Metaphysical Thriller

What if your past came back to haunt you and stalked the present until it became your worst nightmare? J.J. Hughes explores the lengths to which we'll go to keep the past from overshadowing the present and destroying the future.

Deep in the enchanted hills west of Florence, a powerful ancient relic lays hidden, shielded by veils of secrecy both human and divine. Julia Giardano’s father tells her she’s a witch, heiress to an ancient tradition and all its mysteries, but before she can learn more, he’s murdered in cold blood. Alone, with few clues, can Julia find her legacy in time to save it from her father’s murderer, Gregor Danilenko, who will stop at nothing to possess the relic he believes will give him eternal life and unmitigated power?

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.

David, a college student, takes a summer job at a run-down family resort in a dying English resort town. This is against the wishes of his family because it was at this resort where David's biological father disappeared fifteen years earlier. But something undeniable has called David there. The characters have a suspicious edge to them.

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.

Three seemingly unrelated events are part of a mosaic created by Satan’s warriors to lure Brady, the young man who talks with angels and who can call on the Light of the Blessed Virgin, to a place where his maddening interference will be destroyed once and for all. But Brady is anointed by God for such a time as this. With his brothers and an ancient line of Hebrew warriors at his side, he again charges boldly into battle, facing Satan’s foulest in Rome, Paris, and a place of unspeakable horror in Calcutta, India, as he comes to the aid of an Albanian nun.

Sweeney is a druggist by trade; Danny, his son, is in a persistent coma, the victim of an accident. Hoping for a miracle, they have come to the Peck Clinic, a fortress-like haven in a post-industrial city overrun by gangs. Doctors there claim to have resurrected two patients who were similarly lost in the void.

Even for a techno-shaman, a kachina in the bedroom isn't exactly part of the drill. When Olivia Lawson wakes to find one towering over her, she panics. A Hopi god visiting the real world isn't just wrong - it's impossible. Or is it? Soon Olivia learns that the kachina is the least of her worries. As she struggles to save her clients, clashes with other shamans, and fends off the attacks of real-world vigilantes, Olivia finds herself in the destructive path of a malevolent ancient force intent on leaving the spiritual realm to conquer this one.

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.

On the day of her mother's funeral, 23-year-old Grace Maxwell discovered the man who raised her was not her biological father. Instead, he was a best-selling self-help author and a world famous "Guru to the Stars." Known as Mr. MAJIC, for the miraculous impact his books and seminars had on millions of people, he had inexplicitly vanished around the time Grace's mother became pregnant with her. For over 20 years, the mystery of Mr. MAJIC’s sudden and unexpected disappearance, and the speculation of what might have become of him, was the stuff of Urban Legend.

Two drownings occur in Lake Hopatcong within days of each other, with similar circumstances. Diane is certain the deaths of her mother and of Ryan's wife were not accidents, despite the results of the official investigation. What she doesn't suspect is that the trail to the justice she seeks runs through a past life she and her friends shared hundreds of years earlier. With the help of a hypnotist, Diane, Ryan, and Martha look into their hidden memories.

Dinah isn't just a private investigator, she solves unthinkable mysteries in the multiverse, and has never lost a case, until her best friend becomes a victim in a series of mass murders. Someone is toying with the human race, and sending threats across the cosmos. Arik, an Oxford professor in mythology, holds the key to several secrets in the multiverse. When Dinah travels to Earth to seek help from him, they discover one of the secrets he knows could make him the next victim.

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.

Leigh has been married to a Hawthorne for a decade, but never knew the family secret: the Hawthornes are witches. When the dynamic Preacher Cody instigates a new, world-wide witch hunt, Leigh must choose sides. Will she stand with her husband and children, or will she run? This isn't the first witch hunt the Hawthornes have faced, but it could be their last. Will anyone survive?

As Livvy struggles to hold on to loved ones, her past and future unexpectedly collide. Caught between the multiverse and the real world, and saving herself or doing right, Livvy learns a final truth: the real measure of love isn't fighting for someone, it's dying for them.

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.

In 1975 a black child named Radar Radmanovic is mysteriously born to white parents. Though Radar is raised in suburban New Jersey, his story rapidly becomes entangled with terrible events in Yugoslavia, Norway, Cambodia, the Congo, and beyond. Falling in with a secretive group of puppeteers and scientists who stage experimental art for people suffering under war-time sieges, Radar is forced to confront the true nature of his identity.

Things in the fishing town of Cold Storage, Alaska, are changing. It's the summer of 1968; the men are wearing their hair long, the Vietnam War is at its height, and multiple assassinations have gripped the country. But some things remain the same. Ellie's bar is still the place to catch up on the town gossip, and there's a lot to talk about, from the boys who have returned from the war (and the ones who haven't), to the robberies that are plaguing the locals, to the new guy in town: a famous monk from Kentucky.

Writing in England at the turn of the 20th century, G.K. Chesterton was dubbed the "prince of paradox" for addressing serious questions with his light, whimsical style. In this classic allegory, which has captivated generations since it was first published in 1908, Chesterton tackles such profound concepts as honor, truth, and God with insightful humor and colorful enigma.

Jack Brennan, an ambitious high-powered attorney dies, only to find himself constrained to a peculiar afterlife as an earth-bound spirit trapped in an old Virginia farmhouse with a very much living, reclusive writer of campy vampire novels. Hallie Barkly recovering from a painful and disillusioning divorce has forged a career and exorcised her demons by writing under the pseudonym of Sebastian Winters.