Dark Are The Steps Of Time

Cave guide Keven Neff’s Wild Cave tour through Mammoth Cave turns wildly adventurous after the tour poses for photographs in the Snake Pit for his friend and retired cave guide Bob Cetera. A Homeland Security agent sent to assess terrorist threats to cave tours becomes the least of Keven's problems. Shortly after leaving Bob's photography group, Keven encounters a ghostly lantern floating across the cave passage. Keven calls on Bob and Walt to investigate while he tries to keep his tour on time. Near Cathedral Domes, Craig, a visitor, lags behind to make a call on his smart phone. After a deafening buzzing, Keven and the tour find themselves in what looks like the same cave passage, but fresher somehow. Craig is missing, and the trail is littered with rocks that they didn't hear fall. When the tour fails to show up on time, the park rangers search, but find only Craig sitting in the dark, apparently suffering from a nervous break down. Rejecting the ranger's idea that Keven is lost, Bob mounts his own search with his friend Walt and the rescued Craig. They reconstruct the chain of events that led to Craig being left alone in the dark and decide to follow Keven: not knowing where he went or if he survived.

Guided by a Monarch caterpillar wizard, David travels to the land of dreams, discovers his own magic, and saves two worlds.

Collection of classic macabre and fantastic tales from a master of pulp fiction.

All but one member of the Mammoth Cave Wild Cave Tour led by Keven goes missing. Officials say they are just lost in the cave. Bob and Walt know better. When Bob and Walt go to find the tour, they suddenly find themselves in familiar passages, but virgin, or almost virgin, cave. What follows is a tour through Mammoth Cave as it once was as they struggle to get the cavers home.

This fourth and final volume of the Star Trails Tetralogy provides the action-packed and surprise ridden conclusion to the Brightstar saga that began in Beyond the Hidden Sky.Guilt ridden by their failure to prevent their father's ambush and exile Dirck and Creena remain at odds over cristobalite's usefulness. Eventually Dirck and Win depart for the Clique base at Apoca Canyon while Creena and the others remain in the Caverns to continue the controversial research. When little brother, Deven, finds a new crystal with even more amazing properties hope returns that saving their father may yet be possible. But before she can uncover its secrets Integrator forces invade the Caverns necessitating a harrowing escape loaded with unexpected consequences.Believing they're all lost forever, Dirck endures a dark and lonely time that changes him forever. The strange circumstances of their return vindicate Creena's faith in the crystals but now they're in a lethal race against the Integrator to develop the technology that will assure victory with time itself the ultimate prize.

When Nole Darlen kills his father—the man who has built the largest house anyone in these East Tennessee hills has ever seen—the single resounding gunshot sets up a dark patchwork of memory and expectation that gathers-up townspeople, hill-folks, lovers and outlaws. Here is a tangled tale involving the dead man’s wife, neighbor Burlton Hobbes, desperado Jem Craishot, and a grizzled muskrat-trapper named Hogeye. Central to the story is a pistol that Nole Darlen has taken from a card game the night before the murder. The pistol becomes a totem to Nole, an embodiment of the frustrations and failures that have dogged his life. He envies and fears the outlaw, Jem Craishot, wishing he, too, could be “fearsome,” but descends, instead, into cowardice and betrayal. Eventually, the gun becomes a central element of the novel’s twisted story, a talisman of murder, and a key to the book’s shocking ending. Richard Hood brings to bear his deep roots in rural East Tennessee. The plots and subplots of Regret the Dark Hour are based on true stories. The house still exists, the patricide really happened, the outlaw—Jem Craishot—is based upon the legendary Kinny Wagner, whose exploits derive from this time and region. The novel’s social and cultural backgrounds are accurate, and call-up the rich heritage of East Tennessee. The novel has been called “Southern Gothic Noir,” and Hood describes it as an “anti-mystery.” There is never any doubt about who killed Carl Darlen, but the story turns and weaves through the day of the murder and ends with a startling, dark, surprise. Here is a story of family violence—its simmering causes and smoldering consequences—set against the clashing tensions of old-and-new, fiddle-tunes and factories, among the hills and coves of prohibition-era East Tennessee. Praise for REGRET THE DARK HOUR: “Richard Hood’s Regret the Dark Hour is a search for Regional Truth and the ways memory, representation, and history intertwine to produce stories, interpretation, and character. This novel is a triumph—giving us the sound and flavor of prohibition-era East Tennessee, in a mix of voice, perception, and blindness embedded within the darkly tangled story of a family murder.” —Shelby Stephenson, Poet Laureate of North Carolina and author of Paul’s Hill: Homage to Whitman; Our World and Nin’s Poem “Regret the Dark Hour calls up a story of betrayal, forbidden love, and familial violence in prohibition-era Appalachia. Hood’s stunning and lyrical writing vividly captures the world of this forgotten time period. A beautiful debut and wonderful addition to southern noir.” —Jen Conley, author of Seven Ways to Get Rid of Harry

Thomas enters a boarding house, but can't seem to leave.