horror – witches

Word Count: Click here to reveal89382 (Click here to hide)

Summary: Joss Evans thought joining the Hypatia Coven would give her answers about her mysterious abilities. Instead, it's only raised more questions. Plagued by blackouts and terrifying visions, Joss struggles to control powers that even the most experienced witches can't comprehend. Her past—particularly the blood on her hands—has made her an outsider among those who should be her sisters. Only witches River and Indigo stand firmly by her side. When evidence suggests a demon is hunting Joss for her unique psychic gifts, the fractured coven reluctantly seeks help from Claire, a demon hunter with her own complicated history with the Hypatia Coven. As tensions rise and loyalties blur, Joss finds unexpected solace in her growing connection with Abigail, a powerful witch who sees beyond her broken edges. With dark forces closing in, Joss must decide: Will she surrender this new imperfect life, or fight for her place in a world that both fears and needs her power? Some sacrifices leave scars. Others leave nothing at all.

Word Count: Click here to reveal77920 (Click here to hide)

Summary: Some ghosts aren't meant to stay buried. Fourteen years after her best friend's murder, Joss Evans is tormented by unanswered questions, until a mysterious encounter brings her face-to-face with Elena Lewis, a woman who knows far more about that fateful night than she should. But Elena's secrets come with their own dangers. As unexplained supernatural events begin to unfold around them, the two women find themselves drawn together by forces beyond their control. The tension between them grows with each new discovery. Realizing they can’t combat these forces on their own, Joss and Elena enlist help from the Hypatia Coven. They work together to confront the danger lurking at every turn. With the past and present colliding, Joss and Elena must decide what's more dangerous: the ghosts they're chasing or the desire threatening to consume them both. Some truths are worth any risk—even if they frighten both the living and the dead.

Word Count: Information not available

Summary: The highly anticipated second installment in the award-winning Alex McKenna Series, this LGBTQ teen paranormal is perfect for fans of  the series Stranger Things, and Goosebumps! No dark entities shall pass through this shield, as I will it ... so shall it be. Alex McKenna's plans for a couple of supernatural-free days are interrupted by an ominous visit from the ghost of seven-year-old Haven. The little girl needs his help and he's willing to risk his life to save her after-life. Despite his great-grandmother's warning, he choose to cross the bridge between the living and the dead to assist her. The trip lands Alex and his girlfriend at a high school known as the Academy of Souls. The ghostly campus for dead teens is a safe place for those who are unable to complete their after-life journey. There they meet Ophelia, Haven's older sister, who has been searching for her for more than a century. To reunite the sisters, Alex must cross the teacherous terrain of the in-between realm known as the Underworld, and rescue Haven from the clutches of the Soul Gatherer. A demonic spirit that feeds off of the souls of children. Could this be Alex's last case or will he keep his promise to Haven and save her soul before it's too late?

Word Count: Click here to reveal38000 (Click here to hide)

Summary: RISE (noun / verb) Eight definitions to inspire writers around the world, and an unlimited number of possible stories to tell: 1) An upward slope or movement 2) A beginning or origin 3) An increase in amount or number 4) An angry reaction 5) To take up arms 6) To return from death 7) To become heartened or elated 8) To exert oneself to meet a challenge Rise features 300-word speculative flash fiction stories from across the rainbow spectrum, from the minds of the writers of Queer Sci Fi.

Word Count: Information not available

Summary: An LGBTQ teen paranormal adventure!  The dead need him. Seventeen-year-old Alex McKenna is a transgender boy who comes from a rich history of Strega witches. Possessing the ability to communicate with the dead, he uses his talents and understanding of what it means to be different to bridge the gap between the living and the beyond. With his girlfriend Margaret and his spirited great-grandmother by his side, Alex helps lost souls resolve their earthly connections and move on. When a series of murders plagues his neighborhood, Alex discovers the gruesome truth behind a sixty-year span of deaths and the sinister being responsible. Will Alex save the next victim and stop the murderer for good? Or will this be his final case? Alex McKenna and the Geranium Deaths is the first book of a YA Paranormal Romance series for young adults. It's a chronicle packed with slow-burn romance, snarky dialogue, supernatural witchery, and fantasy adventures set in New York, and other worldly places. In the realm of paranormal teen books, think a devilish recipe of Crave meets Kingdom of the Wicked with a pinch of School Spirits.

Word Count: Click here to reveal135000 (Click here to hide)

Summary: “Aye, well, what is an angel, anyway?” At Samhain, things in Llwyncudd are taking a turn for the strange and bizarre. The red dragon is spotted around town trying to dig its own grave whilst his vessel is happily participating in life elsewhere. Did Stewart’s dragon spirit leave him? Michael, can’t live with the thought. Meanwhile, Dr Lilibeth Blackthorne, PsyD, has moved to town at her brother Sam’s suggestion. Many of its residents are in desperate need of her counselling services and she’s uniquely qualified—even if she’s never particularly seen multiple personalities quite like this. Fairy-halfling Arthen also joins the town after being raised in the local fairy village on the other side. Despite the odd cultural clashes of living in a society that requires silly things like clothing, he is making many new friends and is more special than his former masters would have him believe. Join our friends as they battle their demons from the darker side of the veil in Green Hills and Battlefields—the thrilling fifth book of the Green Hills Series by Celyn Kendrick!

Word Count: Click here to reveal33000 (Click here to hide)

Summary: Clarity (noun) Four definitions to inspire writers around the world and an unlimited number of possible stories to tell: 1) Coherent and intelligible 2) Transparent or pure 3) Attaining certainty about something 4) Easy to see or hear Clarity features 300-word speculative flash fiction stories from across the rainbow spectrum, from the minds of the writers of Queer Sci Fi.

Word Count: Click here to reveal99000 (Click here to hide)

Summary: Gavin Booker, a school librarian at Cooper Road Elementary, Raleigh, Northern Carolina, leads an orderly, normal life. Work, jogging, friends from work, his son every other weekend. Gavin is also a secret. He is a hybrid, or part-fairy, and in the Columbian Empire, hybrids are under an automatic death sentence. Magic is illegal. So is loving another man, another capital crime. Fairies are locked away in ghettoes, magical beasts, such as gryphons, unicorns, and pegasi are kept in zoos. The others, the tree and water spirits, the talking beasts, fauns, and the rest, are in hiding. This is the world in which Gavin grew up. He survived, thanks to his mother. He can never forget he is different: ministers preach against people like him constantly; hating the other is a part of every school’s curriculum.   But now, things are changing fast, and apparently, for the worst. Earthquakes, volcanoes, killer storms are all frequent occurrences. The medicine Gavin takes to suppress his body’s glowing, isn’t working. The spells cast by his doctor, a witch, are losing their power. If anyone finds out what Gavin is, he is dead. Under threat, the Empire always goes after its marginalized people. Can Gavin survive the coming catastrophe? Will he ever recover from losing the boys he loved? Can he find the fairy man who has haunted his dreams all his life before it is too late? Can his scarred heart ever heal?

Word Count: Click here to reveal36000 (Click here to hide)

Summary: INK (NOUN) Five definitions to inspire writers around the world and an unlimited number of possible stories to tell: 1) A colored fluid used for writing 2) The action of signing a deal 3) A black liquid ejected by squid 4) Publicity in the written media 5) A slang word for tattoos Ink features 300-word speculative flash fiction stories from across the rainbow spectrum, from the minds of the writers of Queer Sci Fi.

Word Count: Click here to reveal100000 (Click here to hide)

Summary: Short Synopsis Agata Rosso, a once-mighty yet now prematurely aged European witch, believes that the special gifts in a young girl named Lía Munro can restore youth and vitality both to herself and her bedridden husband. She sets a deadly plan in motion to capture and use Lía—but will the girl have enough power to protect herself, plus the father she loves so much? Outline 1940 in a small farming region, and children have disappeared from the land. Local families—old-time Australians and newer European arrivals—know what to do about packs of wild, scavenging dogs in the forests, but they seem to have no way of finding children whose very bones have vanished from the earth. They also don’t know how to deal with the strange couple Mr and Mrs Rosso, who might just hold the key to everything—including the miraculous breaking of a ten-year drought. Now it’s 1977 and the wider city is growing, encroaching into these outlying communities and turning pristine farmlands into new housing estates. Paul Munro and his daughter, Lía, have arrived to inspect an available property; it’s the secluded hillside old home of the Rossos. Paul and his wife—who has recently died—grew up around the area. Paul wants to show Lía the countryside of his early years, but when Lía experiences Rosso House for the first time its undeniable spell and the spirits it hides makes her understand that this is the place she really wants to be. Just turning sixteen, grieving the loss of her mother, experiencing a spiritual awakening she doesn’t understand, Lía loves the quiet isolation and rural beauty that Rosso House and its land has to offer. At first her new life with her father seems idyllic, yet she’s soon drawn into committing a terrible act of mercy. At the same time Paul meets the beautiful and enigmatic Candela, only to become ensnared in the evils that hold her and her baby captive. The connection between Lía’s suffering and Candela’s troubles might just be the wizened old witch, Agata Rosso. Constantly searching for a way to restore her youth and her husband’s powers, Agata soon discovers just how useful Lía could be. She sends the most ruthless of men to capture her; in parallel, the terrifying man-wolf-father of Candela’s baby will do anything to get his son back. Lía desperately needs her father’s help; Candela is trying to escape a world of violence; both women are soon confronted by the very definition of evil. Will they find help from others, or is there some deeper answer within themselves? The shadow-worlds of ancient evil and modern corruption collide in this supernatural thriller, blending past and present, history and fiction, into a mesmerising adventure.

Word Count: Information not available

Summary: Welcome, Gentle Stranger. The Night Bazaar is open to you, once more. But this mysterious midnight gathering isn’t the usual marketplace. It’s a vendor's faire not constrained by geography or time. One week it appears in present-day New York, the next in . . . well, let’s say 14th century Venice, shall we? For this time, Madame Vera and the other peripatetic denizens of The Night Bazaar return to the Bazaar’s roots. Its origin story and inaugural appearance, as the exotic marketplace pitches its colorful tents in La Serenissima, the city of a hundred canals, host to fancy glassworks, masked revelries, and singing gondoliers. And – you guessed it. Unfortunately, in 1348, to the Black Death. The market's aisles are still crowded with vendors of the rare and unusual, exotic dancers, assorted faeries, jongleurs, acrobats, mountebanks, courtesans, and purveyors of curious objets d’art. Booths feature medical oddities and strange instruments of all sorts. Tents offer passersby unusual, uncanny services. But this time, the Plague threatens the complacent citizens of Venice. Who will survive, and at what cost? The Bazaar always sells that which cannot be had elsewhere, at any price. Everything you’ve read about, but thought had passed away, or perhaps never existed. How wrong you were! For Madame Vera and her staff can take you anywhere, and anytime. You need only be Invited . . . and now you have been. (Volumes of The Night Bazaar can be read in any order; each anthology is designed to stand alone as well. Time is relative, after all!)

Word Count: Click here to reveal55000 (Click here to hide)

Summary: In Unsafe Words, the first full-length collection of her edgy, award-winning short stories, Loren Rhoads punctures the boundaries between horror, dark fantasy, and science fiction in a maelstrom of sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll. Ghosts, succubi, naiads, vampires, the Wild Hunt, and the worst predator in the woods stalk these pages, alongside human monsters who follow their cravings past sanity or sense. Featuring an introduction by Lisa Morton and cover art by Lynne Hansen, these never-before-collected stories come from the magazines Cemetery Dance, Space & Time, City Slab, and Instant City, the Wily Writers podcast, and from the books Sins of the Sirens, Demon Lovers, The Haunted Mansion Project: Year Two, Tales for the Camp Fire, and more. One story, “With You By My Side It Should Be Fine,” is original to the collection.

Word Count: Click here to reveal87000 (Click here to hide)

Summary: Summary of Book: Their leap of faith could unleash magic -- or plunge them into darkness. Henry Thorn has worked at Larkin's since graduating high school. He likes it -- especially when he can use his secret skill of hiding inside shadows so his boss can't find them. Without that talent, he would never had survived growing up different. When a hire enters the store, Henry's other latent talent kicks in. He can smell an emotional response even before he lays eyes on the redhead. Jamey Currey came out, and his conservative parents promptly kicked him out. He, too, is different -- he senses Henry's attraction the moment they met. The first time they kiss, torrential rains fall from skies split by lightning. Their kiss also awakens the Watchers, diabolical hunters who will stop at nothing -- even extermination -- to keep magic suppressed. With the help of a friendly coven of friendly witches, the boys embark on a quest to discover an ancient key to restoring magic to the world, and to understand mysteries of their own hearts. The question is, will this quest cost them their lives?

Word Count: Information not available

Summary:

The action-packed conclusion to the award-winning series!

Withrow, Roderick, the Technopagans, the Book People, and all the rest of Withrow’s friends, allies, and accomplices are back again to bring the fight to their enemies – and to finish it once and for all!

The elder vampires have issued their challenge and Withrow has taken them up on it. Now he and the rest of the gang have teamed up to go to where they’ve always known they shouldn’t trespass: the stronghold of the elders, a gated community on the outskirts of Charlotte, North Carolina. Tucked away behind the high walls of their unholy fortress, the elders are ready to spring their villainy on the unsuspecting modern age and only Withrow stands in their way.

Withrow, Roderick, Jennifer, and their friends know they have only one chance to stop these ancient evils from roaring back out of the past – and it will take risking everything and everyone they hold dear if they’re to succeed. Join the fight alongside these unlikely heroes as they risk life, limb, souls, and sanity itself in a no-holds-barred free-for-all against the monsters who stand ready to re-enslave the world!

Word Count: Click here to reveal108000 (Click here to hide)

Summary: Being a nobody isn’t Duncan Alexander’s life goal, but it’s worked for him. He has a nondescript job, a few good friends, and overall he’s content. That’s until one fateful trip to San Jose, California, where he is “Called” to meet the mysterious Juliet de Exter. Juliet is a beautiful, wealthy, powerful Immortal who is undertaking The Calling—a search for a human to join her world of Immortals. Inexplicably, Duncan’s calling is more dangerous than any of the Immortals, even Juliet, ever thought it would be. There is more to this nobody, this only child of long-deceased parents, than anyone thought. When Duncan experiences uncontrollable dreams of people he doesn’t know and places he hasn’t been, Juliet and the other Immortals worry. Soon, his visions point to a coven of long-dead witches. The dreams also lead Duncan to his one true love. How will Duncan navigate a forbidden romance with an outcast Immortal? How will he and the others keep the balance between the Light and Dark, survive vicious attacks, and keep the humans from learning who they truly are? More importantly, who is this implacable foe Duncan keeps seeing in his dreams?

Word Count: Information not available

Summary:

Withrow Surrett, cantankerous vampire lord of North Carolina, is passing the long winter nights of the off-season in the sleepy resort town of Sunset Beach. When the nights are long and humanity slumbers, where else would a vampire go but the beach? This is no mere vacation for Withrow and his cousin Roderick, though. They’re hunting down a nest of nasty elder vampires who want to take over the world!

Of course it’s not that simple, because for Withrow nothing ever is. Withrow and Roderick - and their team of frienemies, rivals, and allies - soon learn there are stranger things afoot than vampiric machinations among the dunes of Sunset Beach: mysterious mortals, twisted sorceries, and fleeting apparitions. Through sabotage, espionage, and bare-knuckled brutality Withrow must find and stop the elder vampires before they play the ace up their sleeve!

Kick back in the sand with the fourth installment of this vampire and urban fantasy series, perfect for fans of Rick Gualtieri, Jeff Strand, or Christopher Moore.

Word Count: Information not available

Summary:

Durham, North Carolina has industry, commerce, fine universities, a world-famous baseball team, technopagans, vampires, and its very first superhero and supervillain.

As Withrow Surrett, self-declared vampire lord of North Carolina, digs in to see what’s up in his own back yard, two mortals - The Bull’s Eye and El Diablo - make headlines fighting crimes and committing them. With the help of friends old and new, Withrow has to track down both hero and villain before his city decides to go looking for even weirder things that go bump in the night!

The fists fly fast and furious in the third installment of this vampire and urban fantasy series, perfect for fans of Rick Gualtieri, Jeff Strand, or Christopher Moore.

Word Count: Information not available

Summary: WILL YOU BE ONE OF THE INVITED? A forbidden midnight market is coming to town. The Night Bazaar isn't new. In fact, it's as old as civilization. Its first recorded appearance was in Sana'a, around 700 B.C.E. with secretive merchants from the East who presented covered stalls of exotic goods and arcane services. Various mentions appear in obscure and controversial works from around the world. The only common element is that the market opens at midnight, closes before sunrise, and may appear for up to a week in the same city . . . Paris, 1796 . . . London, 1888 . . . Berlin, 1936 . . . San Francisco, 1906 . . . but never in the same venue each night. And never again in the same city. There's just one catch: In order to find it, you must be Invited. Tonight, The Night Bazaar opens in a parking garage somewhere in Manhattan. A whole subterranean city full of antique costumes, alchemical treatments, magical dentistry, palmistry, Tarot, tea leaf-reading, and water-, glass-, and crystal-gazing, oddities and objets d’art, medical curiosities and surgical instruments. Other lost arts and body alterations are offered in certain alcoves. Through the narrow aisles throng jongleurs, freaks, charlatans, mountebanks, faeries, prostitutes, and acrobats. The scents of opium, perfume, tobacco, greasepaint, incense, plastic explosive, alcohol, and sex permeate the air. But each object or service comes with a gift, a curse, or a haunting. (This is the summary of volume one. However, The Night Bazaar anthologies need not be read in any particular order; they are all designed to stand alone as well.) The Bazaar sells that which cannot be had elsewhere. Everything you’ve read about but thought had passed away, or perhaps never existed. How wrong you were! Your guide is Madame Vera, a tall, thin woman of uncertain age, ethnicity, and trustworthiness. The stories within are your invitation to join us. It seems you have already spotted something you desire . . . but don’t head off that way, not just yet. You have all night . . . but not a moment more.

Word Count: Information not available

Summary: The Fright Factory is here to help you as you labor in the control room, on the assembly line, or mixing the chemicals of inspiration and imagination in huge vats that give off dark and eerie vapors. Here you'll find guidance in drawing up the blueprints of your story along with a selection of tools to help you customize your design. The elements of horror include the setting, the tingle of suspense building into genuine fear, and of course the Monster. Those are the basics. From there horror can become ghost stories, tales of suspense, splatter and/or gross-out horror, and what might be called the O. Henry approach (twist endings). Cross-genre writing mixes in police procedurals, P.I. stories, and medical horror. Romance with monsters has become popular. You can also throw in the weird western, the Elder Gods, and Joe R. Lansdale - a category unto himself. Whether you're telling a weird tale in the classic tradition of Clark Ashton Smith or creating cutting edge steampunk frights, the long and venerable history of the horror story has also spawned a set of clichés you'll want to avoid. Now the whistle shrieks, signalling the beginning of a new shift. Time to set the machinery of the factory in motion as we explore the art and craft of building better horror.