The Codex of Leaves: A Gothic Romantasy of Dangerous Secrets and Fated Mates

   

The Codex of Leaves:

A Gothic Romantasy of Dangerous Secrets and Fated Mates

(The Weave Saga Book 1)

She can read the memories of the dead. The living Codex has been waiting for her.

Eva Vance has spent her life hiding an impossible gift.

With a touch, she can hear the memories objects leave behind—secrets buried in blood, grief, and time. All she wants is to protect her sister and escape the forces that have hunted them for years.

Then her gift draws her to Thorne Manor.

Beneath its rain-darkened halls, Eva discovers forbidden laboratories, ancient wards, and a living book bound in copper and silver leaves. The Codex knows her bloodline. It knows why she was summoned.

And it remembers Sebastian Thorne.

Brilliant, dangerous, and nearly three centuries old, Sebastian is the immortal guardian of a Threshold sealed beneath his family’s estate. He knows more about Eva’s inheritance than he will reveal—and far less than he should about the power awakening whenever they touch.

Eva does not trust him.
Sebastian cannot afford to need her.

But when the wards begin to fail and a fanatical order closes in, they are forced into an alliance neither can control. Every secret the Codex reveals draws Eva deeper into a forgotten war. Every touch strengthens a bond that feels less like magic than fate.

Eva was never summoned merely to open the Codex.

She was summoned to rewrite the laws of their world.

To save her sister and keep the Threshold from falling into enemy hands, Eva must decide whether trusting Sebastian will give her the power to protect everything she loves—or surrender her future to a destiny chosen long before she was born.

But awakening the Threshold may require the one choice she fears most: trusting Sebastian with her sister’s life, her own destiny—and her heart.

The Codex of Leaves is an adult gothic romantasy about Eva, who is drawn into the mystery of an ancient book that remembers. Blending Victorian atmosphere, dark academia, dangerous secrets, living magic, and a slow-burn romance, it opens the door to the Weave Saga.

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Murder at the Shore

 

Murder at the Shore

Robert Louis Rodgers

2nd Edition – Now Available (2026)

Windemere Bay is a peaceful summer resort at the New Jersey Shore, where families return year after year for sun, swimming, and relaxation. For twenty-year-old college student Alex Rhodes, it’s supposed to be the perfect escape—lazy beach days with friends, a summer job at the local supermarket, and the hope of finally asking out Grace, the new cashier who catches his eye. Then the notes appear. On the Fourth of July, identical typed messages turn up in every mailbox: “SOMEONE IS GOING TO DIE TONIGHT.” Most people laugh it off as a sick prank. Until the assistant groundskeeper is found floating lifeless in the resort pool the next morning. The police rule it an accident. Alex isn’t convinced. When a second body turns up—and then a third—the pattern becomes impossible to ignore. As more cryptic warnings appear, the idyllic resort begins to feel like a trap, and Alex realizes someone at Windemere Bay may be hiding a deadly secret. With the body count rising, Alex and his tight circle of friends race to uncover the truth before another life is taken. In a close-knit summer community where everyone knows your name, the killer could be anyone. Murder at the Shore is an atmospheric whodunit blending small-town secrets, summer nostalgia, amateur sleuthing, and escalating danger along the Jersey Shore. The first book in the Windemere Bay Mysteries series. This 2nd Edition features smoother pacing, a revised ending, updated formatting, and a new cover. Available now—because some notes you can’t ignore.

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Set The Tone: What to Say, and How to Lead, When It Matters Most (Coaching Playbook For Modern Times)

     

Set The Tone:

What to Say, and How to Lead, When It Matters Most

(Coaching Playbook For Modern Times)

Restaurant and food service managers do not need more theory. They need something that holds up on a Saturday night when half the team is new, the rush will not stop, and everyone is watching to see how you handle it. This is that system. Written for the people who run the floor, The Coaching Playbook gives you a full framework built on behavior, not personality. You will learn how to build trust fast, cut turnover, and lead with purpose even when you are not the one with the title. At the center is the Coaching Loop: Observe, Coach, Apply, Review, Repeat. Five simple moves you can run on any shift, with any team, starting tomorrow. Around it you get the daily huddle that builds culture in five minutes, coaching logs and behavior scoreboards that actually get used, and feedback scripts written the way people really talk. No corporate language. No binder nobody opens.

Inside you will find four frameworks that work together. The Ted Lasso Effect, on leading with belief. The Shoresy Standard, on holding the line and hating to lose. The Assist Standard, on putting the team above the individual. And the Whole Roster Principle, the idea that you do not have weak people, you have strengths and opportunities you have not coached yet. It is warmth and fire in the same leader. Heart and an uncompromising standard. Written in one voice that reads the same whether you run a line, a floor, a bar program, or a district. Clay David Laugier spent more than twenty years leading teams in restaurants, food service, and hospitality before founding Clay Laugier Ventures. He writes for the person running a double on four hours of sleep who still finds a way to make their team believe the night is going to go well. Your team isn't broken. Your system is. Lead with heart. Coach with clarity. Let's set the tone.

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Necromancers Don't Read Toe Tags

  

Necromancers Don't Read Toe Tags

A Supernatural Dark Comedy by Thomas L. Vaultonburg

In Rookford, Illinois, the dead aren't the only ones keeping secrets. Thomas L. Vaultonburg's Necromancers Don't Read Toe Tags is a darkly comic supernatural novel combining occult mystery, institutional corruption, social satire, and the peculiar absurdities of life in the American Midwest. Kitten Killswitch arrives from Chicago's industrial music scene with a past she'd rather forget. At The Collective, Juniper Michaels turns charitable work into public sainthood, while cultural director Nancy McConaughey discovers that protecting an arts community can mean protecting the very people who threaten it. As reputations are manufactured and uncomfortable truths disappear, Elias Mort and Janelle Montclair pursue unfinished accounts through a city where influence reaches far beyond the gallery walls. Belial feeds on disorder, the dead resist convenient explanations, and justice comes with consequences nobody particularly wants to face. Funny, unsettling, irreverent, and occasionally tender, Necromancers Don't Read Toe Tags explores what happens when a community becomes more concerned with appearing virtuous than actually doing good. Newly revised for 2026, the novel has been polished and reintroduced for a new generation of readers. About the Author: Thomas L. Vaultonburg is a Rockford, Illinois-based poet, novelist, and independent publisher. He founded Zombie Logic Press, edits Zombie Logic Review, and co-founded Wolf Twin Books. His writing encompasses supernatural fiction, poetry, haiku, literary criticism, and Midwestern cultural history. Learn more about the author and his work at Zombie Logic Press.

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Necromancers Don't Read Toe Tags

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IOH: GODCODE

If memory can be rewritten, evidence can be erased, and death is no longer final, who controls the truth?

After twenty years frozen in digital darkness, Algus awakens inside the System—a quantum civilization where consciousness survives death. He has a new body, fractured memories, and no idea why he was hidden for two decades. Then he learns that Agrom City is gone. Fifty million people vanished with it, including the daughter whose face survives only in fragments.

To uncover what happened, Algus must descend into Deepweb cities, reunite a hacker team broken by distrust, and follow evidence leading through artificial intelligence, corporate empires, and a cyberwar born in the physical world. But every answer raises a more dangerous question: who destroyed Agrom—and why did someone wait twenty years to wake him?

GODCODE is Book One of the IOH trilogy—a cinematic cyberpunk mystery thriller set in a corporate dystopian future where a body can be replaced, a life can be priced, and the promise of eternity belongs to those who control the machinery.

What begins as a memory loss mystery opens into an artificial intelligence conspiracy that binds a father's grief to the fate of millions. Algus needs the people he once trusted, but their secrets could make the truth harder to bear than his missing memories.

Blending digital consciousness science fiction with the urgency of a hacker cyberwar thriller, GODCODE explores a digital immortality dystopia where survival offers no guarantee of freedom. To challenge its rulers, Algus must confront the cost of their power—and the choices he is willing to make to bring them down.

Enter the System but do not trust any of your memories.

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Cheap Houses: A Memoir of Poverty and Reinvention in Rural America

Some children grow up believing the world is fair. Others learn to survive before they are old enough to understand why they have to.

Stevie G. Davis was born to a teenage mother and abandoned by his father before birth. His childhood unfolded in the coal camps and small communities of rural northern Alabama, where his family moved from one cheap house to another in search of work and a place they could afford. The houses had cracked walls, little insulation, and few comforts. Hunger was never far away, and every dollar mattered.

As a boy, he picked cotton, hauled pulpwood, baled hay, cut fence posts, and accepted whatever work he could find. He wore hand-me-down clothes, carried paper-sack lunches, and stuffed cardboard inside worn-out shoes because new ones were a luxury his family could not afford. Poverty was not something he recognized at first—it was simply life.

Everything began to change when he discovered a set of "Future Cards" describing the emerging world of computers. To a boy who had never seen one, they represented more than technology. They represented possibility.

At seventeen, Davis enlisted in the United States Air Force as a medic. Through persistence, self-education, and a willingness to embrace every opportunity, he built a career that eventually led him into medical information systems. In 1992, he was recognized as the United States Air Force Medical Information Systems Non-Commissioned Officer of the Year before continuing his journey into corporate information technology.

Yet success never erased the memories of the cheap houses that shaped him.

Written with honesty, humility, and the eye of someone who remembers every detail, Cheap Houses is more than a memoir of poverty. It is a story of resilience, family, sacrifice, fear, reinvention, and the quiet determination to build a different future without forgetting where you came from.

For readers who appreciated the emotional honesty of The Glass Castle or the perseverance found in Hillbilly Elegy, Cheap Houses offers an unforgettable journey from hardship to hope—proving that while our beginnings shape us, they do not have to define the rest of our lives.

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Cheap Houses:

A Memoir of Poverty and Reinvention in Rural America

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We Taught an Owl to Fly: A True Story of Kindness, Hope, and Letting Go

We Taught an Owl to Fly:

A True Story of Kindness, Hope, and Letting Go

When a summer storm leaves a tiny owl alone, one family gives it a second chance. Inspired by a true childhood story, We Taught an Owl to Fly is a heartfelt picture book about kindness, patience, and learning that sometimes the greatest act of love is letting go.

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or Visit the Website Below

https://www.wetaughtanowltofly.com/