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Literary Titan Silver Book Award
Celebrating the brilliance of outstanding authors who have captivated us with their skillful prose, engaging narratives, and compelling real and imagined characters. We recognize books that stand out for their innovative storytelling and insightful exploration of truth and fiction. Join us in honoring the dedication and skill of these remarkable authors as we celebrate the diverse and rich worlds they’ve brought to life, whether through the realm of imagination or the lens of reality.
Award Recipients
Crescent City Requiem by Brian Kaufman
The Suicide Council by Victer Hugo Basurco
Departure from Innocence by WILLIAM WILSON
Steel & Ballast by Markella Kara
Visit the Literary Titan Book Awards page to see award information.
Fangs for Hire: A Story of the Vampire Larisa Tokar
Fangs for Hire is a fast-moving blend of vampire fiction, wartime drama, and espionage thriller. Its narrator, Larisa Tokar, is a century-old vampire who works as a freelance operative for intelligence agencies, using her supernatural strength, heightened senses, voice imitation, and access to blood memories to pursue dangerous targets. The story alternates between her present-day missions in Paris and her youth in Nazi-occupied Minsk, where she joins the resistance, is betrayed, publicly executed, and resurrected through the intervention of the ancient vampire Andrei Rumin. That structure gives the novella two distinct energies: the brisk confidence of a supernatural spy adventure and the heavier emotional pull of an origin story shaped by war, loss, and survival.
Larisa is the book’s center of gravity, and her blunt, self-assured narration makes her easy to understand even when her actions are ruthless. She enjoys money, travel, history, good company, and the practical advantages of immortality, but she also carries lasting grief over her parents, her friends, and the destruction of the life she expected to have. Her moral code is simple and consistently applied: protect innocent people and reserve violence for those she believes have earned it. That certainty gives the action a pulpy, vigilante quality, while her memories of occupation and execution add a more personal motive beneath the swagger. Her confrontation with Roman Starenko, the officer who betrayed her, brings those sides together in a scene driven by anger, political disillusionment, and long-delayed revenge.
The novella is especially interested in building a complete vampire society. The Urtama have elders, laws, banks, donors, safe houses, political networks, and punishments for anyone who threatens their secrecy. This world feels less like Gothic folklore and more like an international organization that has quietly adapted to every century. The book also spends considerable time on military and political history, often pausing the immediate story to discuss Soviet repression, the German invasion, Napoleon, resistance movements, and the changing shape of Europe. Readers who enjoy historical detail may find this scope rewarding, though the amount of explanation sometimes slows the suspense. While the story could benefit from careful editing, its directness gives it the feeling of Larisa telling her remarkable life story exactly as she remembers it.
I’d recommend Fangs for Hire most strongly to readers who like alternate-history adventures, powerful antiheroines, detailed vampire lore, and action stories with a firm moral divide between predators and their chosen prey. It should also appeal to military-history fans who enjoy seeing real events woven into supernatural fiction. The violence is graphic, and the book includes sexual material, so it’s best suited to adult readers. At heart, this is the story of a young woman whose first life is destroyed by war and whose second life becomes an ongoing campaign against cruelty. By the final pages, Larisa’s immortality feels both like a weapon and a responsibility, leaving her with endless time to remember the past, enjoy the present, and decide what kind of future she’ll help create.
Pages: 145 | ASIN : B0H68MHWVP
The Galaxy of Kon-Ki: Waking on Earth
Colin Nimer’s The Galaxy of Kon-Ki: Waking on Earth is an energetic science-fantasy adventure that blends martial arts, alien civilizations, supernatural abilities, military training, and body-horror creatures into one large-scale story. The novel begins with a dangerous Devi hunt before shifting its attention to Eiki Akihiro, a talented young martial artist whose recurring dreams and unusual powers connect him to a much bigger universe. Once Eiki is recruited aboard the Lóuchuán, the book expands into a team-based adventure filled with training, rivalries, hidden agendas, and increasingly dangerous missions. It’s a big book with a big imagination, and it clearly wants readers to settle into its world for the long haul.
Eiki’s journey gives the story its emotional center. He’s skilled and determined, but he’s also impatient, insecure, and intensely focused on proving himself. His relationship with Katsu, his godfather and martial arts teacher, brings warmth to the early chapters and gives real weight to the choices Eiki makes later. David, Sìrù, Màn-Ruì, Taye, and the rest of the crew add different personalities and pressures, so the story often feels like an ensemble drama. The characters argue, tease each other, make painful mistakes, and carry personal struggles into combat. That emotional messiness makes the crew feel alive, especially when loyalty and ambition start pulling them in different directions.
The novel’s closest popular comparison may be Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson books. Both stories take a young person with unexplained abilities, reveal a hidden world operating alongside ordinary life, and surround the hero with mentors, rivals, monsters, and a larger destiny. Nimer’s approach has more of a martial arts and military flavor, though, with detailed combat systems, formal ranks, training exercises, and a large multicultural cast. Kon-Ki itself works as both a source of power and a reflection of identity, which gives the action a personal dimension. The fight scenes are highly choreographed and often inventive, although the level of physical detail can slow the pace when several battles arrive close together.
What stayed with me most was the book’s interest in growth through discipline. Characters don’t simply unlock power and become unstoppable. They train, fail, lose control, hurt people, and face the consequences. The story also leaves plenty of mysteries open, particularly around Eiki’s lineage, David’s changing abilities, the Devi-A, and the larger forces moving behind Kuno’s mission. That makes Waking on Earth feel like the opening movement of a much broader saga. Readers who enjoy expansive worldbuilding, martial arts action, alien cultures, complicated friendships, and stories that spend time explaining how their powers work will find a lot to dig into here.
Pages: 400
Crescent City Requiem
Brian Kaufman’s Crescent City Requiem is a slow-burning psychological horror novel that blends private-eye fiction, blues history, New Orleans folklore, and supernatural dread. Francis Mallory, a hard-drinking investigator and amateur blues musician, accepts an unusual assignment: locate a supposedly haunted recording by Ike Zimmerman, the guitarist credited with helping Robert Johnson master his craft. The song, “Seven Moons,” is rumored to drive anyone who hears it toward suicide. What begins as a hunt through the secretive world of rare-record collectors gradually expands into a story about obsession, racial history, voodoo traditions, personal guilt, and the possibility that one piece of music can open a door that should remain closed.
Mallory gives the novel its bruised, uneasy center. He’s observant, intelligent, self-destructive, and often difficult to like, but his harshness is complicated by moments of generosity and genuine tenderness. His relationship with Grace, the sharp young woman who unexpectedly becomes his assistant, brings energy and warmth to the investigation. Their connection also becomes increasingly uncomfortable, tangled, and morally fraught, which fits a novel so concerned with the excuses people make for their worst choices. Kaufman doesn’t treat Mallory’s damage as a charming detective quirk. His drinking, violence, grief, and hunger for redemption shape nearly every decision he makes.
The strongest element is the atmosphere. New Orleans feels crowded, damp, musical, decaying, and fully inhabited. Record shops, bars, restaurants, cemeteries, alleys, street musicians, tourists, and local legends all feed into the book’s mounting sense of unease. The blues material is equally important, giving the mystery a convincing foundation and tying the supernatural threat to questions of exploitation, ownership, race, and cultural memory. The pace is deliberate, with plenty of conversations, historical detail, and philosophical reflection between the major turns. Some passages linger longer than necessary, and Mallory’s repeated thoughts about guilt and evil can become heavy, but that repetition also creates the feeling of a man circling an answer he’s afraid to face.
I’d recommend Crescent City Requiem to readers who enjoy character-driven horror, morally compromised investigators, Southern Gothic settings, and mysteries that unfold through mood and conversation as much as action. Blues fans and readers fascinated by rare records will find an extra layer to appreciate, while anyone drawn to ambiguous supernatural fiction should enjoy the way the book keeps psychological collapse and genuine haunting in tension. It’s a dark, patient novel that asks whether evil comes from spirits, systems, other people, or the choices we keep making after we know better.
The Unknown
Makanda centers on a crime scene investigator investigating a series of mutilated bodies dating back to 1973 in a region where local legend, cryptid folklore, and biological terror blur into nightmare. Where did the idea behind this story come from?
There exist real police reports and other supporting documents from 1973 from people who saw the Big Muddy Monster firsthand. Funnily enough, I’m acquainted with one of several people who saw the monster and were interviewed by the local Murphysboro police department (though I didn’t find that out until after I’d written my novel). I took eyewitness accounts and local legend and combined them with violence, gore, fear, suspense, and a giant dash of biology to add my own nefarious spin onto the landscape and unsuspecting folks of southern Illinois.
Giant City State Park becomes almost a character itself in the story. How did the landscape and atmosphere of southern Illinois shape the tone and direction of the novel?
Giant City State Park is a legitimate character in real life. The park is huge and beautiful. Every day, folks come from all over the world to visit the park and its gorgeous winding trails, verdant expanse, and serene landscape. The Shawnee National Forest here in southern Illinois is exceptionally large, with a varied terrain of rock formations, woods, creeks, wetlands, and flora and fauna. The park is peaceful yet dark and brooding come sundown. It’s quite atmospheric in many ways.
The idea of a local legend returning in a new form is central to Makanda. What do you hope readers take away about the relationship between myths, fear, and the unknown?
I hope that folks understand that while times change, people change, and landscapes change, our cemented fears rarely change. Sure, it can be said that myths change – which they do (that’s part of the allure of our myths and legends). But at the end of the day, those myths, fears, and the unknown rarely change in our minds. The circumstances that cause that fear may change, but the idea behind the fear remains the same. We will always be afraid of the what-ifs. We will always be afraid of the unknown. And we will always be afraid of the boogeyman in whatever form it manifests itself. Don’t believe me? Go and read IT by Stephen King. That book will change your mind.
What is the next book you are working on, and when will it be available?
I write all the time. Even on days that I’m physically and mentally drained, I have to write so as to offer my mind some respite from itself. I refer to the endless library of information inside my mind as my Hoard. Inside my Hoard are a plethora of folks, and the only thing they require to become real and substantial is my unwavering, incessant need to write. If I write, those folks inside my Hoard become quiet. If they’re quiet, I’m allowed a smidgeon of peace from time to time. With that said, I have enough written works to release one novel every year or two for the next two decades. However, as it currently stands, I do not yet know what book will be released next. I’ll pray to God for clarity on what comes next. But I will say that I’m leaning towards a collection of short stories based solely on southern Missouri during the summer. Whatever book comes next will be within the next year and a half to two years.
Author Links: GoodReads | Amazon
When mutilated hikers begin turning up in Giant City State Park, crime scene investigator Janice Redfield suspects the truth is far worse than an animal attack. Decades earlier, locals whispered about the Big Muddy Monster—a towering nightmare blamed for a string of brutal deaths in 1973. Now the legend is waking up.
Born from a microscopic parasite older than history, the creature grows smarter and deadlier with every host it consumes—cricket, snake, deer, man—until it becomes a towering apex predator with a hunger for perfection. As blood floods forests, classrooms, and homes, science, obsession, and violence collide.
Makanda is a relentless descent into body horror, biological terror, and vivid brutality—where survival may demand the unthinkable, and mercy comes at the price of sanity.
The Ghost Moth
Leslie Garland’s The Ghost Moth: A Red Grouse Tale is a layered supernatural novel built around the oldest kind of storytelling setup: friends gathered in a pub while one of them shares a strange tale. Joe begins reading from an obscure book of local legends, drawing his listeners into the story of Adam Callow, a shy young novice who enters Black Acres Monastery in 1535. As Joe reads, the historical legend starts bleeding into his own family’s life, especially after a visit to the cave described in the book. That combination of fireside storytelling, local folklore and creeping personal danger gives the novel its distinctive shape.
The historical sections are rich with detail about monastic life, religious discipline and the fears surrounding temptation, heresy and witchcraft. Adam’s struggle is both spiritual and painfully human. He’s caught between Prior Obscurant’s harsh theology, McBane’s cruelty, Brother La Roche’s compassion and the mysterious Eve Lilith, whose name hints at the larger myth Garland is steadily building. The story spends plenty of time discussing faith, sexuality, guilt and institutional power, so the supernatural elements grow out of the characters’ beliefs rather than simply appearing as shocks. That makes the horror feel psychological before it becomes openly uncanny.
The book reminded me of Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, particularly in its use of a medieval religious setting to explore who controls truth and how belief can be twisted into authority. Garland’s style is more like a pub storyteller than Eco’s scholarly detective narrative, and he often pauses to explain history, theology or folklore directly to the reader. There’s also a touch of M. R. James in the cursed manuscript, the ancient landscape and the unsettling sense that investigating an old legend can awaken something very present. Garland blends those influences with earthy humor and a narrator who knows he’s telling a tale to friends over drinks.
What stayed with me most was the way Adam’s tragedy echoes through Joe’s modern marriage. The connections between Eve, Lilith, the ghost moth and Joe’s wife Elizabeth gradually turn a historical legend into a story about possession, family and the danger of recognizing the truth too late. The novel has the loose, digressive rhythm of an enthusiastic storyteller who wants to share every fascinating detail he’s uncovered, but that voice also gives it warmth and personality. The Ghost Moth is an ambitious folk-horror tale about desire, repression and ancient patterns repeating themselves, told with the confidence of someone leaning across a pub table and insisting that every word really happened.
Pages: 322 | ASIN: 1911761021
Stormfront Rising
Stormfront Rising is a big, rowdy fantasy adventure built around danger, discovery, and the kind of companionship that’s forged when everyone is wet, wounded, outnumbered, and still cracking jokes. Jason N. Long opens with a ship caught in an unnatural storm, purple lightning crawling across the sky, and a kraken turning disaster into outright catastrophe. From there, the novel keeps widening its horizon, drawing readers into a world of rival empires, elemental dragons, dangerous magic, strange oceans, and cities with histories that feel much larger than the characters passing through them. The maps, faction guide, and detailed systems of measurement reinforce the sense that this is a fully imagined place.
The book’s real engine, though, is its band of survivors. Leo, Zoe, Thorn, Ben, Toby, and the wider cast have distinct voices, skills, and emotional burdens, and their relationships give the story its warmth. Leo’s practical instincts, Zoe’s dangerous confidence, Thorn’s enormous personality, and Ben’s anxious intelligence create a lively rhythm that carries through the quieter stretches as well as the fights. Their banter can be filthy, affectionate, cruel, and unexpectedly tender, often within the same conversation. That mix makes them feel less like a polished heroic fellowship and more like people who’ve learned to love one another while standing knee-deep in trouble.
Long approaches fantasy with a tinkerer’s enthusiasm. Weapons have mechanisms, magic has consequences, cultures have customs, and politics shape nearly every choice. The story blends seafaring adventure, military fantasy, dark comedy, cosmic speculation, and dragon mythology into something proudly excessive and deeply personal. Its action is physical and graphic, but the violence has weight because the characters carry their losses forward. Even the jokes often sit beside grief, fear, or loyalty, which gives the novel an emotional texture beneath all the blood, monsters, and spectacle. The author’s acknowledgement of his “three-body problem” and “quantum queries” hints at the scientific curiosity running beneath the fantasy framework.
By the time its many conflicts converge, Stormfront Rising feels like the opening movement of a saga that has been living in its author’s imagination for years. It’s ambitious, unruly, funny, violent, and sincere, with a world large enough to reward readers who enjoy learning names, factions, histories, and rules as they travel. Most importantly, it understands that epic fantasy works best when the fate of nations is tied to people we’d willingly follow into a storm.
Pages: 471 | ASIN : B0GXFGQ2BM
