When four patients spontaneously regain consciousness after being declared dead, their loved ones are ecstatic and words like "miracle" and "miraculous" begin to float around the hospital. But the jubilation is short-lived when the patients neither recognize their families nor answer to their names. 

Each one vehemently claims to be someone else, someone who lived, and died, in the past. When it's suggested that all four are suffering from fugue states, one of the doctors says that he recognizes a name and verifies he not only knew the girl but was there when she died in 1992. 

It soon becomes obvious that the bodies of the four patients are now inhabited by the souls of people long dead.  

At first glance, Second Lives may be considered a horror story but it is so much more. Four people from differing walks of life die. Yet, they are somehow miraculously brought back from the brink of death, long after such a thing should have been possible. Are they really though, as each person claiming to be someone else, with no memory of the person whose body they now inhabit? The more you read, the story transmutes into one of kindness, compassion, and understanding. 

The story begins in the past, following four people's lives...and deaths: Elisabeth Wyman, died in 1914 attending a woman's suffragette protest, Timothy O'Neal, in a hit and run accident in 1956, Aryeh Rosenberg, murdered in his watch shop in 1922, and Christine Moore, accidentally falling off her high school balcony in 1992. Then we jump to August 24th. These travelers, as they will be later deemed, wake in new bodies: Elisabeth in the body of Sara Cortland, comatose and pregnant but kept alive until her baby reaches term; Timothy in the body of Henry Rollins, a dementia patient whose body is failing him; Aryeh in the body of James Cooper, a paraplegic gay man who decides he can no longer deal with the demands of life and commits suicide; and Helen Harmon, who chose cardiac surgery so that she can get on with her life. While at first, it was challenging to follow so many different characters and timelines, they eventually blend into something totally unusual.



I was completely unprepared for the intensity of Second Lives. Reincarnation certainly isn't a new concept in literature, but Second Lives is unique. These people's lives ended and they immediately stepped into the modern world, in bodies that don't belong to them, waking to relationships and families that have already been established. We aren't talking being reborn as a baby to live a shiny new life full of possibilities. We are talking about shutting one door and immediately opening another. Not only do the travelers have to cope with waking someone else, in another time, but those who lost a loved one have to deal with grief, skepticism, and finally acceptance. How they each choose to do so varies in emotion and strength. 

I was most touched by Henry's story, both before his death and after Timmy's subsequent rebirth. Second Lives turned out to be a very engaging read and one that surprisingly tugged a bit on the ol' heartstrings. While not solidly horror (though technically a body count of 9 IS impressive), it has aspects that science fiction and contemporary fantasy readers would enjoy. P.D. Cacek is definitely an author that I will pick up again!

The price of freedom is always paid in blood.

The sovereigns of the Silver have awakened, but the Queen is a fractured shell of the woman Cam remembers. He hopes to put her back together by finding her son, the missing prince. At least, that’s what he tells his friends when he leaves for the Red.

Back in the Blue, Julia’s old tormentor Rufus is hounding her at every turn. She’s sick of feeling powerless, but she has a plan that will bring the Nobles to their knees.

All she needs is blood.

The Blood Prince is the final book in Josie Jaffrey’s Sovereign trilogy, set in a dystopian Europe where vampiric Nobles control the last remnants of the human race.

Available February 20th!

You don't read the book. It reads you.

Rumors of a deadly book have been floating around the dark corners of the deep web. A disturbing tale about a mysterious figure who preys on those who read the book and subjects them to a world of personalized terror. Jesse Wheeler--former guitarist of the heavy metal group The Rising Dead--was quick to discount the ominous folklore associated with the book. It takes more than some urban legend to frighten him. Hell, reality is scary enough. Seven years ago his greatest responsibility was the nightly guitar solo. Then one night when Jesse was blackout drunk, he accidentally injured his son, leaving him permanently disabled. Dreams of being a rock star died when he destroyed his son's future. Now he cuts radio jingles and fights to stay clean. But Jesse is wrong.

The legend is real--and tonight he will become the protagonist in an elaborate scheme specifically tailored to prey on his fears and resurrect the ghosts from his past. Jesse is not the only one in danger, however.

By reading the book, you have volunteered to participate in the author's deadly game, with every page drawing you closer to your own personalized nightmare.

Bracken, a down on his luck oil man is offered a chance of redemption when a billionaire offers him a job to repair a ghost oil rig in the South Pacific Ocean. The payment is enough to retire him and his small crew. 

But when they arrive on ghost rig Sera, Bracken soon discovers they're not alone. Something very large circles under the water around the rig. Something that shouldn't exist, but does. A thing of nightmares. And it's hungry... 

Iris thought she could ignore the shadows…until they came after everyone she loved.

Seventeen-year-old Iris Kohl has been able to see both dark and light figures ever since a tragic incident three years ago. The problem is, no one else seems to see them, and even worse…the dark figures terrorize humans, but Iris is powerless to stop them. 

Although she’s learned to deal with watching shadows harass everyone around her, Iris is soon forced to question everything she thinks she knows about her world and herself. Her sanity, strength, and will power are tested to the limits by not only the shadows, but also a handsome new teacher whose presence scares away shadows, a new friend with an awe-inspiriting aura, and a mysterious, alluring new student whom Iris has a hard time resisting despite already having a boyfriend. As the shadows invade and terrorize her own life and family, Iris must ultimately accept the guidance of an angel to revisit the most horrific event of her life and become the hero she was meant to be.

It begins, they say, with a woman screaming . . .

On a remote Scottish island, the McBride house stands guard over its secrets. A century ago, a young widow and her son died mysteriously there; just last year a local boy, visiting for a dare, disappeared without a trace.

For Zoe Adams, newly arrived from America, the house offers a refuge from her failing marriage. But her peaceful retreat is disrupted by strange and disturbing events: nighttime intrusions; unknown voices; a constant sense of being watched.

The locals want her to believe that these incidents are echoes of the McBrides’ dark past. Zoe is convinced the danger is closer at hand, and all too real—but can she uncover the truth before she is silenced?

They’re real: fairies, pixies, werewolves, ogres! They’re aliens!

Drunken journalist Jack March can’t believe his bleary eyes when he stumbles onto a winged fairy! She vaults away into the night sky, and his unbelievable—and unbelieved—encounter leads to a stunning revelation that all the creatures of myth and legend are real!

Fairies, pixies, trolls, werewolves, ogres, vampires, angels, elves, bigfoot—all are alien exiles to the planet. For their crimes, these “mythicals” are serving out banishment disguised in flesh-suits enabling them to live among the planet’s natives.

Jack reveals their secret to the world, along with a horrendous discovery: they have decided that the native “terminal species” must be eradicated before it ruins its home planet's ecology.

In this riveting scifi/fairy tale, Jack joins with sympathetic fairies, pixies, and ogres to attempt to save the planet from the mythicals, as well as the mysterious alien cabal known as the Pilgrims.

A cosmic event in 2015 fused Earth with the faerie realm. Scientists referred to the event as The Anomaly. A byproduct of The Anomaly was the advent of hybrid beings—people who became mixed with whatever animal or object was closest to them the moment the event occurred. Humans, or pedigrees, soon relegated fairy refugees and hybrids into ghetto zones in large cities.

Seventy years later, Wolfgang Rex, a second-generation hybrid—part human, part Rhodesian Ridgeback—is a retired police detective who runs a private investigation business in Chicago’s Southside. It’s a one-hybrid show; though Rex couldn’t survive without his assistant, the faerie Sally Sandweb.

One night, two vampires visit Rex and offer him a substantial reward for the recovery of a stolen scroll. Later that same evening, Charlotte Sweeney-Jarhadill, a pedigree woman from Louisiana, visits Rex and hires him to exorcize the headless ghost of a Confederate soldier from her home.

To complicate matters, the private detective ends up falling for Charlotte. Meanwhile, the vampires demand results in the search for the missing scroll. When Rex’s assistant Sally goes missing, he must stay alive long enough to find her. Charlotte and the vampires, however, have other plans for Rex.

An Albert Taylor Mystery Double Feature

Private Number: A radio station receives a strange call from a caller from beyond the grave, at least that's what's claimed. But is it a hoax, a crank caller, or is the person truly dead? When things get more baffling paranormal investigator, Albert Taylor, steps in to look into matters that harbor a dark and evil secret. 

Claws: A series of brutal and savage animal-like murders rattle the small mining town of Brewster, Nevada, a quiet, little community where such atrocities are unheard of, where everyone knows each other's name, and where you can leave your door unlocked at night...until now that is. Weird animal hairs are discovered at each of the crime scenes. Is it an animal or a sinister creature of myth and lore lurking in the woods? When the body count starts racking up and tension among the townspeople rises, the town turns to paranormal investigator, Albert Taylor, to sort matters and lay his traps for the predator.

The third book in Josie Jaffrey's Sovereign series has a gorgeous cover and it's here on Cats Luv Coffee Book Reviews!

Take a peek !:)

A grieving man travels through time via car crash. A family of matriarchs collects recipes for the dead. A woman gains an unexpected child in the midst of a bunny apocalypse. An outcast finds work in a magical slaughterhouse. 

Julie C. Day’s debut collection is rife with dark and twisted tales made beautiful by her gorgeous prose and wonderfully idiosyncratic imagination. Melding aspects of Southern Gothic and fabulism, and utilizing the author’s own scientific background, Day’s carefully rendered settings are both delightful and unexpected. Whether set in a uniquely altered version of Florida’s Space Coast or a haunted island off the coast of Maine, each story in this collection carries its own brand of meticulous and captivating weirdness.

 Yet in the end, it is the desperation of the characters that drives these stories forward and their wild obsessions that carry them through to the end. It is Day’s clear-eyed compassion for the dark recesses of the human heart and her dream-like vision of the physical world that make this collection a standout. 

What kind of demons await you tonight?

For Richie, life's constant cheap shots are adding up. When he finds something is watching him, he never dreamed that it would show him everything that he ever wanted.

When his son, James, comes to stay for the last month of summer, the changes in his father's behavior come to the forefront. What is his father doing staring into the window in the middle of the night?

Was the fiery spark in the dark real? Or is James' imagination getting the best of him?

Summer's almost over.

And life is about to change.

Will the son be able to save the father? Or is it already too late?

The Window holds the answers...and the key.

The new and terrifying novel from Glenn Rolfe, author of LAND OF BONES and BECOMING

'Gaining their ink was just the first step. Now they have to earn it.'

Christian Blake, an unruly English teenager, finds himself in a mysterious tattoo parlour in Connaught Square where he is possessed by a Rune God, Hagalaz, and given the power to harness the forces of nature. Only problem? Hagalaz doesn't like to play nice. He is the God of Disruption, and he is intent on making Christian's life a living hell.

Christian’s mentor, The Raven, pulls him from his relative comfort in London and takes him across the world to join his Tribe, a group of four unlikely teenagers with their own newly-gifted magical powers. They are tasked with taking on the forces of evil brewing across the globe: The Settlers, a growing group of aliens that have slowly integrated themselves into the mainstream of Planet Earth's politics and positions of power.

They have a dark secret, and it the Tribe's mission to discover what that is and to put a stop to it. But nothing is what it seems, for it will take much more than the powers of a few long-forgotten gods to put an end to the impending global catastrophe that threatens to destroy everything and anyone in its path. 

The fight for survival started with a blast.

Then it started snowing in May and the grid failed.

Then they came.

Who are they? And what do they want?

Find out in this addicting post-apocalyptic survival horror thriller that will leave you wanting more. 

When a mysterious blast goes off in a small college town, triggering a blizzard, the few survivors must decide whether to stay or leave and face the monsters who came with the snow.

In the Blue, the world’s last city, all is not well.

Julia is stuck within its walls. She serves the nobility from a distance until she meets Lucas, a boy who believes in fairytales that Julia’s world can’t accommodate. The Blue is her prison, not her castle, and she’d escape into the trees if she didn’t know that contamination and death awaited humanity outside.

But not everyone in the Blue is human, and not everyone can be contained.

Beyond the city’s boundaries, in the wild forests of the Red, Cameron has precious little humanity left to lose. As he searches for a lost queen, he finds an enemy rising that he thought long dead. An enemy that the humans have forgotten how to fight.

One way or another, the walls of the Blue are coming down. The only question is what side you’ll be on when they do.

The world runs on ARCs. Altered Reality Chips. Small implants behind the left ear that allow people to experience anything they could ever imagine. The network controls everything, from traffic, to food production, to law enforcement. Some proclaim it a Golden Age of humanity. Others have begun to see the cracks. Few realize that behind it all, living within every brain and able to control all aspects of society, there exists a being with an agenda all his own: the singularity called Adam, who believes he is God.

Jimmy Mahoney’s brain can’t accept an ARC. Not since his football injury from the days when the league was still offline. “ARC-incompatible” is what the doctors told him. Worse than being blind and deaf, he is a man struggling to cling to what’s left of a society that he is no longer a part of. His wife spends twenty-three hours a day online, only coming off when her chip forcibly disconnects her so she can eat. Others are worse. Many have died, unwilling or unable to log off to take care of even their most basic needs.

After being unwittingly recruited by a rogue singularity to play a role in a war that he doesn’t understand, Jimmy learns the truth about Adam and is thrown into a life-and-death struggle against the most powerful mathematical mind the world has ever known. But what can one man do against a being that exists everywhere and holds limitless power? How can one man, unable to even get online, find a way to save his wife, and the entire human race, from destruction?

Harley Baker's obsession with the afterlife leads him to experiment with astral projection, but when he doesn't take the necessary precautions before an OBE, he comes back to find that a demon has taken over his body. While in spirit form, Harley watches the impostor romance the girl he's crushing on, ace his college exams, and impress his best friend with opportunities for wealth beyond his wildest dreams. 

Not only does Harley have to figure out how to get his body back before he's trapped in the astral plane forever, but he has to stop the demon from a plan that will veil the world in darkness and enslave the human race.

(Veiled, #2) Publication date: November 25th 2018 Genres: Adult, Urban Fantasy

History believes me to be a merciless savage. A terror upon the Earth known as The Impaler. Archaic lore whispers I am the first of the vampire lineage.

These claims … are all painted in bloody truth.
Now, while the world watches in fear, a war is brewing. Humans are targeting vampires in merciless attacks to force us back into the shadows.
They woke me to be their weapon.

They know not my loathing for my own kind.

Even I cannot say for certain whose side I’m on.
I have bowed before the alter of darkness rooted in the Nosferatu bloodline. Been forced to drink of its bitter sacrament. They refer to me as The Son of The Dragon, and I laugh. For I, alone, know that malevolent essence is one no man could ever tame.

Bryn Kolt can’t seem to stay put—or perhaps she can’t seem to find what she’s looking for. Traveling the country ever since cancer took her mother five years ago, Bryn has yet to fill the ache death left behind.

When her grandmother wills her a cabin, she isn’t expecting to discover the old woman’s ramblings about magic are true. But sure enough, Rhyeos, a shadow wolf guardian, enters her life as casually as if he had always been there, bringing with him the promise of adventure.

Soon there’s more for Bryn to dwell on than the flirty Guardian of the Forest’s advances, however. Somewhere deep in the magical world Beyond a villain known as The Beast threatens to tip the balance toward darkness. What’s worse? He wants to meet her.

Callie, a Classics major, flees home to protect her family from a monster straight out of mythology. Visions lead her to Nectar and Ambrosia: the weirdest pub on Earth, where inter-dimensional travelers with attention seeking issues get drunk in between the A-list celebrity lives they create. They can't pretend to be gods anymore—not since a treaty with the current Supreme Deity promising they won't intervene in human affairs.


The Doorkeeper of this threshold, Florian, rides herd on the rowdy Amaranthine and offers her shelter and a job. Callie likes the lonely, mysterious bartender more than she should. For Florian, her presence is a ray of light in the gray monotony of his sentence behind the bar, but he keeps a cautious distance—the truth of how he became Doorkeeper could change Callie's perception of him forever.