Here are the new releases from Crossroad Press for May and June 2023. Unless noted otherwise, you can purchase any of them at Amazon, B&N, Apple, Google Play, Smashwords, or Kobo.
Tales from the Southern-Fried Crypt
by Ronald Kelly
Below the pale orb of a full moon, a lone boat navigates the dark channels of the Louisiana bayou, moving between ancient cypress and the heave mats of Spanish moss that dangle from their gnarled limbs.
Who are the two who brave the swamp at night? One is a lanky Cajun man by the name of Pierre, while the other is his visiting cousin from Tennessee. The man folks call… THE OLD STORYTELLER.
Take a seat and join him as he shares ten terrifying tales on a midnight boat ride across black waters where no man should dare to go! It is dark and dangerous down on the bayou; a place full of horrifying critters and plenty of haints and spirits, too! See those mausoleums on the bank yonder? Listen closely, for that is where the dead tell their frightening stories!
Be deathly silent and listen. Listen to the bonechilling:
TALES FROM THE SOUTHERN-FRIED CRYPT!
Stories included in this collection:
Beneath Black Bayou
Oh, Sordid Shame!
The Web of La Sanguinaire
N’awlins Haunted Crypt Tour
Suckers!
Saturday Night at Mee-Maw’s
Cat Daddy Fever
Mojo Mama
The Final Feature
Embrace
Night’s Plutonian Shore: Book One of The Nights Trilogy
Researching sustainable energy, Rick’s best friend Wally has discovered a means to tap into the bioplasmic energy field that surrounds all living things. He envisions trains and office towers running off collective psi. But when he invites his friends to test his psychotronic generator, they unleash demons residing in the human old brain, the seat of aggression and primal drives.
As the body count rises, it becomes clear, for these creatures of the id to survive, their creators must die. Pursued by police and hunted by their doubles, the choice is simple: kill or be killed.
Even if the face of the enemy is your own.
Kelly 2/1 Ista is an apprentice hypothecary, learning to work with the quasi-living computer programs that live and breed in virtual space. She is also a foundling, the only survivor of a disaster on one of the Night Sky Mining Company’s mining platforms, and without a real identity, she will never be able to leave the station. When a second platform is attacked and abandoned in much the same way, she joins forces with a pair of off-station investigators in the hope that she will find her true identity — but there is far more danger waiting for her in both the real and virtual worlds than she had even begun to imagine.
When enigmatic poet Henry Coronado disappears six months after the New Year’s Eve, 1959, Welcoming Chaos event, he takes with him a profound secret wrapped within the words of his poem, “Autumn in the Abyss”. Fifty years later, an ill man’s research into Coronado’s work and life reveals that poetry can indeed change the world, or leave it in ruins.
The Word is a live thing…and often with lethal intentions.
Reality is the strangest mirror…
This new edition of Autumn in the Abyss includes six tales from The Dark is Light Enough for Me and all fourteen tales from Occasional Beasts: Tales.
by Nzondi
Bram Stoker Winner for Best Young Adult Novel
In the Metaverse, No One Knows the Dead Better than Feeni Xo
The story is set on alternate Earth and follows the life of Feeni Xo, a teenage enhuman girl who wants to become an investigative forensic coroner. Similar to vampires, “enhumans” need human blood for sustenance but thanks to the creation of synthetic blood, don’t need to break enhuman laws by harming humans for survival.
One night, coming home from a party, Feeni seems to kill a young girl. Her brother, who is a police officer, helps her cover it up, but when Feeni retreats to the metaverse to play a virtual reality game that uses data from police cold cases, she discovers the dead girl in real life is actually the younger sister of her neighbor, who also happens to be a police officer.
Overwhelmed with guilt, she’s forced to help her neighbor investigate her sister’s death in a case that becomes ominous when they play the House of Oware game that’s been reprogrammed to kill every participant.
Rebellious twins James and Louise meet a man while out for a night of fun who invites them to join a dangerous and exciting club.
While they yearn to join Nick’s club and escape their staunchly religious upbringing, entrance requires they commit a crime tailored just for them. The twins find themselves trapped in a shadowy world they only half-believe is real and contemplating horrible acts that no sane person would consider.
But sometimes the most fertile breeding ground for evil is innocence…