L.M. Carrow

The world has always been thinner than we believed. Warden Cael Bren's assignment should have been routine: repair a cracked boundary marker in the northern forest and return home within the week. But when the stone begins to bleed something that is not water - and time itself begins to fracture - he realizes the markers do more than mark territory. They hold reality together. As cracks spread across the land, forests twist, memories shift, and entire settlements slip between versions of themselves. With the help of a hunter who knows the woods too well and a scholar who understands too much, Cael uncovers the truth: the boundary is failing. And something ancient is pushing through. What begins as a repair becomes a reckoning. Because saving the world may require more than skill or courage. It may require becoming the boundary itself. Where the World Is Thin is a sweeping literary speculative novel about sacrifice, consciousness, and the fragile architecture of reality. Quietly epic and deeply human, it asks what we owe the future—and what it means to endure.

In Never Break the Rules – Volume I, L.M. Carrow presents a haunting collection of supernatural stories where every warning, superstition, and whispered prohibition carries a cost. Across lonely towns, fog-choked lakes, cursed objects, and forgotten hallways, characters learn - too late - that the boundaries they break are the only things holding reality together. A ferry operator tests the one rule her entire town lives by and discovers what waits in the fog after dusk. A clockmaker’s apprentice pushes a brass regulator past midnight and finds time itself demanding payment. A photographer snaps a single forbidden picture of a lighthouse beam and unleashes the drowned faces within. A beekeeper, a librarian, a diver, a blacksmith, a nurse, even a child with folded paper cranes - each one faces a rule carved in wood, whispered by elders, or taped to a wall… and the horrifying truth behind it. Some rules protect you. Some rules protect everyone else. And some rules - once broken - don’t let you walk away unchanged. Atmospheric, unsettling, and woven with dread, Never Break the Rules – Volume I explores the thin boundary between the ordinary and the uncanny. Each story stands alone but echoes the same chilling theme: The world is full of doors we’re not meant to open. This book shows what steps through when we do. Perfect for fans of: – Shirley Jackson – Carmen Maria Machado – Adam Nevill – Black Mirror – Folk-horror and liminal supernatural fiction Turn the page - but remember: every rule has consequences.