Poisoned Soil
by Tim Young
4.5 out of 5 stars on Amazon
Dark Contemporary Fantasy
Combine Barbara Kingsolver's pastoral perspective with the dark writing style of Stephen King and Dean Koontz and you'll likely end up with:
Your Dinner Locally Grown: On Poisoned Soil
Set in the mountains of Georgia, Poisoned Soil is a harrowing, cinematic novel that follows a small-town man who risks it all for a chance to make his fortune. College football star Blake Savage could almost taste NFL fame, until an accident shattered both his knee and his future. When Blake meets famous, egocentric restaurateur Nick Vegas, he realizes he has one more shot at glory. Nick offers Blake more money than he can fathom to produce a delicacy for his ultra-exclusive network of underground supper clubs. The job sounds easy enough but there’s a catch: it’s illegal.
Blinded by greed, Blake conceals his sins from his wife, Angelica, and enters Nick’s gilded world. But when the foodies take their first bites of the illicit delicacy an ancient disease resurfaces, unleashing a trail of black death that points back to Blake. As Angelica desperately clings to mystical Cherokee traditions to save her family, a mysterious youngster named Ozzie finds himself trapped in Blake’s deadly game.
Poisoned Soil is a shockingly real drama about what can go horribly wrong when greed entices otherwise good people to make bad decisions.
Nightworld
by Maureen Noel
4.2 out of 5 stars on Amazon
Paranormal Romance
When night falls, Sapphire enters a world that leaves her body cut, bruised, and inexplicably swollen with child. There, in a place densely forested and deathly cold, Sapphire becomes Safire — a trained assassin who must kill or be killed. But when her nightmare demons start walking the streets of her peaceful little town in broad daylight, Sapphire must hurry to unravel the mystery of this Nightworld. For her sanity, her unborn baby, and the fate of future generations.
TAKERS
by Chris Davis
4.9 out of 5 stars on Amazon
Vampire Dark Fantasy
There's a new kind of vampire in the City of Angels.
Los Angeles Police Detective Kel Langston finds that out the hard way when he survives a brutal attack in a dark alley only to realize he's been turned into a monster. Stuck halfway between the living and the dead, his existence becomes a nightmare war for control between his human side and the burning hunger that gnaws at him, urging him to do things no human should ever want to do.
And as if that isn't enough, Kel finds himself forced into hunting the creatures that did this to him, a new kind of vampire humans don’t even know exist...a kind of vampire known only as Takers. Something he hates…and can't resist…and doesn’t know how to kill.
Takers… Your blood is only the beginning.
Roads of Madness (Island of Fog, Book 5)
by Keith Robinson
4.5 out of 5 stars on Amazon
YA Contemporary Fantasy Adventure
Emily Stanton was sick. They all knew it was a matter of time before she became too sick to walk, and after that -- well, it didn't bear thinking about. Walking into the night was their only option. The sickness was worsening by the hour, and by morning she might not be able get to her feet. They had to make it to safety soon. But where was it safe? The city? Their old island?
Roads of Madness pits Hal and his friends against an enemy worse than dragons -- people! But not just ordinary people. Driven crazy by a terrible, unseen infection more than a decade before, and eking out a semblance of life in the bleak, deserted streets ever since, the only way for these people to survive is to hunt and scavenge. Their skin still burns and itches after all these years, a suffering that just won't end. The biosuited military calls them scrags. Marked by lesions and scars, they're easy to recognize... and best avoided.
Hal, Robbie, Abigail, and a very sick Emily know their island is farther along the coast, just beyond the city. There they hope to find a way back home. But they have a long road to travel; the city stands in their way and Emily might not last that long, for she carries with her a sickness of a different kind. Could things be any more dire?
Unfortunately, yes. Under normal circumstances, the journey would be fairly simple. As dangerous as the scrags are, they're no match for a fire-breathing dragon, an ogre, and a naga. And there's no way they could catch a nimble faeire! But magic has fled the land after the recent phoenix rebirth, and the shapeshifters find they can no longer transform...
The first three books of the series formed a trilogy, a three-part story that wrapped up at the end of Mountain of Whispers. Then Lake of Spirits started a new chain of events for the shapeshifters and left some of the children in a terrible situation. ROADS OF MADNESS continues the story...
Ljubljana Witch
by Stavrogin
4.6 out of 5 stars on Amazon
Humorous Contemporary Fantasy
A mysterious e-mail:
‘Come to Ljubljana. Stay with me forever.
D’
With his friend Jay along for the ride, and others picked up along the way, Billy arrives in Ljubljana and quickly finds that things are a lot stranger than he could’ve possibly imagined. An art commune run by a man in a bear costume. A castle surrounded by continual snow, with ancient gods and 80s board games, famous writers and forbidden rooms.
And Daisy…his beautiful, unpredictable host.
