Showing results by author "Shawn Raiford" in All Categories

Time bends. Lives collide. Nothing is what it seems. Abby Graham has spent years wondering who her father really is. Now she’s walking into a mental hospital, determined to face the truth—even if she’s not sure she’s ready for what she’ll find. The man waiting inside may be her dad… or just another broken stranger who looks like him. Across time and light-years, Trent—a brilliant but unstable temporal assassin—is tracking a slippery alien mobster across a hostile world. With only his sarcastic AI partner, Bob, to keep him focused, Trent’s mission is spiraling into chaos. ...

The Ancients died out centuries ago. From those ruins, grew a new nation. An empire, the Sisterhood Empire. In the Sisterhood Empire: Girls become Ladies when they turn sixteen. All property is owned by Ladies. Boys become serfs when they turn sixteen. Serfs can't own property; they are property. Under the dominion of Empress Rhala-Li, Ladies ran all of society. Serfs are kept in line by wearing pain collars around their necks. Ladies wear panic buttons on their wrists; serfs obeyed or else. Max lives on a farm, raising pigs and goats, with Reena-Kae, Momma, and Ned (Momma’s serf). They ...

Ana wakes up in a hospital. Her body is pretty banged up, but knows she will heal. She doesn’t remember everything, but she remembers enough. Two drug dealers raped and beat her, leaving her body on the side of a road to die. She does not inform the police. Why do that? She has other plans. For the two drug dealers, the problem was that Ana was a killer: a serial killer. The hunger—an insatiable need to kill. To see and feel warm blood on her skin. But this time isn’t about the hunger, it’s about cold and brutal revenge! If you like horror and thriller-suspense fiction, you will ...

Kayleine watches her husband, Pete, from the couch—once a promising Major League hopeful, now a construction worker drowning in alcohol and anger. He was supposed to be a hero for their daughter, Sarah. Instead, he’s become the one thing Kayleine hoped to protect her from.When the whirl of patrol car lights spills through the blinds, painting the living room red and blue, Kayleine knows the reckoning has arrived. Sheriff Bobby—Old Bobby to everyone in town—stands outside with his deputies and a bullhorn, calling Pete out, giving him one last chance. But Kayleine can already feel the...

Short story collections are awesome! Science fiction is probably my favorite genre. But I also really like horror & thriller. I wondered if there are others like me, who would like stories of both genres in one volume. So I put this short story collection together. In this collection I have split them down the middle. Three sci-fi stories, and three horror. Six awesome stories in all. Over fifty thousand words of story in this volume. I hope the stories in this book will help you fight those Lonely Nights. Stories inside: Into the Basement Aisle 6 Road Kill Dome Number Five The Helper Trent...

The hunger is back, and blood and death are its demands. Always. But Ana is too tired—and all she wants is sleep. At a lonely roadside motel, she strikes a deal with the night manager for a room. With the TV flickering in the background, she crawls under the covers. The bed is warm, big and the mattress is so soft. What else could a girl want? Sleep comes fast and easy like a baby wrapped in a warm blanket in her mother's arms. However Ana wakes when strange men enter her room. Wanting what every rapist wants, she knew what to do. The hunger would get its meal. They don’t know Ana. They...

Five sci-fi short stories! Over fifty-thousand words in this collection! I’ve always loved short stories and collections. Science fiction is probably my favorite genre to read and to write. In this collection, there are over fifty-thousand words, and contains five science fiction stories. These stories range from characters with telekinesis, time-traveling, and living in virtual reality. I hope you like these stories. List of stories inside: Ability Fast Life Trent the Time Traveler Guilty Arrival Enjoy! (Details inside on how to get more FREE short stories!)

Habb Monnerd moves fast, head down, pretending he doesn’t notice the security drones tailing him. He and his friends—Exa and Beckat—stole something they were never meant to touch. On Veltren, a proud world of the vast Republic, that kind of theft doesn’t end with a slap on the wrist. His friends manage to escape, hijacking a civilian transport in a desperate attempt to draw the drones away. But the chase ends abruptly when armored officers surround them… only to let them go without explanation. No charges. No questions. Just confusion and a warning chill in the air. Moments later,...

Wesley Cole once had a gift—or a curse. As a toddler, toys floated around him as if held by invisible strings. His mother called it his ability. And then, as mysteriously as it appeared, it vanished. Twenty-five years later, Wesley is ordinary in every way… until tragedy shatters his life. His cousin and closest friend, Beatrice, is found dead—an apparent suicide after losing her job. Grief crushes him. His long-dormant telekinesis flickers back to life, weak and unfocused, and he barely cares enough to wonder why. But on the day of her funeral, everything changes. Wesley discovers ...

Chloe is the perfect killer—until the target was someone she loved. When a man wants your loved one dead, there’s only one rule: kill him first! A powerful child-sex trafficker orders a hit after two Houston Homicide Inspectors uncover the body of a murdered girl. To get it done, he turns to Lukas Zimmerman—broker of assassins and monsters. Zimmerman offers the contract to Chloe, a merciless and highly skilled killer with a reputation for finishing every job she takes. But the moment she sees the target list, she violently refuses. One of the marks is Henry—the only person she would...

In this omnibus: Ungoverned: Chloe is the perfect killer—until the target was someone she loved. When a man wants your loved one dead, there’s only one rule: kill him first! A powerful child-sex trafficker orders a hit after two Houston Homicide Inspectors uncover the body of a murdered girl. To get it done, he turns to Lukas Zimmerman—broker of assassins and monsters. Zimmerman offers the contract to Chloe, a merciless and highly skilled killer with a reputation for finishing every job she takes. But the moment she sees the target list, she violently refuses. One of the marks is ...

Some rooms are built for death...and she has just woke up in one. Chloe wakes restrained on a cold metal table, naked and terrified at what she see. Human skulls line the shelves... A pot bubbles ominously... The stench of copper and decay fills the air... Power tools hang from the walls—a grim warning of the pain to come. Far away, Henry Creed—Chloe’s brother—and Houston PD investigator Mitch Mason are chasing a brutal murder case. But as the clues unfold, it becomes horrifyingly clear: Chloe may be the next victim of a sadistic madman who records his crimes for the world to watch....

Manners are free. Survival isn’t guaranteed. Melvin already has one woman locked in his trunk. All he wants is a quick burger and fries before getting back to his “work.” But when the woman (Maggie), in line, snaps at him, something inside him twists. Melvin hates rude people. Always has. Always will. Maggie—wealthy, comfortable, living in a gated subdivision—never imagined one bad moment would paint a target on her entire family. But rude behavior, in Melvin’s mind, is a crime deserving the harshest punishment. And he’s more than happy to deliver it. When he pays Maggie a ...

Alex rebuilt her life—until the man who destroyed it appeared one day. Justice failed her all those years ago. Will revenge fail her now? Alex has fought hard for thirty years to rebuild her life. Now she clean, stable, and surrounded by the family she adores. She was even a grandmothe now and loved every minute of it. But all of it shatters the moment she turns down aisle six of a local grocery store. Standing between the canned goods and the cereal is a face she hoped was gone forever. The face belonged to the man who murdered her brother. A ghost from her darkest past—very much alive...

For Cecil's entire adult life, each blurry day bled into the next. Boredom didn't even come close to how he felt. Until that day. One quiet evening at a burger joint, eating alone, Cecil witnessed a brutal, yet glorious, murder right in front of him—and everything changed forever. For the first time in his life, he felt truly alive. That night a dark, relentless need became alive inside him and he could not and did not want to ignore it. Cecil's need wasn't just to hunt. It was to kill them. To kill them all.

If they hurt your loved one, what would you do? Would you make them pay? What can you do if you're a small twelve year-old girl? The answer is... plenty! After their mother was murdered behind a bar, Chloe and Henry end up with the Parnells. They were terrible Foster parents, from not buying clothes to not feeding them. Chloe is in no position to do anything about her Foster parents, because no other Foster family wanted them, because they were too old and siblings. After helping her deviant Foster father's obsession with torturing and killing animals, and enduring two long years of sexual ...

Rain slicks the pavement as he waits at a quiet bus stop, a stranger among strangers. People hurry past—young, old, men, women—each of them lost in their own small world, unaware of the predator sitting inches away. Cecil Cobb prefers it that way. For years he has walked these streets with a calm, monk-like stillness, hiding the truth behind an ordinary face. The city doesn’t know his name, but it has felt his presence—victims found and lives ended. Tonight, another life slipped through his fingers. And as Cecil listens to the rainfall and watches the crowd blur by he replays the ...

In a world of power and cruelty, survival is rebellion. Max lives a simple life on the family farm with his two sisters, Momma, and Ned—at the edge of the Sisterhood Empire. But in Haera, simplicity doesn’t protect you. In the Empire, girls rise to become Ladies with wealth and power… while boys are born to become "serfs", stripped of rights, stripped of hope, and treated as property. A trip to Town’s Center shatters Max’s world. The lesson is harsh and clear: his future is bleak, bound by chains he never asked for. The Gallows is the chilling prequel to Serf 72, setting the stage...

The hunger is back. That meant blood and death. Living on the streets gives Ana everything she craves—freedom, anonymity, and endless opportunity. With nothing but her old, worn tennis shoes, a filthy backpack, and her treasured box cutter she keeps close, she drifts from town to town across the American highways, chasing the kind of fun only a predator understands. Tired and wanting to sleep on a bed tonight, she makes her way to a roadside motel. While the manager kicks her out and tells her to go to hell. That wasn't nice! Ana thinks about her treasured box cutter and the fun—cutting...

Why would anyone interrupt a serial killer’s dinner? One interruption. One mistake. One man you should never provoke. Melvin arrives in San Francisco with nothing but a headache and a need for anonymity. After time hidden in the woods, he checks into the Marriott—soft bed, hot shower, a normal night. In the hotel bar, he settles in with a cheeseburger, fries, and a Coke, savoring the rare feeling of comfort. His evenging was going good. Until Slick walks in. Loud. Flashy. Entitled. The kind of man who talks to just to hear himself. Melvin tries to ignore him, focusing instead on the ...