Books published by publisher Edward Ware Thrillers YA, an imprint of Cheops Books, LLC

Veronica Whittier gets out of the car and sees a church with stained glass windows and a steeple --- not a house. Is this where she is supposed to live? Her parents have bought this one hundred-year-old building, recently converted into restaurant, on a peninsula sticking out into the Pacific Ocean. But that is not all that is strange about it. Just across the bay is a tall, black mountain. Is that smoke or are those clouds that Veronica sees hanging over it? The previous owner claims that the volcano is dormant and has not erupted in “human memory.” Veronica is not so sure. Then there is the unkempt, dark-haired dude with patches on his clothing who seems to have come with the restaurant --- Clifford. He is mean to Veronica from the beginning. He keeps on telling her that he wishes that she would go home even as he sweeps floors and does garden work for her parents. When he runs into her investigating noises at night, he rudely shoves her back into her room and even locks the door. He tells her to mind her own business. Veronica meets the other islanders, a gang of kids her own age, who live on the rocky promontory that juts out into the sea where the volcano is located. They don’t want her to have to stay locked up all day at the Sanctuary Grill with Clifford. But it is when they take her out on the town and decide to show Veronica a good time, that the plot reaches its “explosive” climax. The volcano has a few things to say about it, too.

Shannon Whalen thought of the boardwalks where she used to live in the East before moving to Washington state. They had hot dog stands. They had shops and bicycle rentals. They had amusement parks and lots and lots of people. She could hear the music in her ears right now as she opened the door to her new home and with anticipation gazed out at the boardwalk that led practically from her door to the sea. Not a soul was visible anywhere, only sea birds squawking in her face and the sound of the sea. Shannon heard a shout. Now she thought she saw a boat with a sail. But when she goes out to wave at the folks, nobody is there. Was it her imagination, or was it something far more sinister in this lonely, God-forsaken coastline with big waves and mirages? Shannon had better find out soon before she joins the ghastly crew playing tricks on the living.

Connie has just moved to a lake in Montana. Her parents see real estate possibilities. She answers the phone. A mysterious voice asks for Johnny. She says, “Johnny doesn’t live here.” The man on the phone doesn’t believe her. He gives her a message. “Tell Johnny to meet me 8000 miles from Tokyo.” When she refuses he tells her do it or else she might be dead.Who is this mysterious caller? Who is Johnny? And why do the movers who are bringing the furniture into the cottage by the lake freak when she tells them what the caller said. They zoom away without saying one word.What is going on? Should she turn right around and flee back to Virginia herself? What kind of future could there be out west here in the middle of nowhere with an inexplicable death threat hanging over her head? Connie had better figure it all out soon or she might find herself doing the dead man’s float in the lake.

Charlene keeps her favorite seashell in her bedroom aquarium. She holds it to her ear. It seems to echo with the sound of the sea. Sometimes she can even imagine that it is calling her name. She has a fight with her boyfriend and races off for the beach where she goes when she wants to be alone. Somebody is watching her from out in the waves, though they are getting bigger all the time as a storm comes on. Why, the man seems to have blond hair and vivid blue eyes! He is calling out her name with an echo that sounds like her seashell. When a wave crashes down upon them, she sees the unknown man’s mysterious face and hears the word, “Charlene!” What should she do? If she is not careful, Charlene might be swept out to sea herself.

Dana’s father just lost his job as an ornithologist at the University of Arizona. They are now living in a trailer park. He gets an offer from a Mrs. Mayfair in Alberta, Canada to catalog all the birds on her estate. But why does Dana suddenly start having dreams about birds of ill omen, birds with dark wings shadowing the landscape? When she gets to Canada, she meets a boy her own age. But for some reason he has never left the estate. In fact, she finds that she and the family aren’t going anywhere very fast either. It begins to resemble a prison. Her new friend, Michael, tells her a dark secret that will make your hair stand up on end when you read this young adult thriller novel, Dark Wings.

Dominique’s boyfriend, Sean, has been arrested for murder. Sure he had come from a rough background, a broken home, and lots of toughs for neighbors. But he was adopted now and had put it all behind him. When she looks into his dark eyes and feels his lips on hers, she knows he loves her. Someone who loves cannot commit violence against someone else. Right? He swears to her he didn’t do it, and she believes him.Dominique tries to hang onto her sanity through the trial and conviction until it comes down to her to prove that he was framed. But she had better get it right. She has only one chance. Someone lurks out there who doesn’t want to be identified or named —- the real killer. And she doesn’t want to be his next victim.

A young woman in white sails across the lake to Lake House, now deserted and abandoned from long ago. Her ghostly figure walks through the doors to the piano and begins to play Beethoven’s Fifth. It echoes through the empty halls. A ghostly attendant brings her a news article about a girl named Beryl in Philadelphia, an heiress. They will write her and summon her to Lake House today. She must play the part that all the girls of Lake House are destined to play. It is fate.

Belle is supposed to meet her boyfriend, Les, in Red Rock Canyon. She has just moved to Montana, and he said he must show her something. Her life depends on it. And only he can show it to her. She waits impatiently by the rushing stream gushing over red rocks, almost mesmerized by the power of the water. Something is etched in one of the rocks only inches above the stream. It is the small stick figure of a man. What does it mean? Suddenly a gun fires. A bullet ricochets off the rocks and almost hits her. She falls to the rocks. Belle can only conclude that she wasn’t supposed to see it. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Teenager Bianca Winters had no idea what was in store for her in the next few years when she took on a babysitting assignment across the street with Little Katie Shipley. That night her whole life was to change forever as a killer roamed around in the dark upstairs. She had to save the baby while the housekeeper, Mrs. Ingersoll, fell to her death.In the months that followed the murder, Bianca comes under the wing of her new medical advisor, Doc, who helps her recover from the horrible experience. She falls in love with the young man only to have doubt cast on his motives by circumstances that hint that he himself is the killer. When he goes on the run, she has to still believe in him somehow. How could she love a murderer?Katie Shipley’s parents move to California and take Bianca with them as her live in babysitter. Bianca thinks that Doc is dead, killed trying to escape from the authorities. But then just as a strange gentleman from England appears and tries to kidnap Little Katie, a young man who reminds her of the one she has lost materializes in her life again. He shows her what has really been going on all these years behind the scenes, why Mrs. Ingersoll was killed, and what the bad guys want with Little Katie. The trilogy ends with the biggest surprise ending of all time.

Millicent is haunted by bizarre images of a spooky landscape that she has never seen before in her life. As soon as she closes her eyes at night she seems to be transported to a different world. Fissures and cracks open up in the earth. There is rumbling and groaning. The Earth speaks to her in different voices. Waters from all sides fill in the fissures and holes in the earth, boiling and bubbling up.She wakes to the sound of “Who? Who? Who?” Owls perch in the trees outside her bedroom window in her house in Alberta, Canada in the town of Five Hundred Lakes. She looks a the portrait of her boyfriend, Andrew Stark, in the photo by her bed. He disappeared a year ago in a search and rescue mission in the Rocky Mountains.Her cat brings her a package wrapped up in bows addressed to “My Can Do Girl.” She opens it up and finds a gold pin. It was the second anniversary of the day she met Andrew at a race and he helped her over the finish line and called her “My Can Do Girl”. She wonders how such a thing is possible.Millicent looks out the window into the Rocky Mountain landscape and wonders if he is still out there somewhere. Is he perhaps calling to her from the dream world that she visits every night, the one with the dry, cracked earth and the bubbling waters? Is it a real place that she must find? Can she find the answer to what happened one year ago there? Millicent had better figure it all out very, very soon because there could also be someone or something lingering in the shadows that wants her as dead as Andrew.

The teenage heroine is playing the part of Ophelia on the stage back at her high school. Suddenly when Hamlet is lamenting over her dead body, for she was supposed to have committed suicide to escape the wild Danish prince, the lid to the coffin slams shut. She does not remember anything else until she wakes up in the trunk of a car in a car repair shop in Hole, Arizona where she has never been before in her life. Worse, she cannot remember anything except a few lines from the play:Tomorrow is St. Valentines Day.All the morning betime.And I a maid at your window,To be your Valentine . . .Those had been the lines that her character on the stage, Ophelia, had been reciting near the stream where she killed herself. At this point the heroine cannot even remember her own name, though she is dressed in diamonds and expensive clothing.She is thrown out of the car repair shop with a wad of money in her hand and stumbles into a bar and grill where other teenage girls start picking on her because she looks so out of it. She does not know where to go next. Has she been robbed? Are thugs after her? She had better figure it all out soon or she will find herself dead.If you enjoy Ophelia Plot you will enjoy other young adult thrillers by Dora Benley that have a romantic edge such as Silver Wolf Moon, Mary’s Gone, Latin Lessons, Rose Red, Murder on Spirit Island, and Murder in Jasper.

Vicki and Sue have driven to the end of the road. Their car falls into a pothole. When they climb out to try to get the tire to move, Vicki sees a glacier on the mountain. She gets out Mark’s last postcard. It’s an exact match. This was the last place she heard from him, the town of Screaming Woman beside the Screaming Woman Glacier.Vicki embarks on a quest to locate her boyfriend. She discovers that the hotel staff have all of Mark’s things, including his watch, his shoes, and his book. A girl gets pushed off the glacier and murdered the day she arrives. What kind of gang of desperadoes lurks here? Vicki had better find out. Someone is after her next. She had better find out what is going on soon or she may disappear just as her boyfriend did.