DarkWinter Press is excited to announce the authors and their books that we've secured for the remainder of 2024 until Fall 2025! There's something for everyone in this fantastic list of upcoming titles!
September 2024: Graham Kent, Worsery Rhymes
Like nursery rhymes...only worse.
If the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, Graham Kent gives his absolute best with this collection of irreverent poetry not intended for the faint of heart. Deftly combining cutting wit with dark sarcasm, this volume of verse joins the likes of Edward Gorey and Adam Mansbach... even if they didn't invite him.
October 2024: Lene McLeod, Fringes of Grey
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.
February 2025: Paul Edward Costa, Vigils of the Night Office
The title “Vigils of the Night Office” is taken from the book “The Rule of St. Benedict” which outlines duties for Benedictine monks; however this is just poetic inspiration and framing for this is not a religious collection of poetry.. Documents describe vigils of the Night Office as such: “The Office at night, before dawn, is a very ancient monastic prayer time, probably going back to Apostolic times, with the goal of breaking up the night and sanctifying those hours.” This collection evokes the idea of private prayers that speak to both the poet's individual experiences as well as more general cultural themes. The sections of this book deal with government bureaucracy, speculative ideas, reanimation, social commentary, mental health, spirituality, poetry, nature, and longer/experimental poetics. Throughout all of these, Costa writes in an accessible, narrative form that emphasises speech’s musicality while investigating large, powerful, and nefarious structures in our society.
March 2025: Susan Richardson, Smatterings of Cerulean
Smatterings of Cerulean, by renowned poet and literary podcaster Susan Richardson, brings the rich internal landscapes of the human experience, a trajectory of loss, rage, love, and ultimately hope, into focus through a collection of short poems and accompanying photographs.
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.
June 2025: Frank Beghin, Sweet Creatures: A Trilogy of Terror
Highlights of this chilling collection include:
'Sweet Creature'
It's been a year since Katherine's death, and the hole in Sam's heart is bigger than ever. Sam's true love is gone, and not even the thing in the attic can bring her back. Cassie, in a moment of weakness, sought companionship in the human world, never imagining she would be captured and imprisoned. Now, her only desire is to be free. Ash, the third wheel of this unlikely trio, is the unexpected guest, and he has a terrible secret that will endanger all their lives. Tonight, on the night of a full moon, the fates of these three—be they human, beast or demon—will be decided.
'Light Years from Home'
Driving home from work late one night during a thick fog, Charlie Templeton encounters a strange light that whisks him to an alien world. There, he discovers his dead wife, Margaret, who claims they are in Heaven and that they can now be together forever. More than anything, Charlie wants to believe this strange apparition, but things are not what they appear, as he soon discovers the night's terrors are only beginning.
'Charlene'
Alex blames himself for Charlene's death, but now he's prepared to face Heaven and Hell to bring his girlfriend back. He'll use whatever supernatural talents he has to break the barrier between life and death, even if it's at the cost of his own soul.
July 2025: Irina Moga, Quantum
Poetry can be perceived as a field of creative energy, whose quanta surround us and into which we can immerse ourselves via the mediating power of daydreaming. Poetry is the deconstruction of reality and its recompilation into alternate patterns, guided by intuition, aesthetics, and the quantum mechanics of one’s own imagination. From a vantage point arbitrarily designated as “quantum,” Moga develops a reading experience moving through layers of sensorial experiences and a tempered lyrical discourse. This approach is meant to anchor readers in quietude and to elicit their own thoughts about the mood and fragmented nature of our surrounding universe.
August 2025: Joe Kraus, A Thousand Miles of Road
This stellar short story collection explores the duress of being alive through characters whose
struggles feel like a thousand miles of hard road. Here are some highlights:
After enduring years of domestic brutality, Melanie escapes her ruthless husband the only
permanent way possible, and from behind the counter of a jewelry store years later, she helps a man take the same dark path out of his own prison.
When Mary comes to, a hundred miles from where she was the night before in the apartment of the last person she'd ever want to wake up next to, she must find her way back to where she started if that place even exists anymore.
Shelly has a disease that is growing inside her, but when even the doctors won't believe her, she is forced to search through the abuse she suffered as a child and find her own way to rid herself of what is killing her.
September 2025: Geri Lipschultz, Grace Before The Fall
From the foreword by John Irving:
“It’s New York in the ’80s, the summer solstice. Grace Rosinbloom is 30; a woman on a spiritual quest, seeking romance, she stumbles on activism. A civil servant, Grace has a part-time life as an underground actress; she also hides out in a serial dream, which resembles the psychedelic ’60s. When her waking life begins to mirror her dream, a feminist tale turns into a nonbinary Cinderella story. Just imagine a messianic meeting of a nonbinary Cinderella with Joan D’Arc… Just imagine magical realism meets Alice in Wonderland, and have a good time.”
October 2025: Paul Robert Mullen, little town blues
A conceptual collection of poems that relate directly to the seaside town where Paul Robert Mullen grew up – Southport, near Liverpool—little town blues explores themes such as a longing for home, the death of British seaside towns, the impact of technological changes on society, the relationship between people and coastlines, aging, and the longing for change versus the metaphorical weight of your roots.
What do you think? Isn't this an incredible line-up? We still have a couple of slots left and we'll be finalizing the last quarter of 2025 once submissions open in January, but for now, we all have a lot to look forward to! And for a special treat, here's the cover reveal for our upcoming release, Worsery Rhymes by Graham Kent (designed by the insanely wonderful artist John Harvey)!
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