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Ghost Beyond Earth: $5.95US On Special at 0.99!
It's the late 1990's and NASA has Space Station Freedom orbiting above the Earth. One of the modules is the Cryogenic Module, a secret project. It's where the bodies of wealthy and famous people lie deeply frozen, preserved until the medical science of the future can revive and heal them. The Cryogenics Module has been a successful, covert source of extra funding for NASA. In space and shadowed from the sun the extremely cold temperatures make low Earth orbit the perfect place to keep corpses in hibernation. Now it's time to try and revive the first patient. It will be a man who, unknown to the space station crew, had already attempted to cheat death with black magic and evil rituals. It brings dire consequences as the crew attempt to bring him back to life.
In the middle of outback Australia on an isolated cattle property the ghost of a couple's dead child begins to appear in the house. Young Ellen was an angel when she was alive. As a spirit returning from the Dead she is much, much worse. Ellen is terrifying.
There is a dreadful connection between the space station corpse being revived and Ellen's sudden ghostly appearances. Matthew Kindling, a lapsed priest tortured by his own fearful visions of the Dead, may be the only person who can keep everyone alive.
Author's Introduction: All my horror stories are based on a single, inspired idea and I start writing from there- writing the book is as much a journey into the unknown for me as it is for the reader. That’s kind of scary in itself! Ghost Beyond Earth was my first published horror novel by a major print publisher and the concept was born from thinking; what would happen if the Space Shuttle was haunted?
If what? Okay, the thing is I’m always trying to create a situation where my main characters can’t easily escape the dilemma they’re in. I used to get annoyed at ghost stories where people could simply leave the haunted house, the blood pouring from the wall- the cursed room... whatever- if they wanted, yet didn't (obviously, for the sake of the story). One day I saw footage of the space shuttle in orbit and figured it was a great place to be haunted. You couldn't get away, right? But the shuttles aren't much bigger than a Volkswagen with a jet engine bolted on the back, so after some research I came across Space Station Freedom, the forerunner to today's International Space Station (SSF was never built).
Similarly, the other half of the novel based on an outback cattle property also provides for a sense of dangerous isolation from where the characters can’t easily escape.
For readers who may be put off by the space station stuff- don't be. Ghost Beyond Earth isn't science fiction. The astronauts are in present-day conditions of weightlessness and eating out of tubes. Ghost Beyond Earth is a ghost story with a dash of witchcraft- and certainly a horror story.
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A Place To Fear: $5.95US On Special at 0.99!
In the small sugar cane town of Hickory supernatural events are on the rise. There are odd, frightening lights hovering above the river and crop circles in the fields. The strange sightings aren’t limited only to the night sky. Glimpses of ghostly apparitions are seen through the windows of shuttered houses-people only recently buried. The situation rapidly gets worse as the eerie lights are more brazen, the dead are seen walking the streets late at night and at the local cemetery the soil over the graves is starting to stir... There is no escape for Michael Garrett and Kerry Wentworth, two newcomers to Hickory. Communications with the outside world are cut off and anyone attempting to enter or leave the town never finish the journey. Hickory has become a bad place to be- a place to fear.
Author’s Introduction: As I’ve explained in my other book’s introductions my stories are inspired by single ideas and built upon from those. In this case, it occurred to me that human beings from the beginning of time have tried elaborate and sometimes dangerous or even evil rituals to communicate with the Dead-and attempted to bring the dead back to life, too. Theoretically, without much success- depending on what you choose to believe. But for advanced civilisations from another planet it must be pretty easy, right? I mean, for a people who can travel the vast distances of space, resurrecting a human corpse should be a piece of cake.
Because of the references to UFO’s and crop circles A Place To Fear was another of my novels that sometimes earned a science fiction label, but again this isn’t true. It’s about a small town filled with ghosts, walking dead and evil spirits all of whom have a bad attitude towards those people still alive... perhaps alive for not much longer. Why is it all happening and where will it all end? Of course, you’ll have to read A Place To Fear to find out.
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Voices Of Evil: $5.95US On Special at 0.99!
A deranged Gallipoli veteran is locked in a padded cell. Two beautiful, young women meet their grisly deaths. In an old, metal tin sits an ancient charm and the demon that lives within it is being released into our world again. When journalist Brendan Craft discovers the mysterious Egyptian charm a series of terrifying events is unleashed-events similar to those suffered by a young soldier as he fought for his life in the trenches of Gallipoli in 1915. Confronted with an evil beyond his imagining, Brendan becomes locked in a battle for his sanity. Where does the dream end and the reality begin? Death may be the only escape from the Voices of Evil.
Author’s Introduction: For Voices of Evil I decided to turn all my previous concepts of writing horror stories on their head. Instead of having my main characters trapped in a dreadful situation they couldn’t escape–a locked house or a walled basement–I wanted them haunted and terrified in the middle of the day. In the middle of a room filled people. In the middle of normal, everyday circumstances we all find ourselves in... get the idea? You’d think you could escape–but still you can’t. The idea of using an Egyptian curse might seem a bit “been there, done that”, but I really wanted to write the parallel story of Australian soldiers during the First World War, fighting at Gallipoli, who also experienced the same haunting evil as they battled with the horror of the trenches. Australian diggers trained in Egypt on their way to the Dardanelles, so it was a kind of “given” that all the trouble should come from an ancient Egyptian something, right?
Of course, it’s not just a curse. This isn’t a “curse” story. It’s a horror story, so it’s got everything. By the way, have you checked among all the old stuff you’ve had in those cupboards since for as long as you can remember? Who knows what you’ve got lurking on a shelf somewhere, just waiting for you to take off the lid...
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The Devil’s Numbers: $5.95US On Special at 0.99!
Air force F-111 pilot Russell Cross gets a near-fatal shock when his dead Gulf War friend reappears in the cockpit. A haunted German submarine in 1915 seems destined to plunge into oblivion, if the ghosts aboard will have their way. A computer expert meets a bizarre and terrible death.
A witness to all these seemingly random events is the ghostly spectre of Matthew, a young boy who in another lifetime opened the door to an unspeakable horror. Now Matthew is preparing to wreak havoc on a luxury super-liner that could be bound for the bottom of the sea, too. And Matthew’s going to take Russell Cross with him.
Anything can happen and you might count the cost with your life, when you start doing your sums with The Devil’s Numbers.
Author’s Introduction: It occurred to me one day that as computers “crunch” numbers faster and faster, maybe we’re coming nearer to opening hidden doors that are best left closed? Creating cracks in our dimension and time by making calculations that should never be figured out and solving puzzles that should never be answered? This is the basic idea behind The Devil’s Numbers–new technology creating an opportunity for ancient evil to step through a gap into the present day. Added to this, I’ve adapted an old, true story about a haunted German U-boat during the First World War. I came across it when I was younger and it scared the hell out of me, because it rang as so genuine–so undoubtedly true in the real sense of the word.
I had a lot of fun bringing The Devil’s Numbers all together. There’s witchcraft from hundreds of years ago, ghosts from the beginning of the twentieth century and a whole, new kind of evil born in the world today.
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Missing Pieces: $5.95US On Special at 0.99!
A terrified secretary finds a severed finger in an elevator. A week later, in another building, a hand is found–from a different victim. What will be next? An arm or a leg? Someone’s head? As Detective John Maiden confronts the mounting horror of the crimes he knows more lives are at stake. And not just those of the killer’s next targets. The kidnapping of a young girl has raised the stakes even higher as her captor wants to get his deeds noticed–and the front pages of the newspapers are giving him nasty ideas. This is a chilling story of murder, revenge and vicious abduction. Note: Some content may not be deemed suitable for readers under the age of 16.
Author’s Introduction: I was having lunch with my publishers one day (not being a smart-ass here, I normally lived thousands of miles away, so it was a sort of once-a-year thing I did) –the publishers of my four horror novels–and we discussed the concept of me trying to write a crime novel. It was one of those only half-serious suggestions that come from too much red wine and beer, but I went away giving it some thought and as I rode the lift up to my hotel room I wondered, what would someone do if they discovered an amputated finger on the elevator floor? Missing Pieces was born–it’s as simple as that. The book was released in Australia, the United States and more recently Germany where’s it’s been a best seller. I must try and remember what kind of wine and beer I was drinking at lunch that day...
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A Clean Kill: $5.95US On Special at 0.99!
In the Sanctuary, a cult religion’s inner-city haven from the outside world, members of the group are meeting bizarre deaths. One by one they are killed in a gruesome way that suggests Biblical revenge of some kind. Detective John Maiden returns from my earlier novel Missing Pieces to solve the case. But in the Sanctuary everyone loves everybody else. They share the same rooms, the same church, the same swimming pool and gymnasium–even the same bed, when no one’s looking. And everybody has something to hide. In the close-nit, secretive environment of the Sanctuary modern police methods and forensics are useless. Every crime scene is saturated with evidence from all the clan members. Each murder is as good as a clean kill and Maiden has to resort to his wits and experience to find the killer. Note: Some content may not be deemed suitable for readers under the age of 16.
Author’s Introduction: A Clean Kill was a first for me. The success of Missing Pieces had my fans in Germany asking for another John Maiden book–something I’d never planned for. So instead of writing a new book based on some unexpected, inspired idea, for the first time I had to go away and deliberately plot and create a story. Among all the concepts I considered there was one thing I was determined to do. I reckon that modern police methods and forensic science are killing off the whodunit crime novel. Sure, there are forensic science novels and TV shows like CSI, but if you want to write a traditional crime story it’s hard to ignore the role of forensics and surveillance techniques that should play in catching the killer. I think that I came up with the answer with The Sanctuary. It’s a place filled with creepy, nasty, unhappy and untrustworthy people who live so close together it’s impossible to separate scientific evidence. Oh, and there’s a killer inside with them, too.
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And In The Morning: $5.95US On Special at 0.99!
This is the story of two brothers, Jonathon and Joseph White, who are caught up in the excitement of the new war in Europe in 1914 and enlist to fight the Hun. And In The Morning is not just a war novel. Amidst the horror of the battlefields a love story begins. Rose is a volunteer in the Nurses Corps and risks her life close to the fighting working among the wounded and the dying. Meeting Jonathon makes Rose realise that life is bittersweet–time is precious and falling in love may be only a hopeless and painful experience. Surely no one could survive the killing in the trenches? Surely she won’t survive herself “the war to end all wars”?
From the first landings on 25th April 1915 to the battlefields of France and Armistice Day 1918, And In The Morning is a uniquely Australian novel of war, love and courage. It’s been described as “giving the soldiers of Gallipoli and the Great War a haunting voice. It is a story that should never be forgotten.”
Author’s Introduction: There was a period in my writing career when I had some spare time. It was just the way things panned out–and my literary agent told me to take the opportunity to “write something I loved”. She meant something I really wanted to do, even if there was no chance of it being ever published. I’ve been a great admirer of authors like John Masters (his Loss of Eden trilogy), Derek Robinson’s brilliant novels of the RAF in both world wars, and of course Sebastian Faulk’s excellent Birdsong. Forever inspired, I wanted to write something like these and my efforts resulted in And In The Morning. No, it was never expected to be published, but a publisher bought the rights after reading just the first few chapters and later And In The Morning was licensed to Readers Digest in two countries, Australia and the Netherlands. There’s something to be said for writing fiction about a subject close to your heart. I’m very proud of this book. I’m also very proud of the Australian history it tells.
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Ghost Tales: Four Stories Of The Dead Among Us: $1.95US On Special at 0.99!
Four horror stories that will have you leaving the light on all night and the doors and windows firmly locked. A young widow wishes that her beloved husband had never died–and gets more than she bargained for. A platoon of German soldiers struggling through a deep snowstorm in the Ardennes Forest in 1944 come across a strange abbey in the middle of the woods and decide to force themselves upon the nun’s hospitality. A young couple driving on a holiday to the north coast pick up the worst kind of hitch-hiker and don’t even know it. The captain of a fishing trawler refuses the local priest’s blessing of the fleet and sails into the arms of the dreaded King of the Sea.
Are the Dead among us? Is your room filled with ghosts right now? Of course they are–where else are they going to go, once they’re dead?
Author’s Introduction: These are not “short” stories–far from it. In fact, Footprints In The Snow is over 200 pages long in the old way of measuring things. All combined, the four stories are longer than a normal book. However, individually each story was born from an idea that ultimately didn’t create a book-length manuscript, which isn’t to say the idea failed. It’s actually a good thing that I resisted the temptation to pad the writing out–include extra subplots to simply add pages and make an entire book. Each story stands on its own and is focused only on what it was supposed to do–scare the hell out of the reader. So why is Ghost Tales much cheaper than my other books, if it’s just as long? To be completely honest, Ghost Tales is the book I’ve chosen to sell cheaply as a way of getting my Ebooks and writing out there to new readers. It’s a promotional thing that will hopefully encourage readers to pay a few dollars more for my other novels. Of course, I reckon you’re getting a bargain.
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