From the Helen Kay Chapbook Award-Winning poet Cassondra Windwalker, an unsuspecting librarian falls head-over-heels for a married man, but when she finds herself caught up in a whirlwind romance, she discovers her new husbands past wives have all met early deaths--and some are not ready to let go yet. Obsession never dies. When librarian Sigrun falls head-over-heels for the sophisticated and very married Edgar Leyward, she never expects to find herself in his bed -- or his heart. Nevertheless, when his enigmatic wife Octavia dies from a sudden illness, Sigrun finds herself caught up in a whirlwind romance worthy of the most lurid novels on her bookshelves. Sigrun soon discovers Octavia wasnt Edgars first lost love, or even his second. Three women Edgar has loved met early deaths. As she delves into her beloved's past through a trove of discovered letters, the edges of Sigrun identity begin to disappear, fading into the women of the past. Sigrun tells herself it is impossible for any dark magic to be at play -- that the dead cant possibly inhabit the bodies of the living -- but something shadowy stalks the halls of the Leyward house and the lines between the love of the present and the obsessions of the past become increasingly blurred--and bloody. Mixing lyrical prose with simmering terror, Hold My Place is a modern gothic horror worthy of Shirley Jacksons nightmares and Daphne DuMauriers dangerous lovers.

Eight chilling tales to read under the Cold Moon. A tinker's son acquires a cursed soul. A dying woman is haunted by her own reflection. An uninvited presence haunts a Christmas seance. A festive holiday turns macabre. Despite the twinkling lights and steaming cocoa, the end of the year is the darkest time of the year-a season of short days, long nights, and cold skies. In this special anniversary anthology, the authors of Black Spot Books mix Ye Olde Yuletide hauntings with modern-day holiday horrors to weave a chilling new collection of dark winter tales. From frozen forests stalked by eerie Christmas ghosts to rotting gifts of winter malice, the spirits of Christmas come home for the holidays in the Dead of Winter.