Sea of Charms by Sarah Beth Durst Reading of Sea of Charms made me regret waiting so long to check out Sarah Beth Durst work. The book is thoroughly charming. Marine is a supply runner who journeys to bring supplies between islands. After a stunning romantic betrayal, she prefers to travel alone trying to pay back the debt her parent’s incurred purchasing her boat. But a handsome musician, a talking plant with a passion for the sea, and a playful sea serpent may be just the crew and found family that she needs. Cozy fiction can sometimes feel derivative, but this story keeps its cozy vibe while still having imaginative details like a harvest celebration involving flying cats and good character development. I liked that we repeatedly see the main character struggle with what is morally right in relatable way despite the fantasy setting. If you love this one as much as me, you will also want to check out her two previous novels: The Spellshop and The Enchanted Greenhouse.
The Felicity Complex by August Clarke The Felicity Complex by August Clarke is a quick and fast paced read that will appeal to those looking for a quirky post apocalyptic tale. The story follows a group of lab created women who are being trained to provide the staffing for a luxury shelter in times of nuclear threat. The story is part post apocalyptic science fiction and part satirical critique on society. Those who are sensitive to violence against women should be aware that there are a few scenes of brutality that are integral to events in the story. Hallelujah, the main character is complex with emotional resonance though Clarke does a good job of giving her an alien otherness in the way she responds to the world around her.
Written by: Aimee Harris Information and Digital Services Manager
What draws writers to the horror genre? How do they tap into the psychology of readers’ fears when creating their plots, characters, and worlds? Several horror authors join us for this panel discussion, sharing their journeys and best practices for presenting the creeps, crawls, and haunts that keep readers turning the page. Attendees will learn how these elements come together in creating a novel, novella, or anthology.
Here are the authors on the panel, their biographies, and highlighted works in our catalog.
James Chambers is a Bram Stoker Award and Scribe Award-winning author and a four-time Bram Stoker Award nominee. He is the author of the short story collections A Bright and Beautiful Eternal World, On the Night Border and On the Hierophant Road; the novellas, Kolchak and the Night Stalkers: The Faceless God, Three Chords of Chaos, and The Dead Bear Witness, Tears of Blood, The Dead in Their Masses, and Eyes of the Dead in the Corpse Fauna series. He also wrote the original graphic novel, Kolchak the Night Stalker: The Forgotten Lore of Edgar Allan Poe, and has edited several anthologies, including Abandoned: Asylum, Under Twin Suns: Alternate Histories of the Yellow Sign, and Where the Silent Ones Watch. His website is: www.jameschambersonline.com.
Corpse Fauna (novellas) – A chronicle of survival in a world of the living dead. There is no Heaven or Hell; there is only blood and the dust of flesh. – from the author’s website
Teel James Glenn has killed hundreds and been killed more times—on stage and screen as a stuntman for forty-plus years. Then he decided to do something risky: become an author. With dozens of books published in multiple genres, he’s a Shamus, Silver Falchion, and Derringer finalist, and won Best Novel 2021 in the Pulp Factory Award and the 2012 Pulp Ark Award for Best Author. His work has been printed in over two hundred magazines, including Weird Tales, Mystery, Pulp Adventures, Mad, Black Cat Weekly, Cirsova, and Sherlock Holmes Mystery. Book one of his ongoing Paradise Investigations series from Crossroads Press, Not Born of Woman, features Frankenstein’s creature as a 1930’s NYC P.I. who uses his knowledge of monsters to combat the worst monster of all: human beings.
Not Born of Woman (Paradise Investigations, Book 1) (linked to ebook on Hoopla)
Send a Monster to catch monsters! The year is 1939, just after a massive Nazi Rally in New York City. A serial killer is loose, leaving strange occult symbols on the foreheads of murdered young women. Adam Paradise works as a private investigator with an office above a drugstore on Fifth Avenue, but he also has a secret: he is almost two hundred years old, assembled from dead bodies by Victor Frankenstein.
A Walking Shadow(Paradise Investigations, Book 2) (linked to ebook on Hoopla)
Adam Paradise has returned to civilization to discover his place in the world. While enjoying a pleasant evening in Chinatown with his friend, they end up in the middle of a brazen robbery. Adam thwarts the holdup, which puts him on the hit list of not only the Tongs, but Yakuza killers, the Italian mob, and a mysterious mastermind bent on starting an ethnic gang war. With his faithful Roma secretary, Vandoma Kalderash, he and Hank are soon plunged into a whirlwind of ambushes and deadly double-crosses. Adam also discovers a level of reality beyond the material world that shakes the foundations of all his beliefs. Can he defeat the unseen forces of this evil without losing the humanity he’s trying to attain?
Adam Paradise is at death’s door in the Realm Between when he receives a call for help from an old client. While Adam tries to recover, accompanied by his faithful Roma friends, Vandoma and Nico, he embarks on the search for the missing man. The trail leads Adam from the pool halls of Harlem to the swamps and bayous of Louisiana and the back alleys of New Orleans and pits him against a sinister masked killers bent on a horrible plan that could cause the deaths of thousands. Can the P.I. triumph against human monsters and rescue his client before a mass slaughter changes the course of civilization?
Carol Gyzander is a Bram Stoker Award® recipient and World Fantasy Award finalist. She writes and edits horror, weird fiction, and science fiction—with strong women in twisted tales that touch your heart. She has a story in Ellen Datlow’s Lovecraft’s Brood cosmic horror anthology (Tachyon Publications, July 2026). Carol co-edited and contributed to the Stoker-awarded Discontinue If Death Ensues: Tales from the Tipping Point (Flame Tree Publishing) and Dark Spores (Crone Girls Press). Carol’s cryptid novella, Forget Me Not, is set near Niagara Falls in 1969 and 1939. Living in northern NJ, she’s Co-Chair of the HWA NY Chapter and co-hosts their online reading series, Galactic Terrors, every second Thursday. Follow her on Instagram @carolgyzander
There are creatures lurking in our world. Obscure creatures long relegated to myth and legend. They have been sighted by a lucky-or unlucky-few. Some have even been photographed, but their existence remains unproven and unrecognized by the scientific community.
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A monster is said to lurk beneath the waters of Lake Erie. Jane and her twin brother Rob are haunted by just that. As children, they lost half their family to a terrible boating accident. They haven’t left dry land since. Only, at the age of sixteen, they allow friends to lure them onto the lake.
When something nearly swamps their boat, years of secrecy are swept away, and the children’s father shares their family history with the supposed Monster of Lake Erie.
Will the tale bring closure or just more tragedy?
Christopher Ryan has been traditionally published in several horror, mystery, crime, and pop culture anthologies. He edits and publishes Soul Scream Antholozine, a horror anthology/magazine hybrid, and has independently published four novels: the IBPA award-winning supernatural police procedural City of Woe, its sequel City of Pain, a high school thriller Genius High, and near-future thriller A Simple Rebellion. Alien Buddha Press published his two poetry collections: It’s Been a Privilege (A Horror Story in Verse) and America, We Need to Talk. He holds a master’s degree in English from Rutgers University. Member HWA, MWA. Social media: @thischrisryan, podcast: Tell The Damn Story (over 400 episodes). Website: chrisryanwrites.blog
What if Paul Farrington, a veteran fixer for a shady corporation, found himself targeted for elimination just as he was trying to finance his daughter’s Ivy League education? How far would he go to provide for his family and keep them safe? What if detectives Frank Mallory and Alberto “Gunner” Gennaro were forced to play catch-up with a killer who may or may not be a demon and who leaves trails of Dantesque murders, each one occurring further south in Manhattan and deeper into his version of The Inferno? How could these situations be connected? How long can the detectives adhere to strict police-procedural facts when confronted with increasingly bizarre events, especially once they begin to invade Mallory’s private life? And how does he find a balance between his rejection of the case’s alleged demonic elements and his strong desire to believe his dying father’s visions of long-dead relatives beckoning him to heaven? When must a detective reconsider what exists outside man’s law?
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