We’ve been striving to add quality original novels, anthologies, collections and non-fiction to our catalog along with our continuing effort to bring out-of-print books back to a new readership. Below are twelve books we published during 2020 that you should really check out.
A WALK DOWN ABBEY ROAD – by Denny Somach – This book is a celebration of the impact and influence the Beatles have had on their generation and the one that followed, on both sides of the Atlantic. It contains interviews with major recording stars including the Rolling Stones, Sting, Billy Joel, Eagles, Steven Tyler, Brian Wilson, Jimmy Page, Elton John, DavidBowie and others who were witness to history. A Walk Down Abbey Road also contains interviews with the four Beatles.
SIGNALZ – An Adversary Novel – by F. Paul Wilson – The Change is coming and the world as we know it is ending. Sixteen-year-old Ellie has changed. She looks the same but her mother detects someone else looking out through her blue eyes. Ellie builds a “shelter” in her room with an entrance that leads…elsewhere. And what of the convoy of tractor trailers Hari Tate watches drive up a mountain road and return without the trailers…leaving nothing on the mountain. What are they shipping? And the writer who finds a hole in the floor of his NYC apartment and tumbles through into… elsewhere. They will all find each other and find their answers in the electromagnetic pulses piercing the Earth from Out There, pulses that no one should hear, but some do. But they are not simply pulses. They are SIGNALZ.
AS AN OLD MEMORY – by Vick Kerry – The 1956 Homecoming Massacre shook the residents of Pinehurst to their very core, and it left survivor, Charlotte McAdams, broken for life. Forty years later, the McAdams family have become the victims of many strange happenings that seem to revolve around the fateful night of the massacre. As the anniversary draws nearer, so does the rope around the family threatening to destroy them all.
EDEN’S WAY – by Duncan McGeary –
Lieutenant Silas McKinley and his squad are stunned to discover the two women in middle of the Stasis, but their encounter is quickly overshadowed by the area’s deadly rejection of their presence. They must find a way out.
With nature itself rising up against them, Shani and Silas—two people from vastly different worlds—will have to find common ground if anyone is to survive.
TIME LOOPERS – by David Hambling, Byron Craft, John DeLaughter and Matt Davenport –
Get rich. Wield incredible power. Get revenge. But avoid paradox, or get erased from the timestream so you never existed. Time travel offer endless possibilities and limitless dangers. What would you do if you could go back and relive your past? What if others could too? Who polices time? How do you win a time war? Four stories by four veteran SF Authors.
MURDER OLD AND NEW – a Better Days Mystery by Laurie and Chet Williamson – An aged photograph of a dead man hanging from a tree… Deaths in a nursing home that may not be as natural as they appear… Clues showing a 70-year-old suicide could be murder… Sinister small town secrets, decades old, finally revealed… Feisty Livy Crowe, single-and-loving-it owner of the nostalgia shop, Better Days, has to deal with all of these and more, including her mother’s slow deterioration in a senior residence that might be a crime scene, a very awkward romantic triangle, and murders old and new that threaten even Livy herself…
STAR QUEST: ALL THAT REMAINS – by Patricia Lee Macomber – When Captain Hunter and the crew of the Endeavor come across an alien ship, they have no idea what caused the deaths of its entire crew. Could they be infected with some unknown virus? Or did they simply all go mad and kill each other? Once Dr. Klein rules out infection, it seems like they’re in the clear. Until, that is, some strange phenomenon invades the ship. Suddenly, crew members are acting strangely and the ship’s course keeps changing against orders. To make matters worse, Commander Bishop and Captain Hunter port down to the aliens’ home world to investigate, and end up imprisoned. Now, it’s up to the rest of the crew to free them and save the ship…and themselves.
WITCHES – by Dan Foley – Jesse Prentiss was the last of her coven and the dead were coming. She was too old, too tired and too sick to deal with them alone. In an act of desperation, she sent a drop of her blood into the world in hopes of summoning someone to stand by her in the coming battle with the dead. Can Eileen Ray, a twenty-two-year-old novice, be the one she needs? Together, they will need to contend with a black witch, summoned hell spawn and Eileen’s doubts about her own abilities to defeat the coming of the dead.
PSYCHO KILLERS IN LOVE – by C. T. Phipps – What if all the villains of slasher movies were real? What if the movies made about them were just adaptations of real-life killers with supernatural powers? This is a fact known to William and Carrie because their father, Billy the Undying, was one of the worst slashers of all time. So much so that they’ve spent the past decade in an asylum out of fear they’d end up just like him. Escaping, the two have decided to form a new life on the road. Except, a chance encounter in a dingy diner introduces William to the girl of his dreams. Too bad she’s a girl on a mission to kill all slashers. But maybe the best way to catch a supernatural serial killer is with another pair of them. Enjoy this exciting prequel to the United States of Monsters books!
HOTEL DESTINY: A Ghost Noir – by Raymond Benson – WHAT IF YOU, AS A GHOST, HAD TO SOLVE YOUR OWN MURDER? From internationally acclaimed and New York Times best-selling author Raymond Benson comes a novel that is a ghost story with a distinctive noir sensibility mixed with David Lynchian surrealism. The year is 1985. Manhattan’s Times Square area is sleazy, and the streets are full of what Coleman Sackler calls “New York Street Skunk.” Cole is the night manager and self-proclaimed hotel detective for the transient Hotel Destiny, which has been plagued with scandals over the century, including several murders, gangster occupation and ownership, and fleabag status during the 1960s and 70s. Five recent slayings in the building have been attributed to—the police believe—one killer. During the gala grand re-opening Halloween party, Cole Sackler himself is murdered by a masked man. But hold on! Cole “awakes” and is still in the hotel—as a ghost. Prior to his death, a mysterious woman had told him that hidden portals located throughout the building can lead one to other time periods, and that the key to Cole’s destiny is in the hotel’s past and embedded in its many secrets. Thus, Cole’s spirit sets out to solve his own murder by dropping in on living characters throughout Hotel Destiny’s history and observing and/or interacting with them. His goal is to discover the identity of his killer, as well as learn the ironic truth about his own family, his heritage, and himself!
BLUE HILL – by G. Wayne Miller – Mark Gray had it all together. Until he didn’t. Remarkably creative, successful in business, Gray was a husband, father and son of an elderly clergyman—and a superhero in the online and gaming worlds. Until one night in New York City, when it seems he was responsible for the death of a mysterious woman. Suddenly one of America’s Most Wanted criminals, Gray went on the run—taking a journey back in time and place, where he discovered a long-buried secret. Blue Hill is a story of mystery, memory, faith, forgiveness, and acceptance—a story of lies and truths, of what is real and what is fleeting. Set in 1997, Blue Hill also is a fictional chronicle of an epochal real time: the dawning of the Internet Age, when the culture churned and the world was entering a virtual other-existence. Chat rooms. AOL. Dial-up. Floppy discs. Files measured in kilobytes. The dot-com boom. PlayStation. Nintendo. Super Mario 64. Remember? Here we are today, the fruits of our labor realized, so to speak, with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, disinformation, viral conspiracy theories, deep-fake videos, etcetera. A new world has arrived, and the real-life artifacts in this novel are its roots. Part thriller, part fantasy and farce, Blue Hill is mostly a novel about who and what matter most in this short life.
SWEET DREAMS ARE MADE OF TEETH – by Richard Roberts – Have you ever had the nightmare of being chased by a beast? Then you’ve met Fang. He’ll be the first to admit that he’s a very simple nightmare. All he knows is hunting your dreams and dragging them into the Dark. He’s not ready for his life to get complicated. He’s not ready to be dragged into his best friend’s schemes to make dreams so terrifying they break people. He’s not ready to love, or to be loved, or to meet someone who makes him happy. He’s definitely not ready for those to be three different girls. He’s not ready to grow up. When he does, one thing will stay the same. He’ll stay an artist, and he’ll paint your dreams with fear until they’re beautiful.
TREE FACE AND THE CRIPPLE – by Paul Ebbs –
Tree Face and the Cripple is a story of survival against the odds and an awkward, unlikely friendship based on profound misunderstandings. It is both a high-action suspense thriller with a shattering climax, and a spiritual journey for Sam from bitter, defeated, spoilt, rich kid, into someone altogether stronger. Well, it could be, if Sam lives that long.
FOOL’S RUN – by Sidney Williams – Si Reardon knows nobody wants to hire an ex-cop fresh out of prison unless it’s for a job nobody wants. His only offer’s from Rose Cantor, an elegant and beautiful “special counsel” who just wants him to take a meeting. Her clients Grace and Adam Holst are asking for extreme justice. A very bad man named Valentine Alexeeva, a criminal on the rise, once ordered the deaths of their young daughters over a business deal gone wrong. Alexeeva covered his tracks well. Now he’s still deadly but cultivating a classy façade and making friends in high places. Si would like to say no, but he has a daughter of his own who’s in danger, and he needs money fast. Dealing with Alexeeva means jeopardizing everything and drawing on contacts Si met in lockup plus The McCluskeys, a pair of weird, bayou-dwelling brothers with a few nefarious enterprises of their own. And Si knows no job is ever as simple as it looks. He soon finds himself embroiled in a game with Alexeeva and his brutal minions, a game that could earn Si a bit of redemption or cost him his freedom or his life.
THE HALLOWEEN STORE and Other Tales of All Hallows’ Eve – by Ronald Kelly – When you first enter The Halloween Store, things seem normal. Fun and frightful decorations, ghastly costumes and masks of the season, and bags of candy galore. Then, as you travel farther into its shadowy depths, things begin to change. The air smells of damp autumn leaves and candle-scorched pumpkin. The shelves of All Hallows’ Eve fare grow darker and more disturbing. Strange and unsettling things of Halloweens past and present lurk amid the cobwebs and dust…
SEASON’S CREEPINGS: Tales of Holiday Horror – by Ronald Kelly – O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree… what lurks among thy branches… Christmas can be the most wonderful time of the year. Candy canes and hot cocoa. Snowmen and sleigh rides. The love and hope that the Nativity brings. Cold milk and warm cookies for Santa. Family, friends, and the cheerful laughter of children. But, beneath the festive wrapping paper and the gleam and glitter of the lights and tinsel, things less jubilant may lie in wait. The holiday season can bring love, peace, and benevolence… but it may also spawn a darkness lurking amid the shadowy boughs of the Christmas tree, ornaments that should have never seen the light of day, let along hung on festive branches, and bones that jingle and dance, in search of Santa’s crimson suit… and the flesh that resides within. In this collection of harrowing holiday tales, Ronald Kelly leaves ten frightful and horrific gifts in the Christmas stockings that hang from the mantle of your cheerful fireplace. Ghastly and gruesome presents that slowly unwrap and burst into life while you are tucked, snug and warm, in your bed and take on nightmarish form in the icy winter hours of Christmas Eve, turning comfort and joy into terror and dread.
