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The Knight at the Top of the Stairs
The Knight at the Top of the Stairs is an unsettling and emotionally resonant piece of psychological horror masquerading as a classic coming-of-age story. Set against the turbulent backdrop of 1968, the novel centers on nine-year-old David, a boy whose world, already fractured by historical tragedy, becomes increasingly governed by mythic struggle. His childhood home in Pine Hill, Massachusetts, becomes a metaphysical battleground, haunted by the rigid, silent vigilance of the ‘Knight at the Top of the Stairs’ and actively threatened by the ‘Buzzing Man,’ a creature of sickening, honey-sweet temptation that seeks to corrupt loyalty and exploit fear, particularly through David’s older brother, Steven. The narrative intricately weaves real-world chaos with deep-rooted occult evil, forcing David to discard the safe, simple rules of childhood for the complex, brutal code of knighthood, compelling him toward a final confrontation where he must determine the price of protecting the helpless.
My strongest emotional response stems from the author’s ability to juxtapose the cosmic horror with such tangible, domestic fear. The novel’s central theme, that historical trauma and moral failure do not fade but become inherited burdens, is articulated through the question, “Will you stand, or will you kneel?” It is a choice that hangs over every character, particularly David, whose journey from naive fear to resolute courage is genuinely moving. The inclusion of real-life upheavals, such as the distant, televised horrors of the Vietnam War and national assassinations, anchors the internal, supernatural dread, suggesting that the true source of evil is not the entity in the cellar, but the willingness of men to be whispered into betrayal. I felt a palpable sense of dread build throughout the middle chapters, not just because of the encroaching monster, but because of the agonizing realization that David’s own family history is intrinsically bound to this ancient conflict, leaving me utterly immersed in the moral weight of his inheritance.
The craftsmanship of the writing itself is exceptional. The prose possesses a rare lyrical intensity that elevates the narrative beyond typical genre fare. Author Brett Bacon employs an effective rhythm, utilizing both sharply concise sentences and sweeping, descriptive passages to maintain an almost unbearable tension. The voices of the children are rendered with startling clarity. David’s attempts to form new “rules” to govern the terrifying unknown, Kevin’s wide-eyed innocence and subsequent psychic sensitivity, and Steven’s rapid, chilling descent into malevolence, all felt tragically real. I found myself sympathetic to David’s father, whose own buried wartime experiences mirror the ancient knight’s legacy, adding layers of sorrow to the final, necessary fight. It is a text that demands, and rewards, careful reading.
The Knight at the Top of the Stairs is a dark and philosophical powerhouse that successfully merges the psychological depth of a domestic drama with the existential threat of epic fantasy. I highly recommend it to readers who appreciate character-driven horror that focuses less on jump scares and more on the slow, corrosive influence of evil, particularly fans of Stephen King’s early, atmospheric works (like It) or those who enjoy stories about inherited guilt and the cost of moral vigilance.
Pages: 225 | ASIN : B0FVP5KP5L
My Twelve-Year-Old Wife
My Twelve-Year Old Wife is a dark, time-bending thriller about love, grief, and the unrelenting pull of fate. It follows Dan Fox, a husband desperate to find his missing wife, Celia, only to have a twelve-year-old girl appear at his door claiming to be her. What begins as a mystery about disappearance spirals into something stranger, a story that slips between timelines and emotions, showing how trauma, memory, and devotion can warp across the years. The book plays with horror and science fiction but stays grounded in its aching humanity. Each chapter peels back another layer of the impossible, until the reader is as disoriented and haunted as Dan himself.
The writing is cinematic and unnerving, full of tight, fast sentences and moments that hit like a punch. I could feel Dan’s confusion and fear, his disbelief when he’s confronted with a version of his wife that shouldn’t exist. The story toys with logic but never loses its emotional truth. The prose has this eerie stillness, a rhythm that feels like breathing in the dark, and the pacing moves between slow dread and heart-hammering tension. I caught myself whispering “what?” out loud more than once, which almost never happens when I read. The author’s control over mood and momentum is impressive. Even when scenes leaned into the surreal, the characters kept me anchored.
But what hit me hardest wasn’t the time travel or the mystery, it was the loneliness. Beneath the weirdness, this is a love story about guilt and obsession. Dan’s desperation feels raw and a little ugly, and Celia’s time-fractured existence is both tragic and strange. Their connection stretches and twists, but it never breaks. I could sense how much the author wanted to explore what happens when love is stronger than reality itself. At times, the dialogue can feel blunt, but it works here, it fits people who are terrified and grasping for sense in the middle of madness.
My Twelve-Year Old Wife is for readers who like their stories unsettling, who don’t mind questioning what’s real and what’s imagined. If you liked Dark, Arrival, or The Time Traveler’s Wife but wished they were more psychological and eerie, this book is for you. It’s weird, bold, and relatable.
Pages: 194 | ASIN : B0FD87Y85R
If We’re Brave Enough
Filaments follows a professor returning to her small hometown to investigate her mother’s strange behavior that is linked to two men’s disappearances and a supernatural force connected to her family. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
I always begin with setting. For this story, I immersed myself in scientific literature about bogs, and the narrative naturally grew from there. During my research, I discovered Sax-Zim Bog in Minnesota—a place that felt like the perfect backdrop for the tale to unfold. From that foundation, I shaped the characters to feel both relatable and grounded, anchoring them in the eerie beauty of the landscape.
What are some things that you find interesting about the human condition that you think make for great fiction?
Our lives run in parallel, each seemingly separate, yet deeply intertwined. We often believe ourselves to be isolated individuals, but in truth, we are threads in a vast, living ecosystem. The suffering we endure is not ours alone—it echoes and reverberates in ways we may never fully comprehend.
Filaments, I felt, was about generational trauma, addiction, and identity. What is one thing that you hope readers take away from the story?
The narratives we craft about ourselves are often the hardest to unravel. Yet becoming our true self is possible—if we’re brave enough to dismantle the facade we’ve built. It takes courage to confront the stories we’ve clung to, but in doing so, we make space for authenticity to emerge.
What is the next book that you are working on, and when can your fans expect it to be out?
I’m beyond excited about my next book! It leans a bit more into sci-fi, but the threads that define my writing style remain firmly in place. This story will spotlight female-driven narratives, unfolding within a world that breathes life into their journeys—infused with a touch of quiet horror. I’m aiming to publish next year, and I can’t wait to share it with you.
Author Links: Amazon | GoodReads
Drawn back to her Minnesota small town, Thea begins to unravel the mystery behind her mother’s erratic behavior and two men’s disappearances. She unknowingly awakens a force that has patiently waited in the shadows for her return. With each new revelation, Thea’s accosted by her small town’s prejudice and simmering bitterness of former friends. What started out as a trip to save her mother becomes a fight for her own survival and sanity.
They Could Be Saviors
They Could Be Saviors is a wild and thought-provoking novel that blends psychological suspense with biting social critique. The story follows a group of billionaires kidnapped by a secret network of women, psychedelic therapists who believe the only way to save the world is to dismantle the egos of the men destroying it. As the captives awaken inside a high-tech facility designed for “healing,” the line between therapy and punishment blurs. It’s a heady mix of moral reckoning, hallucinatory experience, and social rebellion wrapped inside an eerie psychological thriller.
The premise sounds almost absurd at first, but author Diana Colleen sells it with conviction. Her prose crackles with sharp edges, alternating between satire and sincerity. The early chapters, especially those inside Josh Latham’s ruthless corporate mind, feel uncomfortably real. There’s a cold humor in watching a man who’s weaponized “sustainability” for profit wake up in a place that forces him to face himself. The writing feels cinematic yet claustrophobic, like being locked inside someone’s fever dream. At times, I felt disturbed, at others, unexpectedly moved. The story doesn’t let you sit comfortably, it pokes, prods, and dares you to care about people you’d rather despise.
What really grabbed me were the emotional undercurrents beneath all the sci-fi and social commentary. Mel, the therapist leading the operation, is a fascinating mess of empathy and control. Her struggle with addiction, grief, and idealism feels painfully human. I found myself torn between admiring her conviction and fearing her delusion. The women’s mission, noble on paper, curdles into something obsessive. Still, I couldn’t look away. The book doesn’t spoon-feed morals. It leaves you wrestling with big, ugly questions about power, redemption, and what “saving” the world might actually cost. The language swings from lyrical to brutal, sometimes in the same paragraph, which made it both exhausting and exhilarating to read.
If you like your fiction clean and uplifting, this one might rattle you. But if you’re ready for a raw, provocative trip into the psyche of our times, this book is worth every page. I’d recommend They Could Be Saviors to readers who crave stories that take risks and don’t shy away from moral gray zones. Fans of Black Mirror, Margaret Atwood, or Chuck Palahniuk will probably devour it.
Pages: 349 | ASIN : B0FP5X958N
The Grotesque
The Grotesque is a dark novel that dives headfirst into trauma, obsession, and the blurred edges between reality and delusion. The story shifts perspectives between characters who are each broken in their own ways. Katrina, a dancer clawing through rejection and danger. Jared, a haunted figure battling inner demons and visions that blur into nightmares. And Michael, a man desperate to control his own narrative. Their paths intersect in a cityscape soaked with menace, hallucination, and fleeting moments of hope. What begins as a tense character study unravels into something stranger, almost dreamlike, where memory and horror bleed together and nothing feels entirely safe.
The writing has a raw, abrasive energy, like it’s trying to peel back a layer of skin. I couldn’t look away. Foy writes with an eye for the grotesque, both in the literal violence that shadows the characters and in the quiet cruelties they turn inward on themselves. Some scenes made me tense up, almost angry, but that anger was directed at the world he was showing me, not at the prose. The language is sharp, cynical, often bitterly funny, and it fits the mood. It’s not elegant in a polished sense, but it’s alive, and I felt its pulse.
There were moments I loved too. Small sparks of connection, odd flashes of warmth, even in the middle of so much darkness. Those moments felt like stolen breaths, like someone opening a window in a suffocating room. They didn’t last long, but they mattered.
Reading The Grotesque felt to me like stepping into the fractured, hallucinatory world of American Psycho, only with more aching humanity flickering beneath the horror. I’d recommend The Grotesque to readers who aren’t afraid of stories that claw under the skin. If you want tidy resolutions or comforting escapes, this isn’t your book. But if you’re drawn to characters who stumble through shadow and survive in fragments, and if you’re willing to sit with unease, you’ll find something here that lingers.
Pages: 348 | ASIN : B0FPLW71S1
The Storyline That Evolved
A Jericho’s Cobble Miscellany features a variety of voices whose stories are stitched together to form the layered history of a small town. What was the inspiration behind this book?
To properly tell multiple tales, it seemed important to use a variety of voices and characters. A town – especially a small town — is people as individuals, it is not a monolithic entity. I researched in many towns during the writing of an earlier book, The Most Beautiful Villages of New England, and in my volunteer work in helping establish the Upper Housatonic Valley National Heritage Area, which spans two states, and being a trustee of the Connecticut Humanities Council, for which I traveled widely and visited many small towns.
Do you have a storyline in your book that stands out as a favorite? One that was particularly enjoyable to write?
The book has multiple storylines, dozens of them, and their interweaving is at the heart of the book. I particularly liked the storyline that evolved as I wrote, about the friendship of the young woman director of a small historic house/museum, and the much older woman civic association trustee who team up to save it from being closed, and in so doing discover a lot about themselves that they had not known.
I enjoyed the shifts in writing. Why was it important for you to use more than one form of storytelling?
Multiple characters and situations demanded their stories be told and personalities showcased in as many forums, such as newspaper columns, diaries, playlets, brochures, a playground nursery rhyme, poems, oral history transcripts, state markers, and other forms.
What is the next book you are working on, and when will it be available?
I’m in the midst of writing it. Please see my recent novels, The Memory of the Minotaur and Echoes, Or the Insistence of Memory, both available on Amazon.
Author Links: Website
Hard-Won Epiphanies
Secret Seeds follows a young girl and her mother who are trapped in an abusive home as they break free and wind up in an uncertain world of strangers in a cult-like community. Were you able to achieve everything you wanted with the characters in the novel?
My five novels center on redemption through courage and perseverance, which bring hard-won epiphanies. In Secret Seeds, I was satisfied with the character development, which also brought me personal insights on the plight of the undocumented.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
When I began the novel, the headlines were filled with stories of aliens – both human and otherwise. Illegal immigration is an emotional topic, and I wanted to craft a heartfelt portrayal to cast the issue in human terms. We also took a trip to Alaska, and the lifecycle of sockeye salmon and how they fight to make the journey home to spawn resonated with me. Only a small percentage make it home, but none get lost due to their perseverance, and I incorporated this theme in the story.
What is the next book that you are working on, and when can your fans expect it to be out?
I am currently working on a medical thriller and hope to have it scheduled for release in the next year or so.
Author Links: GoodReads | Amazon
Gabrielle Ruiz, an undocumented migrant farm worker, follows the harvest until she and Luis leave the fields to give their unborn child a better life. But after tragedy strikes, Gabrielle finds herself alone and renounced by her father. Adrift, she meets Dale, a beacon of hope who offers her and her infant daughter, Olivia, a chance at a new beginning. After following him to Maine, they welcome a son. But over the years, Dale’s abuse traps Gabrielle and Olivia. Salvation appears in the enigmatic Rezi, who proposes a daring escape — a plan shrouded in secrecy, promising sanctuary for Olivia within a hidden community. As Gabrielle places her trust in Rezi, she ignites a tempest with Dale and has Olivia questioning whether her protectors are from a twisted cult or messengers from another realm.
In a world where freedom is fragile, Gabrielle’s tenacity and her children’s coming-of-age journeys lead them to question what truly defines “home.”
Mind The Blinds
Mind the Blinds follows Elyas, a seventeen-year-old boy living in Nigeria, who struggles with alexithymia and antisocial personality disorder while navigating a life marked by family violence, peer pressure, and dangerous encounters. What begins as a portrait of a boy hardened by neglect and abuse quickly turns into a tense psychological thriller. Elyas gets pulled deeper into violence, secrecy, and survival, while detectives and other students circle closer to the truth. The story balances the harsh realities of growing up in a fractured home with the moral and emotional weight of choices that can never be undone.
I found the writing bold and unflinching. It didn’t shy away from difficult moments, whether it was domestic abuse, corruption, or the chilling matter-of-factness with which Elyas recounts his killings. At times, I felt unsettled, almost claustrophobic, because the story is told in a way that makes you live inside his head. The raw honesty of his voice made me both want to recoil and lean in closer. It’s rare to see a book explore a young narrator with such a cold lens and still leave space for flashes of vulnerability, especially in his care for his younger brother.
Long descriptions of school life, conversations, and side characters slowed down the story as the tension was building. Still, those slower parts gave the book a certain rhythm, like a calm before the storm, and when the violence returned, it felt even more jarring. The contrast worked.
By the time I closed the book, I felt both rattled and impressed. It’s not a story that leaves you with peace of mind, but that’s the point. Mind the Blinds is best for readers who like dark psychological fiction, stories that question morality, and books that sit with you long after you’re done. If you’re willing to be disturbed, challenged, and even a little haunted, it’s well worth the read.
Pages: 264 | ASIN : B0DK6MVGG7
LITERARY TITAN 