Hi Folks,
As you may know, Alan Peter Ryan passed away suddenly in early June 2011. He had just started a major resurgence in his fiction career — which began in the 1980s with classic horror novels like The Kill and Dead White — and we were proud to be working with him on several projects. The two completed books, which will be going to the printer soon, are being announced today. Alan was definitely at the top of his game when he wrote these and we’re glad to be able to share them with the world. Read more below and place your preorders while supplies last.
Amazonas: A Novella
by Alan Peter Ryan
The river, the river. She thought it would never end…
They were in search of The Slave Tree, and this had been a mistake. As the boat traveled up the river, deep into the heart of darkness, Henrietta watched Edwin closely. She watched him chew at his fingernails and spit into the river. She watched a vein in his temple that never stopped throbbing and the tic that made a muscle twitch beside his eye. She watched Edwin and the man named Crown whispering some secret, back and forth, as if Crown was hypnotizing Edwin.
The most frightening part of this insane journey was not the fear of losing her husband. She had passed beyond fearing that. But if she did lose Edwin, here, so far upstream from the last outpost of civilization, surrounded by the green-walled forest and the dark and tangled terrors it contained, what in the name of God would become of her?
There were things moving about the jungle, and there was a madman waiting for them at the end of their journey… and then, most importantly, there was The Slave Tree, which held a secret so dark it could drive a person mad.
Amazonas is a piercing look into the true of heart of darkness into which many men enter… and few ever return.
Click here to read more or to place your order!
The Back of Beyond: New Stories
by Alan Peter Ryan
Each of these four brand new stories from Alan Peter Ryan feature men who are haunted by different demons in different places and different times…
In Brazil, there are signs that say “Sexual Exploration Is a Crime,” and Jerry Crenshaw has traveled to the country in search of a girlfriend. He finds one and he has never known a girl like Renata. She is friendly and vivacious. She stands very close to him and looks up straight into his eyes and keeps one hand resting lightly on his arm. But Jerry’s going to find a lot more in Brazil than he bargained for, including something in a bag that will change his world forever….
“The Winter’s Tale” tells the story of a man who lives by a churchyard that is widely and firmly reputed to be the haunt of sprites and goblins. The man cares not for such tales, but he should have paid heed to the warnings because he’s about to find out the hard way that he is not alone in the cold winter night…
In “Starvation Valley,” a man and his son are on a cross country drive that is not going according to plan when they end up at a place called Janey’s, which may or may not be real. It certainly feels real while they’re there, but when the man goes back to find it again, he learns that some places in the world, once visited and then left behind, seem never to have existed at all…
In “Mountain Man,” there’s an old man named Hiram Fuller whose hands are thin and gray with dirt, the nails long and broken, each with a black crescent of dirt. He reeks to high heaven, not just of old sweat but of something thick and suffocating like the smell of a savage animal unwillingly caged… and when you meet him on the old trail he says he “ate his horse,” and he “might just have to eat you as well…”
Journey with Alan Peter Ryan into the darkness that resides within all of these men… but don’t travel too far off the path because you might not find your way home again.
Click here to read more or to place your order!
