Böcker av Bracken Macleod

HAPPY HOUSE HUNTING… Nelle and Evan Pereira were thrilled to close on their "forever home," a spacious paradise nestled against a state forest in Massachusetts. Three months later, on a brisk Saturday morning, their peace is destroyed when an intruder captures Nelle home by herself. Quickly overpowered by the aggressive stranger, she's forced down to the cold, musty basement where he ties her to a chair. The intruder has a singular, if unusual, demand: he wants her to make a phone call. One that Nelle isn't confident she can make, even though her life depends on it. Desperate to see herself and her husband to safety, Nelle doesn't yet realize this was no chance encounter-it was a carefully planned attack. With no one to hear them scream, their secluded home feels horrifyingly isolated. And before this long day is through, Nelle and Evan, who share a dangerous secret, will bring a violent reckoning down upon all of them.

These stories inhabit the dark places where pain and resignation intersect, and the fear of a quiet moment alone is as terrifying as the unseen thing watching from behind the treeline. In the titular story, a young woman waits for her father to come home from the place where no one goes intending to return. A single word is the push that may break a man and save a life. The members of a winemaking community celebrate the old-time religion found flowing in the blood of the vine. A desperate man seeking a miracle cure gets more than a peek behind the curtain of Dr. Morningstar's Psychic Surgery. A child who dreams of escaping on leather wings finds rescue in dark water instead. Looking back over a life, a homeless veteran must decide to live in the present if he wants to save his future. In a Halloween Hell house, a youth pastor must face the judgment of a man committed to doing the Lord's work. Fiery death heralds the beginning of a new life. A man who has been carrying pain with him his entire life gives up his last piece of darkness. And a still day beneath the sun illuminates the quiet sorrow of the last feather to fall.

HAPPY HOUSE HUNTING… Nelle and Evan Pereira were thrilled to close on their "forever home," a spacious paradise nestled against a state forest in Massachusetts. Three months later, on a brisk Saturday morning, their peace is destroyed when an intruder captures Nelle home by herself. Quickly overpowered by the aggressive stranger, she's forced down to the cold, musty basement where he ties her to a chair. The intruder has a singular, if unusual, demand: he wants her to make a phone call. One that Nelle isn't confident she can make, even though her life depends on it. Desperate to see herself and her husband to safety, Nelle doesn't yet realize this was no chance encounter-it was a carefully planned attack. With no one to hear them scream, their secluded home feels horrifyingly isolated. And before this long day is through, Nelle and Evan, who share a dangerous secret, will bring a violent reckoning down upon all of them.