KAREN’S KILLER BOOK BENCH: Welcome to Karen’s Killer Book Bench, where readers can discover talented new authors and take a peek inside their wonderful books. This is not an age-filtered site, so all book peeks are PG-13 or better. Come back and visit often. Happy reading!

 

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ANYONE BUT HER
Ghost Domestic Suspense Thriller
BY CYNTHIA SWANSON

BLURB

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ANYONE BUT HER
Ghost Domestic Suspense Thriller
BY CYNTHIA SWANSON

Excerpt

My mother first spoke to me from the grave on an August night shortly after my father began dating Peggy. Mom arrived on a whisper, laden with intention.

“Suzanne.” Her voice broke through the stillness in my room. “It’s me.”

Reflexively, I opened my eyes—but it wasn’t with them that I saw her. I simply knew she was there—and for a moment, it felt like time before. Like she was just checking on me before turning in for the night. I was fourteen years old, and until February twenty-second, my mother had checked on me every night of my life. Leaning close, whispering that she loved me, that I was her everything. 

A smile broke across my face. “You’re here!”

“Shh.” I felt rather than saw her press a finger to her lips. “You’ll wake him.”

Her attention turned to my six-year-old brother, Chris, who was tangled in a crimson-colored sleeping bag on the floor. Chris had his own room, next door to mine, but ever since we lost Mom, he often wandered into my room like a sleepwalker and collapsed on my floor. He slept fitfully and woke up crying, crawling into my bed and letting me hold him as he talked about nightmare demons, trolls, dragons—all of whom, Chris explained, waved firearms but never actually shot anything. “They just look like they will,” he said. 

Chris rolled over, his breath ragged, but didn’t awaken. “But you finally came,” I whispered to Mom. “I knew you would.”

“I expect you did, my little seer.”

Mom had always called me her “little seer.” Our Queen Anne Victorian house in Denver’s Capitol Hill neighborhood was built in 1888, and inside its walls spirits regularly appeared to me like decades flowing through the ancient rooms. Not far from home was Cheesman Park, which had been built on a desecrated paupers’ graveyard; rumors of ghosts abounded. When I was small, Mom would take me on twilight walks in the park. “Tell me what you see, Suze,” she’d implore.

Toddling after her, using my limited vocabulary, I’d attempt to explain that I didn’t actually see ghosts with my eyes. Rather, I envisioned some essence of them—something more than light but less than human. Energy, you might call it, an energy that manifested in impressions, whispers, shadows cast on floor or field.

“I believe you, my little seer,” Mom would reply. “I wish it happened for me, too.”

Since her death, I’d been expecting Mom to show up. Not alive, but more real than she’d been since the night six months ago when a lowlife junkie named Robert Shelton entered Zoe’s Records, Mom’s hole-in-the-wall record store on Colfax Avenue, demanded all her cash, and wound up shooting her three times in the chest.

One, two, three.

I felt those three bullets—a lot. Felt their searing heat. Since Mom’s death, I always slept on my side. I couldn’t be chest up—too vulnerable. And I couldn’t be chest down. Too painful. 

I closed my eyes, knowing I could better focus on Mom’s ghost that way. She spoke more distinctly than any spirit I’d ever sensed, using Mom’s warm, round voice—like the sun speaking. I felt the presence of her long, honey-brown hair and amber eyes, her narrow shoulders and wide hips. Three scarlet blossoms, like red anemones, burst across the front of her faded flannel shirt. Knowing she sensed me sensing them, I heard her say, “I’m sorry about those. I can’t seem to make them go away.”

Opening my eyes, swallowing the lump in my throat, I said, “It’s okay.” 

I felt her hand brush across my forehead. “You’re beautiful as ever, Suzie Blue.”

“I’ve been waiting,” I said. “Why didn’t you come sooner?”

“I couldn’t.” She paused. “You know, when I was alive, I was uncertain what the afterlife would bring, but somehow I didn’t think it would be this. On this side, nothing’s in your control.”

“That must be a hardship for you,” I said, and she laughed.

I pressed a hand to my chest. “I miss you so much, Mom. It’s not the same without you.”

“I think that’s why I’m here. Because of tonight.”

“What about tonight?”

Mom paused again. “I saw your dad with that woman. That Peggy Hicks.”

“Oh,” I replied.

About Author Cynthia Swanson…

Links to Cynthia’s websites, blogs, books, #ad, etc.:

Anyone But Her is available in print, ebook, and audio. Grab your copy from any of these retailers:

Amazon

Bookshop

Your favorite independent bookselle
(find one via Indie Bound)

Barnes & Noble

Books a Million

Apple Books

Kobo

Additional ebook retailers

Audiobooks dot com

Libro (audiobook)

Website: www.cynthiaswansonauthor.com

Bluesky: cynswanauthor

Substack: The What If Journal

Happy Reading!