Twenty-somethings April Delray and Eddie Carter have just gotten married in the hot summer of July 1995. They’ve taken about five days off from their real life in Ann Arbor and are heading to the shores of Lake Michigan, several hours away, for their honeymoon. While driving down a deserted stretch of nighttime road en…
The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James is an eery, spellbinding tale spanning two generations of women and centering on an Upstate New York motel where something hasn’t been right for a very long time. Fell, New York, 1982: Twenty-year-old Viv Delaney leaves an unhappy home in Illinois for New York City but finds…
The supernatural thriller, to me, has always been a small sliver of a genre, one that takes a careful hand. Some books tip into straight horror, while others bury their scary happenings in innuendo and the feeling that something bad—really bad—is going to happen. Some read like mysteries, while others are psychological portraits of haunted…
Ever read a book and think, “Wow, I wish there was a movie of this”?
Hey there, reader! It’s been great collaborating with Criminal Element on this “Best of the Month” series, and I’m thrilled to highlight these five November books. When I’m not reading crime fiction or writing about crime fiction as Crime by the Book, I can often be found perusing Criminal Element’s fantastic selection of crime book…
When plotting your books, do you take inspiration from established ghost stories and particular events or weave the story from whole cloth? I make them up! The Broken Girls, for example, started with an idea of a body found in a well. I wanted to know who she was and how she got there, and…
The Broken Girls by Simone St. James is a chilling modern-day Gothic tale about the power of sisterhood and the search for the truth to secrets that shouldn't stay buried. In the damp emptiness of the dining hall, Anthony’s cell phone rang. Fiona didn’t have to watch him answer it. It was enough to hear…
As the days get shorter and an autumn chill finally rolls in, nothing quite hits the spot like some ghostly, gothic fiction. October is a time for witches, spooks, and all things macabre. If you're like me, you line up a full 31 days worth of horror films, stock the bedside table with spooky novels,…
OBSERVATION: Between 1914 and 1919 war and influenza have claimed more than a million lives in Britain alone. CONCLUSION: This is a time for ghosts. Florence Cathcart (The Awakening) Some things are inherently, across the board, creepy. Antique wheelchairs; derelict buildings—especially when they were once grand homes that loom over the landscape; nursery rhymes—doubly so…
The upcoming CrimeFest convention (May 15-18th, Bristol, U.K.) and the Crime Writers of Canada Arthur Ellis Awards (June 5th, Toronto) have both announced their nominees, and we're thrilled to share these shortlists! (Also, once you get to the bottom of all these wonderful titles and authors, you'll see the an extra reason for our beaming,…
