When a mysterious scarlet cross begins showing up on buildings in Glendale—a mark that cannot be wiped away or erased—it signals death for those within. Can the police unravel the mystery? It's a frantic race against time as the death toll rises...

Nurse Meredith Griffin runs St. Jude Hospital's emergency ward, the largest on the Pacific Northwest coast. A psychiatric nursing specialist, she's good at managing other people's problems but is less adept with her own. When a twenty-two-year-old woman is admitted to Emergency with severe lacerations that prove fatal, her death is labelled a suicide, but Meredith isn't convinced. Soon after, her boyfriend, Detective Leo Donnelly, attends the scene of a young woman with the same mysterious fatal injuries, and Meredith knows something is terribly wrong. As she tries to connect the dots, she quickly realises that everyone – in the hospital, the Catholic church and law enforcement – is hiding something, and she must put more than her job on the line to expose the killer before they strike again. A clever and compulsive crime thriller, The Scarlet Cross takes you deep into the dark secrets of institutional power and exposes the thin membrane between safety and peril.

The Scarlet Cross is a fast-paced Urban Fantasy with slow-burn romance and plot twists. Charmed meets Supernatural and Buffy the Vampire Slayer in this quick-witted story of found family, fated mates and loving oneself. Will I be able to face my greatest fears and risk losing everyone I care about? All I want is for Dad to understand my choice and accept me for who I am. But when he refuses to answer my calls or texts, it’s hard to feel loved. Juggling a secret immortal demon boyfriend and hunting the vampires congregating in Happy Valley, with the use of my abilities, it should be easy—or so I thought. But when Luke goes missing, everything changes. It turns out Luke might be connected to the very chaos that threatens to ruin me. I am The Zodian Warrior. The prophecy states I will end the chaos, but after a series of harrowing encounters with The Scarlet Cross and revelations of my lineage, the truths hidden in the shadows may just break me. This is the second book in the Chaos Curse Series.

The internationally best-selling author of Alive explores the rise, the catastrophic fall, and the far-reaching legacy of Knights of the Temple of Solomon. In 1099, the city of Jerusalem, a possession of the Islamic Caliphate for over four-hundred years, fell to an army of European knights intent on restoring the Cross to the Holy Lands. From the ranks of these holy warriors emerged an order of monks trained in both scripture and the military arts, an order that would protect and administer Christendom's prized conquest for almost a century: the Knights of the Temple of Solomon, or the Templars. In this articulate and engaging history, Piers Paul Read explores the rise, the catastrophic fall, and the far-reaching legacy of these knights who took, and briefly held, the most bitterly contested citadel in the monotheistic West. Drawing on the most recent scholarship, and writing with authority and candor, Read chronicles the history of the blood-splattered monks who still infiltrate modernity in literature, as the inspiration for secret societies, and in the backyard fantasies of any child with access to a stick and a garbage can lid. More than armed holy men, the Templars also represented the first uniformed standing army in the Western world. Sustaining their military order required vast sums of money, and, to that end, a powerful multinational corporation formed. The prosperity that European financiers enjoyed, from the efficient management of Levantine possessions and from pioneering developments in the field of international banking, would help jump-start Europe's long-slumbering Dark Age economy. In 1307, the French king, Philip IV, expropriated Templar lands, unleashing a wave of repression that would crest five years later. After Templar leaders broke down and confessed, under torture, to blasphemy, heresy, and sodomy, Pope Clement V suppressed the Order in 1312. Was it guilty as charged? And what relevance has the story to our own times? In this remarkable history, Piers Paul Read explores the Crusades and the individual biographies of the many colorful characters that fought them.