.
Pride and Perilous: A Kyle Callahan Mystery
Mark McNease
Manhattan’s Katherine Pride Gallery becomes the center of high art and low death. Kyle Callahan Mysteries. Amateur photographer Kyle is about to have his first photo exhibit at the gallery. Bodies start to fall and Kyle realizes somebody wants this gallery closed forever. Detective Linda Sikorsky returns to join Kyle in a desperate chase to stop a killer.
Murder at Pride Lodge: A Kyle Callahan Mystery
Mark McNease
In the first of the Kyle Callahan Mysteries, Kyle and his partner Danny Durban head to Pride Lodge, their favorite getaway from the stresses of New York City. They expect to enjoy a festive Halloween weekend. What they find instead is a web of murder, deceit, and revenge served cold as a knife blade.
Stop the Car: A Kindle Single
Mark McNease
1977. Three teenagers driving down an Indiana back road. As the car careens along beneath a million stars, they see it, up there in the sky. Two of them demand they stop the car. The driver refuses. What happens next to them could be real or imagined, but it will never be forgotten.
5 of a Kind: Short Fiction
Mark McNease
A collection of short stories that explore the human condition in all its folly, joy, despair and hope. From a woman whose small son is there one moment and gone the next, to a man who has spent his life peering out at the world from behind a curtain. Each story and its characters express the inner voices of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. Some survive, though in what way and in what state they had never imagined.
The Seer: A Short Story
Mark McNease
“Death is the father,” he said. “Apocalypse is the child.” Worlds are set to collide as a two thousand year old man living above a pet store in New York City encounters a young couple about to have their first child. He looks at them one morning and sees … terror. Can he stop them? Can they stop him? See for yourself and glimpse what is to come, and what is gone forever.
The Pride Trilogy: Three Kyle Callahan Mysteries
Mark McNease
Together for the first time in one book, all three Kyle Callahan Mysteries making up the Pride Trilogy: Murder at Pride Lodge, Pride and Perilous, and the concluding Death by Pride. Reading the trilogy as a whole, readers can see the story arc that brings Kyle Callahan and all the characters to life as they stop one killer at a time.
The Cat in the Window
Mark McNease
In the heart of a heartless city, a woman finds new life with the help of a stranger’s cat. Lillian Bostwick hated the cat in the window. It taunted her, defied her, and finally taught her how to live again. “It sat in the fifth floor window all day long, season to season, morning to night, staring across into her living room. It would be there when she got home from work, positioned exactly where it had been when she’d left that morning. It watched her as if it knew everything about her, as if it just couldn’t wait to tell the neighborhood about Lillian Bostwick and all her little secrets.”
Rough & Tumble: A Dystopian Love Tragedy
Mark McNease
“Rough and Tumble were not their names by birth.” Boy meets boy at the end of civilization. The year is distant, the reality of those living appears dark and harsh. Among them, surviving by wit and easy violence, are Rough and Tumble. Join them as they go on a last nightly prowl, looking for loot and any way out.
In Harmony with the Seasons: Herbs, Nutrition and Well-Being
By Cathy McNease, Dipl CH, RH
Master herbalist Cathy McNease provides a collection of writings on Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) that represents the culmination of a life spent as a teacher and practitioner of this medicine. Practical advice is given about relieving common health complaints, using foods, herbs, and lifestyle adjustments.
An Unobstructed View: Short Fiction
Mark McNease
These eleven stories speak to the common experiences we all share: growing up, growing older, getting on with life as best we can, never surrendering hope. The characters we meet on a street corner in Manhattan or in an apartment in Queens, are characters we could as easily meet on any given day in our own lives wherever we live. At their best, the stories in this volume provide us with an unobstructed view into ourselves.
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Contact: Mark @ MadeMarkPublishing.com