Metaphysical Mysteries

SYNOPSIS: In 1993, a young Italian dramatist and his wife arrive at an island resort, where they meet an old Impressionist and his granddaughter. Surprisingly, the teenage girl looks like the author’s first fiancée, who has been missing since 1982. The same night, the artist and the girl disappear, as if only to create a much greater mystery that cannot remain unsolved forever. (This standalone story is available in print as part of the STARCALL Anthology, Vol. 5, illustrated by the author.)

"The fate of the world hangs on their choices... The past foretells her future..." Zara Khatum is a warrior, a survivor, and a woman fueled by a thirst for vengeance. Haunted by the horrors inflicted on her and her Kurdish people, she seeks only retribution. But a hidden legacy, a powerful artifact, and a destiny woven through millennia threaten to reshape her life and the fate of the world. Enter Peter Gollinger, a troubled Californian whose family is bound by an ancient mystery. He's plagued by dreams, visions of a dark-haired woman he must save. These visions lead him on a path that ...

"Fun, fun, fun! Like the love child of Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett!" Man plans, the Multiverse laughs! "It's like that book about anti-gravity. You can't put it down." "A story 14 billion years in the making!" "Finally, a treatment for readers suffering "Dirk Gently or Hitchhiker's Guide withdrawal!" "Not only is this case stranger than we imagine, it's stranger than we can imagine." No other detective is quite like Dr. Ziegfeld Zaggar, Quantum Detective -- and that's probably for the best. Zaggar and his reluctant, obsessively linear-thinking sidekick, Jack Robbins, investigate the ...

A fast-paced supernatural thrill ride filled with demonic villains set in the heart of South Florida! My name is Patrick Bannon, and I'm a demonologist. Unfortunately, when you mingle with the demonic, you’re bound to make some mistakes along the way. Now I’m paying for my sins. Jenaveve, the Veelah succubus who also happens to be my ex-girlfriend, has me investigating a series of murders. Looks like there’s a new player in town, and they’ve chosen Miami for their home. To make matters worse, Tiberius, the demon responsible for my brother’s suicide, is riding shotgun in my body, ...

In a time when prisons no longer contain inmates behind concrete and steel, the convicted serve their time while asleep, rehabilitating in virtual reality while blissfully unaware of their crimes. Roger Parker is a professional prison breaker, skilled at navigating these strange penal dream worlds and extracting those imprisoned there - for a price. Parker wants out of the game, but a powerful senator, desperate to save his son, convinces Parker to pull one last job.

The God Matrix is a spiritual thriller that blends mystery, suspense, military intrigue, and maybe even Alien abductions, with spiritual principles and quantum physics. It will captivate you and keep you on the edge of your seat, as you are swept up in an adventure that leaves you wondering at the truth of you own existence, and even more so, wondering whether the story is indeed fact or fiction.

Goldilocks' latest case takes her to Big Sky Country, where war looms large atop the Crown of the Continent, and more than one fate may be decided. Goldilocks is no stranger to adversity. In fact, she’s made a career off of overcoming long odds. She’s faced Bloodhoofs, renegade shamans, and even survived betrayal from within her own agency. None of that, however, has prepared her for her most hated enemy to date: desk duty. Grounded from the forests after the events of the previous year, she’s convinced her career has hit rock bottom, but that all changes when a body is discovered ...

The mind is a maze. Your memories are its key. A detective tasked with solving the seemingly impossible murder of an influential scientist finds a clue that leads him to Credence, a corporation that uses mass beliefs to change reality, enabling space travel. In a not-so-distant future, the murder of a notorious neuroscientist threatens the closure of Credence, a federal corporation where the powerful minds of exceptional individuals—the Believers—are harnessed into mass beliefs capable of teleporting spaceships to the other side of the universe. To avoid the deaths of the colonists in ...

Before Amir Zayne became a seeker of truth, he was just another lost kid in Cairo — smart, angry, and already circling the drain. When a classmate dies under mysterious circumstances, Amir’s investigation drags him into a world of pills, secrets, and surveillance. The deeper he digs, the stranger it gets: missing factory shipments, strange visions, and whispers about a drug that doesn’t just numb — it opens something. As Amir spirals deeper into addiction and paranoia, he starts to question everything — his friends, his teachers, even his own father. But some truths don’t want ...

Take a journey into the afterlife with Elizabeth Walker... Leaving her life behind, she enters Heaven full of expectations, meeting friends and family long gone, and marveling at the fact she can still get her favorite cappuccinos. New adventures await...yet she cannot forget her husband and daughters she left behind. Soon, however, she begins to realize Heaven is not what she believed; indeed, the dark lower levels seem to be encroaching...and calling to her. Elizabeth will soon learn what we do in life really does affect where we go in death. What Readers are saying: ★★★★★ “...

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.

When Robert Ryder loses his best friends all in one cruel twist of fate, including the love of his life, it seems almost too good to be true when he finds a book of shadows with a spell to resurrect the dead. When the spell works, the returned want more than just a second chance at life. Their emotions and needs are intensified, the strongest being their desire for revenge. And why are there shadows moving within their eyes? Are they still his friends? Or did something come back in their place? And there are other things seeking to cross over, entities becoming stronger with every use of ...

A mummy is nothing but a pile of bones covered with dried up skin, right? That is until you add a few demons and combine this mixture with a band of monks shrouded in secrecy. For some this story will bring tears of joy while others will experience tears of compassion. But, one thing is for sure – all will be left on the edge of their seats by this thrilling adventure. Dr. Andrew Rogers, a notable archeologist, along with his equally famous partner and friend, Dr. Kathleen McGregor, are persuaded to chaperone a class of thirty female students to the ruins of Egypt. While they have been ...

Are you feeling overwhelmed with your present life situation? Are you in need of a quick retreat into the mountains or a dense forest ? Do you need to recharge your life’s batteries? Then this book of inspirational stories is just for for you. The night may be long, the days might be clouded but nothing lasts forever. Sooner or later, the situation changes for change is the law of life. Those who keep the lamp of hope alive in their heart, see the lamp burning bright and eventually filling their lives with glow and warmth. But all this does not happen on its own. It demands constant ...

Hugo Award winner Elizabeth Bear has won high praise for her thought-provoking science fiction. The second in Bear’s powerful Jacob’s Ladder series, Chill finds the generation starship Jacob’s Ladder with a new captain—Perceval. As Perceval struggles with the ship’s recent damage, remnants of the rebellion still linger and a threat to the crew grows.

Read by award-winning narrator Mike Vendetti, this short story by Philip K. Dick takes us where the powers of earth had finally exterminated the last of the horrible tribes of mutant freaks spawned by atomic war. Menace to homo sapien supremacy was about ended - but not quite. For out of the countryside, came a great golden, godlike youth whose extraordinary mutant powers, combining the world's oldest and newest methods of survival, promised a new and superior type of mankind.

Robert Baxter once reveled in the intoxicating delights of Atopia - the man-made island where humans lose themselves in a world of boundless virtual realities. Now, Bob has returned to immerse himself in this mind-altering, consciousness-sharing refuge from the eroding Earth. But something is very wrong. Bob feels a tidal wave of doom cresting above the pleasure dome that is Atopia. As alternate universes perish, the salvation of all he loves - and all that exists - rests with Bob alone.

Mercy Habernackle has just gotten the surprise of a lifetime. She has a brother - and not just any brother, a dark, mysterious, and incredibly hot brother. Given up for adoption 24 years ago, Reign Alexander just wants to get to know his long lost sister, but things take a dangerous turn when on his first night in Aspen Falls, a woman ends up dead, in Reign's bed! Desperate to prove her brother's innocence and save her mother from heartache, Mercy enlists the help of the Witch Squad to find out who really killed Harper Bradshaw.

A marijuana mystery, the story of Rolland Greene. Rolland Greene, a local writer, and his friends find themselves wrapped up in a complex paper chase. Rolland Greene takes you to the heartland of Northern California and reveals the mind and heart of a Mendonesian caught up in high strangeness. Rolland spends his time writing his political treatise, but suddenly finds himself trying to survive the tumult surrounding his lifestyle and friends. Rolland and his buds all find themselves tormented by bad luck when criminals begin pursuit of a treasure unique to Mendocino, the guidebook to crime. ...

I don’t wish to frighten you, reads the anonymous note introverted and bullied eight-year-old Leo Cruz finds in his backpack. All the sender asks is that he avoid a certain spot on a certain day, or he’ll die. Leo has reason to be afraid. The warning hearkens back to nearly a decade ago - to the same site, where a murder has become local folklore and a favorite campfire tale reinvented year after year by the kids of Arenas, a small Spanish town.