Showing results by author "Maria Merlino" in All Categories

1965 She came to Westbrook with nothing to lose. One dangerous kiss gave her everything to fear. Cassandra Vale arrives at Westbrook College with two suitcases, a scholarship letter, and a secret hunger for a bigger life. She is beautiful, poor, ambitious, and determined never to become ordinary. Then she meets Dean Ryder, the leather-jacketed campus rebel with a motorcycle, a guilty past, and a kiss that feels like trouble. But Westbrook is not just a college. It is a place built on money, silence, and reputation. Behind the ivy walls, a former student named Eleanor Price has been turned ...

Ten powerful stories about lesbian women who rescue, build, remember, protect, create, and love. The Things Women Carry is a literary short story collection about women whose courage is quiet, practical, and unforgettable. A wildlife volunteer finds more than a wounded hawk. A structural engineer fights to save a beloved community center. A home health aide becomes the keeper of a hidden love story. A firefighter trusts her instincts before disaster strikes. An artist refuses to make her work smaller for anyone. These are not stories of tragedy or stereotype. They are stories of lesbian ...

She did not mean to write a book. She meant to write to him. In the room beneath the house, she calls it the lair. It is where the red robe waits, where the lamp stays low, and where one woman writes the private letters she never meant the world to read. When Ian rings the doorbell, the respectable world falls away. What begins as desire becomes ritual. What begins as a secret becomes a confession. Through letters, memory, heat, and obsession, she records the woman she becomes in the red room: bold, hungry, unashamed, and impossible to forget. Letters from the Lair is a modern pulp erotic ...

You don’t lack discipline, you’re stuck in a loop designed to keep you wanting more. Break the cycle, understand your brain, and take your mind back. The Hungry Ghost Why Your Brain Craves More, How Digital Life Hooks You, and How to Take Your Mind Back Why do you keep reaching for your phone… even when you don’t want to? Why does scrolling never feel like enough? And why, after all that time online, do you still feel empty? This book explains what’s really going on. In simple, clear language, The Hungry Ghost breaks down how your brain gets caught in cycles of craving, ...

Ten strange doors. Ten ordinary lives. Ten impossible worlds waiting on the other side. In this modern pulp fantasy collection, practical people are pulled into extraordinary situations they never asked for but somehow know how to face. A mender finds a glowing corridor behind a cellar door. An ice-cutter wakes a woman frozen inside a glacier. A forest warden crosses into a woodland that has opinions of its own. A salter discovers that truth can rise from the dead. A gate-guard finally learns what his oath really means. These are not kings, warriors, or chosen ones. They are workers, ...

Ten women. Ten quiet horrors. One architecture of control. In these chilling stories of love, gaslighting, and psychological control, the monster does not always raise its voice. Sometimes he smiles. Sometimes he says he is worried about you. Sometimes he calls it care. A woman finds messages on her husband’s phone and begins to doubt what she has seen. A wife discovers hidden money and the family system that taught her husband to keep secrets. A frightened dog reveals the truth about a marriage. A woman’s hunger, medicine, body, home, and memory all become battlegrounds in ...

Ten ordinary people. Ten strange discoveries. One ancient archive waiting to be remembered. In Tales from the Emerald Threshold, clocks breathe, embers refuse to die, cats guard hidden doors, dust arranges itself into messages, and a glass sphere contains the memory of a lost city. These ten linked weird-fiction stories follow ordinary people who encounter extraordinary objects tied to a vanished civilization, an emerald mystery, and a hidden order of knowledge older than history. A watchmaker, a grieving son, a postal worker, a conservator, a cartographer, a security guard, an art teacher,...

Ten ordinary lives. Ten impossible moments. One quiet signal running through them all. In Signal and Other Frequencies, Maria Merlino gathers ten literary science fiction stories about ordinary people who encounter extraordinary breaks in reality. An audiologist receives a mysterious transmission through her own implant. A sourdough starter carries more than memory. A funeral director confronts the legal and emotional afterlife of cognitive uploads. A sea turtle records a century-old signal in her shell. A dance teacher tries to correct one imperfect moment from her past. These are not ...

What does a mental health diagnosis really mean? For many people, the DSM feels confusing, clinical, and out of reach. Labels can feel overwhelming. Explanations often sound like a foreign language. This book changes that. The Joy of Understanding Mental Health Diagnosis breaks down how mental health diagnosis actually works in clear, simple language. It explains what the DSM is, how professionals use it, and what those labels do and do not say about you. This is not a textbook. It is a practical, human guide designed for real life. You will learn how diagnoses are made, why symptoms ...

What if the reason you couldn’t “just walk away” wasn’t weakness, or stupidity, but chemistry? Romance scams don’t only steal money. They hijack your brain’s reward system, your stress system, and your bonding system, then use that biology against you. The result can feel like love, obsession, panic, and withdrawal all at once. And even after the truth comes out, your body can keep craving the person who harmed you. The Dopamine Trap explains, clearly, calmly, and without judgment—how scammers engineer attachment and why smart, capable people can get pulled in. You’ll learn ...

Death is not the end of the story. It may be the moment we finally see the truth. The Beautiful Truth About Death is a clear, elegant, and surprisingly comforting guide to what the Tibetan Book of the Dead teaches about dying, living, and waking up. Written in plain English, this book explores the bardo, the mysterious in-between state described in Tibetan Buddhist tradition. But this is not only a book about death. It is a book about life, awareness, fear, grief, karma, recognition, and the quiet truth that we are always changing. Maria Merlino brings ancient spiritual ideas into modern ...

What if everything you were taught about human origins was wrong? For 6,000 years, we've been told we evolved randomly from apes. But your DNA tells a different story, one of deliberate design, genetic engineering, and an ancient conflict that continues today. THE EVIDENCE IS IN YOUR CHROMOSOMES While all great apes have 24 pairs of chromosomes, humans have only 23. Human Chromosome 2 shows clear signs of fusion, two ancestral chromosomes deliberately merged together. Random evolution? Or genetic engineering by an advanced civilization? Ancient Sumerian texts provide the answer. The ...

Four point two million Americans are trapped in gambling addiction right now. The average debt when they finally seek help? $27,500. This is not a problem affecting a few unlucky people. This is a national crisis that is getting worse every single day. Since sports betting was legalized in 2018, searches for gambling addiction help surged 23 percent nationally. In Ohio, the increase was 67 percent. Young men aged 18 to 34 now show gambling problems at a rate of 13.4 percent. And 90 percent of young bettors believe they can make money gambling on sports. They cannot. But by the time they ...

Some recipes are made with love. Some are made with patience. In The Still Kitchen, a gifted cook tells her story as if she is writing a manual. She believes every meal has a method, every silence has a purpose, and every wrong must eventually be answered. For years, D. sat at her table, ate her food, praised her talent, and quietly took credit for the life she built. When the usual paths to justice fail, she turns to the one place where she still has control: the kitchen. What follows is a chilling literary suspense novel about obsession, restraint, betrayal, and the dangerous beauty of ...

What do a desert lizard, a Beijing field hamster, a horseshoe crab older than the dinosaurs, and a cone snail at the bottom of the Pacific have in common? They all knew something we didn't. And their secrets are keeping you alive. In this book, biochemist and former Ringling Bros. clown Maria Merlino takes you behind the scenes of the most astonishing pharmacy on earth: the natural world. Every chapter reveals one creature, one accident, one ignored scientist, and one discovery that changed medicine forever. You will meet the Gila monster whose venom became Ozempic. The hamster caught in a ...

You knew something wasn’t right. But you just couldn't prove it. But every time you tried to explain it, it slipped through your fingers. He didn’t hit you. He didn’t scream. He didn’t leave obvious damage. So why did you feel confused… anxious… and like you were slowly losing yourself? Because sweetheart, he knows exactly what he’s doing. This book breaks down the five oldest manipulation tactics used in relationships — the subtle ones that make you doubt your memory, question your instincts, and stay longer than you should. Inside, you’ll learn: why you keep second-...

In a late-night world once ruled by smug lectures and one-sided satire, Greg Gutfeld flipped the script—and won the throne. Averaging over 3 million viewers nightly in 2025, Gutfeld! crushed Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, and Jimmy Fallon, proving conservative comedy could dominate ratings, spark conversations, and make millions laugh at the absurdities of polarized America. As the show winds down in 2026 with a reflective tone, Gutfeld’s unfiltered monologues, razor-sharp panel chemistry (Kat Timpf, Tyrus, and more), and fearless takedowns of media bias, “woke” overreach, and ...

Do you struggle to speak up when something bothers you? Do you say yes when you mean no, avoid conflict, or replay conversations in your head long after they end? Many people learn early in life that keeping the peace is safer than speaking the truth. Over time this habit becomes a pattern. You swallow your words, smooth things over, and try to make everyone comfortable. On the outside you appear kind, easygoing, and dependable. On the inside you may feel resentful, exhausted, or invisible. Say It Anyway is a practical and compassionate guide for people who want to stop people pleasing ...

Most caterpillars eat leaves. This one lives in spider webs, feeds on trapped insects, and wears the remains of the dead as camouflage. In the mountain forests of Oʻahu, scientists discovered one of the strangest caterpillars on Earth. Known as the bone collector, this rare Hawaiian species survives inside spider webs by moving carefully, scavenging what the spider leaves behind, and blending into the debris of the web itself. Reporting on the 2025 discovery described it as a newly identified carnivorous Hyposmocoma caterpillar with a very limited known range and fewer than 62 observed ...

For a hundred years, neuroscience has focused exclusively on neurons, the brain cells that fire and wire together to create our thoughts and memories. But what if we have been studying only half the story? Recent breakthrough research has revealed that another group of brain cells, astrocytes, control something even more fundamental than thoughts. They control your overall brain state. They decide when you feel alert or exhausted, motivated or defeated, calm or anxious. They track how long you have been awake and force you to sleep by accumulating a fatigue signal you cannot ignore. They ...