"The Wantland Files gripped me from the beginning and didn't let go. Filled with suspense, romance, and mystery, this novel has all the right elements to keep you guessing until the end. This was by far the best book I read all year."--Tamara Grantham, RONE-award-winning author of the Fairy MD series ★ Oklahoma Book Awards Best Fiction Finalist ★ She sees dead people. He's sure they don't exist. Psychic Kimberly Wantland investigates paranormal disturbances. Her television show, The Wantland Files , catapulted her from private paranormal investigator to media sensation. She receives thousands of requests for help every day, but during her latest investigation at a young mother's house, Kimberly senses something different. And disturbing. As if she didn’t have enough problems with this case, renowned illusionist and confirmed skeptic, Sterling Wakefield, shows up unannounced, ready to disprove her psychic abilities. A dark figure drifts through the halls. Mysterious yowling echoes in the night. Something dark haunts this house. Before Kimberly can convince Sterling her powers can resolve this terror, she first must convince herself... " The Wantland Files gripped me from the beginning and didn't let go. Filled with suspense, romance, and mystery, this novel has all the right elements to keep you guessing until the end. This was by far the best book I read all year."--Tamara Grantham, award-winning author of the Fairy MD series "THE WANTLAND FILES by Lara Bernhardt is as full of satisfying capital-R romance as any book I've read in a long time. That is, in genre terms it's at least partly a romance, but it embraces and expands the sense of the word by taking the reader to a place full of wonder and thrills -- into a greater Romance, if you will. In that way, it's something like the so-called "scientific romances" of Edgar Rice Burroughs and others, which blended science with escapist fiction to create new and compelling worlds for the reader to savor. You could call WANTLAND FILES, maybe, a "spiritual romance." Plus, it's pretty doggone scary. As is true with all good novels, it's got a strong thematic foundation -- in this case, the ages-old conflict of skepticism vs. spirituality. The latter is represented by Kimberly Wantland, an appealing TV psychic whose hit TV show takes her viewers on forays into haunted homes. The former is embodied by the initially hissable Sterling Wakefield, whose job is to debunk the work of people like Kimberly with a sneer and a flippant remark. Taking place over a relatively compact period of time, THE WANTLAND FILES wastes no verbiage in delivering its well-delineated characters, nicely constructed scenes, realistic conflicts, and a sense of foreboding that doesn't go away until the very end. It's a fine piece of work that bodes exceptionally well for a series."--John Wooley, acclaimed author of Seventh Sense and Wes Craven: The Man and His Nightmares Lara Bernhardt is a Pushcart-nominated writer, editor, and audiobook narrator. She is Editor-in-Chief of Balkan Press and also publishes a literary magazine,  Conclave . Awards include 1st place in several writing competitions for poetry, short story, and fiction category entries. Her debut novel,  The Wantland Files , was a finalist for the 2017 Oklahoma Book Award for Best Fiction. The sequel,  The Haunting of Crescent Hotel , was a 2019 semi-finalist for the 2019 Kindle Book Awards in Suspense/Horror. Her first women's fiction, Shadow of the Taj , is available now. She lives in Oklahoma with her family.