The Dead Path

Nicholas Close has always had an uncanny intuition, but after the death of his wife he becomes haunted, literally, by ghosts doomed to repeat their final violent moments in a chilling and endless loop. Torn by guilt and fearing for his sanity, Nicholas returns to his childhood home seeking a fresh start. But he is soon entangled in a disturbing series of disappearances and murders. He finds himself a suspect, and as the evidence mounts against him and the ghost continue to haunt him, Nicholas will need to confront the woods that surround his hometown--the origin of his troubles and where a malignant evil may be lurking, waiting.

Introduces a spiritual path of personal transformation and rebirth. This book draws on the wisdom of shamans, Tibetan Buddhists, and ancient Egyptians, Michelle Belanger and illuminates death as a beautiful gateway to change and regeneration.--Worldcat.

What could be worse that getting stuck in a virtual world? Instead of enjoying the game, I found myself trapped inside my character

Nicholas Close has always had an uncanny intuition, but after the death of his wife he becomes haunted, literally, by ghosts doomed to repeat their final violent moments in a chilling and endless loop. Torn by guilt and fearing for his sanity, Nicholas returns to his childhood home seeking a fresh start. But he is soon entangled in a disturbing series of disappearances and murders. He finds himself a suspect, and as the evidence mounts against him and the ghost continue to haunt him, Nicholas will need to confront the woods that surround his hometown--the origin of his troubles and where a malignant evil may be lurking, waiting.

The battle is one of wits and cunning, where the strong heart will overcome his enemy. Ex-marine Arthur Nakai spent years as a member of the Shadow Wolves, an ICE tactical unit tasked by the US government to hunt human traffickers and drug smugglers on the US/Mexico border. He put that life of confronting violence in the darker contours of the desert landscape behind him and settled into a quiet existence in New Mexico with his wife, Sharon, a local TV reporter. But when Sharon goes missing after crossing paths with a serial killer who has just added to his list of young victims, Arthur's calm world is shattered. He must return to the darkness of the life he left behind in order to save what matters most to him, and the future he and his wife plan to share together. He can only hope that she is still alive, and that his skills will be enough to find her. So begins the hunt-to find a ruthless killer and save the love of his life.

The next book of the series is available for preorder! The Nemesis of the Living (An NPC's Path Book #5): https: //www.amazon.com/dp/B08X2VG3ZP Dying in virtual reality isn't fun, but facing bullets from real-world criminal overlords is really the pits. In such a desperate scenario, their demand to render them a service in VR doesn't sound like such a bad alternative. The problem is, the games played by spook agencies follow much harsher rules. For them, the absence of choice doesn't sound like a good excuse - not if you end up in the grindstones of their undercover schemes. Still, it's not as if I ever had a choice. That's why the price tag for my freedom didn't sound too excessive. All I had to do was log in, become a necromancer, shake the malefic hunters off my tail, pass the elimination test and locate one particular person. Which one? Why? And how was I supposed to do it? Wrong questions. Instead, I had only to ask one: why me? Why John Doe?

“An intense snapshot of the chain reaction caused by pulling a trigger.” —Booklist (starred review) “Astonishing.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “A tour de force.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) A Newbery Honor Book A Coretta Scott King Honor Book A Printz Honor Book A Time Best YA Book of All Time (2021) A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner for Young Adult Literature Longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature Winner of the Walter Dean Myers Award An Edgar Award Winner for Best Young Adult Fiction Parents’ Choice Gold Award Winner An Entertainment Weekly Best YA Book of 2017 A Vulture Best YA Book of 2017 A Buzzfeed Best YA Book of 2017 An ode to Put the Damn Guns Down, this is New York Times bestselling author Jason Reynolds’s electrifying novel that takes place in sixty potent seconds—the time it takes a kid to decide whether or not he’s going to murder the guy who killed his brother. A cannon. A strap. A piece. A biscuit. A burner. A heater. A chopper. A gat. A hammer A tool for RULE Or, you can call it a gun. That’s what fifteen-year-old Will has shoved in the back waistband of his jeans. See, his brother Shawn was just murdered. And Will knows the rules. No crying. No snitching. Revenge. That’s where Will’s now heading, with that gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, the gun that was his brother’s gun. He gets on the elevator, seventh floor, stoked. He knows who he’s after. Or does he? As the elevator stops on the sixth floor, on comes Buck. Buck, Will finds out, is who gave Shawn the gun before Will took the gun. Buck tells Will to check that the gun is even loaded. And that’s when Will sees that one bullet is missing. And the only one who could have fired Shawn’s gun was Shawn. Huh. Will didn’t know that Shawn had ever actually USED his gun. Bigger huh. BUCK IS DEAD. But Buck’s in the elevator? Just as Will’s trying to think this through, the door to the next floor opens. A teenage girl gets on, waves away the smoke from Dead Buck’s cigarette. Will doesn’t know her, but she knew him. Knew. When they were eight. And stray bullets had cut through the playground, and Will had tried to cover her, but she was hit anyway, and so what she wants to know, on that fifth floor elevator stop, is, what if Will, Will with the gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, MISSES. And so it goes, the whole long way down, as the elevator stops on each floor, and at each stop someone connected to his brother gets on to give Will a piece to a bigger story than the one he thinks he knows. A story that might never know an END…if Will gets off that elevator. Told in short, fierce staccato narrative verse, Long Way Down is a fast and furious, dazzlingly brilliant look at teenage gun violence, as could only be told by Jason Reynolds.

Virtual worlds are places of boundless freedom. Anyone can become an elven mage or an invisible rogue, join a clan and go on raids, fight, develop their characters and most importantly, escape from the daily grind. However, a game is only a game if you can quit. This is something I learned the hard way. I just wanted to let off some steam in virtual reality and ended up getting murdered and imprisoned in the body of one of the undead