Showing posts with label Thriller/Suspense. Show all posts

Published  November 1, 2022 by Windstorm Press Jane’s nightmares are back—and this time, they’ve unleashed a brutal killer. Jane Walker’s ni...


Published November 1, 2022 by Windstorm Press


Jane’s nightmares are back—and this time, they’ve unleashed a brutal killer. Jane Walker’s nightmares aren’t imaginary—they’re glimpses into the traumatic past; and the past can be dangerous, especially now that Jane’s protective birthmarks are gone.

Worse, she’s no longer invisible within her dreams—and learns this the hard way while using her power to incriminate a ruthless killer. Inadvertently revealing her ghost form, she launches him on a relentless hunt to track her down.

Even more disturbing, Jane knows this man. She once tried to use her power to save him from injury, but instead set him on a path of violent crime. Now, he’s targeted the man she loves, and Jane must keep one step ahead of this cold-blooded assassin before he gets rid of Ethan permanently.

Jane has one last chance to fix the mistake that altered this man’s history, but that means taking her most dangerous dream journey yet—one from which she might never awaken.

Ghost Mark is the second installment of the Dark Dreams Series by JP McLean, an author whose writing the Ottawa Review of Books calls “relentless and original.”





in search of a setting

by jp mclean



No matter the genre, all works of fiction have a setting, and every setting requires research, even the fictional ones. But choosing a present-day setting, like New York, or Paris, requires a deeper dive. Why? Because even if you have never visited the location you choose, your readers may have. If the location details aren’t authentic, you’ll lose credibility with your readers.

Getting the details right is important

Setting is more than a location on a map. In order to pull your reader into the setting, and keep them there, you have to evoke the senses, create an immersive experience. When researching a location, consider the sounds (cars honking, frog song), the scents (exhaust, wood smoke), the sights (high rises, fields of corn), the textures (cool glass, weathered wood), and the local cuisine (fast food, fine dining).

Setting your story in a place you’re familiar with is one way to get the details right. Most of the settings I choose are cities I’ve lived in. I know the street layouts, the neighbourhoods, the feel of the places. Indoors or out, downtown or suburb, I know where to find a suitable place for each scene. But what do you do when the setting is unfamiliar?

Any excuse for a road trip

Location research is a writer’s best excuse for a road trip! I’ve driven across Canada and down the west coast of the United States many times to see and feel for myself the places I’m using. I take copious notes and every opportunity to talk to locals. Most places have visitor information centres that are useful resources. The knowledgeable people who work there are happy to talk about the location and its famous or infamous residents. Does your story call for a name drop? Often, brochures and pamphlets are available for useful tips on everything from local festivals and markets to tourist hot spots, hikes, beaches, and restaurants. You’ll find plenty of detail to add layers of richness to your settings.

Servers at local restaurants are also a tremendous resource, and if you catch them during a slow time, they’re usually happy to talk. A server in the Napa Valley, in California’s wine country, gave me a piece of writing gold when she asked if I was in town for the crush. I learned that was local lingo for the annual grape harvest.

One mistake I’ve made on past road trips is not having a list of questions and scene-specific
requirements. It’s easy to get sidetracked when you’re on a road trip, so I like to know what locations the book calls for. Do I need to find a city park? A high rise? A derelict warehouse? Having a list may be easier for writers who plot, but even those who don’t plot, can keep a daily travel diary, and include the five senses they encounter while they’re out and about.

But what to do when you don’t have the flexibility to travel?


Happily, there are many other resources writers can tap. To get an overview of the area, a roadmap or Google Maps are good places to start. Supplement the big picture with Google Earth to hone in on the types of buildings in the area (residential/industrial), the architecture (gothic/modern), the scenery (lush/barren). Use traffic cameras to gage how busy the streets are, what kind of trees, billboards, or buildings line the highways. These are the streets and conditions your characters will encounter.

Search the internet for the scents and sounds of the place (seriously, type in scents and sounds of X city and you’ll be surprised how much you can glean). Find the local restaurants and look at their on-line menus. These are the meals your characters will order.
Check the weather charts and sunrise/sunset times to be sure you’re true to the timeframe you’re using. Research the flora and fauna your characters will encounter. Interview people you know who have been to the location. I’ve also used local real estate listings to get a feel for neighbourhood homes and condos. Most real estate listings these days come with drone footage, 360-degree views of the interior, and sometimes the architectural plans. This information can help round out interior scenes or lend flavour to scenes staged in the general vicinity.

Not everything you find will make its way to the page

You’ll often end up with much more information than you can use in your story. But the research is never wasted, because even if you don’t use the crush, knowing about it helps you understand the setting and the people, and that knowledge will infuse itself 
itself into your writing, pull in the reader and hold them in the story.




JP (Jo-Anne) McLean is a bestselling author of urban fantasy and supernatural thrillers. She is a 2021 finalist for the Chanticleer Paranormal Award for Supernatural Fiction, and the Wishing Shelf Book award for Adult Fiction. Her work has won a Readers’ Favorite Award, a Gold Literary Titan medal, and honourable mentions from the Whistler Independent Book Awards and the Victoria Writers’ Society. Reviewers call her work addictive, smart, and fun.

JP holds a Bachelor of Commerce Degree from the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business, is a certified scuba diver, an avid gardener, and a voracious reader. She had a successful career in Human Resources before turning her attention to writing.

Raised in Toronto, Ontario, JP has lived in various parts of North America, from Mexico and Arizona to Alberta and Ontario. JP now lives with her husband on Denman Island, which is nestled between the coast of British Columbia and Vancouver Island. You can reach her through her website at jpmcleanauthor.com.
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Published February 26th 2022 by Tangled Tree Publishing What happens in Vegas just might kill you. When divorcee Justin Gray wakes up next t...



Published February 26th 2022 by Tangled Tree Publishing

What happens in Vegas just might kill you.

When divorcee Justin Gray wakes up next to a beautiful stranger in Vegas on his birthday weekend, he assumes it’s just a drunken mistake. When he discovers that he’s married to said stranger in her early twenties, he insists on an annulment and assumes his life will return to normal once he gets back home.

He assumes wrong.

As the shapely blonde refuses to give him an annulment and insists the marriage continue, what was a wild weekend turns into a deadly mistake.

Murder is only the beginning.

Get ready for a tale of greed so twisted you won’t know what’s on the next page or who anyone really is until the…

very…
last…
page. 




Mental illness in fiction

by rachel tamayo


We love our crazy, don’t we? Books like the You series by Caroline Kepnes, The Shining by Stephen King, and the umpteen other psychological thrillers that line shelves as far as the eye can see in bookstores both digital and physical. 

We love these characters. They grip us. Like in The Shining, Jack Torrence and his slow maddening decent into a paranormal induced psychotic break. Or Joe, who becomes rapidly obsessed with one woman after the next, every female is “the one.”  Or how about this classic, the little talked about The Island of Doctor Moreau by H.G Wells in which the mad scientist Dr. Moreau moves to an island and performs extreme and horrifying experiments creating a mass of animal-human hybrid creatures? 

These characters have all got one thing in common. Insanity of one form or another. History proves that little to nothing was known about the general craziness perceived in the population, and anything that was perceived as out of the norm led to people being locked away for the rest of their natural lives in deplorable conditions. Now we are left with reminders of these actions in abandoned asylums and story after story of once horrendous hospitals haunted by the long dead spirits of the abused and mishandled. This brings to mind characters like the wife in the attic in the classic romance, Jane Eyre. 

But now, in the year of our lord 2022, things are a bit different, or so we like to think, anyway. Now we have the Movement for Mental Health, we have the National Alliance on Mental illness, numerous hashtags, and so many more.  There is an attempt to understand, treat, and accept mental health disorders for what they are, diseases of the mind. 

So this bids the question, has this changed how we perceive and create our crazed characters? In the past these sorts of characters were easy additions to tales meant to shock and frighten readers. There was no reason to explain, or even humanize these characters. They were all just “crazy” bad guys. 

Now, authors like myself, tend to do things differently. Researching legitimate mental problems, reaching out for history, truth, facts about treatment and the effects such things have on others around them. All these things create reality, truth-based fiction around real illnesses that need attention. Things these people have to deal with, the uphill battle their disease creates while they and their loved ones try to seek help.  It generates an entirely new form of psychological fiction. The harsh reality being that there generally is little to no treatment, very little help, and sometimes things go very wrong, and get very bad. As someone that has years of experience dealing with the law enforcement side if this issue, and has training to do so, I see both sides of this coin. Terrifying things happen due to mental disease. 

Books like Jane Eyre were written 175 years ago. In the nineteenth century, they were painted as dangerous lunatics and the only solution to their dangerous lunacy was imprisonment. In the Twenty-first century, we like to think we paint them in a different light. 
But have we?





Rachael Tamayo is the bestselling author of the award-winning Deadly Sins series, and the bestselling award winner (soon to be re-released) Crazy Love. Before she started her writing career, she was a highly awarded 911 emergency services dispatcher with twelve years of experience and many commendations under her belt. Upon exiting law enforcement, she’s focused her writing on the dark, suspenseful, and psychological. Now Rachael uses her dark thriller as a sort of self-therapy after all those years answering 911, and works what she knows into frighteningly realistic and layers characters her readers love her for. Rachael lives on the Texas Gulf Coast near Houston with her husband of eighteen years and their two children.


author email: rtamayo@rachaeltamayowrites.com
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Publication date: October 19th, 2021 Links:  Amazon  |  Goodreads What if your lifelong curse is the only thing keeping you alive? Abandoned...


Publication date: October 19th, 2021

What if your lifelong curse is the only thing keeping you alive? Abandoned at birth, life has always been a battle for Jane Walker. She and her best friend, Sadie, spent years fighting to survive Vancouver’s cutthroat underbelly. That would have been tough enough without Jane’s mysterious afflictions: an intricate pattern of blood-red birthmarks that snake around her body and vivid, heart-wrenching nightmares that feel so real she wakes up screaming.

After she meets the first man who isn’t repulsed by her birthmarks, Jane thinks she might finally have a chance at happiness. Her belief seems confirmed as the birthmarks she’s spent her life so ashamed of magically begin to disappear. Yet, the quicker her scarlet marks vanish, the more lucid and disturbing Jane’s nightmares become—until it’s impossible to discern her dreams from reality, and Jane comes to a horrifying realization:

The nightmares that have plagued her since childhood are actually visions of real people being stalked by a deadly killer. And all this time, her birthmarks have been the only things protecting her from becoming his next victim.





NAMING CHARACTERS by JP McLean


In his famous Romeo and Juliet soliloquy, Shakespeare asked, “What’s in a Name?”

Quite a lot, as it turns out. I don’t have children, so the only names I’ve bestowed are on my fictional characters and my dogs. Happily, my choices have yet to be challenged (at least by the dogs).

Still, it’s important to find a good fit between the character and the name you choose. A name invokes an image in a reader’s mind. The way the name is spelled, how it rolls off the tongue, how it looks visually on a page—all these things add nuance to the character.

There are many elements that influence a name choice:

The era in which the story is set: Consider that Zeus and Apollo are now names reserved primarily for pets (the gods would not be pleased). The most popular names of any decade are readily available online.

The gender of the character, whether male, female, or gender variant: Consider Taylor, Charlie, Emerson.

The location within the country: If your characters are in the southern US, they may have uniquely southern names like Gunner and Knox, or Dixie and Hattie.

The personality of the character: Are they a no-nonsense one-syllable Jane or Bill, or a complicated three-syllable Abigail or Joshua? Is your character a wallflower or minor character you don’t want to draw attention to? Plain names such as June or Joe slide under the radar. If your character is the serious type, they may choose Judith over Judy, or Theodore over Teddy.

Age also plays a role. Younger characters might use a nickname, like Billy for William or Caddie for Caroline. Sometimes, nicknames stick throughout adulthood, and sometimes they’re used ironically: Stretch for a shorter person, Tiny for a larger person.

The entire cast of characters must be considered: Mix it up so the names don’t all start with the same few letters of the alphabet or aren’t all the same syllable length.

To help readers differentiate between characters, it’s important the names don’t look or sound too much alike. As in Abe and Abigail. Or Emery and Emelynn (yeah, that was one of my mistakes—Emery’s name got changed to Avery).

Writers also need to consider the nationality of the characters. Does your cast reflect the mix of people you’d see in your neighbourhood? In the grocery stores and libraries? If not, fix it. You can find lists online of names by nationality.

A resource I use all the time is the local telephone book. The flimsy paper books aren’t as prevalent or thick as they once were, but they’re rich in interesting names. Best of all, these are the names of people of all nationalities who live in your neighbourhood.

The best part about finding the perfect name for your character is that the name does some of the work for you in defining the character’s role and personality. Names have connotations, so it’s important to make the most of them. And even if your fictional children hate the names you’ve given them, they’re not likely to disown you for your choices.




I'm very fortunate to live in a writer's paradise on one of the small northern Gulf Islands off the eastern shore of Vancouver Island, British Columbia. The rugged beaches and towering fir and arbutus trees that surround me often end up in my stories. When I'm not pouring my imagination into my computer, I'm futzing in gardens, making a mess of the kitchen or hiking local trails. I write stories that entice you to believe the impossible and escape the everyday for a while. Enjoy the read!

Publication date: September 28th, 2021 Links:  Amazon  |  Goodreads DEXTER meets DEATH WISH in this pulse-pounding, relentlessly fast-paced ...


Publication date: September 28th, 2021


DEXTER meets DEATH WISH in this pulse-pounding, relentlessly fast-paced thriller from the author of Bad Parts.

ONE GUN. SIX BULLETS. NO CHOICE.

Ken Fujima, a downtrodden substitute teacher from suburban Pennsylvania, is trying to rebuild his life when his home is broken into by a pair of West Coast assassins. As part of a revenge scheme, they attack his wheelchair-bound father, forcing Ken to intervene.

During the scuffle Ken picks up a mysterious revolver to defend himself. What he soon learns is that the revolver is a cursed yakuza weapon that will remain fused to his hand until he either dies or kills six other people.

Tormented by this gruesome ultimatum, Ken teams up with his estranged brother, a recovering heroin addict, in hopes of targeting drug dealers responsible for recent overdoses among his high school students.

As hours tick away and other murderous opportunities arise, Ken strives to remain moral, but the haunted revolver has other ideas—if he won’t decide who dies, the gun will.


ADVANCE PRAISE FOR ENTRY WOUNDS:
“An action-packed, surprise-filled, outrageously thrilling novel!”
Jeff Strand, author of Wolf Hunt

“Entry Wounds is a harrowing supernatural thriller filled with shootouts, bloodshed, betrayal—and best of all, a cursed revolver. As the body count rises, so too does the action in a roller coaster ride of a story that concludes with a fantastic twist I never saw coming. Great stuff, and I'll be keeping an eye out for whatever Brandon McNulty puts out next.”
Jeremy Bates, author of Suicide Forest and The Sleep Experiment

“Clever and gripping, Entry Wounds is a tour de force that moves as fast as the bullets from the cursed gun within its pages. You’re going to want to read this ASAP.”
Robert Swartwood, USA Today bestselling author of The Serial Killer's Wife

“A thought-provoking book of bullets and blood about a thirst for vengeance so palpable that it has its own agency. Entry Wounds makes the reader question whether, in the face of unstoppable lust for death, a predator is as tormented as his victim.”
L.C. Barlow, award-winning author of The Jack Harper Trilogy

Read now

    
       
Growing impatient, she slammed the revolver’s butt against the door. It was a humid late-September night, and sweat greased her armpits and lower back. She wanted to remove her jacket, but its deep pocket was the only reasonable hiding place for her gunhand.

        Yes, gunhand. All one word. That was how she’d come to think of it. Not as a gun in her hand but a complete fusion of flesh and steel. Since she first grabbed it yesterday, she’d been unable to let go.

 


Brandon McNulty grew up loving monsters, demons, and the thrill of a great scare. Now he writes supernatural thrillers, horror, and other dark fiction. He is a graduate of Taos Toolbox Writers Workshop and a winner of both Pitch Wars and RevPit. He writes from Pennsylvania.

Publication date: August 31th, 2021 Links:  Amazon  |  Goodreads Adaline Rushner is a woman in pieces. Her daughters have gone missing, and ...


Publication date: August 31th, 2021


Adaline Rushner is a woman in pieces. Her daughters have gone missing, and although the authorities seem to have found their bodies, something still isn't right. Her husband, Cache, can't bear the pain and wants to move on, but Adaline can't shake the feeling they're still alive. She even starts seeing them in the house, though Cache does not. Adaline wonders whether this current tragedy has something to do with the misfortune and painful experiences she suffered in her own childhood, but her memories have gaps in them that she can't quite close on her own.

After Adaline and Cache move to Salt Lake City, everything gets even stranger. Local cop Officer Abbott thinks Adaline's distinctive owl necklace may somehow link to his own missing daughter. Adaline's neighbor Maggie offers assistance and comfort, but Adaline suspects her of hiding other truths from her. Adaline tries to prepare for her girls' eventual return while investigating her own past forgotten traumas, but a threatening message urges her to let the past stay forgotten. Can Adaline find the truth and save her marriage to Cache, or will the tangled web of memories from her past keep her from moving on?

Author Lauri Schoenfeld's psychological thriller is a suspenseful tale of family trauma, discovering our inner strength, and understanding the power of forgiveness.

Read now



Giving Your Characters Pain
by Lauri Schoenfeld

We all go through pain either psychologically, emotionally, or physically. A lot of times it can end up being all three. No one shares their agony exactly in the same way as another because of our different personalities, upbringing, experiences, and perspectives. None of us are free from it.

As you're writing, your character or characters will always have something in one of these areas that they're striving to get through—trying to understand and process. They may be searching out who they are, and maybe because of their upbringing or culture, this search causes them a great deal of affliction, going outside the grain of figuring those pieces out. Perhaps the loss of someone they love has greatly affected their worth, will, drive, or purpose for existence. Or physically, an illness they feel is so intense that even getting up to take a shower is too much to handle. Each area can weaken your character's spirit and heart.

Readers want to keep reading because pain is a universal thing, even if they don't completely relate to what that character's dealing with. They want to root for them. The readers feel the agony and empathize with how much this space hurts the characters deeply and want to be there to push them forward.

The hero's journey for our characters is constant movement within that anguish. Getting to the next step can be more intense, scary, hard, and worse before it gets better. Our characters will want to leave, but they'll have to make the hard choice to face it and keep going through the storm. By doing so, some answers, lessons, and moments will define them.

Here are a few examples from some of my favorite books. There are no spoilers on endings!

From Fault in Our Stars, the character Hazel Grace Lancaster is a seventeen-year-old who has thyroid cancer. It's started to spread into her lungs, so she uses a portable oxygen tank to breathe properly. Hazel feels suffering day in and day out. She wants to be understood. To appease her mother, she attends a cancer patient's support group and meets a teenage boy named Augustus Waters. They begin to build a friendship, and she finds out he had osteosarcoma but had his leg amputated and is cancer-free. With their friendship, they're able to help each other with the struggles they both face.

In Shutter Island, Teddy Daniels is devastated by the loss of his wife, which took place in a fire. The grief he feels messes with him both emotionally and psychologically, sending him spirally to look for answers about his wife's death and his own sanity. He wants truth and answers. The story makes you question the depth of this man's sorrow, and you can't help but wonder where his head's at, but you're rooting for him to figure it out.

In Wonder, August Pullman, also known as Auggie, has "mandibulofacial dysostosis," a rare facial deformity. Surgery is not uncommon for him, as he's had (27) of them. Auggie's been homeschooled by his mom for eleven years, so when he's enrolled to go to 5th grade in a public school, pain, and fear of being different sets in. He wants to be accepted and liked. Auggie goes to school anyways and faces the unknown each day.

What hardship is your character dealing with?

Is it physical, mental, or emotional? All of them?

What would your character/characters have to do to face that pain? The next step forward?

What is one thing that your character wants and is in search of?

        • Hazel wants to be understood/friendship.
        • Teddy wants truth and answers.
        • Auggie wants to be accepted and liked as he is.

For fun and research, go through some of your favorite movies and establish the characters' ultimate affliction and want/need (goal). Or even think about your own life story, a friend, or a family member. How has their pain/ struggle made them tick? React? How have they handled it?

Now, write that novel. Bring in all the raw emotion, so the reader's sucked into feeling it all right along with your character.

  

Publication date: August 5th, 2021 Links:  Amazon  |  Goodreads From its creepy town mascot to the story of its cursed waterfall, Burden Fal...


Publication date: August 5th, 2021

From its creepy town mascot to the story of its cursed waterfall, Burden Falls is a small town dripping with superstition. Ava Thorn knows this well – since the horrific accident she witnessed a year ago, she’s been plagued by nightmares.

But when her school nemesis is brutally murdered and Ava is the primary suspect, she starts to wonder if the legends surrounding the town are more fact than fiction.

Whatever secrets Burden Falls is hiding, there’s a killer on the loose, and they have a vendetta against the Thorns…

Read now


 
Kat Ellis opens the curtain on this small town thriller with the introduction to our protagonist, Ava Thorn. Ava, a senior in high school, has been ousted from her childhood home, the manor and grounds of the once-thriving Thorn apple orchards which has been owned by the family for generations. To make matters so much worse, it's been sold by her uncle to the one person Ava despises most—the man who collided with her parents' car and who she blames for her parents' deaths—Madoc Miller. When one of the Millers turns up dead and Ava is the one to discover the body, rumors start to fly of Dead Eyed Sadie, a blight upon the Thorn family history.  But is Sadie really behind the death or is it less supernatural?

The small-town setting of Burden Falls is absolutely dripping with superstitions from Dead Eyed Sadie to the drawings of the evil eye everywhere. This is one small town where the roots go deep and sometimes tear themselves out of the grave to haunt you. It's impossible for everyone in town to not know what's happening and easier for the rumors to spread. To make things even more interesting, Dead Eyed Sadie is a harbinger of death for the Thorns. It's rumored that every Thorn who has died has seen Sadie right before death and Ava even has first-hand knowledge of that with her dad's sighting right before the wreck. Is Dead Eyed Sadie for real? It's hard to know for sure.  There's a crosshatching of supernatural and natural that is surprisingly effortless here.  

Ava is an interesting MC. High schooler. Outsider. Bloody Thorn. The death of her parents is fresh in her mind as it only happened last year. She has the added benefit of being right there in the car with them when it occurred and those seconds are etched on her mind and heart. Typically, teenage protagonists annoy me. They are self-centered and vapid. While some of the side characters (looking at you, Ford), definitely had no inkling how to think of anyone but themselves, Ava is fallible and yet still lionhearted and intelligent. She's also grieving and attempting to come to grips with what her new life holds. On the outside, she's fine but internally, she's just trying to hold it together. Anyone who has ever endured grief like this knows that every day you might wake up with a completely different emotion than you had the day before. That made Ava much more relatable with the layers of emotions that she experiences. From our external viewpoint, we still know that Ava is an incredibly unreliable narrator. She dreams things that feel real and has moments of seeing things that are there—until they aren't. She doesn't even know if she can trust herself to know the truth. It's a fantastic trick to make the reader second guess everything but Ava is so vulnerable that you want desperately to believe in her.

This is one of those mysteries that the person you least expect is always the person you should most suspect. I can't say there were any surprises in the end given that formula but I enjoyed the ride. Even though it's technically YA, Ava's maturity has been thrust upon her and made her read much older. Great characters with complicated relationships start you down this dismal path but the urban legends, dark familial history, and a splash of blood will keep you there until the end. 


Kat Ellis is a young adult author whose novels include Wicked Little Deeds/Burden Falls (August 2021), Harrow Lake (July 2020), Purge (September 2016), Breaker (May 2016), and Blackfin Sky (May 2014). She is a fan of all things horror and sci-fi, and a keen explorer of ruins, castles and cemeteries – all of which are plentiful in North Wales, where Kat lives with her husband.
You can find out more about Kat at www.katelliswrites.com or connect with her on social media. 
Email: katelliswrites@gmail.com
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The 10 Best 2021 Thriller and Horror Novels You Haven’t Read (But Should IMMEDIATELY) Rebecca Webster Okay, you already devoured Verity and...

The 10 Best 2021 Thriller and Horror Novels You
Haven’t Read (But Should IMMEDIATELY)

Rebecca Webster

Okay, you already devoured Verity and The Silent Patient (and let’s be honest, every other mass-market thriller that’s hit the shelves). What’s going to prompt you to check the locks on the doors five times before bed now? (Especially with the spooky season right around the corner.)

I’ve got you. The following are the top hidden gems of 2021. You might not have heard of these firecrackers (because marketing budgets are comparatively TINY in the small-press and indie scene), but these new releases are the equivalent of the taco truck your foodie friend keeps raving about across town. There’s no flashy sign or ads on the radio. But you can look forward to eating some of the best darn tacos you’ve ever had.

Enjoy!

One Left Behind

Carla Kovach

Teaser: “In a patch of forest on the outskirts of a small town, five teenage school friends prepare to spend a night away from home. Carrying their tents and  sleeping bags, they laugh and joke as they make their way into the darkest part of the woods, away from prying eyes. But as the sun rises the following morning,  only four are left alive.”

The Bottom Line: I could NOT put this one down. It pulled me in fast and didn’t let go until the last page. I stayed up way too late with it and will think  bout it literally every time I go camping.



The Lies She Told

Denise Grover Swank

Teaser:
“It’s been a week since Carly Moore’s friend Jerry was run off the road and killed, and the sheriff’s department has already struck out on leads. She’s not about to sit back and let it go, but the last thing she wants is to endanger anyone else. Besides, as she learned long ago, problems come in threes. . . . But lies are told for a reason, and there are people around her who are willing to kill to keep the truth hidden.”

The Bottom Line: This one will give you a hangover--because you won’t be able to put it down to sleep! Carly is a fantastic protagonist, and the author keeps the tension at an 11/10 the whole way through the book. This is the fifth book in the best-selling Carly Moore series, and I plan to go back and read the other four STAT.


One Child Alive

Ellery Kane

Teaser:
“In the ashes of the Fox family’s seafront vacation home, Olivia Rockwell can barely hold back her tears as she wonders who in the close-knit town of Fog Harbor could destroy such a warm, loving family. Then she spots a little green toy soldier in the sand and follows a set of small footprints along
the beach to an abandoned lifeguard hut. Inside, she finds the youngest Fox child, Thomas. The only survivor…”

The Bottom Line: While technically part of a series, this book holds its own just fine as a standalone (but you’ll want to read the others as soon as you put it down. Don’t worry, no spoilers in the third book). I thought I had this one figured out, and I was dead wrong. It was so captivating I nearly missed
picking my kids up from camp the week I finished it.


The Thicket

Noelle W. Ihli

Teaser:
“Would you recognize a real scream on Halloween? That’s the question haunting Norah Lewis. She can’t shake the guilt that’s stalked her since the night her brother was murdered. She heard —and ignored—his last screams. Just like everyone else at the Thicket, a haunted attraction in tiny Declo, Idaho.”

The Bottom Line: I expected to be scared by this one (and I was). But it was WAY more than a slasher. I didn’t expect to fall so completely in love with Norah and her friends in this heart-pounding serial-killer thriller. (And yes, I did sleep with the lights on the night I finished reading!)



Cross My Heart

D.K. Hood

Teaser:
“When the body of a man is found in the dense forest surrounding Black Rock Falls, Sheriff Jenna Alton immediately sees disturbing similarities with a past case—the same murder weapon, the remote beauty spot, and the way the victim is perched against a tree with no sign of a struggle. But the killer in that case was jailed for life. Jenna suspects a copycat killer and her fears are confirmed when, during the town’s Halloween festival, the bodies of two tourists are found further down the remote trail.

The Bottom Line: This D.K. Hood novel is part of a series featuring Sheriff Jenna Alton. That said, it holds its own as a standalone and is a twisty, read-it-till-3 am ride. I’m a sucker for serial killers novels, and this one hit all the right notes.


The Evidence

K.L. Slater

Teaser:
“Everyone’s heard of Simone Fischer. The young mother accused of killing her husband in cold blood, one sunny afternoon, while their son played in the room next door. So when journalist Esme secures an exclusive interview with her it feels like the opportunity of a lifetime . . . But not everyone is pleased that Esme is telling Simone’s story. And when Esme’s beloved sister is left for dead in a nearby wood, Esme’s life begins to unravel. Forced to question what Simone has told her, she can’t help but wonder if murder was the only way out of Simone’s marriage.”

The Bottom Line: If you’re not reading K.L. Slater, you should be.  Especially this latest release. She’s ridiculously talented and a master of tension and twists. Her books just keep getting better, and I will recommend her every time to thrill-seekers looking for something new.


The Forever Home

Sue Watson

Teaser:
“Carly had thought they’d always live there. The beautiful Cornish cliffside house they’d taken on as a wreck, that Mark had obsessively re-designed and renovated – a project that had made him famous. It was where they’d raised their children, where they’d sat cosily on the sofa watching storms raging over the sea below. It was where they’d promised to keep each other’s secrets…Until now. Because Mark has fallen in love. With someone he definitely shouldn’t have. Someone who isn’t Carly. And suddenly their family home doesn’t feel like so  much of a safe haven.”

The Bottom Line: Domestic thrillers like this one are right up my alley. You’ve got a perfect family, a perfect home, and some incredibly dark secrets that unravel everything. This one will draw you right in and stay with you long after you put it down!


A Good Mother

Sam Hepburn

Teaser:
“I see my son’s scooter lying in the undergrowth. Time stands still. Where is he? Deafened by my own heartbeat, I keep looking but I can’t see him. This is all my fault. My punishment for the things I did, and the things I should have done.”

The Bottom Line: As a parent, this one destroyed me in the best way possible. It’s an intense page-turner that I could not put down. And I find that I can’t stop thinking about this family, weeks after reading! Readers should know this one is INTENSE and may trigger some folks who have a history of
family trauma or abuse.


Widow’s Island

L.A. Larkin

Teaser:
It’s already dark when Stephanie Miller returns to her remote lakeside home on Whisper Island. It’s only been a few months since her husband died, and her bond with her daughter is stronger than ever. Calling Amy’s name, Stephanie hears her phone buzz inside her purse. She doesn’t have to look to know that it’s another anonymous threat, she’s had them all day. But now she sees that this one is different. Someone knows she’s just walked through the door. Someone iswatching her every move…

The Bottom Line: This crime thriller had it all: serial killers, murder, amazing characters, and hooks that kept me saying “Okay, ONE more chapter.” The killer was terrifying, and Stephanie and Amy were so real to me.


The Liar’s Daughter

Rona Halsall

Teaser:
“The call comes on an ordinary Sunday afternoon to say your sister has been admitted to hospital with a serious head injury. But you don’t have a sister… do you?”

The Bottom Line: That’s all I’m gonna reveal on that teaser, because this one will have you hooked from the first page. And I do NOT want to give away any of the incredible twists. Creepy, delightful, and fast-paced: I absolutely loved it.



Rebecca Webster

Rebecca is a freelance writer, mother, and true-crime lover. She’d rather be reading than doing almost anything else. She lives in Salt Lake City with her husband and two children.

   Publication date: February 25th, 2020 Links:  Amazon  |  Goodreads The highwayman brought his hand up and ran his fingers through the bea...

  

Publication date: February 25th, 2020




The highwayman brought his hand up and ran his fingers through the beard. 'Where do we go from here?' he asked the Bundy-ish reflection. Sooner or later, the monster would have to be fed." 

Having abstained from killing for almost a year, the Highwayman is coming unglued. 

Unsure if the FBI is watching, Lance Belanger spends his days and nights in a paranoid malaise, longing to kill again. Meanwhile, in Bucharest, Romania, an Interpol raid leads to clues and a witness who can identify the Highwayman. Armed with new evidence, newly promoted SAC FBI Agent, Dave Maxwell heads for Bucharest, as his team of investigators redeploys their investigation on their original suspect, Lance Belanger. It would appear, the net is closing. 

But the Highwayman has other ideas. 

Just after dusk, outside of Pittsburgh, four strangers exit a service van and perpetrate the mass murder of four families in their suburban homes. It doesn’t take long for the FBI to connect the killings to Highwayman, and when they raid Belanger’s properties, they are left a parting gift. 

Another murder and a message for Maxwell from the Highwayman himself. 

Come and find me! 

The killing ramps up, Maxwell leads a posse of investigators across two states, north to Canada to try and thwart the Highwayman in his endgame, that involves kidnapping, mass murder, and betrayal. 

The predator is now the prey. 

But can they stop him before he disappears for good?



Read now





I always approach a piece like this with the same thought.

Wasn’t Stephen King available? 

Mr. King is too busy to tell you how to do it, so here I am, M.J. Preston, about to give you the goods on writing and what it means to be successful. Get ready for the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I am not a guru; nobody has beat down my door, offering me to teach a Masterclass. But along the way, I have learned a thing or two about the craft, so here are some essential survival tips.

To make a million dollars writing, the first thing you’ll need is four million dollars. That’s cover advertising, flights, book signing tours, giveaways, your agent, publicist, and of course, you’ll need a kick-ass book too.  But if you haven’t got four million bucks, here are a few tips.

Tip # 1

The truth is that there is no advice I can offer as a writer of either horror or crime-thriller that will make a new writer’s life any more or less successful. If there was, I’d be charging admission, commission, and royalties. 

Tip # 2 

Success doesn’t depend on tremendous advances from publishers and movie options. Nor is it being the darling of the writing world. True success can be found in the story you write and how readers react. You write a novel, hope it finds an audience, and there you have it. There is no magic formula, no technology, App, or Masterclass that will turn you into the next Stephen King, Patricia Cornwell, or James Patterson’s ghostwriter.

Tip # 3

I recently corresponded with a successful author to wish him good luck on a newly launched book. He thanked me and stated that he believed we make our good luck. Tempted to ask him if he had a particular formula for luck-making, I did not. That is because my interpretation of this author’s luck was to follow the path of his career. His luck-making was to keep writing, keep moving, one story to story, novel to novel, because not only do you give an audience a buffet of different tales and characters from which to choose, you also get better with every word you write. If people dig your stuff, they’ll keep reading it, and that’s how you make your luck. But that isn’t all. Stay humble. Embrace your readership and appreciate them for taking the time out of their lives to read your work, whether your audience is one or twenty-five million. 

That is what this writer has done. That is his formula for good luck. 

Tip # 4

I believe to be a good writer, you must always be an observer of the human condition. Personally, I am a voyeur who doesn’t peek in your window. Instead, I catch glimpses, take mental notes, and store them in that battered filing cabinet in the back of my brain. If you are the target of this voyeurism, I may have a piece of you in that filing cabinet. Things in those files might include your mannerisms, accent, tempo, tone, and how your eyes light up with a smile or darken with a frown. You don’t know it, but I might be inside your head looking out through your eyes, putting myself in your place because I am always taking an inventory. Sometimes unconsciously. Maybe you have a limp? A limp? Hmmm. What could I do with that? 

His limp was a ruse, a wolf moving among the sheep. The street was a chaotic bloodbath. Bodies everywhere. Buildings in the rubble. The limping man moved briskly. And for a good reason. The second bomb hadn’t gone off yet.

Are you thinking about that second bomb? I know I am, and like you, I’m not even sure where and why the first bomb went off. But the muse brings gifts, and with that, I begin to build a world with characters and backdrops. And yes, I’m dropping little hints of upcoming work, but I’m also laying it out for you. That’s how this writing gig is. If you’re here for the movie options, accolades, and red-carpet treatment, you are here for the wrong reasons.

If you’re here to tell stories, show us what you got.

M.J. Preston


   To my neighbors, I am a quiet and assuming guy who works blue-collar. What they don't know is that I also write dark speculative fiction. My work has been printed all over the world. I have four novels on the market and a fifth and sixth in production. My short fiction is available with numerous pubs, including magazines and anthologies.

I have my own writing style but would say I was influenced by authors like Robert R. McCammon, Joe R. Lansdale, and John Sandford.