Website: https://www.motinabooks.com
Books Published By Motina Books
Word Count: 68,474
Summary: It’s the summer of 1971, and all ten-year-old Janina Starcevich wants to do is spend the seemingly endless warm days riding her bicycle, climbing trees, and catching frogs in the pond in her back yard. But when a young drifter named Justin Lazarus walks into the hardware store owned by her next-door neighbor, Kathy Christian, a series of events are set in motion that will change them all forever. Justin is a melding of opposites—charming but odd, friendly but frightening, seemingly ordinary but at the same time deeply strange. Kathy compares him to an optical illusion before you’ve figured it out. Something’s wrong, but it’s impossible to say exactly what. The events of that sweltering summer turn the little village of Guildford, New York upside down. So why, twenty-five years later, can Janina—now happily married, with three children of her own—barely remember what happened? A chance mention at work starts her on an obsessive quest to reconstruct how the tragedy in 1971 unfolded, and to try to figure out what had been her role in it. The more she uncovers, the more puzzling and disturbing it becomes—an enigma that has lain buried for two and a half decades, centering around one single question: Who was Justin Lazarus?
Word Count: 77,200
Summary: It’s August of 1850, deep in the bayou country of southern Louisiana. Four good friends are working in the fields harvesting the crops when a sudden thunderstorm drives them all indoors. There’s kind, warm-hearted J. P. Ayo; eager, earnest young T-Joe Lirette; wry, hard-bitten Clovis Dantin; and gentle, easy-going Leandre Naquin. “Hell of a night,” Leandre remarks, as they share a drink and wait for the storm to pass. “The kind of night when the ghosts walk.” This seemingly offhand comment is the impetus to the four men sharing their own ghost story. The tale each man tells--by turns tragic, funny, frightening, and heartbreaking--gives them a window into their friends’ souls. When one of them confesses that his own personal ghost story isn’t over, that he’s still trapped in the middle of it, the events that follow will test the depth of their loyalty and friendship in ways that none of them could ever have dreamed. What is certain is that after that night, none of the four will ever be the same.
Word Count: 70,028
Summary: How Far Would You Go to Find a Lost Loved One? Ten years ago, a man and his girlfriend went into the woods at the end of Claver Road on what was supposed to be a weekend's camping trip, and never returned. Police combed the area, but nothing was found except for his car, abandoned where they'd parked it. It seemed like Brad Ellicott and Cara Marshall had been swallowed by the silent, brooding forest, leaving not a trace of what had happened or where they went. His identical twin brother, left to mourn his loss, has spent the last decade unable to let go of his grief, to accept that Brad and Cara are gone forever. Based on sinister hints from a few of the older residents of Guildford, New York, the closest village to the woods, he discovers that there might be more to the story than the disappearance of a couple of hikers. The woods has had an evil reputation for well over a century, and his brother and his girlfriend are not the first people to defy the warnings and brave the shadows under the trees-nor the first to vanish there. Becoming obsessed with discovering what happened to his brother, he delves deeper and deeper into the mystery that lies beyond the end of Claver Road, and he uncovers a terrifying truth that challenges everything he believes. Is the knowledge worth the cost? And will he get the answers he needs before the forest claims him as its next victim?