Lonnie Busch

Michelle and Cliff Stage bought their isolated vacation cabin in the mountains of North Carolina with hopes of repairing their eighteen-year marriage. But when Cliff disappears one night searching for the source of a mysterious light in the woods, Michelle's life will change in unimaginable ways. After the sheriff's department fails to find him, Michelle scrambles down the same dark mountainside alone, the strange, beckoning light her only guide. What she discovers is a cabin, identical to theirs, housing a life she barely recognizes--and a husband she hardly knows. Cliff is a changed man. Now caring and considerate, no longer a manipulative womanizer, he is also missing a finger. He claims that Cassie, their teenage daughter, is dead, killed in a car accident over a year ago. Michelle knows that's not possible--Cassie had phoned her from Atlanta only hours before. Even when shown Cassie's grave, Michelle refuses to accept she's gone. Michelle wants her daughter and her life back, and the only clue to what has happened is a man named Pink. A real estate agent and the man who years earlier built Michelle and Cliff's cabin, Pink was rumored to have killed his wife and buried her on the property then vanished never to be seen again. But in Michelle's new reality, Pink and his wife still reside in town and Pink's smile-splashed billboards are everywhere. To get back to the world where her daughter exists, Michelle must unravel the mystery of Pink while questioning her very reality--and her sanity. Haunting, atmospheric, and deeply thought-provoking, The Cabin on Souder Hill questions the very nature of our existence and the choices we make to form it.

"A fun, fresh take on a SF trope with enough surprises to keep readers guessing." —Kirkus ReviewsModern-day messiah or military experiment gone awry—either way, Geoffrey Cannon, a young inspirational guru, has mad metaphysical skills… and big troubles.In 1943, unsuspecting sailors on the USS Eldridge are subjects of a U.S. Navy experiment. Sailors die, others are maimed, including Third mate Peter Smithwick whose amputated legs are restored through advanced extraterrestrial technology. Leaving the Navy, and fleeing his hometown, he escapes his dubious rescuers to go on the lam under a new name.2024, in the tranquil mountain town of Kleary Creek, religious handyman, and all-around nice-guy, Orvin Littney meets his new neighbor, the mysterious Geoffrey Cannon. While walking together one morning, Orvin experiences a heart attack, and is in the throes of death when Geoffrey miraculously saves his life. Miracles such as these, Orvin soon learns, account for Geoffrey’s cult-like following in the mystical, self-help community.But Geoffrey’s life as a spiritual healer takes a dark turn when devotees are inexplicably murdered under grisly circumstances—all young women he’d had brief affairs with. Hikers and residents turn up dead, while rumors of a monstrous creature in the woods around Kleary Creek circulate, whispers of Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Yeti. With events growing ever more ominous, Orvin comes to believe his “savior” friend, Geoffrey, is somehow at the center of it all.

The world is about to change in unimaginable ways… Earthquakes rock the planet, revealing massive metallic objects and vast subterranean graveyards. One such location is in the Arizona desert. Scientists believe this incredible discovery may hold answers to the origins of man, but when the site is suddenly shut down due to seismic activity, one researcher knows she must return. Assistant archaeologist Rebecca Duccati sneaks into the compound alone, and will have to dig deep to find clues in these strange underground caves and tunnels. The work is dangerous and frightening, but she feels a connection to this bizarre phenomenon that even she isn’t fully aware of yet. FBI Special Agent Demzey knows nothing about archaeology; his specialty— anomalous crimes, the fringe edge of the aberrant and the unknown. Demzey is investigating a recent rash of vicious and brutal murders, the clues surrounding the killings both disturbing and inexplicable. He and his assistant Connie Wegman catch a break when they discover remains of two monstrous creatures unknown to science, believed to be a race of aliens responsible for attacks on humans across the globe. With the death toll ticking ever higher, scientists and intelligence agencies on every continent search for the source of these vicious creatures, until the combined efforts of Duccati and Demzey begin to unravel the mystery, though what they uncover could spell the end for the human race.

“Part ghost story, part love story, all with the bite of loss, grief, and redemption.”—Jubal Tiner, author of The Waterhouse, a James Jones First Novel Fellowship Finalist, and editor of Pisgah Review. Turnback Creek, winner of the Clay Reynolds Novella Prize— During the day, retired heavy equipment operator Cole Emerson cooks, cleans, and tries to keep his dying sister Elsie comfortable, but at night he escapes into the dark solitude of Hardman Lake to fish for bass and clear his head, until one evening in Turnback Creek, when he spies a haunting teenage girl who awakens in him a young man’s desires and old buried memories. The Marind-Anim— Clyde Buxton is in rehab trying to gather up the lost parts of himself when he wakes one night to find a mysterious yet entertaining young woman at the foot of his bed. A Happy Boy— After a rash of miscarriages, Jessica Garren hopes to dissipate her slowly deadening despair by adopting an oddly jubilant ten-year-old boy. The Call of Tin— During a short day-hike, Marsha witnesses a frightening creature that transforms her life, but her husband only heard it, and becomes fixated on trying to figure out what it was, hoping to shake his wife back to normalcy. Chaos Chaos— All the men in the Crane clan die before age fifty, but Mallory wants to spare her older brother Nolan the family curse, while struggling to get her own tilt-a-whirl life under control. One Night In Liberty— Convinced that his best friend had an affair with his wife, Arthur confronts Po, but Po isn’t forthcoming, bound by a curious pledge of secrecy. Clewison’s Wake— Obsessed with discovering how a fellow fisherman at the lodge is catching so many big trophies, Benny decides to follow Clewison one night, and ends up lost, his only guide back a peculiar light floating against the seamless black banks of Wambli Lake.

Past and future collide in this mind-bending plunge into choices and consequences, when a young video game designer meets his new boss, who not only has a connection to the young man's past, but a pivotal role in determining his future! Game designer Theodore Trumbull understands the addictive allure of video games; the chance for unlimited do-overs until you achieve your goal! As a young boy, Theodore was granted a cosmic do over and chose a different outcome to spare his best friend a brutal thrashing, though his choice resulted in another boy's death. Theodore had glimpsed the future or changed the past, he would never be sure, but the event destroyed his childhood. It’s 1979 and Theodore is about to be given another opportunity to choose a different outcome, to save someone he loves. But this time there’s another player in the game, his boss, president of DreamCo, Frank Cantwell, a corporate gladiator with an insatiable appetite for wealth, and a dangerous fixation on the paranormal. Through a disturbing synchronicity, Theodore and Cantwell are flung back together to explore their haunting connection to each other, one that stretches across two thousand miles and nearly two decades, all the way back to The Baldwin Hotel.

Several years into a multi-decade deep space mission, a team of eight scientists—four women, four men—are exploring a dwarf planet near the Kuiper Belt, loading soil samples, rocks and artifacts onto their ship, when they inadvertently bring aboard a stowaway, an unseen entity which is trying desperately to escape from Cargo Hold 4.