Dozing Through the Velvet Trap
By @john1208
In the foggy, brutalist coastal town of Gresnov in 1977, ambition is everything. When Kovanya is publicly humiliated in the town square by her reborn sister Lishka for refusing a prestigious factory promotion just to sleep in, Kovanya happily accepts the disgrace. To escape her family's relentless drama, she marries Bramen, the town's shunned, silent ice-hauler. Bramen finds her absolute laziness utterly adorable, happily working double shifts just to buy her the softest pillows. While dozing in a sea-cave to avoid her screaming relatives, Kovanya's hammock snaps, accidentally crushing an assassin and saving the shadowy Chairman Vossig. Her reward is a lifetime VIP suite at the newly built Solitude Sanatorium, a lavish palace of endless room service. Lishka seethes, having schemed for years to marry a future mogul and gain entry to that exact elite circle. But the luxurious sanatorium is an eerie, atmospheric trap - a labyrinth designed to silently eliminate the region's VIPs. While Lishka exhausts herself navigating deadly conspiracies, Kovanya's hot-tempered refusal to leave her plush bed inadvertently ruins the architects' sinister mechanisms. Told in alternating perspectives between husband and wife, can the laziest woman in Gresnov sleep through a conspiracy meant to consume them all?
4
Lounging in the Shadows
By @john1208
Tarnstead in 1979 is a damp, fog-choked town brimming with sinister secrets and ambitious locals. Ovidia Gable couldn't care less. After an ordinary morning of brewing instant coffee goes terribly wrong - interrupted by a bleeding wall and a screeching aunt - Ovi realizes she is trapped in a thriller, and decides she is entirely opting out of her family's gothic drama. Her solution? Marry Mercer Hayes, a brooding, gigantic outcast rumored to be a dangerous cryptid, just to escape the estate. To the town's horror, Mercer doesn't murder Ovi; he bakes her fresh scones, scrubs the floors, and ensures she never lifts a finger. Told in alternating third-person perspectives between the shameless slacker and her intensely domestic husband, their quiet life thrives. While the hardworking local heroine, Enid, exhausts herself investigating the town's curses, Ovi’s lazy demand to buy a 'quiet, cursed swamp' for her hammock accidentally sits them on a fortune in rare medicinal truffles. Mercer becomes a wealthy tycoon to fund his wife's lounging. But Tarnstead's shadows are restless. With Ovi's fiercely loyal best friend Leta harboring a treacherous secret, can Ovi survive the town's real mastermind without ever having to get out of bed?
2