A haunting in Santa Fe will either reunite Ghost Healers, Inc. or disband the group forever.
When Ellen decides to buy a fixer-upper in an art community in Santa Fe, New Mexico, she’s reassured by the realtor that nothing evil has ever occurred there. What she doesn’t know is that the bridge near the back of the property is notoriously known in the town as Suicide Bridge. As she and her friends try to uncover why so many people have taken their lives there, they are shocked by what they find. Can the reunion of Ghost Healers, Inc. untether the troubling spirits near Ellen’s fixer-upper, or will their discoveries be too much for them this time?
When her name was called, Ellen followed her massage therapist, Kelly, to one of the private rooms in back. Kelly didn’t look much younger than Ellen, but she was in amazingly great shape, and her skin glowed. She wore her brown hair braided, and bangs swept across her pretty, brown eyes. Her summer dress tied around her neck and was backless, exposing three interesting tattoos. One of them read, “STAY HUMANE.”
The room smelled of lavender and was dimly lit with candles. Soothing music played overhead. The massage table was covered with fresh linens.
“You can hang your clothes on the hook behind this door,” Kelly said. “I’ll be back in just a moment.”
Ellen undressed and hung up her clothes. Then she climbed onto the table on her stomach and covered herself with the top sheet. She put her face in the donut pillow and closed her eyes. She had dozed off when Kelly knocked on the door.
“Come in,” Ellen said, drowsily.
As Kelly started on Ellen’s back, Ellen sighed and sunk more deeply onto the table, relaxing the muscles she didn’t know she’d been clenching. Not wanting to fall asleep and miss the massage altogether, Ellen decided to start up a conversation.
“I just put an offer on a house here in Santa Fe.”
“Congratulations,” Kelly said. “You’ll love it here. I’ve lived here for over thirty years, and I wouldn’t move for anything.”
“Well, I’m not actually moving here,” Ellen explained. “I’m buying it for a studio retreat. I’m an artist. I paint.”
“How nice,” Kelly said. “What kind of art do you make?”
“Mostly portraits and landscapes. Whatever inspires me. I’m not a serious painter. It’s more of a hobby.”
“And in what area are you buying?”
“It’s on Luna Circle, right behind the Frank S. Ortiz Dog Park,” Ellen said. “In the Casa Solano Subdivision.”
“I know the area well. I take my dogs to that park every weekend. Is it the house by Suicide Bridge?”
Ellen stiffened. “What’s Suicide Bridge?”
Kelly moved her hands down Ellen’s back. “I didn’t mean to make you anxious. Try to relax. I’m sorry I mentioned it. I just thought that the real estate agent would have had to disclose the information.”
“What information?” Ellen asked.
“There’s a bridge between the dog park and a house on Luna Circle that’s been for sale for ages.”
“Is it an old steel bridge across a narrow ravine?”
“Yes.”
Kelly worked her way up Ellen’s back, but it was hard for Ellen to enjoy it, because now she was anxious about the bridge.
Kelly massaged beneath Ellen’s right shoulder blade and said, “Over the years, it’s become known as Suicide Bridge, because, for whatever reason, that’s where a lot of people have gone to take their lives.”
“What do you mean by a lot?”
“It seems like someone does it every year for as long as I’ve lived here. I would guess over fifty people have died there.”
“How sad. I wonder what it is about jumping from that bridge. Why there?” “They don’t jump. They hang themselves.”
After earning her Ph.D. in English and teaching writing and literature for over twenty years, Eva Pohler became a USA Today bestselling author of over thirty novels in multiple genres, including mysteries, thrillers, and young adult paranormal romance based on Greek mythology. Her books have been described as “addictive” and “sure to thrill”–Kirkus Reviews.
Title: The Choices Author: Alan L Moss Genre: Thriller
Sixty-six million years ago, the Chicxulub asteroid crashed into the Yucatan peninsula. Its heat and dust killed the dinosaurs and most other species on the planet.
Based on newly generated NASA measurements and a unique theory, a Ph.D. geology student concludes the Chicxulub asteroid created a fortune in hidden diamonds. When she discovers her business partner and financier is of questionable character, she escapes to Canada to plan an expedition to mine the stones.
Gary Levin arrives in the same Canadian village to mourn the loss of his wife, senselessly murdered during a white supremacist shooting. He soon finds a wounded golden retriever and a flash drive of unknown origin.
Puzzled by information on the flash drive, Levin learns the data could guide mining the fortune in diamonds from Mexico’s Yucatan cenotes (underground water channels). Although there is danger diving/mining the waters and evidence of opposition plotting their demise, the lure of the diamonds and the opulence they represent are too much to resist.
Levin and his companions crisscross the globe in a race to obtain the diamonds before the spurned financier and an approaching hurricane can disrupt their efforts.
When the plane landed, only Don knew the location of the treasure. This was to help insulate the rest of the team. Before they exited the terminal, a customs officer appeared.
He was a large man with a thin brown mustache. He approached Don.
“Okay, my compadre, what are you smuggling into the territory this time?” Don smiled.
“Sorry to disappoint, but muddy clothes and wet camping equipment from Mexican jungles are all I can offer you.”
“I expect you to hide more exotic fare than that,” the official replied.
“Well, feel free to have at it,” Don said.
The man went through the group’s luggage. Finding nothing, he turned to the scuba gear.
“Is there any way I can get into these tanks?” he asked Don.
“I guess you’d have to break them open,” Don replied. “I’ve been smuggling oxygen into the territory for many years. The problem is,as soon as you open a tank, the contents rush into the atmosphere and disappear.”
“I get the point,” the inspector replied. “Did you have a nice flight?”
“You know, nothing is better than returning to our island.”
Alan L. Moss is a unique and emerging voice in the thriller genre. His novels spin sophisticated tales of conspiracy, love, sex, and subterfuge.
In his latest work, The Samoa Seduction, two strong willed individuals are haunted by their love for one another while manipulated by a deadly conspiracy.
Alan’s writing draws upon Ph. D. research capabilities and many years in Washington, D.C. as a federal Chief Economist, Congressional Fellow, and Adjunct Instructor at the University of Virginia’s Northern Virginia Center. In 2002 he put his government career aside and moved to the Jersey Shore to pursue his writing.
He has penned six published books, four novels and two nonfiction works. After years of politics and bureaucracy, Alan has found the freedom of writing fiction an intoxicating and satisfying calling.
Distinguishing features of Alan’s novels are involvement with significant national and international issues and spectacular locations. His new novel, The Samoa Seduction (October 2015 by A-Argus Books/W & B Publishers) is an eye opening thriller that combines the action of a drug company conspiracy, industry efforts to suppress wages, and government corruption with murder and a steamy affair. Settings include Samoa’s lush scenery, the Central Canterbury Plains of New Zealand’s south island, a resort on Hawaii’s Molokai Island, the TranzAlpine Railroad, and tuna fishing vessels on the Tasman Sea.
Alan’s previous work on The Insidious Deception Saga chronicles how a pre-med student and brilliant college professor become entangled in conspiracies hatched by al Qaeda and a ruthless CEO. The two resulting novels include:Insidious Deception (Whiskey Creek Press 2013), and the sequel, Surviving the Endgame (Whiskey Creek Press 2014), in which a presidential election becomes a deadly contest between the international conspirators and those seeking their destruction. Rob Taylor, the series’ protagonist, finds the love of his life and struggles to protect her from the conspiracy’s violent tentacles.
Turning to Alan’s nonfiction work, in May 2008 Praeger Publishing released Selling-Out America’s Democracy. The book shows how special interests, through their lobbyists and the U.S. system of campaign financing, have denied a majority of the American population the policies they seek and have led the nation into a period of decline. The book includes telling interviews of Washington insiders and a four-part plan to restore the U.S. democracy. Copies are available at www.amazon.com and other web book sites.
Alan is a member of the Authors Guild, International Thriller Writers, and the American Political Science Association.
For more information about Alan and his writing, see www.alanlmoss.com.
Leocadia arrives home from school to find her mom’s body. Unaware that the killer still lingers, she rushes to her mother’s side, only to be grabbed from behind. And everything fades to black.
Leo has been battling personal demons after a year of retrograde amnesia. She’s been having vivid dreams of that day. And her dreams are getting worse—she’s starting to remember. Two more bodies are discovered and they are oddly linked to her mom’s unsolved homicide.
Leo befriends her new neighbor. He’s eager to visit Star Hallow’s notorious haunted mansion. It’s located on a deserted cul-de-sac where she once lived and where her mom was murdered. But it’s the Lucien Estate, the mansion next door to her old home, where they happen upon misty ghosts, ghosts that just might help to unravel the homicides.
Will Leo’s memories send her reeling into a relapse, or will she be able to overcome her demons to find her mother’s killer – only to become the next victim?
Not dawdling but clinging to the banister, I breezed up the stairs to the second-floor landing. Adjusting to the dimness, I gazed into the extended hallway. A billowing shape floated by with long, silvery hair.
My tone quavered, “Is that you, Henry?” Either he was wearing a wig to scare me, or Monique Baskerville’s ghost decided to make an appearance.
“Up here…” My head jerked to the distinct words coming from above.
“Henry, I just peed myself,” I said, singing the words, “just in case you’re wondering.” I veered around the banister to take the third set of stairs. Footsteps came from behind me and my skin chilled into mounds of gooseflesh. Is someone following me? I stopped and chafed the freeze from my arms. Whoever or whatever had also stopped.
Resembling a motorized robot, I took one stair, waited and listened, another stair, waited and listened. I heard rustling, and sensing a presence I twisted on the spot. White misty flecks evaporated into thin air leaving behind a lingering scent. An extremely familiar perfume.
“Mom? Is that you?” Stifling my inhalations, I half expected her to respond. With nothing forthcoming, the thoughts of witnessing a ghost loosened my vocal cords. “Henry. I need you!” I chugged up the staircase faster than a locomotive.
Cathrina Constantine is an International Best Selling and Award-Winning Author. Her books have won Reader’s Favorite International Book Awards. New Apple Medalist Award. Literary Classics Gold and Silver Award. Literary Classics Seal of Approval. And recently 1st Place Top Shelf Award for YA/Mystery.
Cathrina loves to immerse herself in great books of every kind of genre, which helps her to write purely for entertainment, and hopefully to inspire readers. When not stationed at her computer you can find her in the woods taking long walks with her dog.
