The Selected Papers From the Consortium for the Study of Anomalous Phenomena presents two tales of family misadventures penned by Kate Maruyama. SAFER Los Angeles is in lockdown, "Safer at home," so Soledad, a college student, jumps at the opportunity to be live-in caretaker for Story, the son of an A-list celebrity. Solid pay and a change of scene are just what she needs in the pandemic. The parents are high maintenance, but she and Story form a quick bond. The dazzling lifestyle shows its dark underside when unsettling occurrences mount. Now it turns out the job that would set Soledad up for college might derail her life entirely if she decides to keep Story safer. FAMILY SOLSTICE The Massey family has a secret and Shea, the youngest, will be the last to find out exactly what's in the basement. She's been training hard for her 13th year when it will finally be her turn to perform the family duty of fighting. Her older siblings won't tell her anything, but she's excited and ready to take all comers. Even if they had, nothing could truly prepare her for what she has to face. These compelling explorations of dark family secrets fearlessly delve into some of today's most relevant and troubling issues. In Safer, Maruyama explores what parents will do for a child, and what happens to outsiders in unsafe houses, while Family Solstice addresses the dangers of tradition, inheritance and the sins of the father.

The cabbie only remembers taking a break, pulling over in an alley to catch both his breath and the sunrise. His windshield shatters, and two people dash away. He tries to scream, to move, but his neck won’t turn. He can only stare at the cab’s dirty ceiling. Finally, a deliveryman calls the cops. Surely, they’ll arrive soon, but we’re pinned in place right along with him as he tries to puzzle it all out. In this second installment of the CSAP novella series, award-winning author L. Marie Wood uses her descriptive powers to bring us fully into one incident in a person’s life, and hold us there, transfixed, until we see it all, crystal clear.

After a major accident leaves her in a dire financial situation, Maxine Forrest returns to live in her childhood home. The empty husk holds only the memories of her father’s abuse and her mother’s reticence to leave her parents are nowhere to be found. The cocoon of her past remains unchanged, yet wrapped in the ghostly remnants of her mother’s whispered insistence that things could change. Escaping the sins of her parents should be easy enough for Max, but those sins are intrinsic to her genetic make-up, so escape is impossible—succumbing, and metamorphosis, are inevitable.

Deirdre's family tree was never something she thought much about. For 24 years it's just been her and her mother. But when she accidentally gets pregnant her mother insists they go back to their family roots. Now Deirdre is about to discover just what kind of sinister soil her family has sprouted from.

No one cares when Lila Carson’s ten-year-old brother Beau disappears. He can’t speak. He throws tantrums. He’s a useless Carson, one of those kids in a broken-shuttered house that lost its glory when his father died. When the sheriff and his good ol’ boy deputies show up to investigate, they eye up Lila and call her twin brother, Quentin, names. A closeted bisexual girl in the South, she’s terrified. Lower Congaree recites it like an eleventh commandment: Don’t go in that swamp. But as the long night drags on, it’s clear Beau disappeared behind those ancient trees. The sheriff’s deputies won’t risk going back there. Lila might not have a choice.

After a tragic accident leaves her widowed, Netta flees home to Daunderhead hoping for the space to process her grief. Instead, she finds her cousin, Thorn, once like a brother to her, swimming at the bottom of every bottle he can find. Her parents, unable to break him from his alcoholic stupor, have grown despondent and resigned to his fate; and her once beautiful childhood home has fallen into the grasp of nefarious ghosts whose goals remain unclear. Refusing to allow another tragedy to befall her family, Netta takes it upon herself to help her cousin and–hopefully–stop the hauntings.