Halloween’s here and with it the end of our journey together. It’s been fun sharing my gruesome finds with all of you and I hope you’ve found at least one new book or author to enjoy as the nights grow longer and the dark grows deeper. I have one more find to share with you today, plus a few comments to make about two of my own tales, before we close the book on our little adventure together.

Most of us have something we fear. Something that sets off that primal warning system deep in our psyche, that starts shouting as us to run even before we’ve managed to get a grip on the situation. Hospitals do that to me. Just setting foot inside one sends my pulse racing and my head darting from side to side as I subconsciously searching for a way back out. Fear might be too strong a word, but there’s no doubt that I’m experiencing some severe mental discomfort.

Which is why the Edie Spence novels by Cassie Alexander made my list of “horrifying” reads. The main character’s a trauma nurse in the secret wing of a hospital that handles paranormal patients, from vampire servants to moon-crazed werewolves to the zombie next door. Horrifying is right! They’re dark, gruesome, and rather fun in their own way…

NIGHTSHIFTED
Cassie Alexander

Edie’s just trying to learn the ropes so she can get through her latest shift unscathed. But when a vampire servant turns to dust under her watch, all hell breaks loose. Now she’s haunted by the man’s dying words—Save Anna—and before she knows it, she’s on a mission to rescue some poor girl from the undead. Which involves crashing a vampire den, falling for a zombie, and fighting for her soul. Grey’s Anatomy was never like this…

Book two in the series, MOONSHIFTED, is due out next month.

Throughout this series several of you have written in asking what I would recommend as Halloween reads from my own modest body of work. If you’re inclined to seek it out, I’d suggest the following:

THE HERETIC
Joseph Nassise

Boston SWAT officer Cade Williams doesn’t believe in the supernatural until a chance meeting with a fallen angel leaves his wife dead and him holding on to life by the thinnest of margins. When he is discharged from the hospital, scarred body and soul, he discovers the encounter has left him with a few otherworldly talents of his own.

Several years later, Knight Commander Cade Williams runs the elite Templar combat unit known as the Echo Team, which puts him in the perfect position to search for the creature he’s come to know as the Adversary. His efforts yield little success, however, until a cabal of necromancers attempts to seize an ancient Templar artifact for their own nefarious purposes and gives him the first real lead he’s had in ages. Now it’s time for Cade to face his demons – human and otherwise.

THE HERETIC is book one in the internationally bestselling Templar Chronicles series that also includes A SCREAM OF ANGELS and A TEAR IN THE SKY.

If modern day Templars battling the supernatural doesn’t do it for you, perhaps you’d have more fun with an old-fashioned zombie apocalypse – particularly one set in the midst of a steampunked World War I.

BY THE BLOOD OF HEROES
Joseph Nassise

At the tail end of 1917, the Germans introduced a new type of gas to the battlefield, T-Leiche, or “corpse gas,” and changed the face of the war by resurrecting the bodies of the dead, giving the enemy an almost unlimited source of fresh troops.

When the American ace Major Jack Freeman-poster boy for the war against the Kaiser’s undead army of shamblers-is downed over enemy lines and taken captive, veteran Captain Michael “Madman” Burke is the only man brave and foolish enough to accept the mission to recover Freeman. Burke assembles a team of disparate members, from his right-hand man, Sergeant Moore, to big-game-hunter-turned-soldier Clayton Manning, who funds the mission for an opportunity to confront this most dangerous zombie game, to professor Dan Richards, one of Tesla’s top men and the resident authority on all things supernatural. With the help of a highly advanced British dirigible war machine to infiltrate enemy territory, the team faces incredible danger as it struggles to reach the prison camp and strike at the heart of the enemy.

But they are pitted against the most deadly enemy of all: Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron. Having risen from the dead with his abilities enhanced but his mind on the brink of madness, Richthofen has plans for victory that give no quarter to soldiers or civilians.

Thanks for joining me and Kobo on this moonlight tour of the dark corners of the literary landscape. I hope you’ve enjoyed the trip and wish you all a very happy Halloween!

All the best,
Joe Nassise

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Joseph Nassise is the author of more than twenty novels, including the internationally bestselling Templar Chronicles series, the Great Undead War series, and the Jeremiah Hunt trilogy. He is a former president of the Horror Writers Association, the world’s largest organization of professional horror writers, and a multiple Bram Stoker Award and International Horror Guild Award nominee.

You can find him online at Shades of Reality.

Click here for a full list of Joseph’s picks!

It’s Day Fourteen of our fifteen day journey and I’ve got a real treat for you today. Two new books – and when I say new, I mean new, as both of these volumes have just come out in the last couple of weeks! One is a young adult tale from the acclaimed author of the Generation Dead series, Daniel Waters, that is also perfect for adults. The other is a supernatural western from newcomer Rob DeBorde that will satisfy fans of horror and dark fantasy alike.

BREAK MY HEART 1,000 TIMES
Daniel Waters

Living in the aftermath of the Event means that seeing the dead is now a part of life, but Veronica wishes that the ghosts would just move on. Instead, the ghosts aren’t disappearing—they’re gaining power.

When Veronica and her friend, Kirk, decide to investigate why, they stumble upon a more sinister plot than they ever could have imagined. One of Veronica’s high school teachers is crippled by the fact that his dead daughter has never returned as a ghost, and he’s haunted by the possibility that she’s waiting to reappear within a fresh body. Veronica seems like the perfect host. And even if he’s wrong, what’s the harm in creating one more ghost?

When the Event kills more than two million people in a single moment, life is forever changed for those still among the living. Losing that many people at once is a tragedy, but even that is easier to cope with that the fact that the ghosts of the dead begin to return to the living in the aftermath of the catastrophe. Just a few at first and then more and more, until a person can hardly turn a corner without running into another one. It is into this setting that Waters drops his protagonist, Veronica, and the chills and thrills don’t let up until the very last page. A creepy little thriller that’s perfect for the Halloween season.

PORTLANDTOWN
Rob DeBorde

Welcome to Portlandtown, where no secret is safe—not even those buried beneath six feet of Oregon mud.

Joseph Wylde isn’t afraid of the past, but he knows some truths are better left unspoken. When his father-in-law’s grave-digging awakens more than just ghosts, Joseph invites him into their home hoping that a booming metropolis and two curious grandtwins will be enough to keep the former marshal out of trouble. Unfortunately, the old man’s past soon follows, unleashing a terrible storm on a city already knee deep in floodwaters. As the dead mysteriously begin to rise, the Wyldes must find the truth before an unspeakable evil can spread across the West and beyond.

I love supernatural westerns and in the last couple of years there have been some really terrific ones. HALLOWED GROUND by David Niall Wilson comes to mind, as does Cherie Priest’s terrific western-zombie-steampunk series The Clockwork Century, especially DREADNOUGHT.

I’m happy to say that I’d add PORTLANDTOWN to that list. I picked up the day it came out, enticed by the terrific cover art, and finished it up pretty quickly. For a supernatural western, this one had it all – cursed guns, books of black magic, necromancy and the zombies it spawns, Native American spirit totems, you name it. The story moved along at a good clip and there were a few plotlines that were left hanging, hopefully to be deal with in later books. I’ll be looking for more from Rob DeBorde in the future!

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Joseph Nassise is the author of more than twenty novels, including the internationally bestselling Templar Chronicles series, the Great Undead War series, and the Jeremiah Hunt trilogy. He is a former president of the Horror Writers Association, the world’s largest organization of professional horror writers, and a multiple Bram Stoker Award and International Horror Guild Award nominee.

You can find him online at Shades of Reality.

Click here for a full list of Joseph’s picks!

Halloween is just around the corner and I can’t think of a better time to dive into Al Sarrantonio’s Orangefield trilogy, which is why you are getting three books today instead of the usual two. While each of the three books can stand well enough on their own, the common setting and familiar characters make them a real treat to read one after another, especially in the midst of the Halloween season.

Sarrantonio has long been praised as a master of the atmospheric tale in a style similar to that of Charlie Grant and these three books certainly capture the flavor of Halloween in the northeastern U.S.

Horrorween
Al Sarrantonio

For untold ages a dark presence has shrouded the small town of Orangefield. In addition to the plentiful pumpkins that gave the town its name. Orangefield is home to the dreaded Lord of Death himself, Samhain. Despite the rumors of his existance,and rare, brief sightings Samhain has long been content to leave the local inhabitants alone. But that is about to change…. When a boy from the town disappears, detective Bill Grant is convinced Samhain is responsible. But even Grant cannot imagine the horrific extent of the Lord of Death’s grand scheme. As what may prove to be the last Halloween approaches, the fate of the world will depend on the survival of a small group of people pawns in a terrifying game of cosmic proportions.

Hallows Eve
Al Sarrantonio

After twelve years, Corrie Phaeder is returning home to Orangefield—the last place in the world he wants to be. Orangefield is a town of nightmares, a town where the impossible and the horrific happen all too often, where ghosts rise screaming from their graves, and where trick-or-treating goblins have no need for scary costumes. Something is waiting patiently for Corrie’s homecoming. This Halloween, a messenger from a realm of shadows, with the body of a scarecrow and the head of a pumpkin, will usher Corrie into what might prove to be his last nightmare, a battle to the death with the ultimate darkness.

Halloweenland
Al Sarrantonio

In Orangefield, Halloween is never normal—and this year will be no exception. For Orangefield is now the home of Halloweenland, a bizarre carnival run by the mysterious Mr. Dickens. No one who sees the carnival doubts that it’s a very strange place, but its real secrets can hardly be imagined. Orangefield is also the home of Detective Bill Grant, who thinks he’s seen it all. He’s on the trail of an odd little girl, a girl who could hold the end of the universe in her hand. The trail will lead Grant to Ireland, the ancient home of the Lord of the Dead, then back to Orangefield, where, on what may be the last Halloween, the ultimate battle between Life and Death will take place.

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Joseph Nassise is the author of more than twenty novels, including the internationally bestselling Templar Chronicles series, the Great Undead War series, and the Jeremiah Hunt trilogy. He is a former president of the Horror Writers Association, the world’s largest organization of professional horror writers, and a multiple Bram Stoker Award and International Horror Guild Award nominee.

You can find him online at Shades of Reality.

Click here for a full list of Joseph’s picks!

I’m a sucker for a well-written debut novel.

It wasn’t all that long ago that I was walking into a bookstore and searching the shelves for my first published work. I remember what an emotional roller coaster that was and just how badly I wanted that first book to find an audience that loved it as much as I did.

More often than not it is simple word of mouth that takes a book from middle-of-the-road sales to sales that makes the publisher sit up and take notice. In today’s installment of Horrifying Hallowe’en Reads, I wanted to do my part to pass the word on a couple of debut novels that deserve to have people talking about them.

THE INQUISITOR
Mark Allen Smith

Geiger has a gift: he knows a lie the instant he hears it. And in his business—called “information retrieval” by its practitioners—that gift is invaluable, because truth is the hottest thing on the market.

Geiger’s clients count on him to extract the truth from even the most reluctant subjects. Unlike most of his competitors, Geiger rarely sheds blood, but he does use a variety of techniques—some physical, many psychological—to push his subjects to a point where pain takes a backseat to fear. Because only then will they finally stop lying.

One of Geiger’s rules is that he never works with children. So when his partner, former journalist Harry Boddicker, unwittingly brings in a client who demands that Geiger interrogate a twelve-year-old boy, Geiger responds instinctively. He rescues the boy from his captor, removes him to the safety of his New York City loft, and promises to protect him from further harm. But if Geiger and Harry cannot quickly discover why the client is so desperate to learn the boy’s secret, they themselves will become the victims of an utterly ruthless adversary.

Some might look at the description above and think “thriller” rather than horror. I would counter that by pointing out that the main character, Geiger, tortures people, often quite brutally, for a living. Even worse, halfway into the story we find ourselves not only routing for this man, but in some ways actually liking him. That’s horror, my friends, and I suggest you give THE INQUISITOR a read to see what I’m talking about.

Fast-paced, well-plotted, with enough twists and turns to satisfy even the most discerning reader (and of course there’s that thing about the likable torturer!), THE INQUISITOR really delivers.

We move from the streets of New York to those of London for our second selection for today…

THE ROOK
Daniel O’Malley

“The body you are wearing used to be mine.” So begins the letter Myfanwy Thomas is holding when she awakes in a London park surrounded by bodies all wearing latex gloves. With no recollection of who she is, Myfanwy must follow the instructions her former self left behind to discover her identity and track down the agents who want to destroy her.

She soon learns that she is a Rook, a high-ranking member of a secret organization called the Chequy that battles the many supernatural forces at work in Britain. She also discovers that she possesses a rare, potentially deadly supernatural ability of her own.

In her quest to uncover which member of the Chequy betrayed her and why, Myfanwy encounters a person with four bodies, an aristocratic woman who can enter her dreams, a secret training facility where children are transformed into deadly fighters, and a conspiracy more vast than she ever could have imagined.

With an opening line like “The body you are wearing used to be mine,” do I really need to say anything more? THE ROOK opens with a bombshell like that and doesn’t let up. The central character, Myfanwy, discovers that she is an middle executive of the Checguy, a kind of paranormal MI6. The agents, Pawns, are run by those higher up the food chain, notably the Rooks (like Myfanwy), Bishops, and Lords. Myfanway takes up her usual place in the Checguy hierarchy while desperately trying to understand her role in it all and, perhaps more importantly, who in the organization is trying to kill her. Along the way she ends up protecting England from an antler cult, a villain manifesting as a roomful of flesh, and the ancient Grafters of Belgium.

With the first Myfanway leading the second along with letters left in her care, we’re treated to both the present and the past like a braided cord, drawing us along with each twist and turn. The sly humor and self-deprecating irony is simply the icing on a well-baked cake.

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Joseph Nassise is the author of more than twenty novels, including the internationally bestselling Templar Chronicles series, the Great Undead War series, and the Jeremiah Hunt trilogy. He is a former president of the Horror Writers Association, the world’s largest organization of professional horror writers, and a multiple Bram Stoker Award and International Horror Guild Award nominee.

You can find him online at Shades of Reality.

Click here for a full list of Joseph’s picks!

When I was first starting out in my writing career, one of the classic pieces of advice I’d hear was the recommendation to start with short fiction and then gradually make your way up to writing a novel. Sometimes I still hear that advice given to your writers today and I have to admit that it puzzles me now as much as it did back then.

Writing a quality piece of short fiction is no easy task; I’d rather tackle a novel length work any day of the week then try to shoehorn all I have to say on a particular topic into a couple dozen pages or less. Thankfully, there are others out there with far more skill than I in this particular area and I wanted to use today’s entry to introduce you to two of them.

PENTACLE – A SELF COLLECTION
Tom Piccirilli

PENTACLE collects the classic tales of an unnamed Necromancer and his demonic familiar “Self” as they wander the spectral highways of America incurring the wrath of both heaven and hell.

I was first introduced to Piccirilli’s unnamed necromancer and his wise-cracking remorseless familiar Self in the pages of DEEP IN THE DARKNESS PEERING, a limited edition collection of tales published back in 1999 by Terminal Frights Press. Piccirilli’s raw talent shown through like a searchlight in the darkness and I was fascinated with the play between these two characters as they wandered modern-day America dealing with various types of evil.

As Tom himself explains, ” I wanted to create my own kind of mythos, which I could return to over the years. True historical accounts of the Inquisition and the hysteria surrounding the witch trials are fascinating and shocking, with descriptions of some of the most terrible and savage periods in world history. So the challenge was to use realand realisticaccounts from history, along with ceremonies, ritual, legends and superstitions in order to weave them into a cohesive body of work. With each new Self tale I try to play with elements of a different legend, religious practice, or piece of folklore while allowing the reader to learn more about the dual identities of Self and the necromancer.”

This digital collection brings together many of the Self tales that Piccirilli has written over the years and illustrates quite clearly that Tom is a master at the short fiction art form.

PICKING THE BONES
Brian Hodge

A hardened photojournalist’s glimpses the face behind the atrocities of war. A report on the arcane origins and tragic premier of the flipside version of Mel Gibson’s most infamous movie. The seeding of Lovecraftian terrors in the unlikely realms of vintage psychedelia and cinematic sound design. The chapter in the life of Dracula’s Van Helsing that reunited Hodge with editor Jeanne Cavelos, mastermind of the Dell/Abyss series. A trip inside one of the Middle Ages’ seven towers of darkest iniquity, now thriving in modern-day Los Angeles. Dying is easy. Living is hard. And forces beyond your control have a bone to pick with you…

Just as with his previous collection LIES & UGLINESS, Brian Hodge doesn’t shy away from digging down deep into the depths of the human soul and shining a light on what might be lurking there. His fiction is always both thought-provoking and emotionally visceral and PICKING THE BONES is no exception.

The seventeen stories included in the collection present a powerful thematic punch as they explore the the nature of man’s deepest fears and darkest longings. At its current $2.99 price, this is an incredible steal!

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Joseph Nassise is the author of more than twenty novels, including the internationally bestselling Templar Chronicles series, the Great Undead War series, and the Jeremiah Hunt trilogy. He is a former president of the Horror Writers Association, the world’s largest organization of professional horror writers, and a multiple Bram Stoker Award and International Horror Guild Award nominee.

You can find him online at Shades of Reality.

Click here for a full list of Joseph’s picks!