

Sophie, a hardworking but overlooked Common-Blood vampire, dies alone in the basement of her family’s mansion on the very day she is supposed to receive the Coven’s Distinguished Service Award. While her parents, brother Conner, blood-bond mate Ryan, and favored Pure-White-Blood sister Ella celebrate Ella’s college graduation upstairs, Sophie is attacked by three rogue vampires. She is drained, violated, and left with a fatal head wound. Her desperate phone calls for help are dismissed as “tantrums.” Her family continues to treat her absence as attention-seeking. They decide to “teach her a lesson,” give her closet space to Ella, and only grow concerned when a holy-silver gift (stolen by Ella) burns Ella’s hand.

George Culkin has one year left to live and descends the mountain with seven marriage contracts, a body full of unmatched medical and martial ability, and absolutely no plan beyond survival. On his first day down he accidentally saves Cindy Ginger, a powerful CEO who pulls him into her world before he can think twice. What was supposed to be a casual detour becomes considerably more complicated. George's seven senior sisters,each formidably powerful in their own right, have strong opinions about his wellbeing and even stronger opinions about anyone who threatens it. When he discovers that the enemy behind his shortened life and his new entanglements is one and the same person, he stops keeping a low profile. He came down the mountain to survive his last year. He ends up fighting for a whole lot more than that.

In a devastating fire, a stepmother and her stepdaughter become trapped in an elevator, and Evelyn sacrifices her life in a desperate attempt to save Heidi. Unbeknownst to her husband, Vincent Clarke, Evelyn's tragic death occurs while he stands by the side of Heidi's biological mother, Fiona Lawson. Grief-stricken, Heidi cries out, "I only have one mother, her name is Evelyn Glover!"

The apocalypse arrives. Zombie hordes swallow cities, and starvation does the rest. Veteran soldier Leon Reed activates the Apocalypse Bunker System, beginning with nothing but a welding torch and a modified harvester, and breaks ground on Dusk Farm. While the rest of humanity stumbles toward extinction, he grows anti-toxin wheat inside bulletproof greenhouses and eats hotpot for dinner.Leon stockpiles supplies, raises walls, and draws in the talented and the desperate, upgrading his farm step by step into a steel fortress bristling with heavy weapons and piloted Titan mechs. The wasteland treats him as an anomaly. He treats the wasteland as farmland.