The Road to Paradise Mountain

By Kari Kilgore

Chasing a Lifelong Dream
Ella finds the perfect vacation spot in the Road to Paradise Mountain Resort.
Stunning scenery. Fabulous rooms. Decadent food.
Peace and quiet and reconnection.
And best of all, a dream car and a great driving road just for her.
But Paradise hides more than Ella ever imagined...

 

Also available in the collection Stepping Out of Reality: Short Spells of Appalachian Magic.

 

An excerpt from The Road to Paradise Mountain:

 

When Getting There IS the Point

Jacob often picked beachy places, where the recreational activities were limited to swimming, sunbathing, and enjoying exotic food and drink.
Ella, on the other hand, too often found herself feeling...restricted on that kind of vacation. Stuck in one spot, and more antsy than relaxed. She often escaped on boat tours or walking tours. Anything to get moving and explore.
That was another way the Road to Paradise Mountain Resort was her perfect choice.
The road part of the name not only meant the long, twisting, gorgeous drive to the lodge itself.
The vast acreage was also home to a fabulous network of roads meant for the best kind of driving.
Beautiful. Challenging. And fast.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Spiral Publishing, Ltd
• Release date: Apr 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201212230

Kari Kilgore

Kari Kilgore started her first published novel Until Death in Transylvania, Romania, and finished it in Room 217 at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, where Stephen King got the idea for The Shining. That’s just one example of how real world inspiration drives her fiction. Kari’s first published novel Until Death was included on the Preliminary Ballot for the Bram Stoker Award for Outstanding Achievement in a First Novel in 2016. It was also a finalist for the Golden Stake Award at the Vampire Arts Festival in 2018. Recent professional short story sales include three to Fiction River anthology magazine, with the first due out in the September issue. Kari also has two stories in a holiday-themed anthology project with Kristine Kathryn Rusch due out over the holidays in 2019. Kari writes fantasy, science fiction, horror, and contemporary fiction, and she’s happiest when she surprises herself. She lives at the end of a long dirt road in the middle of the woods with her husband Jason Adams, various house critters, and wildlife they’re better off not knowing more about. Kari’s novels, novellas, and short stories are available at www.spiralpublishing.net, which also publishes books by Frank Kilgore and Jason Adams. For more information about Kari, upcoming publications, her travels and adventures, and random cool things that catch her attention, visit www.karikilgore.com.

Book preview

The Road to Paradise Mountain

For women everywhere

who understand that sometimes

it’s all about the drive

THE ROAD TO PARADISE MOUNTAIN

KARI KILGORE

SPIRAL PUBLISHING, LTD.

CHAPTER 1

The Road to Paradise Mountain Resort more than lived up to its promise as far as Ella Weaver was concerned. The location in the remote and secluded mountains in the far western tip of Virginia was enough to earn the name.

Endless acres of forested mountains, bathed in the stunning pinks, yellows, and purples of trees waking up for springtime. Ella had to work to convince herself she wasn’t looking at rolling ocean waves reflecting back a brilliant sunrise.

The main lodge could have been the stand-in for a grand lodge in a national park even though the resort was private. Set in an open meadow with mountains all around, three stories made of huge, rough-cut gray stone, with plenty of windows to take in stunning views in every direction.

All around the lodge, broad swaths of daffodils and tulips continued the colors from the trees, while a creek brimming with snowmelt provided a musical counterpoint to the songs of robins and brilliant red cardinals greeting the very early morning.

From the narrow balcony of their third-floor suite, Ella could just see the edge of the tennis court where she and her husband Jacob had spent a few laughing, profoundly unskilled hours the day before. Straight ahead, across all those flowers and not-quite-green-yet grass, the hiking trail they’d explored the day before headed for miles into the canopy of trees.

With all that sudden activity after a long