Crystal Winters and the Haunted Mansion

By M. Kate Allen

Crystal Winters has always stood out among the other kids, sporting blue hair, a razor-sharp mind, and a craving for adventure. On her tenth birthday, her parents give her permission to ride her bike beyond their immediate neighborhood. She rides far and finds a spooky mansion abandoned in the woods. Will she dare to cross the threshold and expl

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thea Press
• Release date: May 13, 2021
• ISBN: 9781733506465

M. Kate Allen

After a childhood spent with her nose in a book, M. Kate Allen now spends her grownup life weaving magical tales of her own. M. Kate Allen lives in Tempe, Arizona, with her daughters, both of whom are voracious readers, and her husband, who is a hoot.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Once upon a time, there was a girl named Crystal who didn't like to wait around. She arrived an hour and forty-seven minutes after her mother's water broke. The nurses and doctors gaped as she made her way into the world with a shock of dark-blue hair and light blue eyes. She was reading full-length novels at the age of three. She read every note her Kindergarten teachers wrote before her parents came to pick her up from school, and there were a few. Crystal was a current of energy, fast as lightning and loud as thunder.

Crystal was a girl unlike any who had ever lived in her town. This left her feeling very much alone.

On her tenth birthday, her parents gave her permission to begin riding her bike around the neighborhood on her own. She didn't waste a moment. As soon as they returned from her birthday party, she put on her favorite dark blue jeans and black leather boots and tied her waist-length dark-blue hair in her favorite sparkling black hair tie. She packed a pouch of cashews, threw a metal water bottle in a sling over her shoulder, and pedaled away into the evening light, hair and handlebar streamers flowing in a tumbling breeze of her own making.

At the edge of her town lay a wide, deep forest. She parked her bike along the outer ring of trees. Her birthday landed in the month of the Leaf-Turning—leaves in hues of red, orange, and yellow whispered amongst themselves before they danced through the air to the forest floor. She looked left and right to see if anyone was watching.

She was the only creature of her kind there.

For the first time in her life, she slowed down.

She stepped carefully into the trees, rubbing their bark and catching leaves. Deeper and deeper into the forest she walked.

She stepped into a