Showing results by author "Kathryn Meyer Griffith" in All Categories

Midnight. Some call it the witching hour. Others call it the devil’s hour. Here in the graveyard, midnight is a very special time. It is a time when ghostly spirits are at their strongest, when the veil between our world and theirs is at its thinnest. Legend has it, that while most of the world is asleep, the lack of prayers allow the spirits to communicate under the cover of darkness, among the headstones, their whispers rustling in the leaves of the old oak trees. But if you’re here in the graveyard, you can tell yourself it’s just the wind....

That’s what 27 writers want you to consider, here in this collection of the strange and terrible, the shocking and amazing, the frightening and awe-inspiring. Assembled here for easy perusal are some of the finest tales of ghosts, zombies, witches, cryptozoological freaks, monsters, and aliens of the past year.

Abigail Sutton's beloved husband walks out one night, doesn't return, and two years later is found dead, a victim of a long ago crime. It's made her sympathetic to the missing and their families. Starting her new life, Abigail moves to small town and buys a fixer-upper house left empty when old Edna Summers died. Once it was also home to Edna's younger sister, Emily, and her two children, Jenny and Christopher, who, people believe, drove away one night, thirty years ago, and just never came back.

Ex-cop Henry Shore has been Chief Park Ranger at Crater Lake National Park for eight years and he likes his park and his life the way it's been. Safe. Tranquil. Predictable. But he's about to be tested in so many ways. First the earthquakes begin, people begin to go missing, then there's some mysterious water creature that's taken up residence in the caves below Crater Lake and it's not only growing in size, it's aggressive and cunning and very hungry.

The Fifth Spookie Town Murder Mystery is finally out. Who wouldn’t want to find a chest of buried treasure, ancient gold coins, and exquisitely priceless jewelry on their land? A treasure a sailor dead for over 70 years once found in the shallow waters of a distant island and later buried, hid, the remnants of at the end of his tragic life. The townspeople of Spookie have been searching, fighting, and killing each other over it for decades, and no one has ever unearthed it.

Ten years ago Frank Lester, a Chicago homicide detective, thought he had rid himself forever of the Mud People Killer who'd kidnapped and murdered six people. Frank had shot him as he'd fled through a snowy night; had killed him, he believed, though a body was never found. But the killer wasn't dead. He'd only been waiting to take his revenge on Frank and those he cares about now...10 years later. Frank retired early and is living back in his hometown of Spookie when the killer resurfaces to take up where he left off.

Prehistoric creatures have again invaded Crater Lake National Park - and this time there's more than one. Henry Shore has been Chief Park Ranger at Crater Lake National Park for thirteen years now and thought the days when he'd had to fight a rogue dinosaur that lived in the caves below the lake were long over. Until one of his park rangers, to save a visitor's life, is in a deadly struggle out in the woods with a new breed of dinosaur worse than the last one.

Two mysteries, one from her far distant past of over 70 years ago and one for the future and a dire prediction from her grandniece Glinda, a psychic, that will affect not only Spookie and its inhabitants, but the whole world. Mysterious bones are unearthed in the ground behind Luke’s Hardware Store, and Frank and the sheriff are determined to find out whose bones they are, and how the victim died - even though whatever happened occurred over 70 years ago.

This sixth Spookie Town Murder Mystery belongs primarily to Abigail and Frank Lester, my two main characters in the six book series. It’s their turn. First off, it at long last solves the enigma of Abigail’s first husband Joel Sutton’s disappearance, and death, a decade before…the tragic event that sent Abigail to Spookie in the first place to begin a new life. The new life that would grow so big as to include a new love, a new family, quirky, but well-meaning friends, and the strange murder mysteries her new friends would drag her into over the years.

A beautiful Civil War era bed and breakfast called Willowwind is cherished and run by a loving couple, Adrian and Caroline Stone. But it’s also haunted by a long-dead Civil War era ghostly vampiress called Lilith who believes the man, Adrian, is her reincarnated soldier/lover and she will do anything to have him, body-heart-and soul, for her own again, no matter how many she must kill. Yet Adrian’s wife, Caroline, along with the spirit of her dead father, will do anything to make sure that doesn’t happen. For true love is far stronger than any evil obsession.

For seven long years, chief park ranger Henry Shore has been dealing with and fighting anachronistic dinosaurs in his beloved Crater Lake National Park and in the surrounding town of Klamath Falls. It began with one lone leviathan, the one he tongue-in-cheek called Godzilla. Henry and his band of heroes defeated it but others followed: the flying varieties he named gargoyles, the mutant t-rexes and roaming velociraptors that were so much smarter than their ancient ancestors.

Henry Shore has spent the last decade hunting for, fighting, protecting people from, and exterminating rogue dinosaurs in his beloved Crater Lake National Park, and the towns around it. Once the chief park ranger there, now he’s retired and, since all the dinosaurs are supposedly gone, he’s trying to live his best retirement life. Except, for Henry, that doesn’t seem to be possible…because of a new sorrow he’s had to shoulder, and a new insidious breed of super-smart, highly intuitive dinosaurs that have suddenly emerged to again menace humanity.

The eccentric, and sometimes lovable, characters of Spookie have returned for another series of mysterious adventures. Frank Lester, ex-Chicago homicide detective and mystery author, after his and Abigail’s long-awaited vacation is over, and they’re home again, has once more come out of retirement this time to take the position of sheriff of Spookie, because of Sheriff Mearl’s murder.

Frank and Abigail, and the town of Spookie, have survived the last horrific year and a half and are moving on with their lives. They’re sending their two children, Laura and Nick, off into the world to seek their futures. Abigail is preparing for another art gallery show, her theme this time: ghosts.

To keep the bank from repossessing her eighteen-wheeler, Baby Blue, and putting her and her daughter, Tessa, on the street, Loretta Brennan takes a dangerous job driving it into Wyoming with a winter storm approaching. All alone she worries if she can make the deadline and navigate the roads since her driving partner husband died the year before in an accident.

Someone is terrorizing the elderly and vandalizing their homes in a certain neighborhood in Spookie. As usual, Abigail Sutton, a freelance artist, and her boyfriend, Frank Lester, a retired homicide detective, are called in to help find out who's doing these awful acts. The two seem to have an uncanny knack for unraveling mysteries and getting to the bottom of such strange happenings. Some of the old people think it's ghosts in their basements, in their homes, doing these destructive deeds, but Frank doesn't believe in ghosts while Abigail isn't so sure.

Chief Park Ranger Henry Shore has dealt with and fought real live dinosaurs at his beloved Crater Lake National Park for over six years. With the help of his rangers, a few brave FBI friends, and army soldiers, he'd been victorious over a prehistoric lake creature and years later some particularly fiendish, and clever, specimens of the flying variety. He and his newspaper publisher wife, Ann, thought their park was finally rid of the monsters and they could reclaim their tranquil life in a place they cherished. Not so.

Jenny and Jeff Sanders become the victims of a bizarre crime, leaving Jeff dead, Jenny in a temporary coma. She returns to her children. With Jeff's death she must move back to her childhood home in Summer Haven, Florida, where once they destroyed a family of vampires. Her brother, Joey, a local diner owner, helps them.

Maggie Owen is a beautiful, spirited Egyptologist...but lonely. While staying in Egypt on a grant from the college, she searches for an undiscovered necropolis she’s certain lies below the sands beyond the pyramids of Giza. Even this discovery doesn’t give her the happiness she had hoped it would. There has always been and is something missing. Love.

What would you do to live forever, to stay young forever? To find true love again? And if you were a white witch with the magical powers to make it happen and the secret of how to do it, would you? So, when the banshee comes calling for you one rainy, dark night, you'll do what you have to do to get what you desire the most: more time.