Kate Maruyama, Member of the Diverse Works Inclusion Community

We have some creepy reading to take you up to Halloween!

Linda Addison recommends

Brian Barr is a fiction author of novels, short stories, and comics. Along with Chuck Amadori, Barr is the co-creator and co-writer of Empress, a comic book series with art by Sullivan Suad, Zilson Costa, Marcelo Salaza, Geraldo Filho, and Matheus Bronca. He is NOT the author of God’s Plan for Us, written by a different Brian Barr.

His debut novel is Carolina Daemonic, Book I: Confederate Shadows. His second novel is Psychological Revenge: The First Super Inc. Novel, and he has a short story collection, Daemensions, as well as another collection, The 3 H’s Trilogy: The Head, The House, and The Hell. Some of his short stories are reprinted separately from anthologies and collections on Kindle for .99 cents.

Carolina Daemonic is a dystopian alternative timeline urban fantasy-horror with LGBT, steampunk, and occult elements.

Psychological Revenge is a fun, campy superhero novel with zany villains and lots of action.

The 3 H’s Trilogy begins with the story of a woman who falls in love with a decapitated head. From there, the story only gets weirder and darker, and is unlike any tale ever written. The Head, The House, and The Hell, three interconnected short stories now available in a complete collection; a weird mix of cosmic horror, weird fiction, and comedic bizarro!

Recommended Reading 1: The Endless City, released August 2018 (with the life he once knew in shambles, Sam searches for answers in a city riddled with plague and ruin).

The city is not eternal. Sam remembered that sentence. It was like a motto he forced out of the jungle of his mind at the right occasion, then thought repeatedly, something to keep him somewhat grounded as the disease continued to steal his senses and awareness of the world around him. You’ve been walking in circles. Columbia is not endless.

Then, it all faded again, as Sam took each of his slow, shuffling steps. The city’s name, its finite area, and its familiarity all died. The metropolis became endless and foreign once again.

The hunger returned.

Growls came from inside a nearby hotel.

Sam growled back, then sniffed. He was ready, as always. It would either be them or him.

Recommended Reading 2: The 3 H’s Trilogy; from The Head, after Elizabeth finds a head in her garden:

She had to call the police.

She turned and started to walk back to her mother’s house.

“Where are you going?”

Elizabeth’s heart jumped as she turned back to the head, shocked to hear that deep, gruff voice. Their eyes were locked again, his blue eyes even more lively than before, mouth now closed, expression somber.

“You’re not just going to leave me out here, are you?” the head asked.

Follow the author at http://www.brianbarrbooks.com/.

 

Janet Joyce Holden recommends

Renée Ahdieh is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In her spare time, she likes to dance salsa and collect shoes. She is passionate about all kinds of curry, rescue dogs, and college basketball. The first few years of her life were spent in a high-rise in South Korea; consequently, Renée enjoys having her head in the clouds. She lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, with her husband and their tiny overlord of a dog. http://www.reneeahdieh.com/

Recommended reading: The Wrath and the Dawn.

Every dawn brings horror to a different family in a land ruled by a killer. Khalid, the eighteen-year-old Caliph of Khorasan, takes a new bride each night only to have her executed at sunrise. So it is a suspicious surprise when sixteen-year-old Shahrzad volunteers to marry Khalid. But she does so with a clever plan to stay alive and exact revenge on the Caliph for the murder of her best friend and countless other girls. Shazi’s wit and will, indeed, get her through to the dawn that no others have seen, but with a catch … she’s falling in love with the very boy who killed her dearest friend.

She discovers that the murderous boy-king is not all that he seems and neither are the deaths of so many girls. Shazi is determined to uncover the reason for the murders and to break the cycle once and for all.

 

Kate Jonez recommends

Lee Murray is a multi-award-winning writer and editor of fantasy, science fiction, and horror (Sir Julius Vogel, Australian Shadows). Her titles include the military thriller Into the Mist (Cohesion) and Hounds of the Underworld (Raw Dog Screaming Press) a supernatural crime-noir co-written with Dan Rabarts. She lives with her family in New Zealand, where she conjures up stories from an office with a view of a cow paddock.

Recommended reading: Into the Sounds.

On leave, and out of his head with boredom, NZDF Sergeant Taine McKenna joins biologist Jules Asher, on a Conservation Department deer culling expedition to New Zealand’s southernmost national park, where soaring peaks give way to valleys gouged from clay and rock, and icy rivers bleed into watery canyons too deep to fathom. Despite covering an area the size of the Serengeti, only eighteen people live in the isolated region, so it’s a surprise when the hunters stumble on the nation’s Tūrehu tribe, becoming some of only a handful to ever encounter the elusive ghost people. But a band of mercenaries saw them first, and, hell-bent on exploiting the tribes’ survivors, they’re prepared to kill anyone who gets in their way. As a soldier, McKenna is duty-bound to protect all New Zealanders, but after centuries of persecution will the Tūrehu allow him to help them? Besides, there is something else lurking in the sounds, and it has its own agenda. When the waters clear, will anyone be allowed to leave?

“Murray pretty much nails small unit tactics.” – Justin Coates, author of The Apocalypse Drive

“A fantastic blend of military fiction, a very real primordial monster, and powerful mythology.” – Paul Mannering, author of Hard Corps, Hell’s Teeth, and Eat.

 

Kate Maruyama suggests

Rebecca Roanhorse is a Nebula Award-winning speculative fiction writer and a Sturgeon/Locus/WFA Award Finalist and a Hugo Award winner for her short story, “Welcome to your Authentic Indian Experience™,” and a 2017 Campbell Award winner for Best New SFF writer. Her debut novel, Trail of Lightning Book (#1 in the Sixth World Series from Saga Press), is available now. Book #2, Storm of Locusts, will follow in April 2019. She also has a middle-grade novel coming in 2019 from Rick Riordan Presents, titled Race to the Sun, and in 2020, an Anasazi-inspired epic fantasy, Between Earth and Sky (Saga Press). She lives in Northern New Mexico with her husband, daughter, and pug.

Her nonfiction can be found in Invisible 3: Essays and Poems on Representation in SF/F, Strange Horizons, Uncanny Magazine, and How I Resist: Activism and Hope for a New Generation (Macmillan).

Find more at https://rebeccaroanhorse.com/, and follow her on Twitter at @RoanhorseBex.

Roanhorse’s Sixth World series shows a future devastated by climate change as seen through the eyes of a Navajo monster hunter. For in this apocalypse, the Navajo culture has been reborn.

Her award-winning short story, “Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience,” presents a future world and lures you in before it chills you on several levels. It takes the danger of appropriation, the disintegration of native cultures, and the struggle for identity to a deep level of horror.

You can listen to her award-winning short story, as read by LeVar Burton here: http://www.levarburtonpodcast.com/?_branch_match_id=358273180277051672.