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FOR THE TLDR CROWD:
If you listen to audiobooks or do reviews, but don’t like reading newsletters, you should jump to the bottom because we have been offering free Audible download codes, UK and US, for a few weeks now, along with links to the audio samples, but very few have taken advantage of it. We also have the instructions for requesting review copies.
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NEWS
One thing we have seen over the many years Crossroad Press has been in business is the coming and going of other presses. It’s always sad to see a viable market disappear. Sadder, even, when the circumstances of the closing are tragic, or hard on the authors. Recently Down & Out Press closed their doors. We’re not in the position we used to be where we can just take on huge numbers of books when something like this happens, but we are adding a few titles, and we’ll be announcing those later this month.
This newsletter may be a little light. A lot happened this week, but time has been at a premium.
PREORDERS
Matilda’s Retreat – Catherine Cavendish – Due 10 February, 2026 - The house kept its secrets – until someone disturbed it
Alone and isolated on a windswept moor, the centuries’ old building had seen its fair share of owners and more than its quota of dark legends when Lynn Schofield and her husband visited their friends there. From the moment they cross the threshold, it’s clear there is something very wrong here. Behind the walls is a house unlike any other and the horrors it has witnessed are embedded in its very fabric, ready and waiting for the next victim. Decades later, another couple own the now ruinous house. For Diana, her initial reluctance to move in soon takes a leap forward when she sees something that shouldn’t be there. But as major renovations proceed – and the library starts to reveal its secrets – her mounting fears prove to be only the beginning of her nightmare. Soon, she will discover the legends of Matilda’s Retreat are not consigned to the annals of history, as her life changes forever.
Silent Thunder – P. J. MacGregor – Sequel to White Crows – Due 20 January, 2026 - As a climate catastrophe swallows south Florida and the Keys, psychic Mira Morales watches the obliteration of her past on live TV. She is losing her former bookstore and home where she lived for decades. Tango Key itself disappears as she witnesses the catastrophe in stunned disbelief. But when she’s recruited by the FBI to go undercover at a government-controlled animal rescue facility, she’s drawn into an even darker storm. She discovers the facility actually weaponizes animals. Dogs, cats, even wild animals are enhanced in ways that defy science. Their intelligence has been heightened and they can communicate - through Scrabble tiles. What begins as an investigation becomes a mission of survival for Mira, her family, her community and the extraordinary animals she helps to escape the facility. Political corruption deepens and government surveillance closes in. When violence escalates, Mira must decide how much she’s willing to risk. Will exposing the truth cost her the lives of her husband and daughter? Can she save these animals she has grown to love?
SPOTLIGHT
Vincent Courtney was born with a pen and paper in hand which made for a very uncomfortable delivery for his mother. He is the author of 18 books. He also created a writing course, "Scary Good Writing with Mr. Butt and Bonefish," used by teachers across the United States to teach their kids the parts of speech and how to write effective essays.
COMPLETE SERIES RELEASES
Macabre Ink Resurrected Horrors: Many years back, near the time of the release of Grady Hendrix’s Paperbacks from Hell, we started to realize just how many classic horror authors, particularly from that period, we had been bringing out the backlists from. We started with a first round of ten, and added a second, and we are going to continue to release titles, only one per author, going forward. Watch for new entries in this newsletter. Each book will have a paperback edition (eventually) and hopefully all in audio. The paperbacks have a small banner on the spine for the series. When possible we have used the original paperback covers.
No way to list bios and descriptions of so many, but here are the titles and links for each.
Undertaker’s Moon – Ronald Kelly / Night Songs – Charles L. Grant / The Kill Riff – David J. Schow
The Cats - Nick Sharman / Gnelfs – Sidney Williams / Dark Silence – Rick Hautala
Rest in Peace – Jack MacLane (Bill Crider) / Animals – John Skipp & Craig Spector
Dreamthorp – Chet Williamson / I Am Dracula – C. Dean Andersson
Shadow Child – Joseph A. Citro / Sineater – Elizabeth Massie /
Night Visions: At the Crossroad – Richard Laymon, Gary Brandner, Stanley Wiater, Chet Williamson
Where the Chill Waits – T. Chris Martindale / Crucifax – Ray Garton
AUDIO SPOTLGHT
Hannawhere – by John McIlveen – Performed by Mary Ann Jacobs (Editor’s Choice) 788 positive reviews on Audible! – AUDIO SAMPLE
In a suburb on Boston's North Shore, a catatonic little girl is found behind a dumpster. She is a mystery. As social worker Debbie Gillan pieces together the puzzle of the child's identity, she discovers the child had disappeared two years earlier along with a twin sister. She also discovers Hannahwhere, an alternate world that is both a haven and a prison. Life-altering trauma becomes the key to unraveling the truth about the children, about Hannahwhere, and about Debbie herself. Truths that could either save them or destroy them all.
FREE AUDIOBOOK DOWNLOAD CODES FOR AUDIBLE
Here is our new list of books we are offering free download codes for. We are trying to build reviews, and while we don’t require a review for a free download, even just a rating on Audible or Amazon can make a huge difference in visibility. Beneath the new books are those from last week, because all still have some codes available for US and UK listeners. We will offer them to the first five who request them, and only one title per requester. To request a code send a note to [email protected]
THIS WEEK’S TITLES:
Clickers Vs. Zombies – J. F. Gonzalez & Brian Keene – Performed by Chet Williamson AUDIO SAMPLE : From best-selling authors J.F. Gonzalez and Brian Keene comes the wildest, pulpiest, most over-the-top installment in the Clickers series yet—a crossover with Keene's The Rising! In the aftermath of a devastating tsunami and a series of undersea earthquakes, hordes of Clickers swarm onto the California coastline, slaughtering everything in their path. As the attacks spread to other parts of the world, humanity fights back, unaware that a second foe is about to emerge—Ob, the leader of a supernatural race of beings known as the Siqqusim, who have the ability to possess and reanimate the dead. Now, Earth faces an invasion from not one, but two enemies—the mindless and hungry Clickers, and the evil and equally ravenous zombies. Both groups have only one goal in mind—the total extermination of the human race. But what happens when these two forces meet.... Clickers vs Zombies - No matter who wins, mankind loses....
Sunray Alice – Jeremy Hepler – Performed by Cathi Colas AUDIO SAMPLE : Approaching the end of her life, Alice Mayes, notorious caretaker of the anomaly known as The Garden of Sunray, is eager to tie up one last loose end before moving on. The last loose end. For decades, she’s been dreaming of finding someone to share her secret with, someone worthy of her truth, and in 20-year-old Emily Newell, she thinks she finally has. On a momentous stroll through her massive garden with her young friend, Alice delves back into the past, back to those five horrific, mind-bending days in the summer of 1944, when she was 16, and for the first time in more than 75 years, gives voice to her role in the Nazi prisoner internment camp tragedy that befell the small town of Sunray, Texas. In revealing all she witnessed, confessing all she did, she hopes to pass on a wondrous legacy as well as validate and honor the mysterious man she knew as Karl Wagner.
Vortex – Ray Garton – Performed by Caroline McLaughlin AUDIO SAMPLE: Karen Moffett and Gavin Keoph have investigated vampires in Los Angeles in Night Life and werewolves on the Northern California coast in Bestial, but this time they face something utterly baffling...and deadly. Blockbuster horror novelist Martin Burgess has money to burn and enjoys spending it to find out if the paranormal things he writes about are real. He hires Moffett and Keoph again and sends them to California’s Mt. Shasta. Long believed by spiritual seekers and New Agers to be a “vortex” of magnetic and spiritual energies, Mt. Shasta is a mystical locale, allegedly the site of alien visitations, paranormal apparitions, bizarre physical phenomena, and even Lemurians, an ancient race of little people from Atlantis believed to be living inside the mountain. Strange things are happening in the small town at the foot of the mountain, things that have remained invisible to most, but not all, of the residents—things that have caught the attention of Martin Burgess and his small army of computer geeks and conspiracy theorists. Skeptical of the New Age mumbo-jumbo, Moffett and Keoph encounter an extraordinary, hungry creature that is being used to malevolent ends by a powerful and cruel enemy. Uncovering the mysterious secret in Mt. Shasta is one thing—staying alive long enough to share it with anyone is another.
LAST WEEK REVIEW COPIES -Codes still available
Ulster Lament by M. J. Neary – Performed by Michael Langan – AUDIO SAMPLE
Breathe: A Master Diver's Survival Tales – Rick Bettua with Rob MacGregor – performed by Daniel Grimes. AUDIO SAMPLE
Dagon's Bell and Other Discords – Brian Lumley – Performed by Joshua Saxon – AUDIO SAMPLE
REVIEW COPIES AVAILABLE
There is a form on our website for requesting review copies of any of our titles, but you can also do so by emailing us at [email protected] – Let us know which of our many books you’d like to read and review. Provide us with the places you will post your review, and let us know if you’d like to be added to our list of reviewers to hear about all upcoming titles.
THAT’S A WRAP!
Thanks to everyone who made it to the end of the newsletter. Remember to share, and check out all our titles, available on most eBook platforms.
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