Here are the new releases from Crossroad Press for May and June 2024. Unless noted otherwise, you can purchase any of them at Amazon, B&N, Apple, Google Play, Smashwords, or Kobo.
by Mark Morris
(Release date – 5/4/2024)
Kate Nolan is a successful magazine editor with a loving husband, James, and a five-year-old son, Max. Her life couldn’t be more perfect—but one day she receives a phone call from James, which changes everything.
Clearly distressed, James tells Kate to meet him at midnight outside the beach café once owned by her long-dead grandmother in the seaside town of Seahaven, where they both grew up. A strange request, made even more sinister by the fact that in recent weeks Seahaven has become prey to a serial killer who is targeting the local children.
Kate keeps the midnight appointment, but instead of finding her husband and son, she finds herself drawn into an ever-tightening web of past misdeeds and long-buried secrets. As hopes for her missing family fade, Kate becomes involved in a desperate race against time. Where are her husband and son? Have they become the latest victims of the serial killer, who calls himself Dominic and seems to know her intimately? And what has all this to do with Kate’s childhood terror of the impenetrable darkness known as “the black”?
(Release date – 5/7/2024)
When family man Paul Jeske discovers an envelope in his mailbox addressed to one Lucine Korth, curiosity drives him to investigate this unique name. His research turns up images of an intensely attractive woman who lives only blocks from his home. As Paul delves further into this emergent fixation, blurring lines both legal and moral, his professional and family life suffer. Soon this game of cat-and-mouse progresses into perpetually-more perilous territory and Paul learns an astonishing truth about Lucine Korth…and that things are rarely ever as they appear.
At once an examination of obsession in the digital age and the fragile nuances of modern family dynamics, When at Last I Find You asks how far would you go to obtain the unobtainable? What would you risk to satisfy your curiosity? And are you willing to make the ultimate sacrifice—family, career, sanity, and soul—to say you succeeded?
by Edward Lee and John Pelan
(Release date – 5/14/2024)
Sciftan: a proper noun of ultimately unknown origin, taking from the Old Frisian alt. transitive: sciff: to mutate, and tannin: one who. Modern English translation:
Shifter
Richard Locke is a poet. He hasn’t written much since Clare, the woman he was going to propose to, told him she wasn’t in love with him anymore.
Captain Jack Cordesman is investigating a series of murders in which the victims appear to have been partially eaten. So far the only evidence linking these murders are the red, female hairs found at the crime scenes and a bar napkin with one of Locke’s poems scribbled on it.
With a rundown mansion, priceless automobiles, and guest houses filled with brutalities the likes of which you’ll never forget, Shifters is full of fun time gore…and monsters.
(Release date – 5/21/2024)
New York City Fashion Executive Peter Delmonico has had a rough life. Physically abused by his father as a child, and mentally abused by his wife as an adult, he sees no choice but to let his inner demons guide him through life. Obsessed with photography for as long as he can remember, he takes a detour one afternoon into NYC’s Bryant Park, where he snaps a photo of a beautiful woman who bumps into him, and then kisses him, only to vanish into the crowd as mysteriously as she appeared. Determined to bring true love into his life, Peter sets out on a journey throughout Manhattan to find her, his only real lead the photo he took of her in his camera.
Missed Connection is an intense erotic thriller filled with twists and turns, a raunchy, funny, sexy, satirical, and somewhat diabolical look at life in Manhattan through the eyes of a damaged man who only wants to love, and be loved.
“This taut page-turner has a harrowing premise, breakneck first-person narrative, and one hell of a final twist. Thriller Fans: don’t miss MISSED CONNECTION!” — New York Times bestselling author Wendy Corsi Staub
“Sleek as a bullet and just as deadly, Michael Laimo is in top form. MISSED CONNECTION is not to be missed!” —Ronald Malfi, author of Come With Me and Black Mouth
The Compendium of F, Volume One: The Seventies and Eighties
(Release date – 5/22/2024)
This first volume collects all the stories F. Paul Wilson published in the Seventies and Eighties. Presented in chronological order with introductory notes by the author, this is a monumental and historical document as well as well as a wonderful celebration a staggeringly impressive career by one of our best.
Included in this collection:
The Cleansing Machine
Ratman
Higher Centers
The Man with the Anteater
He Shall Be John
Lipidleggin’
To Fill the Sea and Air
Demonstrong
Be Fruitful and Multiply
Soft
The Last ‘One Mo’ Once Golden Oldies Revival
Dat-Tay-Vao
Traps
The Years the Music Died
Ménage à Trois
Doc Johnson
Cuts
Muscles
Feelings
Tenants
Faces
The Tenth Toe (or: The Beginning of My End)
Buckets
by Steven Beai
(Release date – 5/28/2024)
At Uncle Vincent’s house, unspeakable things come out at night.
Julian Baker has heard hushed whispers about the mystery from his family his entire life. In his senior year in high school, he vows to uncover the secret kept by those closest to him. What he discovers will change the lives of an entire town.
High atop Crumpton Hill in Harris, Indiana there is a place locals shun once night falls. A place where the dead reach out to the living and nightmares come to life to walk the grounds.
Whatever you do, don’t go outside after dark at Uncle Vincent’s house.
Imagine a place of mystery, where ghostly visions appear, the dead walk, and your every nightmare comes alive.
Welcome to Uncle Vincent’s house.
Compendium of F, Volume Two: The Nineties
(Release date – 5/29/2024)
This second volume collects all the stories F. Paul Wilson published in the Nineties. Presented in chronological order with introductory notes by the author, this is a monumental and historical document as well as well as a wonderful celebration a staggeringly impressive career by one of our best.
Included in this collection:
A Day in the Life
Pelts
The Barrens
Rumors
Topsy
Please Don’t Hurt Me
Foet
Bob Dylan, Troy Jonson, and the Speed Queen
The Long Way Home
When He Was Fab
Itsy Bitsy Spider
(the answer)
Offshore
Aryans and Absinthe
Lysing Toward Bethlehem
Night Dive
Aftershock
by Mark Morris
(Release date – 6/2/2024)
“The uglimen are coming. Watch your back. They killed your dad. They’ll kill you too if they can.”
Rob Loomis has everything he could wish for: a beautiful girlfriend, a job he loves, a nice flat in London. Life is sweet—until the day that his mother rings him at work to tell him that his quiet, thoughtful and apparently contented father has hung himself from the banister of their family home. Before long, Rob finds that it is not only his own and his mother’s grief that he has to cope with.
A mysterious, hissing voice on the phone informs him that his father was murdered, and that his murderers—the uglimen—are targeting Rob as their next victim. But if Rob’s father really is dead, why does Rob glimpse him, standing between distant trees, watching his own funeral? Is his father a phantom? A figment of Rob’s imagination? Or has he somehow faked his own death in order to avoid some terrible retribution?
To discover the truth, Rob must confront and accept shocking revelations about his father, must delve deep into his father’s past, and in particular into certain events that occurred in California in 1969, during the fabled summer of love. For it was here where his father made the biggest mistake of his life, where his reckless actions were to have such devastating consequences that they would destroy not only his life, but the lives of all those around him.
by Carl Bowen
(Release date – 6/4/2024)
Lost in Eternal Nights
How important is the unlife of a single vampire in the secret war that rages in the Final Nights? That’s what Michael Luther asks himself when his beloved childe dies. What good is fighting a war when the things you love will inevitably be ripped away? What good is obedience to the Traditions when the Kindred in power don’t care if you survive or perish? What reward is there in continuing to exist when all that made you human is dead?
As Michael investigates the circumstances of his childe’s death and gets drawn into the web of deception and treachery that brought it about, he discovers the answers to these questions. And he discovers that the strongest passion to live on after death is the thirst for vengeance.
Predator & Prey: Vampire is the first in a series of six books that examine the hunters newly arrived in the World of Darkness and the supernatural foes they have been created to destroy. In the course of the series, the line between hunter and hunted begins to blur. The series continues with Predator & Prey: Judge.
Compendium of F, Volume Three: 2000 and Beyond
(Release date – 6/6/2024)
This third volume collects all the stories F. Paul Wilson published from 2000 to 2020. Presented in chronological order with introductory notes by the author, this is a monumental and historical document as well as well as a wonderful celebration a staggeringly impressive career by one of our best.
Included in this collection:
Anna
Performance
Sole Custody
The Tapework Letters
Hunters
Interlude at Duane’s
Do-Gooder
The Sound of Blunder
Piney Power
Prankters
Renascence
The Compendium of Srem
Secret Ingredient
The Long and the Short of It
To the Lonely Sea and the Sky
Ellie
The Last Bonneville
(Release date – 6/10/2024)
Welcome to the ghostpocalypse.
Stuart Angelino is a former gang enforcer on his way through empty western Kansas, fresh out of prison and ready to get his life back on track. He stops at an isolated convenience store for gas and a break. While he’s there, a strange, expanding storm blows in with purple-black clouds and green lightning. He and several others are trapped inside by this storm that doesn’t slacken.
A nightgown-clad woman wanders into the parking lot. One of the men in the store goes out into the rain to help her, and she viciously murders him before running off into the storm. Soon others appear, vengeful ghosts from many different times and places. Something has opened a rift between the spirit world and ours, and ghosts are returning in waves.
When it’s clear no one outside the storm has entered it, the group realizes they are the world’s best bet to stop what one of them calls the ghostpocalypse. But they will have to battle the weather, mobs of crazed spirits, as well as ghosts with specific grudges against those in the store. And more dangers await, because the rift is letting more than just ghosts into our reality.
(Release date – 6/11/2024)
Who is Fit to Judge?
Douglas Sands is a middle-aged corporate manager whose comfortable life has been filled with loss and disappointment. He has a good job, lives in a fine home and wants for nothing… except, perhaps, for everything to be different, or perhaps just as it was years ago. Before his son died. Before he and his wife lost their passion for one another. Before a co-worker turned up dead.
Sands finds himself yearning for the past even more when he begins to see and hear things that are not of the world he knew. Monsters lurking in the shadows seem to desire the only things of value to him. But even as his eyes open to the truths of the World of Darkness, Douglas Sands is forced to deal with the all-too-human mistakes he’s made as well. He cannot help but wonder if he’s truly fit to judge the supernatural fiends he discovers.
Predator & Prey: Judge is the second in the series of six novels that explores the Hunters newly arrived within the World of Darkness and the supernatural foes they have an obligation to confront. In the course of the series, the line between hunter and the hunted continues to blur. The series continues with Predator & Prey: Werewolf.
by Ed Gorman
(Release date – 6/14/2024)
Guild is a man tormented by his past. He already narrowly escaped one lynching, and he certainly isn’t about to get caught up in another one.
He’s just a weary bounty hunter looking to collect his reward when he rides into the dusty Dakota town of Denton one evening. He doesn’t plan to stay long—until an old buddy and a beautiful woman convince him to change his mind.
But some folks don’t like his presence in Denton. They don’t like the questions he’s asking and the insinuations he’s making. And they’ll do everything they can to make sure he leaves mighty quick—whether it’s on the back of a horse or in a narrow pine box.
by Ed Gorman
(Release date – 6/14/2024)
THE LAW WANTED HIM TO HANG—FOR A CRIME HE DIDN’T COMMIT
Two men are dead, the bank’s been robbed, and there’s a one-thousand-dollar reward on the head of crazy mountain man Kriker. But the law’s been wrong before, so bounty hunter Leo Guild decides to track Kriker into the icy boondocks to hear his side first.
And there, in the outlaw camp where the six-shooter rules, death and love and revenge clash in a bloody burst of gunfire as Guild discovers that the law and the truth are not always on the same side.
(Release date – 6/14/2024)
GUISES is a classic Charlee Jacob collection featuring a mix of twenty-one short stories and novelettes.
Charlee was one of the most respected authors in modern literary horror. This collection showcases her unique talents as one of the premier storytellers of the genre.
GUISES is a masterful example of Jacob’s beautifully brutal and grotesque style of dark fiction. Within GUISES, Jacob explores endless variations of the masks—literal and figurative—that hide human frailties and reveal the true nature of the wearer. From the works of art in the titular story to the seemingly surface attraction of the weary hero of “The Piper,” the nature of the camouflage ranges from the breathtakingly beautiful to heart-stopping horror. And sometimes, the extremes are indistinguishable from each other…
Grave Deeds and Dead Plots, Volume 2
(Release date – 6/16/2024)
Welcome to the second volume of Grave Deeds and Dead Plots, the collection featuring true crime stories that have resulted in hauntings. Within these pages are tales of murder, bloodshed, passions running high — and the hauntings that have followed these events.
Do the victims of true crime remain to tell the tales of their untimely demise? Are the dead still crying out for justice? Do the departed have stories to share? Find out in this second installment of Grave Deeds and Dead Plots, a continuing series by award-winning* author Sylvia Shults.
*Gone On Vacation: Haunted Zoos, Museums, and Amusement Parks (First Place, BookFest Awards, Spring 2024); Days of the Dead: A Year of True Ghost Stories (First Place, BookFest Awards, Spring 2022)
I Will Always Find You: The Complete Slattery Falls
(Release date – 6/18/2024)
I Will Always Find You collects all three books in Brennan LaFaro’s Slattery Falls trilogy, a pulse-pounding, genre-spanning tale of a haunting in New England. Slattery Falls, Decimated Dreams, and The World You Loved come together for the first time in one dazzling volume, joined by The Orphan’s Revenge, a brand new, never before released novella.
Book One: Slattery Falls
Travis, Elsie, and Josh, college kids with a ghost-hunting habit, scour New England for the most interesting haunted locales. Their journey eventually leads them to Slattery Falls, a small Massachusetts town living in the shadow of the Weeks House. The former home of the town’s most sinister and feared resident sits empty. At least that’s what the citizens say. It’s all in good fun. But after navigating the strange home, they find the locals couldn’t be more wrong. And now the roles are reversed. The hunters have become the hunted. Something evil refuses to release its grip, forcing the trio into one last adventure.
Book Two: Decimated Dreams
Five years after the demise of Robert Weeks, his shadow still haunts Elsie and Travis. Along with their young daughter, April, the Morlands have found peace, but when the sun sets, nightmares drag Elsie back to the worst day of her life. When April claims a man with green eyes taps on her window at night, it’s only a matter of time before children begin to disappear again, starting with April.
With their daughter stolen and an undead madman seemingly back from the grave, Elsie and Travis have no choice but to return to the twisting, turning streets of Slattery Falls. What will it cost them to get their daughter back and make sure Robert Weeks stays dead this time?
Book Three: The World You Loved
Following the events of Decimated Dreams, Travis and Elsie reunite with their daughter, April. Only the world has changed while they were gone. Officer Metcalf and her wife, Penny, have kept April from harm, but when Travis and Elsie return, the shadow of Robert Weeks lurks around every corner.
Brought together by fate, the group prepares to make a final stand that will take them between dimensions, into the past, and to the chilling House of the Phantoms. Sacrifices will be made and strength tested as they desperately seek to find a way to defeat Robert Weeks in his own world, a haunted reflection of Slattery Falls.
The Orphan’s Revenge
Pulled from the pages of The World You Loved, The Orphan’s Revenge is the story within the story. A pulp novella that dives deep into the history and lore of Slattery Falls, told through the eyes of Anthony Stone, a historical character from the Slattery Falls trilogy whose writings and experiences help to pull the dark veil back from the House of the Phantoms, Robert Weeks, and the mysterious figure known only as the Protector.
Containment: The Death of Earth
(Release date – 6/18/2024)
The dead pass through the living like threshing machines.
The plagues are now at the top of the food chain.
The End Times.
The Death of Earth.
The Angel keeps him imprisoned inside the house so the Arch Angels won’t find him and kill him. For he is an abomination, he is Nephilim. Or so he’s told. He is forbidden to set foot outside. Beaten, mutilated and lied to, he rebels and opens the door…
He is the very first survivor to make it out after the event known as Pacifica decimates the west coast. Who is he and why does he only have one eye and the bruises of the abused.
Adam Grigori, is a two-time Noble Peace Prize winner and expert on diseases. He is always the first to enter the gruesome aftermath of world-wide devastation and to help cure the sick. And when the world’s active volcanoes begin erupting, Adam runs into the thick of it. He’s always avoided harm, as if he had an angel on his shoulder. But this time, in Italy, he runs head first into Hell. And what he brings back could mean the end of mankind.
The phantoms of each man, woman, and child who ever perished from disease; every pack, herd, and pride, every school, every flock and murder, once dead, now sought to unravel from the clay; and to embrace their living kind as an accursed kiss dissolved in a pestilent wind. The oceans and seas burned with the red tides. Flora rustled and were purged to nothing by swarms of locusts, ants, weevils, beetles, worms, and moths both living and dead—finally only dead.
Containment is a novel of world-wide devastation and the race to save mankind. Bram Stoker Award winner Charlee Jacob delivers a beautifully gruesome picture of an apocalyptic nightmare. A pure masterpiece of modern horror fiction.
(Release date – 6/25/2024)
Alyce Justice was beautiful. She was not yet thirty, and less than twenty-four hours earlier, with millions watching, she’d held up her Oscar for Best Actress. Now the police announced she’s dead, brutally murdered at the Palisades Estates.
Detective Lucas Horne is on the case, and it should have been a simple one. Justice died shortly after a party held at the Estates. The only attendees were the eleven residents, and only one of them had a motive for murder. Her estranged husband, Brandon Bradford, an immensely popular actor known as much for his temper as for his movies. His anger at her affair with her director, Richard Gold, had been splashed all over social media for months. Just one problem. Bradford had been passed out during the party and was sleeping it off at another house. His alibi was airtight. There were witnesses.
It’s up to Lucas Horne to unravel the mystery and bring a dead woman justice, but if Bradford was the killer, how could he have been in two places at the same time?
The answer is both elusive and deadly.
(Release date – 6/26/2024)
When Worlds Collide
Sickness gnaws at the land. The stream runs black with corruption. Black Rindle, child of forbidden union, is outcast among Garou and humans alike. Why then have the spirits chosen him for a special purpose, when they turn a deaf ear to all others?
Kaitlin has fled the city, fled the undead horrors that walk the streets there, in favor of the solitude—and crippling loneliness—of the wilds. But before she can come to terms with the supernatural creatures that seem determined to draw her back into their world, she must reclaim her place among humanity. Will the mysterious and violent stranger who crosses her path help her balance atop the precipice between the worlds, or will he push her over the edge?
Predator & Prey: Werewolf is the third in this series of six novels that explores the Hunters newly arrived within the World of Darkness and the supernatural foes they believe they have an obligation to confront. In the course of the series, the line between hunter and the hunted continues to blur. The series continues with Predator & Prey: Mage.
(Release date – 6/26/2024)
From the crumbling ruins of a Cambodian jungle temple to the arid canyons of west Texas, exotic demons of the ancient past collide with more modern devils.
As crippled residents in a small Cambodian village try to rebuild their lives in a shattered country, their god returns to them, providing hope and a dream of survival.
But their god has returned as a former American GI, and their hope for peace is a drug that opens the door to untold horrors.
Their beautiful nirvana waits only at the end of a road traveled by nightmares.
It is a world peopled by the bizarre and the unearthly, in which damnation and redemption can come in the most terrifying forms.