Bad Man by Dathan Auerbach

Reddit horror sensation Dathan Auerbach delivers a devilishly dark novel about a young boy who goes missing, and the brother who won't stop looking for him.

Eric disappeared when he was three years old. Ben looked away for only a second at the grocery store, but that was all it took. His brother was gone. Vanished right into the sticky air of the Florida Panhandle.

They say you've got only a couple days to find a missing person. Forty-eight hours to conduct searches, knock on doors, and talk to witnesses. Two days to tear the world apart if there's any chance of putting yours back together. That's your window.

That window closed five years ago, leaving Ben's life in ruins. He still looks for his brother. Still searches, while his stepmother sits and waits and whispers for Eric, refusing to leave the house that Ben's father can no longer afford. Now twenty and desperate for work, Ben takes a night stock job at the only place that will have him: the store that blinked Eric out of existence.

Ben can feel that there's something wrong there. With the people. With his boss. With the graffitied baler that shudders and moans and beckons. There's something wrong with the air itself. He knows he's in the right place now. That the store has much to tell him. So he keeps searching. Keeps looking for his baby brother, while missing the most important message of all.

That he should have stopped looking.

"Somewhere in the distance, lightning lit the sky on fire, and it screamed in pain."

Bad Man will be published on August 7 and is available for pre-order now.
 It is told from the point of view of Ben, a young man who lost his little brother 5 years ago and never forgave himself and never gave up searching. For some reason the police don't seem to care and his step mother is lost in her own world, still buying presents and holding birthday celebrations for her little boy who never came home. Ben's father doesn't want him working in the store where little Eric disappeared but he sure doesn't mind Ben bringing home a paycheck. His boss is a jerk and the other employees are a bit on the suspicious side.
This was an  incredible read. Bad Man has more layers than an onion, each one deeper and darker than the one that came before. A heavy pervasive creeping dread settled in my stomach with the turn of each page.
5 stars
I received an advance copy for review.

Nikolis Cole: The Low-Rise Saint by Richard Black

The death of a Drug Lord's first lieutenant ignites an all-out war between two rival gangs, a war that has raged on for a year. Homicide detective Karen Oswalt realizes she has no chance of bringing peace to the streets unless she can find the murderer, but it appears to have been the perfect crime. No witnesses. At least none have come forward. But all that is about to change. With one phone call from an informant long-thought dead, Karen Oswalt and her partner are about to come face to... uh... well, face with the killer.  









"Where man's justice doesn't reach out, a higher justice will reach down."

Detective Karen Oswalt and her partner Leon Barnes get schooled in justice when they meet with an informant in a drug infested neighborhood to try to solve a murder, in this gritty horror short by Richard Black. Someone else is patrolling the street and there's hell to pay.
This was a well written, fast paced, supernatural horror.
4 out of 5 stars

I received a complimentary copy for review.

The Myth of Perpetual Summer by Susan Crandall

From the national bestselling author of Whistling Past the Graveyard comes a moving coming-of-age tale set in the tumultuous sixties that harkens to both Ordinary Grace and The Secret Life of Bees.

Tallulah James’s parents’ volatile relationship, erratic behavior, and hands-off approach to child rearing set tongues to wagging in their staid Mississippi town, complicating her already uncertain life. She takes the responsibility of shielding her family’s reputation and raising her younger twin siblings onto her youthful shoulders.

If not for the emotional constants of her older brother, Griff, and her old guard Southern grandmother, she would be lost. When betrayal and death arrive hand in hand, she takes to the road, headed to what turns out to be the not-so-promised land of Southern California. The dysfunction of her childhood still echoes throughout her scattered family, sending her brother on a disastrous path and drawing her home again. There she uncovers the secrets and lies that set her family on the road to destruction.  

Part coming of age tale, part family saga, this work of historical fiction put me in mind of V.C. Andrews and I mean her true style when she was alive, not the ghost written books that came out after her death. Although on second thought she would have made it shorter to stretch it into a trilogy. Tallulah James is on her way back to a home she never expected to return to, after news reports that her brother has been arrested for murder. On the way, and once there she recalls what it was like to grow up in such tumultuous times, and the events that led her to flee at such a young age. The story touches on civil rights, mental illness, first loves and family secrets.

4 out of 5 stars.

I received an advance copy for review.

The Offspring by Bill Pinnell

Terrifying family secrets have plagued Hughie Decker for as long as he can remember. Now, just as his life and career have finally begun to make strides, a seemingly innocent story from his hometown newspaper leaves Decker with no choice. He must return to his boyhood home to confront the horrid truth that destroyed so many lives.


I wasn't really sure what to expect from this book. It was the cover that caught my eye first, looking like it leans towards horror, before I noticed it was sitting there in the general fiction section. A glance at the author's name told me nothing, it was not a name I recognized. The short synopsis didn't give away much either, but I picked it up anyway and began to read. Within the first few pages when I met a character by the name of Irene who was Hughie's mom that had run off years ago with a book salesman... there was no turning back for me.

I think I would put this more in the historical fiction category than general fiction. It spans several decades as Hughie Decker, now a grown man, stands on the spot he hasn't visited since childhood and sees clear as day the events of the past. As Hughie travels back to his childhood home and contemplates events of long ago days we are introduced to several more characters from the past Including his best friend Kenny, Hughie's father Lem who never did get along with the cowardly sheriff and his brother Tom who never could win his parent's love.  I'm not going to go into details about the plot because I enjoyed discovering it for myself and will leave it for you to do the same.
4 out of 5 stars

I received a complimentary copy for review.