Showing results by author "J.A. Smith" in All Categories

When Sherlock Holmes joins his sidekick and friend, Doctor Watson, at the wake for Brigadier Buffington, they wonder how Buffington acquired a lost Leonardo da Vinci painting. And, after a curious incident or two, another question arises: Did Buffington die of natural causes? Or was he murdered?

In this book you will find a collection of thirteen unsettling stories from some of the most talented independent horror authors on the scene today. From otherworldly creatures to tales of revenge, vicious pirates to religious zealots, K is for Kidnap will keep you guessing until the end of each story.

Everyone has a common misconception that sports for athletes must be grueling, exhausting, and herculean. But should that really be the case when it comes to sports nowadays? Science is in every aspect of our lives, evolving it for the better. And when it infiltrated the world of sports, something great came out.

Castle Heights is an ordinary looking London tower block...from the outside. But within the drab walls, things aren’t quite so innocent…or safe. Experience the disturbing events which take place on one fateful night as 18 writers bring you 18 stories–one set on each floor. From monsters to killers, the supernatural to the bizarre, these interlinked tales will have you desperate for escape as you make your way up Castle Heights from the ground floor.

Gypsy Smith (1860-1947) was an evangelist who made over 40 evangelistic trips abroad to such countries as the United States, Australia, and South Africa. J. Wilbur Chapman (1859-1918), a Presbyterian, had great success in four pastorates, but is best remembered as a powerful evangelist. William Booth (1829-1912) was a British Methodist preacher who founded The Salvation Army.

A thick fog envelopes the streets of London and nefarious agents set about their evil plots and schemes. Murder most foul rears its ugly head and baffling mysteries confound the good men of Scotland Yard until they've no recourse by to call upon the greatest consulting detective of them all, Sherlock Holmes of 221B Baker Street.

Injured and shaken, Ryan Connors and The Nameless are trapped at a former NSA listening station in the Aleutian Islands. To escape, they must put aside their distrust and launch an operation needed to halt OPIS from completing what they started - unrestricted dominion. In Oregon, Zanzi Connors and Director Lisa Omstead have reunited to search for the one person who could provide the answers they seek, Doctor Josie Lahm, the scientist responsible for creating the technology that has caused so much suffering. But the enemy will do anything to protect their asset.

Tasked with finding common ground and building friendships between the world's two largest countries and arctic neighbors, a young Canadian diplomat finds himself on his first overseas assignment in Moscow, the Soviet capital. It's the early 1970s and a Cold War between communism and capitalism, the west and the east, is simmering-while the ice rink is just starting to heat up. Smith opts for sports diplomacy, throwing off his embassy black tie dress codes and donning the blue and white sweater of the Moscow Maple Leafs.

Every year, as the anniversary of 9/11 inches closer, Kit scans the memorials published in the paper. It's a simple thing to look up a name, to reach out to surviving family members who might still be yearning for connection with their lost loved one...to offer assistance. After her husband went down in the north tower, Kit scraped by as an actress. But now her daughter is in the hospital, bills are due, and the acting work has dried up. Becoming a medium is almost too easy for someone used to pretending for a living. But now the seances are starting to feel unsettlingly real....

Wilmington, Delaware, is one of those cities that feels more like a small town. Neighbors know one another, and businesses cater to the needs of the citizenry. But what happens when the local car salesman suffers one lost sale too many, when one more customer decides to buy from the competition because the price is too high, interest rates aren’t friendly, or that shade of blue just won’t work?

A very ordinary day in the lives of the four Hodges-Bradley children takes on frightening dimensions in the aftermath of what seems like a typical California earthquake. A year and a half has passed since the great sorceress Morgana Shee, with the children's help, closed the last gateway to the Wildworld, a shimmering parallel universe of legend and danger.

After my parents' deaths, I had to learn to forgive in order to move forward in my life. There is no Band-Aid for grief, loss, or offense. We'll have questions about the challenges we face in life, of course. The problem is not having a question. The problem is not that our question remains unanswered. The problem is that we expect, or even demand, resolution and find ourselves offended because of this apparent disconnect between what we thought we were getting and what life gave us.

When Lizzie Jones, pet sitter extraordinaire, is asked to watch over her best friend's two spoiled dogs at the posh gated community of Craggy Hill Estates, the last thing she expects is to wind up in the middle of a homicide. But that's exactly what happens when she finds her best friend's cheating husband and Danger Cove’s celebrity bodybuilder champ, Mr. Jupiter, floating face-down in his hot tub. To make matters worse, the police aren’t looking any further than the wife for a suspect.

For more than four decades, between 1969 and 2010, the remote former mining town of Trinidad, Colorado, was the unlikely crossroads for approximately 6,000 medical pilgrims who came looking for relief from the pain of gender dysphoria. The surgical skill and nonjudgmental compassion of surgeons Stanley Biber and his transgender protege Marci Bowers made the phrase "going to Trinidad" a euphemism for gender confirmation surgery in the worldwide transgender community.

A missing pet. A gang of criminal pit bulls. Two cat detectives are ready to solve a mystery… Yoshi and Gatsby are two felines known as the Petectives. When they agree to help a pretty young cat find her missing brother, a routine pet investigation goes sour faster than a bowl of milk. To solve the mystery, the cat detectives must face down a gang of vicious criminal pit bulls and the neighborhood dog police. While Gatsby's up to his whiskers in danger and romance, Yoshi puts together the pieces of a puzzle that could rock their community. With enemies at every turn, can Yoshi and Gatsby ...

Sci-Fi Shorts is a collection of classic science fiction stories from the golden age of space stories. This group of five unabridged short stories by various authors covers such adventures as crazy scientists stealing souls, time traveling miners, trouble behind enemy lines, gambling for the future of a world, and gateways through space.

Pet Sitter turned sleuth Lizzie Jones is excited about the upcoming Second Chance Animal Rescue fundraiser. The celebrity draw, Sabrina Ramirez, is a pet psychic famous for her TV show The Critter Communicator. Sabrina arrives with her entourage that includes Rosie, an adorable teacup pig that Sabrina treats like royalty, Sabrina's buff bodyguard, her devoted nephew, and unexpectedly, her estranged ex-husband. When Sabrina needs a pet sitter Lizzie is thrilled to take on the job. That is until the little piglet is pignapped on Lizzie's watch - along with her diamond collar!

A brilliant anthology of weird and fantastic stories about islands and sea monsters. 'The Sea-Raiders' by H. G. Wells. 'Alone on a Wide Wide Sea' by J. S. Fletcher. 'Dagon' by H. P. Lovecraft. 'A Tropical Horror' by William Hope Hodgson. 'No Ships Pass' by Eleanor Smith. 'Aepyornis Island' by H. G. Wells. 'The Vengeance of La Maraye' by J. S. Fletcher. 'Absolute Evil' by Julian Hawthorne. 'The Shadows' by Henry S. Whitehead. 'The Lighthouse on Shivering Sand' by J. S. Fletcher. 'Over the Border' by Morgan Robertson. 'Treasure Trove' by Neil Munro.

The Nameless are no more. Former agent Sofia Ortiz must put aside her grief and form a new team - Arclight. After discovering damning intel, General Munroe dispatches them on a recon mission to Hong Kong, in the heart of enemy territory. Zanzi Connors, despondent over the mystery of her missing parents and burdened by guilt, hesitantly agrees to join. With the clock ticking and choices limited, Arclight begins a desperate fight to fulfill their oath of being the beacon in a world of darkness.

SPINE-CHILLING GHOST STORIES TO KEEP YOU UP AT NIGHT It’s been said that there are no haunted places, only haunted people. That’s who you’ll find here, the haunted ones. A maintenance technician in remote Alaska, an English thief, a young couple on a road trip across America, an astronaut on a one-way ride to Jupiter, an Irish gravedigger, and dozens more. All victims of an otherworldly infection, all tormented by a plague of shadows. In this anthology, you will find tales of horror and suspense fiction, science fiction, fantasy, and mystery. An eclectic collection of ghost stories ...