Archives de catégorie : Fiction

DEVOUR de Jazmine Joyner, illustré par Anthony Pugh

In this horror graphic novel, American Gods meets Get Out in a dark retelling of the West African legend of Anansi the Spider.

DEVOUR
by Jazmine Joyner; illustrated by Anthony Pugh
Abrams ComicArts, May 2024

In the Deep South, something evil waits in the darkness . . .

This horror graphic novel tells the story of the Turner family, who move to Alabama to care for their ailing matriarch, Vassie, when she begins suffering from dementia. But Vassie isn’t just any old lady; she’s the last of a line of powerful root women who have been caring for the community since her ancestors were first captured and enslaved by white plantation owners. When Patsy takes a closer look at the Turner family home, what she finds is beyond her wildest nightmares.

In a magical room beneath the house, Patsy discovers the source of her family’s legendary skills: the Ghanaian spider god Anansi. Driven mad by the suffering of the enslaved Africans who worshipped him, Anansi was eventually captured and contained by Patsy’s ancestors.

With their legacy and the god’s imprisonment in the balance, Patsy and her brother, Demetrius, will have to take up their grandmother’s mantle—while she can still remember who they are.

DEVOUR is a terrifying new fable that delivers thrills and chills in equal measure.

Jazmine Joyner is a Black disabled nonbinary femme who has been working in various parts of the comics industry for years. They are based in Southern California and have written for Women Write About Comics, The Comics MNT, and others. DEVOUR is their debut graphic novel.

Anthony Pugh has worked on various projects in the creative industry, including marketing, advertising, storyboard art, character design, and comic book art. Anthony has worked with companies like IDW, Comedy Central, Ogilvy x Adidas, Kid Robot, and Pepsi Cola.

THE RUINOUS LOVE TRILOGY de Brynne Weaver

A dark romantic comedy series of interconnected stand-alone novels following the Kane brothers and the murderous women they fall for. Each novel is told in dual POV and concludes with a happy ending.

THE RUINOUS LOVE TRILOGY
by Brynne Weaver
Zando, 2023 – 2024
(via The Whalen Agency)

Book One: BUTCHER & BLACKBIRD (August 2023)

Every serial killer needs a friend.

Every game must have a winner.

When a chance encounter sparks an unlikely bond between rival murderers Sloane and Rowan, the two find something elusive—the friendship of a like-minded, pitch-black soul. From small town West Virginia to upscale California, from downtown Boston to rural Texas, the two hunters collide in an annual game of blood and suffering, one that pits them against the most dangerous monsters in the country.

But as their friendship develops into something more, the restless ghosts left in their wake are only a few steps behind, ready to claim more than just their newfound love.

Can Rowan and Sloane dig themselves out of a game of graves?

Or have they finally met their match?

Book Two: LEATHER & LARK (February 2024)

Every killer claims a soul.

Every phantom wants revenge.

Contract killer Lachlan Kane just wants a quieter life, to work in his leather studio and forget about the traumatic past that’s forged him into a deadly weapon. But he needs to repay an endless debt, at least until the day his boss offers him a deal: marry Lark Montague, the daughter of his most valued business partner. The only problem?

They can’t stand each other.

Indie singer-songwriter Lark is the sunshine and glitter that burns through every cloud and clings to every crevice that Lachlan tries to hide inside. A rich family, a privileged life, a dearth of responsibilities—Lark has had an easy life. At least, that’s how it seems. But Lark is on the verge of losing her security. And now it’s time to prove she can get control of her haphazard future. What better way than to marry a man who’s the exact opposite of her usual type?

As Lachlan and Lark navigate the intrigue and secrets of the hidden world that binds them together, it becomes harder to discern a fake marriage from a real one. But it’s not just familiar dangers that haunt them.

There’s another phantom lurking on their doorstep.

And this one has come for blood.

Book Three: SCYTHE & SPARROW (September 2024)

Every flight has a landing.

Every circus has a final curtain.

Doctor Fionn Kane is running from a broken heart, one he hopes to mend in small-town Nebraska far away from his former fiancé and his derailed surgical career. It’s a simpler life: head down, work hard, and absolutely no romantic relationships. He wants none of the circus he left behind in Boston.

But the Silveria Circus finds him.

Motorcycle performer Rose Evans has spent a decade on the road with Silveria, and it suits her just fine, especially when she has the urge to indulge in a little murder and mayhem when she’s not in the spotlight. But when a kill goes awry and she ends up with a broken leg, she finds herself stuck in Nebraska at the home of the adorably nerdy town doctor.

The problem is, not every broken heart can be sewn back together.

…And the longer you stay in one place, the more likely your ghosts are to catch up.

Brynne Weaver has been everything from an archaeologist to a deep sea core analyst, an equestrian professional to a specialist in clinical research. She’s traveled the world, taken in more stray animals than her husband would probably prefer, and nurtured her love for both dark comedies and swoon-worthy romances. But during all those adventures, the constant thread in Brynne’s life has been writing. After self-publishing her debut book in 2021, Brynne has since carved a name for herself in the genre of dark romance with eight published works. Her most recent novel, the dark romantic comedy BUTCHER & BLACKBIRD, hit #1 in Romantic Suspense in New Releases on Amazon.

SOME STRANGE MUSIC DRAWS ME IN de Griffin Hansbury

A poignant and provocative story of transgender awakening in a working-class American town.

SOME STRANGE MUSIC DRAWS ME IN
by Griffin Hansbury
W. W. Norton, March 2024
(via Sterling Lord Literistic)

In the summer of 1984, teenage Mel becomes entranced with the trans woman who appears in her blue-collar American town. Through the world-expanding time she spends with the woman, Sylvia, and the changes of adolescence, Mel soon discovers she is not the girl she thought she was—in fact, she might not be a girl at all. In the wake of this revelation, Mel navigates gender, sexuality, and an intense friendship with her childhood best friend in a hostile time and place for both girls and queers.

Moving back and forth to 2019, Mel has become Max, a middle-aged trans man. He returns to his hometown in the wake of his mother’s death, still reeling from his own politically-incorrect, gender-related scandal at his workplace, and bearing the burden of guilt from that pivotal teenage summer. As he reunites with his wayward older sister, spends time with his preteen great-niece and reckons with his past, Max works to come to terms with what it means to be a flawed and forgivable human being amidst constantly changing social norms.

“This gorgeous, propulsive novel is filled with beauty and danger, youth and wisdom and the life-saving lifelines of counterculture. With writing so tense and honest and real, I recognized this place and these people deeply, and felt them all in my heart long after the book was finished.” ―Michelle Tea, author of Knocking Myself Up

Griffin Hansbury is the acclaimed author of Vanishing New York (Dey Street, 2017), based on the celebrated blog written under the pen name Jeremiah Moss. As Hansbury he is the author of The Nostalgist, a novel, and Day For Night, a collection of poems. A two-time NYFA fellow, his writing has appeared in n+1, The New York Times, The New York Daily News, and online for The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Atlantic, The Village Voice, Salon, and The New York Review of Books.

SOUNDS LIKE A PLAN de Dwayne Alexander Smith & Pamela Samuels Young

SOUNDS LIKE A PLAN, the long-awaited second book from Dwayne Alexander Smith, is a dual POV rom-com suspense.

SOUNDS LIKE A PLAN
by Dwayne Alexander Smith & Pamela Samuels Young
Atria, July 2024
(via The Friedrich Agency)

Jackson Jones and Mackenzie Cunningham are both private investigators operating out of Los Angeles. While Jackson specializes in high-end clientele whose swagger matches his own, Mackenzie is scrappy, defensive, and easily underestimated. Despite many years in the same industry, they first meet when they are both hired to find the same missing woman. Unaware that they’ve entered a competition, they keep bumping heads until it’s clear that something suspicious is afoot. Equally attracted to and frustrated by one another, they soon realize that the client who hired them might actually be setting them up! Just as they shift from rivals to partners, Jackson and Mackenzie find themselves fighting for their lives, a string of bodies piling up around them. With no one to trust but each other, they race to solve the case before they can be forced to pay the price for their involvement.

Dwayne Alexander Smith is the author of Forty Acres, which was previously in development as a Feature Film at Netflix, with Luke Cage’s Cheo Hodari Coker attached to write, and Jay-Z attached to produce. Dwayne is also under contract with Audible to write an eight-episode original radio play for Kevin Hart and Charlamagne Tha God’s imprint. When Dwayne received an NAACP Image Award in 2014 for his debut novel, he happened to meet a fellow author named Pamela Samuels Young, whose novel Anybody’s Daughter won an award that same year.

Pamela Samuels Young has been widely published in both commercial suspense and erotica, and many of her characters have legal backgrounds that mirror Pamela’s own. Netflix is also developing Pamela’s work, having optioned the first two books in her Vernette Henderson series, which follows a Black female attorney from Compton, working in a corporate firm. Felicia D. Henderson is attached as Executive Producer (Empire, Everybody Hates Chris, Sister Sister).

THE WITCHES AT THE END OF THE WORLD de Chelsea Iversen

Two sisters find themselves at odds in this breathtaking historical fantasy —and when one releases a dark spell, someone will have to burn. They are witches, after all.

THE WITCHES AT THE END OF THE WORLD
by Chelsea Iversen
Sourcebooks Landmark, October 2023

Minna and Kaija live deep in the birch woods of northern Norway, hiding in the shadows since their mother was burned at the stake thirteen years ago. Sweet-tempered Kaija remembers life before the fire—the friendships, the comfort and warmth of community. Her magic is quiet, mostly charms to heal cuts and bruises. She’d happily give it up to have a normal life. Minna, though, was raised in smoke. She’s a witch through and through: full of power and unafraid of it, wrath always simmering just below the surface. When Kaija decides to return to the village where their mother died to make a new life for herself, Minna, in a rage, releases a curse to raze the community that’s taken everything from her. In doing so, she sets in motion a plot that could destroy Kaija and the new life she’s trying to build. But you can’t take back dark magic once it’s been released, and someone will have to burn. They are witches, after all.

Chelsea Iversen lives with her husband and dog in Colorado, where she reads her runes at every full moon. This is her debut novel.

“Chelsea Iversen’s magical debut is a story for the ages.” –Adriana Trigiani, author of The Good Left Undone.