Ollie Andrews survived what most couldn’t imagine. Abandoned as a child because of a rare genetic condition rendering her incapable of feeling pain, she endured horrors that would have broken anyone else. Pain serves as the body’s warning system—Ollie has no warnings, just injuries appearing without the protective sensation that tells normal people to stop. By eighteen, she’s hiding in Alaska’s wilderness, as far from people as geography permits. Then a monster from folklore attacks her one dark night, and everything changes. 💔
The beast is an aswang, a creature of nightmares that shouldn’t exist outside Philippine mythology. But it’s real, it’s deadly, and Ollie’s unique condition makes her the perfect hunter—she can withstand injuries that would incapacitate anyone else, fight through damage without the distraction of pain. At least, that’s what two scarred monster hunters claim when they capture her and drag her to Fear University, a covert academy where the elite train to fight deadly supernatural creatures threatening humanity. ⚔️
Dark, dangerous, and full of secrets that run deeper than Ollie imagined, the school shatters everything she thought she knew about reality. Monsters are real. Magic exists. And she possesses abilities beyond just pain immunity that make her valuable to forces she’s only beginning to understand. But amidst the shadows and danger lurking around every corner, she finds unexpected freedom from the isolation that defined her life and a magnetic connection with her brooding, battle-worn tutor Luke who treats her like she’s capable rather than broken. 💕
In a world where danger stalks corridors and loyalty is scarce as trust, Ollie’s growing bond with Luke sparks a glimmer of hope and a kind of happiness she’s never known. Yet as dark truths come to light and deception entangles her in a deadly web involving the school’s true purpose, Ollie faces a terrifying possibility that changes everything: she might not be a hunter training to fight monsters. She might be the real monster they all fear—the one they’re training to contain or destroy. 🔥
What makes this captivating: Meg Collett’s complete fantasy series follows Ollie Andrews, abandoned for her rare pain-immunity condition and attacked by a mythological aswang, captured by monster hunters who drag her to Fear University’s covert academy where her unique abilities make her the perfect supernatural creature hunter—until dark truths suggest she might be the real monster they all fear.
With ten days remaining as sheriff, Fen Maguire faces the kind of impossible murder that will haunt him into retirement if he can’t solve it. A hunter is discovered shot through the back while twenty feet up in his deer stand—a killing that defies logic and physics. The angle is wrong, the location makes no sense, and every explanation creates more questions than answers. Then evidence points uncomfortably toward his own ranch manager, someone Fen has known and trusted for years. 🔍
Fen must solve his final case or retire with a killer living on his property and a mystery that will eat at him for whatever years remain. But investigating someone close to home means confronting uncomfortable possibilities about trust, loyalty, and whether he really knows the people around him. The clock ticks toward his last day in office while the case grows more complicated with every interview, every piece of evidence that doesn’t quite fit the obvious conclusion. ⚠️
Nine months into retirement that was supposed to mean peace and quiet, Fen’s carefully constructed new life shatters when a body floats down the Brazos River past his property. He’s done being sheriff, finished with murder investigations, ready to enjoy retirement without corpses interrupting his morning coffee. But the victim’s identity brings complications that pull Fen back despite his resistance—this death isn’t random violence or a tragic accident. 💀
Called back to investigate because local authorities lack his experience with complex cases, Fen discovers the victim’s death threatens to expose secrets powerful people want buried. And they’re willing to kill repeatedly to keep those secrets from surfacing, viewing additional bodies as acceptable cost of continued silence. What begins as helping with one suspicious death becomes a dangerous investigation where Fen’s outsider status makes him both effective and vulnerable. He’s not constrained by department politics, but he’s also not protected by a badge anymore. Some truths stay buried because digging them up gets people killed. 🚨
What makes this compelling: Bruce Hammack’s two-mystery collection follows Sheriff Fen Maguire facing an impossible murder with ten days left in office—a hunter shot while twenty feet up his deer stand with evidence pointing to Fen’s ranch manager—then nine months into retirement, called back when a Brazos River body threatens exposing secrets powerful people kill to protect.
Professor Abby Stafford was burned out in every way that mattered. Overweight, middle-aged, and tired of pretending enthusiasm for students who barely read assignments or administrators who cared more about enrollment numbers than education quality. She’d even thought about suicide during particularly dark moments, but there were her dogs. Who would care for them if she wasn’t around? So she kept trudging forward through days that blurred together in exhausting sameness. 💔
A summer opportunity arrives that sounds too good to be true: become a test subject for a supplement designed to help participants feel better and look younger. Wolf Harbor Resort promises relaxation, rejuvenation, and compensation for her time. What does she have to lose besides a summer of lonely house projects and anxious thoughts? The resort sounds like exactly what the doctor would order if doctors prescribed mountain retreats instead of antidepressants. She signs up without reading all the fine print. 🏔️
Wolf Harbor Resort is beautiful, isolated, and suspiciously eager to keep participants from leaving mid-program. The supplement works—Abby feels energy returning, weight dropping off without the usual struggle, years seemingly reversing. She looks in mirrors and sees someone she doesn’t quite recognize, someone younger and stronger than the burned-out professor who arrived weeks ago. The other participants report similar miraculous results. But the resort may have left out a few critical details about side effects. 💊
Specifically, side effects involving enhanced senses that detect heartbeats from across rooms, strength that shouldn’t be possible for someone her size, instincts that feel distinctly inhuman, and an overwhelming urge during full moons that the resort staff seem to expect and prepare for. Abby realizes too late that “supplement” was a generous description for whatever Wolf Harbor administered. She’s changing into something that isn’t entirely human anymore, surrounded by people who knew exactly what would happen and planned for it. The question becomes whether she wants to fight the transformation or embrace the alpha female emerging from decades of defeat. 🐺
What makes this intriguing: L.J. Breedlove’s paranormal romance follows burned-out, overweight, middle-aged Professor Abby Stafford who becomes a summer test subject at Wolf Harbor Resort for a supplement promising to help her feel better and look younger—discovering too late the resort left out critical side effects involving inhuman strength, enhanced senses, and full moon urges as she transforms.
In Shock: My Journey from Death to Recovery and the Redemptive Power of Hope
Dr. Rana Awdish never imagined that a routine emergency hospital trip would result in hemorrhaging nearly all her blood volume and losing her unborn first child. But after her first visit, Dr. Awdish spent months fighting for her life, enduring consecutive major surgeries and experiencing multiple overlapping organ failures. At each step of the recovery process, Awdish was faced with something even more unexpected: repeated cavalier behavior from her fellow physicians—indifference following human loss, disregard for anguish and suffering, and an exacting emotional distance. 🏥
Hauntingly perceptive and beautifully written, In Shock allows the reader to transform alongside Awdish and watch what she discovers in our carefully-cultivated, yet often misguided, standard of care. Lying in hospital beds as a patient rather than standing beside them as physician, she sees with devastating clarity how the profession trains empathy out of doctors, how efficiency metrics override human connection, how the system prioritizes moving patients through rather than sitting with them in their suffering. 💔
Awdish comes to understand the fatal flaws in her profession and in her own past actions as a physician while achieving, through unflinching presence, a crystalline vision of a new and better possibility for us all. The memoir doesn’t just recount a near-death experience—it exposes the emotional distance healthcare providers maintain supposedly for professional reasons but that leaves patients feeling abandoned in their darkest moments. 🩺
This powerful narrative reveals how one doctor’s journey from death’s edge to recovery became a journey toward understanding medicine’s most fundamental failing: the loss of human compassion in pursuit of clinical efficiency. Awdish’s unflinching honesty about her own past behavior as a physician makes this memoir particularly powerful—she recognizes she’d exhibited the same cavalier indifference, maintained the same emotional distance, contributed to the same system that now wounded her as a patient. Her transformation offers hope that medicine can evolve to honor both clinical excellence and human compassion. ⚕️
What makes this powerful: Dr. Rana Awdish’s hauntingly perceptive memoir chronicles her journey from physician to patient after an emergency trip resulted in hemorrhaging nearly all her blood volume, losing her unborn child, and fighting for life through multiple organ failures—where she discovered repeated cavalier behavior from fellow physicians forcing her to recognize fatal flaws in medicine’s standard of care and her own past actions.
When a woman’s body is discovered by Oak Creek’s river, local police quickly dismiss it as an accidental drowning from years ago. Brought from Chicago to help, Detective Charlotte Dawes has worked enough murder investigations to recognize when authorities are seeking easy answers. An examination tells her what local police refuse to see: somebody moved this victim to this remote location after death. The positioning is wrong, decomposition patterns inconsistent with the timeline locals insist upon, evidence pointing toward homicide. But challenging the official narrative makes Charlotte unpopular. 🏞️
After a local artist is found murdered, her body carefully positioned to match one of her final paintings, the sinister truth becomes impossible to ignore. Someone is turning art into murder with meticulous planning. More disturbing still, when Charlotte examines the artist’s other recent works, she realizes they seem to predict who in Oak Creek will die next, illustrated in increasingly macabre ways. The paintings become a roadmap to future murders. 🎨
As fear grips the town, Charlotte discovers a connection between the first victim and a local cop whose behavior has raised her suspicions. It becomes clear the killer has planned moves meticulously, possibly for years, embedding themselves deeply in the community while waiting for the perfect moment to begin their dark game. 🔍
In Oak Creek where everyone knows everyone’s business yet guards their own secrets fiercely, Charlotte must determine who’s truly playing on her side before she becomes the next body positioned to match sinister art. The killer has been watching, learning, preparing—and Charlotte’s investigation has made her a target. Every person she trusts could be the predator. Every ally might be performing loyalty while hiding murderous intentions. The darkest game has begun, and Charlotte must solve it before the next painting predicts her own death. ⚠️
What makes this chilling: Serial killer thriller following Chicago Detective Charlotte Dawes brought to Oak Creek where locals dismiss a riverside body as accidental drowning until an artist is murdered and positioned to match her painting—revealing her other works predict future victims in increasingly macabre ways while Charlotte discovers connections to a local cop in a town where everyone guards secrets.
Kristina Snow is the perfect daughter: gifted high school junior, quiet, never any trouble. Then Kristina meets the monster: crank. And what begins as a wild, ecstatic ride turns into a struggle through hell for her mind, her soul—her life. 📚
Before the monster, life was good. Kristina maintained excellent grades, pleased her teachers, made her parents proud. Her future stretched ahead predictably bright—colleges would welcome her applications, careers waited, success seemed inevitable. That version of Kristina existed in what now feels like another lifetime, before a summer visit to her estranged father changed everything. 💊
The monster had many street names but was known scientifically as methamphetamine. What began as trying something once during a rebellion against her perfect-daughter image transformed rapidly into something far more consuming than Kristina could have predicted. At first, the wild ride felt like liberation—boundless energy, fearless confidence, the feeling she could accomplish anything. She discovered Bree, a persona emerging under the drug’s influence: bold, sexual, reckless, everything perfect Kristina had suppressed. For a little while, the ride felt incredible. The monster made her feel invincible. ⚡
But what begins as occasional use escalates into dependency consuming her thoughts, relationships, and future. The monster that promised freedom delivers only chains—addiction destroying the perfect daughter and replacing her with someone willing to sacrifice everything for the next high. The wild, ecstatic ride through liberation inevitably transforms into a desperate struggle through hell, where survival itself becomes questionable and the girl who once had everything loses herself completely to crank’s devastating grip. 💔
Ellen Hopkins tells Kristina’s story through powerful verse capturing both the seductive appeal of methamphetamine and the devastating reality of addiction that follows. Life was great for a little while. Then it wasn’t. The monster always wins until you find the strength to fight back—if you survive long enough to try. ⚠️
What makes this devastating: Ellen Hopkins’s powerful verse novel follows Kristina Snow, the perfect daughter—gifted junior, quiet, never troublesome—who meets the monster called crank during a summer visit to her estranged father, beginning a wild ecstatic ride that becomes a struggle through hell for her mind, soul, and life as occasional use escalates into dependency destroying everything.
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