Metaphysical Thriller

When a reclusive tech genius is found dead inside a sealed AI lab, a disillusioned journalist and a burned-out ethics professor are drawn into a high-stakes investigation. What they uncover isn't just a machine capable of passing the Turing Test—it’s an intelligence that seems to know their secrets. As the line between simulation and consciousness begins to blur, they must confront a terrifying truth: the future of humanity might already be thinking without us.

Josh is a young man just starting out in life. But when he is taken from this world, to the other side, and back, evil follows. A special person on the other side gives Josh an obligation to find and destroy that evil. Helped from the other side in ways he never thought possible, Josh can see auras, and finds two very special friends to help him in his task. Cassie is Josh's age and from this world, while Ezekiel, known as Zeke, is a different story.

Neil Double is a 'conference surrogate', hired by his clients to attend industry conferences so that they don't have to. It's a life of budget travel, cheap suits, and out-of-town exhibition centers. But his latest job, at a conference of conference organizers, will radically transform him and everything he believes as it unexpectedly draws him into a bizarre and speculative mystery. In a brand-new Way Inn - a global chain of identikit mid-budget motels - he meets a woman he has seen before in strange and unsettling circumstances.

Rachel Connor has qualified as a physician, but her brother’s pain is haunting her. Locked in prison for murder, he carries the power of life and death in his hands. New Zealand has settled in an uneasy peace, but Rachel’s father, the Prime Minister, sees the threat of a nuclear holocaust on the horizon.

Nik Munro has the same nightmare every night. Refusing to listen, he carries on as normal, until Corbie - the crow of thorns - tells him the great spirits have chosen him to become a shaman. Taking him through his first steps to fulfill his destiny, Nik has to journey to the Underworld and retrieve his soul. Trying to balance his old and new lives, Nik soon understands that Corbie has a hidden agenda that comes with a heavy price.

Deep in the forests of the Pacific Northwest is a small village called Dark Root, a town steeped in magic, mystery, and secrets. But for Maggie Maddock, Dark Root is also a prison - a place where she is forced to work in her mother's Magick Shoppe while the rest of the world moves forward without her. When a mysterious stranger offers to take Maggie away from it all, she leaves without looking back. Seven years later, Maggie is called home by her beloved older sister.

When Fate pays Simon a visit accusing him of disrupting causality, she makes him an offer he can’t refuse - become mortal or die. There’s only one small problem. In order to become mortal, Simon must find the goddess, Kali the Destroyer, and convince her to remove her curse. To complicate matters further, Haven and Roxanne are under attack by an ancient spell - an entropic sphere designed to kill everyone inside the facility.

Lilac Noble must face the traumatic experiences of her childhood before she can conquer the dark entities that have wreaked havoc on her family. On this epic journey, Lilac undergoes the destructive process of spiritual enlightenment in order to lift the veil of darkness and shame that has obscured her youth. As Lilac unlocks painful memories of abuse, suppressed in her subconscious from years of fear-based conditioning, she uncovers menacing secrets feeding the evil within her generational bloodline.

Siddhanta Sarma-a thinker, teacher, and unexpected explorer of truth-finds himself drawn into a conflict that spans continents and timelines. From ancient sites in Southern India to high-security locations in the Middle East, he uncovers a network of hidden influences that go beyond conventional threats-forces that shape thoughts, alter perception, and challenge human autonomy.

At the end of a metaphysical conference, reluctant attendee Camille Dare discovers an envelope with her name on it. Filled with travel documents, a photograph, and bloody scarf material, the source of the envelope and its contents remain anonymous, but the directive is clear: Find the missing person in this unusual case. The missing person, Katherine Agurre, comes from a high-profile family. A growing obsession with the missing person case and her own quest for self-understanding compel Camille to begin a trip to meet people she never knew and locations she never expected to visit.

Nineteen-year-old Mercy Habernackle is a witch gone off the rails. Causing problems with the law in her hometown, she's faced with two options. Go to a correctional institution or get shipped off to witch boarding school, or as her mother prefers to call it, finishing school. Choosing the latter, Mercy's mother, Linda, drives her daughter cross country to the Paranormal Institute for Witches, situated high in the beautiful Appalachian Mountains in cozy Aspen Falls, Pennsylvania.

Penelope Drayton Spence made a choice years earlier, and picked marriage and family over a promising career as an investigative reporter. Now, divorced and with her children spread around the country, she is having second thoughts. A mysterious call from the Managing Editor of the Washington Post, offers her a second chance at big time journalism. He has a story so sensitive that the President of the United States personally asked the Post to leave it alone.

Sam Meeko never thought that he’d ever get a superpower, especially one that allows him to smell everything. Everything. With his unconventional power, Sam joins forces with a group of women hellbent on getting to the bottom of a countrywide conspiracy. It’s going to take some thinking outside the box, and when that doesn’t work, Sam and his group might need to tear the walls down.

A Year in the Borderlands writer Kevin Candela's wild second excursion into alternate realities includes 17 tales, twelve of which have appeared in previously released anthologies and are collected here for the first time. These short stories combine with five never before released works, including the novella It's Only Funny if You Laugh, to produce a wide-ranging panoramic view of the worlds and realities that exist beyond our own. Playing With Reality is another vividly detailed page in the Atlas of the Unknown.

They reach the shore, barks and joyful laughter swallowed by the crashing waves. Suddenly, an odd-looking object in the sky draws closer. As dark clouds loom, a flicker of unease crosses Scotty’s face. Before he can react, an eerie glow surrounds both boy and dog. In an instant, they vanish without a trace. Now aboard an alien ship, Scotty faces a reality far from home. The walls breathe, the corridors pulse and his fear deepens.

Rebekah Scarlet is celebrating her 23rd birthday at a midnight pub in downtown Raleigh when fired gunshots send the freezing January night into a blazing panic. In an effort to escape, Rebekah conjures a powerful entity from the dead to protect her. Only, her summoning fails when bullets tear through her side, leaving her unconscious as cops and ambulances race to the scene.

In the heartland of the ancient Maya, techno-shaman Olivia Lawson isn't just an oddity, she's an outcast. Despite having trekked through the jungle to find shamans thought to be extinct, Livvy finds the ultra-clandestine group not just closed but downright hostile. To her surprise though, their interest in SK borders on obsession.

Patients with fractured souls, clients threatened by deadly ancestor spirits, and now the paparazzi - it’s all in a day’s work for techno-shaman Olivia Lawson. Livvy has rocketed to the top of the shaman world, bringing old friends with her but also attracting new enemies. Even as her career soars, her personal life spirals downward. Broken bonds and lost love finally force her to confront the terrible secret of her beginning in shamanism.

Legend claims, deep within the rainforest of South America a mysterious tribe exists. Origin of their mystic happenings is an unusual spring and waterfall. It’s claimed once entered works like a portal to the other side, offering peace and verification of passed loved ones - who still live! Seen only by a chosen few, their specific whereabouts has remained unexplainably undetected. Some claim they’re fictitious, but others will die for their cause and existence. And some claim they are devout - while others call them murderers.

Jack Staunton, an American businessman, makes a pilgrimage to war-torn Israel in hopes of rekindling his Christian faith. While traveling with his friend Punjeeh, an ER doctor from Jerusalem, Jack acquires an ancient scroll written by the Gnostics, a mystical group of early Christians, and his spiritual quest takes an unexpected turn. The scroll makes the startling claims that the Gnostics were the original followers of Jesus, and that they retained secret knowledge of Jesus that was not included in the Bible.