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Smiling Faceless Woman
Smiling Faceless Woman, by Thomas J. Gebhardt III, is an expansive supernatural horror novel that mixes paranormal investigation, romance, coming-of-age anxiety, and a heavy dose of late-2000s pop culture. The story centers on Alexander Jacobsen, an ambitious linguistics student whose carefully mapped-out future starts coming apart when disturbing events invade his sleep and then his waking life. What begins with sounds, misplaced objects, sleep paralysis, and an oppressive presence eventually leads Alex into SPIRAL, a paranormal investigation group that treats hauntings as equal parts fieldwork, folklore, psychology, and spirituality. That blend gives the novel its identity. It’s paranormal horror with a personal center, where ghosts matter because of what they reveal about the people living around them.
Alex is a fitting lead because he’s skeptical enough to question nearly everything he experiences, but curious enough to keep following the evidence. His gradual acceptance of his family’s paranormal sensitivity works particularly well because it develops alongside a much more ordinary identity crisis involving school, work, ambition, family, and adulthood. The book repeatedly returns to his idea of “LIFE101L,” the informal education he gets when his meticulously planned life refuses to follow the syllabus. His relationship with April Wen becomes a major part of that education. Their connection moves through friendship, unrequited affection, sex, domestic life, grief, and eventual separation, giving the supernatural horror romance side of the book considerable space. When the novel jumps ahead and shows them officially together, that relationship feels authentic because readers have already spent so much time watching it form.
One of the book’s most distinctive qualities is how thoroughly it inhabits its era. MySpace, Nintendo DS systems, Motorola Razrs, mall jobs, MP3 players, memes, movies, bands, clothes, food, and internet culture aren’t occasional decorations. They’re part of the characters’ everyday vocabulary. The result is a remarkably specific time-capsule texture, especially in Alex and April’s scenes together. The prose likes to linger on conversations, meals, music choices, shopping trips, jokes, and small physical gestures, so the pacing has a roomy, episodic feel. That approach also changes the rhythm of the ghost story material. A frightening encounter can sit beside goofy banter or an ordinary afternoon, which makes the paranormal feel as though it’s intruding on an actual routine.
The occult horror and paranormal-investigation sections broaden the novel considerably. SPIRAL’s cases range from a dead child haunting a cottage to a violently malevolent presence on a ranch, and the team approaches each location with cameras, EVP recorders, EMF meters, historical research, prayer, intuition, and competing theories. The novel is especially interested in the argument between scientific explanations and supernatural ones. It discusses sleep paralysis, environmental causes, psychokinesis, folklore, Christian theology, indigenous spiritual practices, and the idea of Sheol as an overlapping realm of the dead. That investigative framework eventually grows into much darker territory involving curses, witchcraft, sacrifice, possession, and the literal smiling faceless woman. By the climax, the restrained unease of Alex’s early haunting has expanded into full-scale demonic horror, with the members of SPIRAL forced into a confrontation that makes their earlier investigations look almost gentle by comparison.
I liked that Smiling Faceless Woman is interested in connection. Alex begins as someone obsessed with controlling the trajectory of his future, and the novel keeps putting him in situations where knowledge, plans, and certainty only take him so far. Friendship, family, romance, faith, grief, and intuition gradually become just as important to him. Even after the violent paranormal climax, the story ends on quieter emotional ground, with Alex and April looking back on what they shared and acknowledging that life has carried them somewhere neither expected. That gives this ghost-hunting horror novel a surprisingly reflective finish. Its ghosts are memorable, its occult mythology is ambitious, and its real subject is the messy process of learning how to live when the world, both the visible part and the part hiding behind it, turns out to be much bigger than you planned for.
Pages: 440 | ASIN : B0FHF3MH7H
Stronger Than Hate
Mississippi Wizards follows two women from different eras whose lives become intertwined through violence, grief, and the haunting presence of a persistent ghost named Nancy. Where did the idea behind this novel come from?
I’d had a few conversations with two of my closest friends, both of whom, unfortunately, have had experiences with some form of racial hatred or another, including with the KKK. I wanted to show just how broad those hate groups are in who they target, and I wondered what would happen if one of them targeted a family member, and what would happen if that person became a ghost. What lengths would they go to, if they could, to protect another family member? The idea just sort of expanded from there.
The novel combines supernatural horror with survival thriller elements and social issues. How did you balance those different genres and themes?
I’ve always been a firm believer that human monsters are far worse than the literary ones. Sometimes, they turn out like Billy- evil, hateful, and violent- but I also wanted to be careful to show that there are those of us in society who, though we may not consider them monsters, certainly succumb to bigotry, hate, and fear. To do so, I did extensive interviews with people who had real-life stories to offer. Though none of them exactly matched this story, I hope I was able to get the essential message across: Together, we are all stronger than hate.
Nancy is both frightening and deeply connected to the characters’ histories. How did you develop her personality and decide what kind of ghost she would be?
When I thought of Nancy, I considered what it would have been like for her to be betrayed in such a final, ultimate fashion. I wondered what she would do to keep someone else in her family from experiencing the same fate, and how frustrating it would be if her plans were foiled over and over again. I felt that, for anyone else, desperation and anger would play a key role, but that desperation would take precedence for Nancy, since she wasn’t a bitter person in life.
The final scene suggests that there may be another strange story waiting to unfold. Did you always envision Mississippi Wizards as potentially opening the door to another story?
Yes and no. When I first thought of this story, I loved the idea that Cassandra could see ghosts and help them, and I thought it would be cool to have her eventually transition into a role where she could help lay spirits to rest. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it would be the choice of the ghost to show itself to her, not the other way around. For that, there needs to be some type of connection. Without that, I didn’t think Cassandra or Liza would get into the proverbial ghost-hunting business, as neither of their personalities would match with that. They were forced into it; they didn’t choose it. If I ever write another story with Cassandra and Liza, it won’t likely be a ghost story.
Author Links: GoodReads | X (Twitter) | Facebook | Bluesky | Instagram | Website | Amazon
Two timelines, two women, one relentless spirit: Liza’s secret love and Cassandra’s haunted mind converge through Nancy, a ghost determined to rewrite a history of hatred and violence. As terror rises and mortal enemies close in, the women must join across time to survive, confront murderers, and reclaim the power stolen from them.
Mississippi Wizards is a gripping, spectral thriller of vengeance, courage, and the enduring strength of love against impossible odds.
Trust, Deception, and Survival
Ghost Town follows a former intelligence operative who finds himself involved in a covert military experiment near the abandoned town of Ehrenberg, Arizona. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
I began writing Ghost Town while finishing graduate film school at UCLA in the late 1970s. Influenced by Robert Ludlum, Jason Bourne-style espionage, and the Cold War, I imagined a dissatisfied intelligence operative confronting something far beyond his training in an isolated ghost town. Originally titled Desert Dreams, the novel evolved through many rewrites into a story that alternates between the present-day mystery and the events that shaped the protagonist’s (Richard Hart) life, revealing how his past prepared him for the impossible. Maybe I was cramming in too many concepts, but I was also intrigued by the military running a time experiment and how they could still be doing that in the present day to influence events. If they could change one thing in the past, could they do it again on a small, isolated scale?
The novel explores how fear, violence, and manipulation can distort people’s judgment. What interested you about examining human behavior under those conditions?
Setting the story during the Cold War, I was fascinated by how intelligent, well-trained people could make terrible decisions under pressure. Espionage isn’t just about gadgets and secret missions—it’s about trust, deception, and survival. I wanted to see how ordinary people would respond when the rules they depended on suddenly disappeared.
Which scenes proved especially difficult—or especially rewarding—to write?
The most rewarding scenes were those in the ghost town, where mystery gradually gave way to discovery. The most difficult part was balancing two stories at once—the unfolding present-day mystery and the protagonist’s past—so they complemented each other and steadily built toward the conclusion. The relationship between Hart, Honey, and Boon was a unique balancing act because each had a different view of what was happening in those three days. It was a challenge to mix the paranormal with a sense of horror in this “literary fusion” of high-tech contrasting with life over 100 years ago, where the disenchanted agent did not have access to any of the customary tools he would have at his disposal in the present time.
If readers leave the novel debating one question, what do you hope it will be?
I hope they might ask themselves, “What would I have done?” It is a story about survival and illusion and giving in to the illusion or sticking with reality and trying to understand what is really happening. Every character is forced to make difficult choices with incomplete information. If readers find themselves debating those decisions long after they finish the book, then I feel the story has succeeded.
Author Links: GoodReads | X (Twitter) | Facebook | Website | Amazon
Finalist, Eric Hoffer Book Awards
Brilliant but burned-out CIA operative Richard Hart has a midlife crisis. He wants out of the intelligence game for good…
A CIA operative. A black-site time experiment. A ghost town that shouldn’t exist.
Three strangers. Three days. Trapped 100 years in the past — and hunted by the dead.
🏆 Winner, American Fiction Awards Finalist, Eric Hoffer Book Awards
Burned-out CIA operative Richard Hart wants out of the intelligence game for good. But a career-ending rendezvous goes wrong, and he’s thrown into a military time-travel experiment gone catastrophically sideways — trapped in a desert ghost town, hunted by ghost riders and desperadoes, with no way home…
Strong Female Protagonists
Broken Image centers around a woman grieving after tremendous personal loss, recovering from an accident, and healing after an abusive marriage, who finds herself in an area terrorized by a serial killer. Where did the idea behind this novel come from?
Broken Image is part of a four-book series, with each book centered on one of the four Bennett siblings. I needed a love interest for Jay, and a reason for her to be in Edmondsville, so I decided to bring back Joe Grimes, one of my favorite secondary characters from The Row Series. Making Sage, his great-niece, felt like the perfect way to root in the small town.
I also enjoy creating strong female protagonists who face real challenges, so I gave Sage the dual burden of grieving her daughter while escaping an abusive marriage. That enabled me to bring in Brooke O’Connor Matthews from my Victory Hill Series. Brooke runs a social network that helps women and children escape dangerous situations, and in this story, she’d been corresponding with Sage’s Uncle Joe. Writing is the fun part, but marketing matters too, and I’ve found that intermingling my series is a great way to introduce readers to worlds they might not have discovered otherwise.
As for the killer…he’s hiding in plain sight, living within the very community that trusts him. He will stay there, quietly keeping everyone on edge, until he finally makes one fatal mistake in book four, Final Image.
Sage’s healing feels just as important as solving the mystery. Was it always your intention for her emotional recovery to be the heart of the novel?
As a retired librarian and educator, I tried to weave in details that might genuinely help readers deal with their own grief or hardship. Jay dealt with the loss of a bullied high school classmate to suicide by keeping a journal of his thoughts and recovery, and that experience shapes how he connects with Sage. He buys her a journal and encourages her to do the same. I included excerpts from Sage’s journal throughout the book, and I’m hopeful that the idea resonates with readers. Journaling can be a simple and powerful tool for working through pain.
I wanted Sage to overcome her grief and abuse and come out the other side a strong, independent woman. She was never really weak. She was just a victim who got in over her head, desperate to do the right thing by her little girl. While editing the book, I took Donald Maass’ Advanced Fiction Methods course, an invaluable tool that helped me sharpen my focus on Sage’s recovery arc. I didn’t want her to simply survive her circumstances. I wanted readers to watch her grow. We see so much grief and abuse in today’s world, and I wanted Sage’s story to show that it’s possible not just to endure it, but to come out the other side stronger than before.
You occasionally let readers see events from the criminals’ perspectives, creating suspense by revealing dangers the other characters don’t yet recognize. What made you choose that narrative approach?
I am an avid Nora Roberts/JD Robb fan, and I’ve always admired how she lets readers into everyone’s head, not just the hero’s. There’s something powerful about that kind of access. It creates a sense of dramatic irony where the reader knows more than the characters do, which increases the suspense. When you see the danger coming before the characters, you’re not just wondering what will happen; you’re bracing for when it will happen.
I also love creating strong, distinct characters, even frightening ones, and letting readers see the world through their eyes. It’s a way of making the threat feel real and immediate, rather than abstract. Readers aren’t just told a killer is dangerous; they are inside his thoughts, seeing how close he already is.
Can readers look forward to more installments in the Bennett Auction Series?
Yes! I am currently working on book three, False Image, which follows Mary Kate Bennett and Sheriff Duane Peterson’s story. Book four, Final Image, will wrap up the series with GW Bennett and Miranda Dooley.
There’s still plenty left to resolve – a ghost who needs to cross over, symbols on a brass key that need to be located to solve a century-old town mystery, and a serial killer who still needs to be caught. I’m excited to bring the Bennett siblings’ stories full circle in 2027, and I hope readers will stick around to see how it all comes together.
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Website | Pinterest | Amazon
When Sage Grimes returns to the small town of Edmondsville, she carries more than grief. The loss of her beloved great-uncle Joe and her four-year-old daughter Grace has left her shattered, her memories fractured, and her trust in the world destroyed. She came to Joe’s home to heal. Instead, she finds returned letters that hint at buried secrets, evidence that someone has been inside the house Joe left her, and terrifying gaps in her memory about the accident that changed everything.
She thought coming home would save her. She didn’t know someone was already waiting.
Jay Bennett has spent years trying to outrun his own painful past. When he meets Sage, he recognizes something in her eyes he’s seen before – the quiet devastation of someone standing at the edge. Determined to help her find her way back, he offers her something unexpected: a journal, a community blog, and a reason to believe her story isn’t over yet. But as Sage’s voice grows stronger, someone works anonymously in the shadows to destroy everything she’s building.
And Jay is keeping secrets of his own.
As fragments of memory begin to surface about the accident that killed Grace, a chilling possibility emerges that will change everything Sage thought she knew. Her dangerous ex-husband is circling. Anonymous threats are growing bolder. And Edmondsville, already gripped by fear as a serial killer terrorizes the community, offers fewer safe places than Sage had hoped.
The closer she gets to the truth, the more deadly the danger becomes.
When Sage discovers that the one person she’d begun to trust has been keeping things from her, her fragile recovery threatens to collapse entirely. Sage must find the strength to face the past before it destroys her future.
Because someone doesn’t want her to remember. And they’ll do anything to make sure she never does.
Broken Image is a gripping small-town romantic suspense perfect for readers who love emotionally complex heroines fighting to reclaim their lives, heroes with wounded hearts and protective instincts, small-town settings with secrets hiding in plain sight, slow burn romance woven through pulse-pounding suspense, and stories about grief, healing and the courage to trust again.
If you loved Mirror Image, don’t miss Sage and Jay’s story in Broken Image – the next chapter in the Bennett Auction Series.
Ghost Town
A. J. Thibault’s Ghost Town is a speculative thriller that combines time travel, espionage, paranormal horror, and the harsh mythology of the American West. The novel follows Richard Hart, a former intelligence operative and RAND analyst whose search for direction leads him into a covert military experiment near the abandoned town of Ehrenberg, Arizona. Transported from 1989 to 1891 alongside pilot Honey Burns and drifter Boon, Hart must navigate a community governed by appetite, suspicion, and violence. The book’s shifting chronology and alternating character histories gradually connect Hart’s private crisis to Moodbain, a legendary agent overseeing a technology capable of altering perception, matter, and time.
Hart gives the novel its emotional and intellectual center. His formidable analytical abilities are balanced by anger, loneliness, and a lingering fear that his achievements have amounted to little. Thibault’s extensive account of Hart’s impoverished Brooklyn childhood clarifies why he values intelligence so fiercely and why humiliation can provoke him into violence. His father’s lesson that “a real man has more than his brain and his fists. He has a heart” becomes a quiet standard against which Hart’s later decisions can be measured. Honey and Boon receive similarly revealing histories, allowing the novel to treat its three stranded travelers as psychologically burdened people rather than pieces in a time-travel puzzle.
The 1891 sections provide the book’s strongest atmosphere. Ehrenberg is crowded with saloons, card games, public punishments, sexual coercion, religious fervor, and eruptions of collective cruelty. As the experiment weakens the characters’ judgment and resistance, ordinary events acquire the instability of a nightmare. Thibault frequently moves between bleak comedy, grotesque spectacle, and genuine menace, creating a town that feels both historically tangible and mentally distorted. The novel’s breadth gives it considerable imaginative energy, though its many flashbacks, tonal shifts, and extended confrontations sometimes slow the central ordeal and require close attention from the reader.
The final explanation reframes the ghost town as both an experimental weapon and a moral test. Hart survives because he can think beyond the apparent limits of his situation, but his more consequential act comes later, when he destroys the information needed to reproduce the technology. That choice answers the question underlying his journey: whether intelligence serves power or conscience. “Time was the most valuable thing he had left,” the narrator observes, and the line captures the novel’s concern with mortality, agency, and responsibility. Ghost Town is an ambitious, densely plotted novel whose most memorable achievement is its fusion of a violent Western setting with a Cold War meditation on the dangers of controlling human perception and history.
Pages: 460 | ASIN : B088WSBPRM
Broken Image
Kay Brooks’s Broken Image is a small-town romantic suspense novel that blends murder, grief, family secrets, and a touch of the supernatural. The story centers on Sage Grimes, who returns to Edmondsville after losing both her young daughter, Grace, and her beloved great-uncle Joe. Sage is also recovering from an accident she can’t fully remember and separating from an abusive husband. While she tries to make a home out of the house Joe left her, a serial killer is stalking women in the area, another woman is fighting to survive captivity, and several people close to Sage are pulled into the growing danger.
Sage’s emotional recovery gives the novel its heart. Her grief isn’t treated as a single obstacle she needs to overcome, but as something that shapes her routines, relationships, and sense of self. Baking, exploring Joe’s collection of local history, and planning a meditation gazebo all become meaningful parts of her healing. One of the book’s most affecting observations comes when Leona tells her, “Our hearts break because they are tender and vulnerable.” That idea runs through the entire story. Sage’s pain leaves her exposed, but it also allows her to form deeper connections with the people who welcome her back into the community.
The suspense unfolds through several intersecting storylines. Sage’s missing memories gradually raise questions about the crash that killed Grace, while Abby receives increasingly disturbing attention from a killer who believes she belongs to him. Ivy’s struggle to escape captivity adds urgency, and Sheriff Duane Peterson works to connect the evidence before someone else dies. Brooks frequently shifts viewpoints, sometimes letting readers see events through the eyes of the criminals. This creates tension by revealing how close the danger is even when the characters don’t recognize it. The mystery surrounding Walter, Sage’s estranged husband, becomes especially gripping as Sage begins trusting her own instincts again.
Edmondsville itself plays a major role in the book. The auction business, fall festival, cemetery, apple orchard, local history society, and community Facebook page give the town a lived-in personality. Brooks fills it with a large, affectionate network of friends and relatives who cook for one another, investigate strange events, share old stories, and show up when someone needs help. The many characters and plot threads make the novel feel busy at times, but they also create the sense that Sage is entering a community with a history that extends well beyond her personal crisis. The ghostly presence of Isabella fits naturally into this setting, adding warmth and lingering mystery rather than shifting the novel into full supernatural horror.
Broken Image is about rebuilding a life after fear and guilt have distorted the way a person sees herself. The thriller plot supplies danger and momentum, but Sage’s movement from isolation toward belonging provides the most satisfying journey. By the closing chapters, her statement, “I’m going to be okay,” feels earned because it comes after she has confronted both the truth about her past and the person who tried to control it. Readers who enjoy romantic suspense with an active community, multiple mysteries, gentle paranormal elements, and a strong emphasis on emotional healing will find plenty to engage with here.
Pages: 292 | ASIN : B0GZFNJZ9G
Mirror Image (Bennett Auction Series)
Mirror Image, by Kay Brooks, opens the Bennett Auction Series with Abby Adams and TJ Bennett entering the secluded White house to prepare an estate auction, only to find a portrait that looks exactly like Abby, a restless ghost named Isabella, hidden family secrets, and a present-day killer circling Edmondsville. The book braids a haunted-house mystery, a slow-burn romance, and a serial-killer thread into a story where antiques, diaries, portraits, and old rooms become evidence rather than scenery.
I appreciated the way the house is presented as more than a setting. Brooks has a strong instinct for objects: Lladró figures, old furniture, sketchbooks, diaries, a missing vase, and the kind of heirlooms that seem to remember more than the living do. That auction-world texture gives the paranormal mystery a pleasing specificity. I also enjoyed Abby’s curiosity; she is not merely frightened by Isabella’s presence, but pulled toward her with compassion, which gives the ghost story an emotional hinge.
The romance between Abby and TJ has a familiar push-pull rhythm, sometimes heated, sometimes prickly, but it works best when their banter is interrupted by real danger or tenderness. The book is busy with ghosts, genealogy, murder, family business, romance, and a killer’s stalking presence, all of which compete for space, but that abundance gives it a pulpy, page-turning energy. I was especially drawn to the idea that history is not dead here; it is ambulatory, wounded, and occasionally mischievous.
This book is for readers who enjoy paranormal romantic suspense, small-town mystery, serial killer thrillers, and family secrets fiction. Fans of Heather Graham’s Krewe of Hunters novels may feel at home with the blend of romance, ghosts, investigation, and danger, though Brooks adds her own auction-house flavor. Mirror Image is a ghost story that feels old, mysterious, and alive.
Pages: 299 | ASIN : B0DYZPL83J
Haunted Day and Night
Haunted Day and Night follows Anastasia “Ana” Day, a young paralegal in York, Pennsylvania, who buys a crumbling 1887 Victorian row home that turns out to be a lot more crowded than the real-estate listing suggested. As she scrapes carpet, patches plaster, and fights with her controlling boyfriend Blake, strange things start happening in the house. Doors swing open on their own, cabinets sit wide open, a saw accident in the basement feels almost pushed, and messages appear in candy-apple red lipstick on the bathroom mirror that tell her to leave. Paranormal investigators eventually help her uncover the story of Eliza and Eva Klinger, former residents tied to women’s rights, whose restless presence nudges Ana away from toxic love and toward a stronger, more honest version of herself. The book blends haunted-house chills with a slow-burn story about walking out of unhealthy relationships and rethinking faith, family, and what it means to have a voice.
I really enjoyed how grounded the horror felt. The house is vivid in my mind, from the stained powder-blue carpet to the mahogany banister and those bay windows that keep catching Ana’s eye while everything else falls apart around her. The early scenes with Blake in the basement and the “LEAVE” message on the mirror genuinely made my stomach tighten, not because of jump scares, but because the danger feels emotional as much as supernatural. The writing leans descriptive and sometimes lingers on details or explanations longer than I personally wanted, yet that same patience helps the creepy moments land. I liked how the dialogue shows Blake’s gaslighting and need for control without turning him into a cartoon villain; I could imagine real conversations like the ones about “helping” her and “fixing” her house and life. Side characters like Bob the handyman and Ana’s coworkers give the story warmth and a hint of community, which makes the isolation in the house hit harder when things go sideways. At times, I wanted a bit tighter pacing, especially in the middle, but overall, the narrative flow kept me turning pages to see what the house would do next and what Ana would finally do about Blake.
What surprised me most was how much the book leans into questions about belief, the afterlife, and women’s agency, and how emotional that became for me as a reader. The ghosts are not just a spooky background; they are women with their own history of fighting for rights, and their presence feels like a protective line of ancestors standing behind Ana. I liked that she wrestles out loud with heaven, hell, reincarnation, and religious dogma, and that different characters give different answers without the story shoving one “right” view in my face. The connection between restoring the house and restoring her sense of self is pretty on the nose at times, yet it still worked for me because it felt sincere rather than gimmicky. I found the EVP scenes with Nate and his team strangely moving: hearing the names “Eliza” and “Eva” come through while Ana has just done her own historical digging gives the whole thing a bittersweet weight. The feminist thread, especially around women ignoring red flags, surviving control, and learning to trust their own instincts, hit me harder than the ghost plot at some points. Every now and then the message tilts a bit preachy, but I never doubted the heart behind it, and I appreciated that the spirits are there to empower Ana rather than just punish or terrorize her.
I would recommend Haunted Day and Night to readers who like their ghost stories emotional and character-driven, with more haunted feelings than graphic frights. If you enjoy old houses, slow-build supernatural tension, and stories about women untangling themselves from bad relationships while questioning inherited beliefs, this will probably be right up your alley. It is a good fit for book clubs that like to talk about themes like spiritual abuse, intuition, and generational female strength, and for fans of softer paranormal fiction who do not need constant jump scares. For everyone else who loves a creaky Victorian, a stubborn heroine, and ghosts who have opinions about patriarchy, I think this book will be a satisfying and sometimes surprisingly comforting read.
Pages: 400 | ASIN : B0BXJTKG4M
