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Supplicant
Supplicant is a science fiction novel with a strong dystopian streak, and its core idea is sharp right from the start: in Kip Cassino’s future, prayer has been measured, weaponized, and folded into the machinery of power itself. A researcher named Mason Pratt proves that directed prayer can preserve life, and centuries later that discovery has helped create a brutal world ruled by the long-lived elite, sustained by engineered “supplicants” who exist to pray for them without end. From there, the novel follows violence, political maneuvering, and the fate of KAX, one of the surviving supplicants, as the story turns that big speculative premise into something much more intimate and disturbing.
What I enjoyed most was the book’s willingness to go all in on its premise. Cassino does not treat the idea of prayer as a soft symbol or a vague spiritual backdrop. He treats it like infrastructure, like currency, like oil in the pipes of civilization. I found that fascinating. There is a real chill in the way the novel imagines faith being absorbed into systems of ownership, biotech, and hierarchy. At its best, the writing has that old-school speculative fiction energy where one bold idea keeps radiating outward and changing everything it touches. You can feel the author thinking through consequences, and I respected that. Even when the book gets blunt, it’s rarely lazy. It wants to ask what happens when something sacred gets processed by institutions until it becomes another tool for control.
The novel is vivid, sometimes almost brutally so, and it doesn’t flinch from cruelty. KAX’s storyline, especially, is hard to read at times. There were stretches where I admired the conviction behind the storytelling, and other stretches where the book leaned so hard into horror that it was shocking. I kept coming back to the fact that Cassino gives KAX an inner life, not just a role in the machinery of the plot. The book is full of excess, but underneath it I could feel a serious concern with dignity, survival, and the damage done when people are reduced to functions. That gave the novel weight. It kept it from feeling empty.
I’d recommend Supplicant most to readers who like speculative fiction that is idea-driven, dark, and unapologetically severe. If someone enjoys dystopian science fiction that wrestles with religion, power, bioengineering, and the moral cost of building a society on human dependence, this book will give them a lot to chew on. For people who appreciate ambitious genre fiction that is willing to be unsettling, provocative, and sometimes messy in pursuit of a big thought, I think it will leave a mark.
Pages: 326 | ASIN : B0GMK71BX2
SILENT TALKING My Kundalini Nightmare: My Memoir of Being Supernaturally Forced to Service: Channeling Entities in an Occult Sex Cult
Sometimes, even after a person escapes a horrific ordeal, silence still hangs over what happened. That silence can shape identity as surely as the experience itself. Speaking out may offer a path back to agency. Fear often stands in the way. Yet people are resilient. When conviction finally rises, a voice can return. This is one of those stories. And it feels, unmistakably, like a case where truth is stranger than fiction.
Silent Talking, My Kundalini Nightmare: My Memoir of Being Supernaturally Forced to Service: Channeling Entities in an Occult Sex Cult by Adria Chalfin is a chilling first-person memoir. Brief in length but striking in impact, it recounts formative experiences from the author’s life that unfolded several decades ago.
Chalfin describes beginning her adult life as a sexual being and finding that experience deeply unfulfilling. That dissatisfaction led her into the orbit of a captivating woman she met in Los Angeles in 1984. An aspiring filmmaker and writer, this woman was drawn to practices that can best be described as sexually sadistic. Chalfin became involved with her and, at first, believed she was discovering a deeper dimension of her own sexuality. The relationship seemed to promise insight, intensity, and understanding.
The opening sections of the memoir contain vivid, unsettling descriptions not only of the physical acts Chalfin was compelled to endure, but also of the psychological manipulation that surrounded them. Under the influence of a woman she believed to be her friend, Chalfin came to think she was channeling entities that overtook her body and left her trapped in a state of paralysis.
As the memoir progresses, it explains how she ultimately freed herself. Because the account is told firsthand, the experience feels immediate and deeply harrowing. What emerges is more than a story of suffering. It is a compelling portrait of how the search for selfhood can veer into dangerous territory and become profoundly toxic. At the same time, it stands as a cautionary tale and a testament to the extraordinary endurance of the human spirit.
Silent Talking is both disturbing and compelling, not simply because of the experiences it recounts, but because of the courage it takes to recount them at all. Chalfin’s memoir offers a haunting look at manipulation, vulnerability, and survival, while also underscoring the strength required to reclaim one’s voice after profound trauma. It leaves the reader unsettled, reflective, and keenly aware of how easily the search for meaning and connection can be twisted into something deeply destructive. As a personal testimony and a warning, the book is powerful, sobering, and difficult to forget.
Pages: 76 | ASIN : B0CTLQMRL9
Primordial, Beautiful and Dangerous
The Gap follows a group of migrants who are forced through the Darién Gap by traffickers, they encounter cruelty, hellish landscapes, and things that blur the line between survival and damnation. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
I had actually been in Panama at the time, preparing to move there with my wife and daughter. Unfortunately, that was an adventure we were unable to complete. I was flying home when the idea for ‘The Gap’ came to me. I had read about the human trafficking problem there, and done a bit of research on the area just out of curiosity. It’s such an interesting place. Primordial and beautiful and dangerous, like Earth must’ve been before mankind walked it. Like Skull Island in King Kong. And I pictured an obelisk, standing in a jungle, and that was it. I was off. I was fortunate; the story came to me complete on that plane, beginning, middle, and end. Many of the characters, the situations, everything. I didn’t have to fight that part, which was good. The languages were hard enough!
What first drew you to the Darién Gap as a setting for a horror novel?
The fact that no one had ever written any fiction about that area, and the timeliness of it. People were just starting to learn what the Darién Gap was, where it was, etc. The problem of human trafficking was growing in the Gap. And it’s so primordial; I wanted to write a Lovecraftian horror novel, and I couldn’t imagine a better setting for cosmic horror than the Darién. It’s dangerous just to go there, for real. The water is full of parasites and amoebas, the black palms have bacteria in their thorns, the snakes are all deadly, the insects are rampant, tropical diseases like malaria and dysentery are common, the heat is crushing, the rain is ceaseless, the guerillas will make you disappear. It’s a place human beings don’t belong. It seems a perfect setting for the worst possible things to happen.
The novel suggests that the line between human and monster is dangerously thin. Is that the core question you wanted readers to wrestle with?
I wanted to blur those lines, definitely. The creatures in ‘The Gap’ feel a real kinship with Pinche, the lead coyote in the story. He’s just like them; he uses people. When he needs to, he sacrifices them. He’s amoral, ruthless, but still human. It’s his willingness to bring people out there into the Gap that makes everything that follows possible. They monsters, the ACTUAL monsters, need a human conduit to act on their behalf, and Pinche is their man. He’s not aware of his complicity, but he’s doing their bidding in the end. In more real terms, the toll human trafficking takes on people in the the Darién Gap is horrific. The level of barbarism and depravity on display there on a daily basis would make most people wish they’d gone their whole life without seeing it. Anything awful that you can imagine occurring to human beings on this Earth does occur there. Rape, torture, kidnapping, murder, forced prostitution, forced drug smuggling. The buying and selling of men, women and children. Slavery, brutality, all relying on humanity to exist. It’s a hopeless, scary region. Setting a horror book there seemed like a natural fit. Half the work was done for me, because the setting is so dangerous in real life.
What reactions do you expect or hope for after someone finishes reading The Gap?
Well, I hope they tell all their friends and neighbors, and coworkers and complete strangers, even, to go right out and buy a copy. SEVERAL copies!! LOL! Honestly, I just hope they enjoyed the story and that the book scared them. Genuinely made them uncomfortable and grossed out. I think horror stories should be as scary as possible. If people buy a ticket for a roller coaster ride, they should get one! So, I hope my readers think the book did that, scared them and made them feel like they were immersed. Sweating, hungry, picking bugs off their necks as they trudge towards some unknown future. I know the inclusion of foreign languages can be challenging, but I wanted the reader to experience the trip the same as anyone in the book did. Coming to grips with differences in culture and language, having to adapt, just gives the reader that much more truth, in my opinion. I hope that anyone who reads ‘The Gap’ has never read another book like it!
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Website
They face unrelenting heat, humidity, venomous animals and insects, poisonous plants, starvation, thirst, disease. The most dangerous creatures are the ones the travelers hire, to guide them through this primeval place.
Migrants are routinely robbed, raped, murdered, or simply lured down ghost trails and left to die. Terror and death are a constant companion.
The migrants are the nameless, known only by their dialects or countries of origin.
Guided through the hellish landscape by three ruthless, amoral human traffickers, each step becomes a struggle for survival as the group discovers the nature of the men to whom they have entrusted their lives. The violence escalates with each passing day, erupting in a shocking act of brutality. And the worst was yet to come.
Awakening from a horrific vision of ancient rituals and malevolent gods, they find themselves in a dreamworld of eldritch gods, old ones from the depths of space and time itself. With four dead at dawn, in the shadow of a malformed and alien edifice beyond reason, the group sets out to find their way back.
Over the course of the next four days, each of them discover that some paths are better left untraveled. That a new life can take on many forms. And that some gaps were never meant to be crossed.
The Condemner: Arisen
The Condemner: Arisen is a dark fantasy novel that drops you straight into a world already splitting at the seams. It opens with Snip, a wiry and stubborn survivor, returning to a growing settlement ruled by his old friend Bobby, now “King Robert.” Their relationship is complicated, built on shared history and shaky trust, and things fall apart fast. A single moment of violence sends Snip running for his life, hunted by people who once saw him as family. From there, the story shifts to his struggle in the northern kingdom of Fanlon, where he gets tangled in cults, crime, and a hulking miner named Laf who saves him for reasons that feel as mysterious as they are unnerving. It’s gritty, moody, and full of momentum.
The writing has a lived-in roughness that good dark fantasy thrives on, but it also lets in these brief moments of softness, just enough to make the hard edges hit harder. Snip’s voice in particular is addictive. He’s flawed, cynical, sometimes funny without meaning to be, and painfully honest. His reactions feel grounded, even when the world around him swings between political ambition, daemon worship, and back-alley chaos. The author’s choice to center such a small man in such a dangerous world works beautifully. It makes everything feel bigger, heavier, more threatening. Even the early warehouse scene with the plague-masked revelers lingers like smoke in the lungs, strange and unsettling without feeling forced.
What surprised me most was how often the book made me feel two things at once. Curiosity and dread. Warmth and irritation. Admiration and exhaustion. The genre label here is firmly dark fantasy, but it’s got a human pulse running through it that keeps it from sinking into hopelessness. The ideas around power, loyalty, and the cost of survival show up in small gestures as often as in big confrontations. And whenever the world starts to feel too large, too mythical, the story tugs you back to the intimate perspective of someone who just wants to make it through the day with his ribs unbroken and his conscience mostly intact. That balance kept me turning pages.
If you like character-driven dark fantasy with grit, tension, and a touch of the uncanny, this book will be right up your alley. It’s especially suited for readers who enjoy morally tangled protagonists and worlds that don’t pretend to be kinder than they are. I’d recommend it to fans of grimdark and anyone who appreciates a fantasy story that feels personal even when the stakes swell to the size of nations.
Pages: 322 | ASIN : B0GC8R8LXF
The Great Dick: And the Dysfunctional Demon
Barry Maher’s The Great Dick and the Dysfunctional Demon starts with a Harvard professor in the late sixties riffing on Moby-Dick and The Great Gatsby and tossing off the idea of a modern version called “The Great Dick.” The story then jumps to 1982 and to Steve Witowski, a thirty-something screwup on the run from a botched drug deal who stumbles into a brutal assault near an old church on the California coast. He tries to help, kills the attacker in chaotic self-defense, and meets Victoria Fairchild, a luminous stranger with secrets of her own. From there, the book slides into a mix of road novel, noir, and supernatural thriller as Steve gets dragged deeper into a tangle of murder, occult relics, demons that may or may not be real, and his own talent for bad decisions.
Steve opens by flat-out calling himself an asshole, and the narration never lets him off the hook. His inner monologue is sharp, petty, funny, horny, scared, sometimes all in the same beat. The writing leans hard into sensory detail and low-level absurdity, like the reek of the Checker cab or the way cheap weed and an old song drift through the scene right before the attack. The fight on the embankment is brutal and weirdly intimate. Keys in his fist, Latin muttered at the worst possible moment, a truck roaring closer. I could feel the panic in my throat. When the book slows down afterward and lets Steve and Victoria talk, that same energy hums under the dialogue. The tone stays casual and foul-mouthed, yet there is a careful rhythm in the sentences. It feels tossed off in the way really worked-over prose often does. I found myself rereading lines just to enjoy how a joke landed or how an image curved at the end.
The book plays with failure and faith in a way that was thought-provoking. Steve keeps trying to patch his life with lies, quick exits, and a little dope, then suddenly he is neck deep in something that smells like capital E Evil. The dagger with the names of Jehovah, Ahura Mazda, Huitzilopochtli, and Asmodeus etched into the handle is such a great symbol for the book’s spiritual chaos. It pulls Jewish, Christian, Zoroastrian, and Aztec gods into the same creepy object and then hands it to a loser who just wanted to dodge a prison sentence. I liked how the story keeps asking what counts as sin, what counts as choice, and where simple cowardice shades into something darker. At the same time, it never reads like a lecture. It feels like a wild story that happens to drag big questions in behind it.
The book is full of sex, violence, and black humor, yet there are small, quiet moves that give it an unexpected emotional weight, little flashes of shame or tenderness or sheer exhausted relief. The setting, work around coastal California, and the abandoned church give the more supernatural turns a solid, grimy base to grow out of, which I really liked, and the whole thing runs on a kind of nervous, late-night momentum.
I would recommend The Great Dick and the Dysfunctional Demon to readers who enjoy flawed, talkative narrators, morally messy thrillers, and horror that leans into both jokes and genuine unease. If you like work in the vein of Carl Hiaasen or early Stephen King but wish it had more occult weirdness and a bit more sex, this will probably hit the spot. For anyone up for a fast, foul-mouthed, slightly unhinged ride that still has something on its mind, I think this book is absolutely worth the trip.
Pages: 464 | ASIN : B0FKWK2K7C
The Can Sack Ghost
The Can Sack Ghost is a collection of personal paranormal experiences that author John Russell has gathered across a lifetime of psychic work. The book moves through story after story with the ease of someone who has lived these moments so fully that they spill out of him. Russell blends ghost tales, philosophical reflections, humor, and straight talk. He jumps from haunted homes to guardian angels to strange synchronicities and encounters that linger in the mind. He frames it all with a simple aim. He wants readers to feel the mystery he’s lived with since childhood and to see the supernatural as both real and meaningful.
I found myself torn between fascination and a kind of wide-eyed wonder. Russell writes in a voice that feels conversational and familiar. He talks about spirits turning radios on during power outages and unseen guests laughing downstairs in the middle of the night. He writes about odd visitors on motorcycles, and even haunted Halloween candy bowls that carry on like they’re trying to join the conversation. What struck me most was not the strangeness of the events but the sincerity behind them. He tells these stories with such calm conviction that it’s hard not to lean in. At times I felt wrapped up in his world, and at other times I caught myself pausing to think, Did that really happen. His storytelling carries that kind of pull.
I appreciated the honesty that shows up when he talks about loss or doubt or the way people dismiss the unusual. Some chapters made me laugh because the moments were just so odd and human. Others made me feel a kind of quiet sadness. He can shift from soft nostalgia to sharp frustration, especially when he writes about so-called skeptics who refuse to believe their own eyes. He doesn’t pretend to be perfect. He doesn’t claim to always be right. Instead, he writes like a man who has lived a wild and unpredictable spiritual life and wants to share what he has learned. That earnestness makes the ideas really resonate with the reader.
I’d recommend The Can Sack Ghost to readers who enjoy true paranormal tales, personal memoirs with heart, or reflective stories told by someone who has walked a very unusual path. If you like books that make you sit back and say, huh, I didn’t see that coming, this one will hook you.
Pages: 156 | ASIN : B0FFLX1YCV
The Gap
The Gap is a survival-horror novel that follows a group of migrants forced through the Darién Gap under the control of brutal coyotes. The story begins with a claustrophobic march through the jungle, where the guides Pinche, Mosca, and Guapo terrorize the group, and the environment itself seems determined to finish the job. As the days stretch on, exhaustion, cruelty, and the strange dread creeping through the rainforest shape a journey that becomes as psychological as it is physical. By the time the story reaches its ending, the line between man and monster feels disturbingly thin.
The writing is direct and raw. The misery hits you in small, relentless details: ants marching through a dead boy’s mouth, water that can’t be drunk without risking agony, a jungle that seems to breathe around the characters. The choices the author makes feel purposeful, even when they’re harsh. Scenes of violence make your stomach churn. At the same time, there’s a strange tenderness woven in through the quiet connections the migrants form, even when they don’t share a language. Those brief human moments, scattered among the horror, make the whole thing feel heavier.
What surprised me most was how the novel blends realism with a slow, creeping sense of the uncanny. For a long stretch, it reads like pure survival fiction, the kind grounded in real-world danger. Then the edges blur. Nightmares start to feel prophetic. The violence becomes ritualistic. By the end, the horror has tilted into something almost mythic, and the shift feels earned because the world was already so brutal that monsters didn’t seem far-fetched. I kept thinking about how trauma can warp perception, how the mind tries to make meaning out of dread. The book never overexplains its stranger moments, and that restraint makes them even more intriguing.
The Gap is a gritty survival horror novel with psychological and supernatural undertones, and it leans hard into the reality that human beings can be more dangerous than any jungle. I’d recommend it to readers who appreciate dark, visceral fiction that doesn’t pull punches, especially those who like their horror rooted in real places and real suffering.
Pages: 356 | ASIN : B0DQJ85XCG
Coffee, Murder, and a Scone: A Mystic Brew Cafe Novel
Coffee, Murder, and a Scone is a paranormal romance mystery wrapped in the everyday life of Violet Blueblade, a sarcastic, introverted mystic who would rather hide behind a cup of coffee than deal with people. The story follows her quiet routines being shattered when vivid visions begin showing her a dangerously handsome man, murdered women, and her own death. As Violet tries to avoid the stranger who seems woven into her fate, she instead becomes tangled in a real haunting, a string of killings, and the sudden awakening of her nieces’ mystical abilities. What starts small in her cozy café grows into a full-on supernatural murder investigation that tests her gifts, her boundaries, and her heart.
The writing has this unfiltered, candid energy that makes Violet’s voice stand out right from the start. She’s funny without trying to be. She’s blunt in ways that feel real. And she never falls into the stereotypical “mystic woman” trope, which I appreciated. Even when the story plays with paranormal romance expectations, Violet keeps everything grounded through her tired sighs, her love of coffee, and her constant attempts to stay out of the spotlight despite literally seeing the future. The genre mix of paranormal romance and cozy mystery works better than I expected, especially because the author lets Violet’s anxiety, humor, and reluctant hopefulness steer the tone.
The story moves from slow daily life to emotional intensity quickly. The visions are vivid, the stakes high, and Steven walks the line between romantic interest and potential danger in a way that keeps the tension humming. There’s a nice thread about intuition, trust, and the cost of being someone who “sees too much.” The way Violet’s nieces slowly discover their own abilities added warmth and levity. Even the side characters, like chaotic Daisy and ever-present Reggie, bring texture to this small town where magic hides in plain sight. When the murder mystery deepens, the shift toward darker images surprised me, but it felt earned because Violet never stops narrating with that same blend of honesty and exhaustion.
By the end, what stuck with me wasn’t just the plot but Violet herself. She doubts, she jokes, she panics, she cares deeply, even when pretending she doesn’t. The paranormal elements give the book spark, but her relationships give it weight. If you like stories that fuse supernatural suspense with character-driven romance and a dash of cozy small-town charm, this book will land well. Fans of paranormal romance, witchy mysteries, and quirky-voiced narrators will probably enjoy it most. If you’re looking for a reflective, funny, slightly chaotic journey with heart, then pick up Coffee, Murder, and a Scone.
Pages: 254 | ASIN : B0FPQG2F2G
