DarkWinter Press is excited to announce the authors and their books that we've secured for the remainder of 2024 and Winter/Spring 2025! There's something for everyone in this fantastic list of upcoming titles!
June 2024: Chris Klassen, An Individual
An anonymous man searches for meaning. His examinations delve into religion, creativity, possessions and asceticism, communication, and childhood reflection. His search sometimes causes pain to others and sometimes pain to himself and, at times, his grip on reality is tenuous. But he continues on, possibly to tragedy, possibly to epiphany.
July 2024: Gordon K. Jones, Fighting For Decency
After drone specialist and newly licensed private investigator, Cody Marshal assists police in stopping the kidnapping of a young child, he’s hired by the boy's father to see why he was taken, in what will be Cody’s first case. His girlfriend, a Toronto Police Officer, Taylor Brants, who also assisted in stopping the abduction, is placed on the investigation to find who was behind the attempt. They both arrive at the same conclusion. The kidnapping was part of an elaborate scheme to raise money for the newly formed violent white supremacist terrorist organization, Pyre.
Lives are put in danger as Taylor and Cody work to take down the deadly group before they can unleash their fiery hate upon the city. Will this intrepid pair of investigators be able to stop a violent hate organization? More importantly, will they be able to survive the deadly Pyre?
August 2024: Brian Michael Barbeito, Still Some Crazy Summer Wind Coming Through
Still Some Crazy Summer Wind Coming Through is a book of prose poems and photography by Brian Michael Barbeito. The writings combine the themes of the natural world and metaphysics, indicating a braided or woven journey through the phantasmagoria of a world that is both physical and spiritual. They are accompanied by sixty landscape photos taken by the author and an introduction by Cristina Deptula, the Executive Editor of Synchronized Chaos Magazine.
October 2024: Lene McLeod Fringes of Grey October
Fringes of Grey is a collection of dark stories that explores themes of aging, death, grief, the supernatural, and the worlds of possibility in spaces of liminality present on the fringes of the everyday. An elderly woman recruits an old friend of her late husband to help unravel the mystery of a decorative bottle. Does she know more than she is letting on? A woman still grieves the loss of her pet, when a stray dog enters her home one day, and mysterious events ensue. A young woman is reluctant to have her caricature done, but she has more to fear than an unflattering drawing. Planting a garden is the perfect retirement project for a man until the witchy neighbours show up. A group of young friends realize their mothers seem to always know what’s up and the creepy sensation of being watched only gets worse after a tragic accident. Find these and other stories that will make you question things as ordinary as frost patterns on windows, pedestrian tunnels, craft beads, and bathroom stalls. You may think twice before taking a vacation by the sea or a drive through a farming village on a cold, rainy October night. What about apartment buildings, city houses, backyards? There is no escape—there are fringes of grey everywhere and this collection reveals some of their strange tales.
November 2024: Bojana Stojčić, Knives All Blade
Knives All Blade is a collection of 36 flash fiction and short stories, exploring the dark side of human behavior—sometimes bizarre, other times spiced with a pinch of humor to lighten the overall somber mood. It may slide into magical every now and then—stories/parts of stories set in an off-kilter version of our world—which only further pinpoints the hardships of the mundane. Although they cover different topics—from motherhood and gender roles to abuse, relationship to death, religion and PTSD—these character-driven journeys are similar in the recurring theme of family ties, and loss and fears the protagonists face (more often than not depicted though blade symbolism), as well as the overwhelming “feel(ing) like he could disappear, and no one would ever know.”
December 2024: Jonathan R. Nightshade, Welcome To This Side Of Midnight
Do you remember a time when vampires were the bad guys?
In this dark and often darkly humorous collection of linked stories, Jonathan R. Nightshade introduces us to a world seen through the eyes of the undead, and who rather enjoy being so, thank you very much.
From deserted Canadian highways and the battlefields of the First World War to the streets of Jack the Ripper’s London, we meet a motley crew of characters, doing whatever it takes to stay out of the sun, avoid suspicion and, above all, feed.
January 2025: Mathew Gostelow, Dantalion Is A Quiet Place
This haunting literary horror novella, written in epistolary formats - letters, diaries, newspaper clippings, court transcripts, and personal accounts, depicts a town lost in time, beset by bleak and strange events, populated by inhabitants who are weirded, warped, and deformed by trauma. Dantalion is a disturbing town where generations and social classes wage a silent war.
March 2025: JF Garrard, The Ghost Bride of Gum San
In 1869, Pearl Ming Ju Wong and her sister are sold as ghost brides and separated in America. Pearl is rescued and tasked with retrieving a powerful artifact hidden in an all-girls convent. A stranger in a strange land, Pearl needs to make a choice, either bargain with a monster to rescue her sister or save Gum San from destruction.
The Ghost Bride of Gum San sweeps the reader into an adventurous paranormal tale with East meets West concepts based in Chinese Taoism and European Christianity. The story explores the immigration experience, the greyness in good versus evil, and the acceptance of other cultures.
April 2025: Alan Parry, Peeling Apples
Set in a quaint UK town, Peeling Apples centres on Martyn, a young boy whose everyday experiences paint a vivid picture of life's simple complexities. The story seeks to capture the naivety of childhood - from Martyn's lonely existence within his busy family nucleus, through his interactions with friends. A significant aspect of the narrative is Martyn's bond with Mrs. Joyce, an elderly neighbour. Their friendship blossoms in the afternoons spent at her house, shedding light on intergenerational relationships and the transformative power of human connection. Peeling Apples is a testament to the enduring nature of relationships and the indelible mark they leave on our lives.
May 2025: Neil Randall, The Professional Mourner
Milica Stankovic wouldn’t stop crying when she was born, and for much of her formative years. This causes untold problems for her parents, Dragan and Nevena. As she grows, she displays an increasing fascination with all things religious, culminating in her having one of her epic crying fits when she passes a funeral procession in town. An old spiritualist and the local priest tell Milica’s parents that their daughter is special, that she’s been touched by the hand of God.
When word of his daughter’s behaviour reaches Dragan’s superiors at the steelworks, he is demoted and treated as a pariah worker, shunned by his colleagues. He falls into dissolute ways and strikes up a friendship with roguish opportunist Robert Savovic.
Savovic sees a business opportunity and persuades Dragan to get his daughter to perform as a professional mourner, to help people express their grief at the passing of a loved one.
When the leader of the regime falls ill, those in his close circle realise that they will have to stage a spectacular public funeral to try and rehabilitate him the eyes of a nation that has become increasingly disillusioned under his despotic rule and they try to enlist Milica’s services with dire consequences.
What do you think? Isn't this an incredible line-up? We still have a couple of slots left and we'll be finalizing up to Summer 2025 in the next few weeks, but for now, we all have a lot to look forward to!
And of course, we're mere days away from the release of our latest publication, the wonderful novella Words On The Page by Zary Fekete. It's currently available for pre-order and you can get your copy here!
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