Stories by @elmacho

The Lunar Chronicles

Once upon a time, in the future . . . . The Lunar Chronicles are futuristic retellings of classic fairy tales. In Cinder, a teenage cyborg (half human, half machine) must deal with a wicked stepmother, start a rebellion against the evil Queen Levana, and decide how she feels about a handsome prince. As the series continues, Cinder forges alliances with Scarlet, a spaceship pilot who is determined to solve the mystery of a missing loved one--with the help of a magnetic street fighter named Wolf; Cress, a computer hacker who is imprisoned by Queen Levana; and Winter, a princess who's in love with a commoner, and who discovers that Cinder, Scarlet, and Cress may hold the key to saving her kingdom--and the world

The Twelve Days of Murder

Eight friends created the exclusive Masquerade Murder Society while in college. The murders they solved were fictional—until their final masquerade, when one of the group disappeared. Twelve years later, the remaining members are invited to a reunion in the Scottish Highlands . . . Twelve years ago, eight friends ran an exclusive group at The Masquerade Murder Society. The mysteries they solved may have been grisly, and brilliantly staged, but they were always fictional—until their final Christmas Masquerade, when one of the group disappeared, never to be seen again. Now our young, privileged cast of old university friends are summoned to the depths of Scotland for a Christmas-themed masquerade party. But all are hiding something deep below the surface that could make or break their careers. Charley is a struggling actress who has always been on the periphery of this high-flying group, but has decided to reunite with her frenemies on the promise of career help if she joins the old cast for one last weekend

Witchcraft for Wayward Girls

They call them wayward girls. Loose girls. Girls who grew up too fast. And they’re sent to the Wellwood House in St. Augustine, Florida, where unwed mothers are hidden by their families to have their babies in secret, give them up for adoption, and most important of all, to forget any of it ever happened. And where every moment of their waking day is strictly controlled by adults who claim they know what’s best for them. Fifteen-year-old Fern arrives at the home in the sweltering summer of 1970, pregnant, terrified and alone. There, she meets a dozen other girls in the same predicament. There's Rose, a hippie who insists she’s going to keep her baby and escape to a commune. Zinnia, a budding musician who plans to marry her baby’s father. And Holly, barely fourteen, mute and pregnant by no-one-knows-who. Then Fern meets a librarian who gives her an occult book about witchcraft, and power is in the hands of the girls for the first time in their lives. But power can destroy as easily as it creates, and it’s never given freely

Don't Let The Forest In

On the first day back at boarding school, Andrew can't wait to find refuge in the twisted fairy tales that he writes for Thomas - the boy with hair like autumn leaves. But Thomas' parents have vanished, and he has blood on his sleeve. Stranger still, Thomas won't talk to Andrew, even though he's always loved sketching the monstrous creatures from Andrew's stories. Desperate to discover the truth, Andrew follows Thomas into the forest and catches him fighting a nightmarish monster - his drawings have come to life. To ensure no one else dies, the boys must battle the creatures every night. But as their obsession with each other grows stronger, so do the monsters, and Andrew fears the only way to stop them might be to destroy their creator

Tumbas de Sangre

El renacer del pueblo se convertirá en una pesadilla para Yesenia "MissGuanajuato"García, la joven y deshonrada inspectora de la policía municipal. La serie de horrendos homicidios será la prueba profesional más exigente de su carrera y, con la necesidad de crear alianzas con quien menos lo imaginó, la investigación se convertirá en una carrera contrarreloj para resolver el misterio antes de que Minerías colapse y se convierta, de nueva cuenta, en un pueblofantasma lleno de tumbas de sangre.

The Talisman / Black House

THE TALISMAN Twelve-year-old Jack spends his days alone in a deserted coastal town, his father gone, his mother dying. Then he meets a stranger - and embarks on a terrifying journey. For Jack must find the Talisman, the only thing that can save his mother. His quest takes him into the menacing Territories, a parallel world where violence, surprise and the titanic struggle between good and evil reach across a mythic landscape. BLACK HOUSE Twenty years ago, a boy named Jack Sawyer traveled to a parallel universe called the Territories to save his mother and her Territories “Twinner” from an agonizing death that would have brought cataclysm to the other world. Now Jack is a retired Los Angeles homicide detective living in the nearly nonexistent hamlet of Tamarack, Wisconsin. He has no recollection of his adventures in the Territories, and was compelled to leave the police force when an odd, happenstance event threatened to awaken those memories.

The Only One Left

At seventeen, Lenora Hope Hung her sister with a rope Now reduced to a schoolyard chant, the Hope family murders shocked the Maine coast one bloody night in 1929. While most people assume seventeen-year-old Lenora was responsible, the police were never able to prove it. Other than her denial after the killings, she has never spoken publicly about that night, nor has she set foot outside Hope’s End, the cliffside mansion where the massacre occurred. Stabbed her father with a knife Took her mother’s happy life It’s now 1983, and home-health aide Kit McDeere arrives at a decaying Hope’s End to care for Lenora after her previous nurse fled in the middle of the night. In her seventies and confined to a wheelchair, Lenora was rendered mute by a series of strokes and can only communicate with Kit by tapping out sentences on an old typewriter. One night, Lenora uses it to make a tantalizing offer—I want to tell you everything. “It wasn’t me,” Lenora said But she’s the only one not dead As Kit helps Lenora write about the events leading to the Hope family massacre, it becomes clear there’s more to the tale than people know. But when new details about her predecessor’s departure come to light, Kit starts to suspect Lenora might not be telling the complete truth—and that the seemingly harmless woman in her care could be far more dangerous than she first thought.

Lock Every Door

No visitors. No nights spent away from the apartment. No disturbing the other residents, all of whom are rich or famous or both. These are the only rules for Jules Larsen’s new job as an apartment sitter at the Bartholomew, one of Manhattan's most high-profile and mysterious buildings. Recently heartbroken and just plain broke, Jules is taken in by the splendor of her surroundings and accepts the terms, ready to leave her past life behind. As she gets to know the residents and staff of the Bartholomew, Jules finds herself drawn to fellow apartment sitter Ingrid, who comfortingly reminds her of the sister she lost eight years ago. When Ingrid confides that the Bartholomew is not what it seems and the dark history hidden beneath its gleaming facade is starting to frighten her, Jules brushes it off as a harmless ghost story...until the next day, when Ingrid disappears. Searching for the truth about Ingrid’s disappearance, Jules digs deeper into the Bartholomew's sordid past and into the secrets kept within its walls. What she discovers pits Jules against the clock as she races to unmask a killer, expose the building’s hidden past, and escape the Bartholomew before her temporary status becomes permanent.

The Folding Star

Edward Manners - thirty three and disaffected - escapes to a Flemish city in search of a new life. Almost at once he falls in love with seventeen-year-old Luc, and is introduced to the twilight world of the 1890s Belgian painter Edgard Orst

Dreamcatcher

In Derry, Maine, four young boys once stood together and did a brave thing. Something that changed them in ways they hardly understand. A quarter of a century later, the boys are men who have gone their separate ways. Though they still get together once a year, to go hunting in the north woods of Maine. But this time is different. This time a man comes stumbling into their camp, lost, disoriented and muttering about lights in the sky. Before long, these old friends will be plunged into the most remarkable events of their lives as they struggle with a terrible creature from another world. Their only chance of survival is locked in their shared past - and in the Dreamcatcher.

The Running Man

Stephen King (writing as Richard Bachman) crafted The Running Man early in his career, though after such mega-hits as Carrie and The Shining. A bit of a departure from the supernatural horror that is most frequently associated with his work, the novel describes a science fiction dystopia where market capitalism and television game shows have spiraled out of control, and the separation between the haves and the have-nots has been formalized with separate currencies. King establishes characters quickly, creating sympathy in the first few pages for Ben Richards--whose 18-month-old baby girl is suffering from a horrible cough, perhaps pneumonia. Not able to afford medicine, Richards enters himself in the last-chance money-making scheme of the Free-Vee games. The games include Treadmill to Bucks, in which heart-attack prone contestants struggle to outlast a progressively demanding treadmill, or the accurately named Swim the Crocodiles. After a rigorous battery of physical and mental examinations, Richards is assigned "Elevator Six"--the path of a chosen few--that leads to The Running Man game. In this game, the stakes and the prizes are raised. Success means a life of luxury. Failure means death. Unfortunately, few ever win the game; in fact, as the producer tells Richards, in six years no one has survived.

Bag of bones

Four years after the sudden death of his wife, bestselling novelist Mike Noonan is still grieving. Unable to write and plagued by vivid nightmares set at the western Maine summerhouse he calls “Sara Laughs,” Mike reluctantly returns to the lakeside getaway. There, he finds his beloved Yankee town held in the grip of a powerful millionaire, Max Devore, whose vindictive purpose is to take his three-year-old granddaughter, Kyra, away from her widowed young mother, Mattie. As Mike is drawn into Mattie’s and Kyra’s struggle—and as he falls in love with both of them—he is also drawn into the mystery of Sara Laughs…now the site of ghostly visitations and escalating terrors. What are the forces that have been unleashed here—and just what do they want of Mike Noonan?

The Dark Tower series

THE DARK TOWER SERIES: THE DARK TOWER I: THE GUNSLINGER THE DARK TOWER II: THE DRAWING OF THE THREE THE DARK TOWER III: THE WASTE LANDS THE DARK TOWER IV: WIZARD AND GLASS THE DARK TOWER V: WOLVES OF THE CALLA THE DARK TOWER VI: SONG OF SUSANNAH THE DARK TOWER VII: THE DARK TOWER THE WIND THROUGH THE KEYHOLE: A DARK TOWER NOVEL

Blood Meridian

"The fulfilled renown of Moby-Dick and of As I Lay Dying is augmented by Blood Meridian, since Cormac McCarthy is the worthy disciple both of Melville and Faulkner," writes esteemed literary scholar Harold Bloom in his Introduction to the Modern Library edition. "I venture that no other living American novelist, not even Pynchon, has given us a book as strong and memorable." Cormac McCarthy's masterwork, Blood Meridian, chronicles the brutal world of the Texas-Mexico borderlands in the mid-nineteenth century. Its wounded hero, the teenage Kid, must confront the extraordinary violence of the Glanton gang, a murderous cadre on an official mission to scalp Indians and sell those scalps. Loosely based on fact, the novel represents a genius vision of the historical West, one so fiercely realized that since its initial publication in 1985 the canon of American literature has welcomed Blood Meridian to its shelf. "A classic American novel of regeneration through violence," declares Michael Herr. "McCarthy can only be compared to our greatest writers."

Desperation / The Regulators

For all intents and purposes, police officer Collie Entragian, chief law enforcement for the small mining town of Desperation, Nevada, appears to be completely insane. He's taken to stopping vehicles along the desolate Interstate 50 and abducting unwary travelers with various unusual ploys. There's something very wrong here in Desperation...and Officer Entragian is only at the surface of it. The secrets embedded in Desperation's landscape, and the horrifying evil that infects the town like some viral hot zone, are both awesome and terrifying. But one of Entragian's victims, young David Carver, seems to know--and it scares him nearly to death to realize this truth--that the forces being summoned to combat this frightful, maniacal aberration are of equal and opposite intensity...

This Monstrous Thing

In an alternative fantasy world where some men are made from clockwork parts and carriages are steam powered, Alasdair Finch, a young mechanic, does the unthinkable after his brother dies: he uses clockwork pieces to bring Oliver back from the dead. But the resurrection does not go as planned, and Oliver returns more monster than man. Even worse, the novel Frankenstein is published and the townsfolk are determined to find the real-life doctor and his monster. With few places to turn for help, the dangers may ultimately bring the brothers together—or ruin them forever

Frankenstein

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is a Gothic horror novel about a scientist who creates a monster that he rejects, and the monster's quest for revenge

The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Picture of Dorian Gray is a novel by Oscar Wilde about a young man who sells his soul to remain young and beautiful. The story is considered a moral fantasy, Gothic cautionary tale, and psychological novel.

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell

In the midst of the Napoleonic Wars in 1806, most people believe magic to have long since disappeared from England - until the reclusive Mr. Norrell reveals his powers and becomes an overnight celebrity. Another practicing magician then emerges: the young and daring Jonathan Strange. He becomes Norrell's pupil, and the two join forces in the war against France. But Strange is increasingly drawn to the wild, most perilous forms of magic, and he soon risks sacrificing his partnership with Norrell and everything else he holds dear

The invisible man

Having devoted his studies to optics and refraction, an impulsive scientist named Griffin has rendered himself invisible. Unable to reverse the effects, his struggle to survive grows desperate until he realizes that there are benefits to living out of the public eye. Increasingly isolated, he soon spirals into a life of crime and degenerates into madness. He can’t see that he has become his own worst enemy. Exploring the loss of identity and the willful disappearance of conscience and morality, H. G. Wells crafted one of his most suspenseful and cautionary tales, which continues to intrigue to this day.