Here are the new releases from Crossroad Press for September and October 2024. Unless noted otherwise, you can purchase any of them at Amazon, B&N, Apple, Google Play, Smashwords, or Kobo.
(Release date – 9/3/2024)
The survivors of what has come to be known as The Catskill Cataclysm are not out the woods yet. As the last known members of The Hidden, they are marked for extermination. Their allies—Chan and Danni, and the Troika—are hunting them as well, but the Hidden do what they do best: hide.
Something new surfaces in the South Atlantic: a Manhattan-size iceberg. And embedded within it is a long lost Nazi U-boat. Back in the day, the Third Reich claimed part of Antarctica for its own. Was the sub on an exploratory mission? It carried a strange artifact that it was ferrying home when it was trapped in the ice. The bodies of the crew are perfectly preserved from the subzero temperatures… but they all were murdered.
Could the appearance of the sub have any relationship to the Catskill Cataclysm? Unlikely. But then, there are no coincidences.
Incantations: Short Stories and Illustrations
by Sandy DeLuca
(Release date – 9/19/2024)
INCANTATIONS is an offering to lovers of horror fiction. It’s a collection of short stories…starting off with four interconnected tales about a traveling photographer named Tani. She encounters a homeless New York City girl who has a profound effect on her life, first as a lighthearted distraction in a derelict section of the city…later as a stark reminder about how hard life and bad luck can damage a woman. Later, Tani meets up with a vengeful entity…conjured with a bag of powerful mojo. She goes on to join a ragtag theater group who are not really what they seem. In the last interconnected story, she teams up with a surreal traveling companion who takes her to the end of her journey.
There’s a lot more here. Vampires appear in the second part of this collection. There are two mystics who are determined to protect their small Rhode Island town from an ancient vampire. In another story, a young man dreams of meeting an undead. A secret his grandmother kept for decades just might grant his wish. A Hollywood vamp tells her tale about becoming immortal…along with some colorful Tinseltown history. And THE VAMPIRE’S CHILD just may break your heart.
There are also murderers, phantoms and assorted demons included in this collection.
It’s lavishly illustrated and written for anyone who loves a good, dark tale.
Edited by C. T. Phipps
(Release date – 9/24/2024)
“Have you seen the Yellow Sign?”
Hastur was not a creation of H.P. Lovecraft but an adaptation of concepts created by Ambrose Bierce and Robert W. Chambers. Nevertheless, Hastur, AKA The King in Yellow, has since gone on to become one of the most iconic Great Old Ones. Whether the mysterious Lord of Leng in the Dreamlands or Cthulhu’s alleged half-brother, he is a figure who haunts the dreams of those mortals who touch upon even the barest knowledge of his existence.
THE BOOK OF HASTUR is a collection of short stories and novellas depicting Hastur’s influence over a variety of individuals as well as those individuals affected by his presence. Some of them are horror, some of them are Pulp adventure, and some are a mixture of the two.
(Release date – 10/1/2024)
Since childhood, successful New Jersey realtor Yvette Rollins’ friend Celine has helped her with all life decisions. But no one can see Celine, and the only person who hears her is Yvette. A serious car accident shatters Yvette’s body and exposes the crumbling façade of her seemingly perfect life. Her loyal twin, Anna, jumps in to help care for her three-year-old nephew, Max, while Yvette is in rehab. To Yvette’s dismay, the accident has also silenced Celine.
When Yvette returns home, Anna shares a recently discovered letter from their absent father, revealing the existence of a real Celine, a third sibling who died in the womb. Their father performed a Vodou ceremony and believes that Celine’s soul lives on in Yvette. Yvette is relieved to know Celine is real, while Anna has mixed emotions. Anna feels she’s spent her life competing with Celine, so is relieved that she’s gone.
As Yvette recovers Celine returns, causing Anna to fear for Yvette’s stability and Max’s safety. Anna uses an old family journal of Vodou spells to launch a desperate scheme to “rescue” Max from his mother. Celine warns Yvette that everything she holds dear is at risk. Who will Yvette believe—Anna, the sister she can see and touch, or Celine, the sister who has never steered her wrong?
(Release date – 10/2/2024)
Once they see you nowhere is safe.
Olympus One colony students Hal Leon and Akio Sato have made history. Their invention, a camera that images dark matter, has had its first successful test; but what it reveals may put human life on Mars in jeopardy.
Hal believes that the strange animalistic silhouettes hidden in the dark matter web prove his theories. The wiry, inhuman forms appear to look to the sky at some invisible threat before they’re wiped away by a wave of nothingness that resets the dark matter web to normal, until it all repeats again—a never-ending cycle.
That is, until something else appears in the dark matter web, and students and colonists alike start dying under mysterious circumstances. Can Hal and Akio figure out what’s causing these grisly murders, and does the dark matter camera somehow hold the key to the mystery?
Echoes of Olympus Mons is for anyone who’s ever wanted a Lovecraftian horror story set on Mars, like Lovecraft’s From Beyond and John Carpenter’s Ghosts of Mars.
(Release date – 10/3/2024)
“Kafkaesque” isn’t a term that’s used often or even lightly. So when it finds itself tied to any modern-day author, you know you’ll be in for a real treat. And that’s just what we’ve come to expect from Steve Rasnic Tem. His work often embodies the same nightmarish quality that authors like Kafka inject into their own writing. However, in Tem’s stories the situations are even more nihilistic. His environments are inhabited by droogs and degenerates, lost or forgotten, whose stories—up until now—have had no voice. But in a world overrun by an abject and apathetic populace, Tem provides his characters with all the voice they need.
Thus, it’s no surprise that violence is the wallpaper that lines Tem’s squalid hallways. Stories like “Facing It” and “Rough Justice” portray a dog-eat-dog world where “little bastards” are held in check and accused baby killers receive their just deserts. But keep a look-out for irony knocking on the door—it provides all the epiphany our flawed anti-heroes would ever wish to meet.
In “Rat Catcher” an infestation of rodents in one family’s home leads to an anguished plea for help. But the man who arrives leaves their children unsettled, and like the nightmare the father endured as a child, a horrific manifestation has been resurrected. Just as deplorable is “The Stench” in which Riley is continually hampered by foul odors found in ordinary people, places, and things, forcing him to avoid them at all costs. But one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, and for Riley, the stench he so admonishes may in fact be our windfall.
Tem shows that there may be a glimmer of sentiment lurking inside—one that needs its door slammed shut. “Love Letters” features a man traveling cross country in the hopes of recovering his ex’s love notes. No matter what their nostalgia, they pull him further from reality and further from the closure he so desperately needs.
“Daddy’s an Actor” and “My Daughter is Here” feature two distinct father-daughter depictions: one that surrounds a fascination with the art of acting; and the other with end-of-life care. Their faux relationships may be teetering on the brink of collapse, but thankfully, their “daughters” are there to swoop in and help as needed…in their own little, maladjusted ways.
Unlike the noir-driven exploits from your father’s time, these forty-three tales of crime and deception run the gamut from high-altitude capers to back-alley brouhahas. You’ll meet obsessives and connivers, goons and scoundrels. You may find it uncomfortable or even disturbing, but you’ll never be lonely or bored locked inside Tem’s “Kafkaesque” amphitheater. With nearly 500 pages of disturbing content, it’s not to be read all at once.
Falmora: A Novella and Six Stories
by Debra Litton
(Release date – 10/6/2024)
In the forest Falmora lives an ancient race. Their small size brings peril from even smaller animals; yet the greater threat is distrust and prejudice among kinsmen. Will they hold by the old ways of the Great One or the false laws of Havar? When Fendun breaks taboo by calling out Andreno’s full name and is banished, passions flare. For Andreno, fearing to break an even graver taboo, will not grant forgiveness. Meanwhile, Fendun struggles to survive, shadowed by the forest girl, Allialónae, adept at weapons and living with nature. Overall looms a mysterious watcher, Angara, shaped by dire acts and enduring hate—is he friend or foe? Finally, Tanéha, a young woman of rare insight, hears the great night bird’s cry and urges the Falmorans to cease their quarrels and unite. Will they heed her warning and triumph over the evil one, Havar?
Following the dramatic climax of Falmora, turn to Debra Litton’s Six Stories—variously humorous, fanciful and poignant—aimed to engage readers young and old.
(Release date – 10/10/2024)
Blood Calls to Blood
Ever since his Embrace, Duce Carter has been a firebrand among the Kindred of Chicago, fanning the flames of revolution against the city’s Prince and its hidebound elders. But when Chicago’s Carthians turn their backs on Duce in the wake of a brutal assassination attempt, the only person he can turn to for help is none other than Persephone Moore, the Prince’s only childe. Is Persephone the friend she claims to be, or is she an agent of the shadowy forces who are out to destroy Carter?
Blood In, Blood Out is the second in a series of novels based on the wildly successful Vampire: The Requiem and World of Darkness horror settings.
(Release date – 10/10/2024)
Against the Deathlords
Dace, chosen warrior of the Unconquered Sun, faces his greatest challenge when he and his men stand between the armies of the Underworld and the population of the city of Mishaka. All his vaunted power will be for naught if his victory costs the lives of those he has sworn to protect. His only chance may lie with the mysterious Lilith, a wild woman who holds secrets of his mysterious past.
Exalted: Relic of the Dawn is the second in a new series of novels based on the hugely successful Exalted property.
(Release date – 10/11/2024)
Steve Rasnic Tem grew up in Lee County Virginia, the westernmost county in the state. It was the heart of Appalachia, isolated, yet beautiful. He has said “Growing up in that small place, it was hard to imagine ever becoming a writer. To me wanting to be a writer was like wanting to become an astronaut or a movie star. I didn’t believe such things ever happened for people like us.”
Now in his seventies, Steve Rasnic Tem’s writings include more than 500 published short stories in a variety of genres, seventeen collections, eight novels, and miscellaneous poetry and plays. He has won the World Fantasy, Bram Stoker, British Fantasy, and International Horror Guild awards. In 2024 he received the Horror Writers Association Lifetime Achievement Award.
“His work…will haunt your imagination and your heart in equal measure, and it both expands and defines the genre.” – Weird Fiction Review
“Steve Rasnic Tem is a school of writing unto himself.” – Joe R. Lansdale
“He’s one of the true masters.” – Ed Gorman
“A Tem story is like no other.” – Simon Strantzas
Scarecrows: Appalachian Tales collects the best of Tem’s writings about his native Appalachia, two poems and twenty-four short stories (including five never-before-published tales) concerning the farmers, miners, teachers, preachers, lawmen, itinerants, housewives, elders, children, and creatures who call these southern mountains home. The tales represent a range of genres: fantasy, horror, crime, humor, and realistic local color fiction of the region.
by Andrew Bates
(Release date – 10/17/2024)
Even in Failure…
The Heart of Osiris has been stolen, all but one of his Eset-a cultists have been murdered, and his prey has escaped. Nicholas Sforza—an undying mummy resurrected by the power of Osiris—has failed in his righteous duty to Ma’at.
All but one of her fellow hunters are dead, her relationship with her best friend is a shambles, and the monster who’s responsible has disappeared. Thea Ghandour—a hunter imbued by a mysterious force represented by beings known only as “the Messengers”—is watching her life fall apart all around her.
…One May Still Find Redemption
Yet the one responsible for all this turmoil is not satisfied. Maxwell Carpenter, a rotting horror that will not die, has left a trail of terror and destruction in his wake as he heads inexorably toward the Lands of Faith with the ancient prize that he has stolen. Driven to once again taste the life that was stolen from him, he leads a chase to Egypt, where he hopes to unlock the secrets of Osiris’ power. The race to this ancient land will tie the fates of these three souls together as the epic Year of the Scarab trilogy draws to its stunning conclusion.
(Release date – 10/19/2024)
Boldly go where no mage has gone before. The battle for reality itself ignites as mages of all stripes vie for the fabled Horizon Realms, the dimensions juxtaposing Earth and…elsewhere. A villain from the mages’ past returns to claim his legacy, embroiling Earth’s magick makers in a struggle both for survival and for dominance of all known creation.
Based on Mage: The Ascension™ from White Wolf Game Studio, The Road to Hell is the first installment in the Horizon War Trilogy. Robert Weinberg is author of the popular Masquerade of the Red Death Trilogy.
by James A. Moore and Kevin Murphy
(Release date – 10/21/2024)
Ilse Decameron, a vampire of clan Tremere, is on a mission to procure a mortal mage. On her trail is Kurt Westphal, a member of the rival Ventrue clan who is trying to uncover the Tremere’s newest threat. He and Ilse uncover a web of betrayal, demonic pacts and a scheme which, if it succeeds, will spell the end of the vampire clans and forever change the face of the World of Darkness.
House of Secrets is the first novel based on the popular collectible card game The Eternal Struggle from Wizards of the Coast. It takes you deep into the World of Darkness, a world where vampires engage in the ultimate struggle for power under the cover of darkness.
by Michael Suttkus and C. T. Phipps
(Release date – 10/21/2024)
Ashley Morgan has been many things: a trainee spy for the House, a psychic superhero, a private detective, and a bounty hunter. However, she’s lost all of those jobs because it turns out none of them are very easy in a city run by vampires. Now having her wounded sister recovering in her apartment, Ashley has to figure out who her latest enemies are. What she finds out are they may be closer to home than she ever imagined and targeting her old classmates at spy school for sale at an undead slave market.
Armed with a magical sword containing an angel, her ex-boyfriend’s magic, her devious brother, and the dubious help of New Detroit’s ex-voivode, Ashley has to set out to smash a conspiracy before it turns everyone she used to know into playthings for the damned. But can she trust even those closest to her?
Brighteyes is set in the same world as the Red Room series, The Bright Falls Mysteries, and Straight Outta Fangton.
Vampire: The Requiem, Book 3 – The Marriage of Virtue and Viciousness
by Greg Stolze
(Release date – 10/29/2024)
Vengeance Is His
Word has spread among Chicago’s Kindred that Prince Maxwell is to grant an indulgence, a one-night lift on the ban imposed on destroying fellow vampires. The Damned scurry for position and ready their long-delayed revenge. But no vampire’s rage is more consuming than that of Solomon Birch, the fallen zealot of the undead church known as the Lancea Sanctum. Birch’s enemies know that if they don’t strike first, he surely will.
(Release date – 11/1/2024)
Everyday horrors, the unexpected twists encountered during an otherwise normal day. The skewed perspectives, those moments of transformative paranoia when everything appears as it might through a funhouse lens. The dreamlike narratives and rhythms which fracture consensual reality into genre-bending rides. When life becomes unmoored and the prosaic becomes surreal. These are the worlds portrayed in this new collection of 20 stories by Steve Rasnic Tem, winner of the World Fantasy, British Fantasy, Bram Stoker, and the Horror Writer Association’s Lifetime Achievement awards.
“Tem’s fiction gives you insight into the lives of people who want something they can’t have, and it allows you to suffer their failures as though they were your own.” – Simon Strantzas
“His work…will haunt your imagination and your heart in equal measure, and it both expands and defines the genre.” – Weird Fiction Review
“Steve Rasnic Tem is a school of writing unto himself.” – Joe R. Lansdale
Included are such stories as “A Thin Silver Line” (originally scheduled for The Last Dangerous Visions), the folk horror “Gavin’s Field,” an aging man’s final road trip in “The Old Man’s Tale,” the Halloween musings of “When They Fall,” the personal apocalypse of “Privacy,” the Jack the Ripper revelations of “Monkeys,” the pandemic Wendigo tale “An Gorta Mór,” the cosmic horror “The Things We Do Not See,” a bizarre journey “Within the Concrete” from ParSec, and the heartbreaking “Memoria” from The Deadlands.
(Release date – 11/1/2024)
Picking up right where Deep in the Darkness left off, Dr. Michael Cayle returns from near death to rescue his wife and daughter, who have been taken captive by the Isolates, the aboriginal creatures living in the woods behind his home. Will he find them alive, or dead? Or…worse?
“Dead Souls is creepy, atmospheric, and explosive—keep a light on and a gun loaded when you crack this baby. Another outstanding thriller from Michael Laimo.” – Douglas Preston, author of The Monster of Florence
“Michael Laimo can stand proud next to Clive Barker and Stephen King.” – The Horror Review
“One of the best and most refreshing horror novels you’re likely to read…” – Gary Braunbeck, on Deep in the Darkness
Trilogy of the Fallen, Book 1 – Ashes and Angel Wings
By Greg Stolze
(Release date – 11/4/2024)
Hell to Pay
The gates of Hell have cracked and demons have escaped to walk the earth, dressed in human flesh. But when the ancient Scourge Hasmed finds himself in the body of three-time loser and mob bagman Harvey Ciullo, he finds the world a very different place than he expected. Using his demonic will, he begins to claw his way up the New Jersey underworld, determined to make it his own.
The Angelic Host that locked him away seems to have vanished, but other demons are out there. And all the while, this hardened child of the pit can’t quite shake his affection for Harvey’s daughter, an instinct that could redeem his soul or destroy him forever.
(Release date – 11/4/2024)
Yarrows do not die.
People do.
The family motto. Cynthia Yarrow laughs as she returns to Oxrun Station, her old hometown. The family is assembled to greet the prodigal—but they have changed in the years Cyd’s been away.
Cyd’s mother cuts herself but does not bleed. One evening a horrified Cyd discovers her father’s lifeless body—only to see him alive and laughing just minutes later.
Everything is fine, they assure her—she’ll understand as soon as she visits Dr. Kraylin. When Cyd refuses, she is pursed through Oxrun Station’s street by a powerful grey limousine.
As the death-car bears down on her, she wonders, is she still a Yarrow—or is she their next target?
(Release date – 11/5/2024)
Send a Monster to catch monsters!
The year is 1939 just after a massive Nazi Rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City. A serial killer is loose, leaving strange occult symbols on the foreheads of murdered young women.
Adam Paradise works as a private investigator with an office over MORT’S drugstore on Fifth Avenue, but Adam also has a secret; he is almost two hundred years old, assembled from the parts of dead bodies by VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN!
The reality of his existence became a legend and then a fictionalized book by Mary Shelley. After being abandoned in the Arctic by his creator, he spent many years in solitude educating himself.
Now he has returned to the world of mankind and has allied himself with many of the downtrodden and outsiders of society. He is determined to try and understand humanity as well as to find out what his place is in the scheme of things.
Adam’s state of being—alive but created from the dead—gives him the ability to see the shadows of once-living beings—that some call ghosts—though he cannot communicate with them.
In this case VANDOMA KALDERASH, a Romani, comes to Adam and asks him to recover a family heirloom, The KOSHTI BOK necklace that her brother used to cover a bet with a loan shark. It is reported to have occult powers.
Things get complicated when the loan shark sells it to a fence who is then found hideously murdered. It soon becomes apparent the series deaths of the young girls are tied into the pursuit of many occult objects, including the Koshti Bok.
Adam has his mismatched hands full as he tries to navigate a maze of deceit and murder that eventually leads him to a building in the Nazi summer retreat Camp Siegfried on Long Island.
He finds himself in the middle of a conflict between evil vs. evil with the life of Vandoma in peril, in a battle that will determine the fate of the entire civilized world and may cost Adam the very humanity he so aspires to achieve.
(Release date – 11/6/2024)
Josh Miller has a talent for finding things. So far, the things people have asked him to find—antique tables, old movie posters—have been innocuous enough. And Andrea Montague, the daughter of a local writer, may be his most interesting find so far.
But no one’s asked Josh to find the missing fifth victim of an unexplained auto accident—the one who vanished from the scene of the crash without leaving a trail of blood, though he must have been badly hurt. No one’s asked Josh to look for the other missing people—residents of Oxrun Station who mysteriously and inexplicably vanished on their birthdays.
Someone very definitely doesn’t want him to find the clearing full of century-old gravestones, the clearing that feels so evil.
This time whatever Josh is hunting is hunting him, too…and it’s hungry.
By Rick Hautala
(Release date – 11/13/2024)
It doesn’t end with death.
David Robinson’s life has taken several turns for the worse: first his daughter dies, then his marriage crumbles, and his career as a mystery writer falls apart. But after he is killed in a hit-and-run accident, David quickly learns that he will face his most harrowing challenges—as a Wraith in the Shadowlands.
Unable to contact or influence the world of the living, David’s agony is made worse when he learns that his ex-wife’s relationship with a dangerous man named Tony Ranieri has put her life at risk. Tony possesses—and is possessed by—a relic filled with such awesome powers of destruction that dark forces within the Shadowlands will stop at nothing to obtain it. They’ll even spur Tony to murder and manipulate the soul of David’s daughter to force his cooperation.
But David is already dead, and he knows that power is a blade that cuts two ways.
(Release date – 11/10/2024)
Bram Stoker Award finalist Michael Laimo delivers his most horrifying novel yet!
Is Bev Mathers going crazy? He’s been hearing chilling voices in his head, seeing nightmarish visions that just can’t be true. And it keeps getting worse and worse. No, unfortunately for Bev, he’s completely sane. What’s taking control of him is far more terrifying than insanity. And it has an unimaginable purpose…
Bev has become an innocent pawn in an infernal game, a victim of hellish forces beyond understanding. His visions of blood and debauchery are growing more ghastly every day. Some of them—the most shocking—are real. Bev can feel his mind, his body, his very soul slipping away. Will his only hope or his eternal damnation come from… the demonlogist?
Julian Cato and the Four Immortals
(Release date – 11/12/2024)
An immortal diviner must navigate the multi-verse, as she joins forces with a Time Guardian to save her siblings from the clutches of a diabolical warlock wanted for crimes against spacetime in forty-two dimensions.
Rainey El-Sullivan is a card-reader known as the Seer of Blandytown. She lives in an antique farmhouse in Monotheiston, DM-1, where technology is outlawed and superstition reigns. She is immortal, due to a vaccine given to her at birth by her father—the notorious doctor and Time Commander Carron Sullivan. Although she has been alive for 126 years, Rainey’s body has been genetically programmed to cease the aging process at age twenty-five. She agreed to be the caretaker of the family home, but after spending a hundred years in a territory deprived of modern advancements and forward-thinking, she has grown lonely and yearns for a more adventurous existence.
Julian Cato is a Time Guardian in the employ of Commander Sullivan. Time Guardians are immortal, highly trained specialty soldiers capable of navigating all 55 dimensions in the MDV (Multi-Dimension-Verse). They are the keepers of time and technology for humanity, but are mostly hidden and incognito. On some dimensions, they are believed to be mythical.
When Julian unexpectedly shows up on her doorstep with amnesia, Rainey has no choice but to return him to her father on the Outer-Dimensional Station. The Commander sends her on a mission to babysit Julian as he apprehends an escaped Gilladragon, and Rainey tries to resist her growing attraction to the handsome Time Guardian. Before they can complete the mission, they inadvertently rouse the enmity of Tony Molinaro—a fugitive warlock who wants to capture the dinosaur-like creature and use its godly powers for his own nefarious purposes. Tony kidnaps Rainey and her three siblings, threatening to kill them if the Commander does not give in to his demands.
Can Rainey survive a deadly chase through spacetime and the fifty-five dimensions, while attempting to help Julian repair his fragmented psyche? Or will the warlock’s diabolical magic destroy her family and everything she holds dear?
By Brian Lumley
(Release date – 11/14/2024)
There have been several editions of this book. Now it comes to you with five additional poems that have been found in recent years. It is believed there is only one poem that remains lost.
In the Acrostics section you will find: “Fantasy Crossroads”, “Pesh-Tlen”, “The Skull of HPL”, and “Maggot”.
In Odds and Ends section you will find: “A Dreamer”.
The least of Lumley’s books, this one is the rarest and the most sought after by collectors. The “least” not only because it’s a very slim volume, but also because it’s a book of “poetry”, and the author doesn’t claim to be a poet any more than he would claim to be a watchmaker. And if he did claim to be a poet … well, he knows it would be disputed.
First published by Spectre Press in 1982, if you were lucky enough to get one of the limited copies … hold on to it. It’s different and entertaining to read.
By Mark Morris
(Release date – 11/16/2024)
“… how do you describe that moment when the lights go out in someone’s eyes and the darkness takes over? They become something you can’t reason with, something whose conscience you can’t appeal to—like a shark or a machine. They look human, but they’re not. Not in the sense that the majority of us understand, anyway. They have no moral code. They become less than human—inadequate, incomplete. And that incompleteness can make them dangerous, even deadly.”
When Ruth Gemmill’s younger brother Alex fails to return her calls, she sets off to check up on him. Unable to find him in Greenwell, the town where he has been living and teaching, she begins her tentative enquiries. She soon discovers the locals to be frustratingly unhelpful, while the eerie town holds more questions than clues. Why are the police so uncooperative? Why is Greenwell so dark and lonely? And who is the “grey man” the schoolchildren saw Alex with not long before he went missing?
As Ruth becomes concerned that something terrible has happened to her brother, events escalate mysteriously, dangerously out of control. Then in one fearful moment she is sure she glimpses the abusive ex-boyfriend she left behind in London, the man who caused her years of tortuous pain. Too late, Ruth realizes that her worst fears haunt her still, and that she is at the center of a far darker nightmare than she could ever have imagined …