Cold Alone — Laura Benedict

It's 2008, and Nicole Martin feels lucky to have a job. She certainly isn't daunted by the notion of working at Bliss House, an inn that has a reputation for being haunted. (And not your average distant footsteps in the hall, and orbs in photographs haunted, either.) When the inn's owners ask her to stay overnight while they travel to Richmond, halfway across Virginia, she jumps at the chance. She imagines an epic girl's night of drinking wine and watching movies in the grand old house, but when a snowstorm hits, Nicole finds herself alone. Bliss House is restless, and as Nicole's darkest secrets surface, the house will use them to try to make her one more victim of its deadly games.

I wrote COLD ALONE: A Bliss House Story, to give you a quick glimpse into the world of Bliss House, the setting for my gothic suspense novels, BLISS HOUSE and CHARLOTTE'S STORY: A Bliss House Novel. Though all three are set in Bliss House at different times, they can be read in any order. The most recent installment of the series is CHARLOTTE'S STORY, set in 1957, in which Charlotte Bliss can only learn the truth about the man she married, and the death of her four-year-old daughter by letting the troubled ghosts of Bliss House lead her. You'll find excerpts of both BLISS HOUSE and CHARLOTTE'S STORY inside COLD ALONE. Enjoy!