Ohio Fear Masters
Perhaps because I’ve lived in Ohio for most of my life, I have a special fondness for the writers who live and work here. They work as hard as any other write and frequently don’t get the recognition they deserve. This is my meager contribution to the correction of that situation. The following authors either live here in Ohio or were born, grew up and have since moved away.
This list is alphabetical by the author’s last name.
 Tapestry of Dark Souls  |
Tapestry of Dark Souls (Ravenloft: The Covenant)Author: Bergstrom, Elaine |
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Ohio Connection: Elaine Bergstrom was born and grew up in the Cleveland area. Based upon the Ravenloft game world developed by Wizards of the Coast for their Dungeons and Dragons Role-Playing Game, each book in the Ravenloft series is an stand alone story of gothic horror. A haunting tale of love, and the power of evil to corrupt and betray. A young man, raised in a monastary, his parents victims of a tapestry of ancient evil, goes in search of love and life beyond the walls. But werewolves and worse stalk the land, and when he returns to release his father from the tapestry’s confines, he brings the Silverlord back to a world that has not seen him for centuries. |
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 Coffin County  |
Coffin CountyAuthor: Braunbeck, Gary A. |
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Ohio Connection: Gary A. Braunbeck was born in Newark, Ohio and currently lives in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and fellow writer Lucy A. Snyder
The small town of Cedar Hill is no stranger to tragedy and terror. Nearly two centuries ago, when the area was first settled, a gruesome mass murder baptized the town with blood. More recently there was the Great Fire, the notorious night the casket factory burned down, taking an entire neighborhood with it. But no one in Cedar Hill can be prepared for what is to come — shocking murders that grow more horrendous with each victim, and a trail of taunting clues that point to the past . . . and to an old, abandoned graveyard. |
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 Number 121 to Pennsylvania  |
Number 121 to Pennsylvania and OthersAuthor: Burke, Kealan Patrick |
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The lonesome sound of a long forgotten train draws an old man to memories of a horrific past . . . A journalist makes the mistake of visiting a website where real-life executions are the order of the day . . . At the foot of an old tree, an insidious evil awaits two boys digging for treasure . . . A browbeaten salesman finds hope and a possible escape from the banality of his world when he returns home to find a fairytale beanstalk sprouting from his garden . . . A man resists the social pressure to quit smoking and puts himself at an unimaginable risk . . . A high school student accepts a dare to ask out the ugliest girl in school and enters a world of pain and violence . . . A bunch of barflies doomed to murder sinners get together for one last drink in a dying town . . . These are some of the passengers, headed for a ride through the dark uncharted regions of the heart and mind, on a train unbound by any law but its own. All Aboard The Number 121 to Pennsylvania. There will be no stops. Table of Contents:
Saturday Night At Eddie’s was developed into a full novel titled Currency of Souls. It also contains the short story and screenplay versions of Mr. Goodnight. The book includes author’s notes about the stories within. |
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 Nights Of Sin  |
Nights of Sin (The Ballad of Kirin Widowmaker #2)Author: Cook, Matthew |
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The besieged Imperial City lies inside the massive wall of the Armitage; outside, the attacking Mor have laid waste to most of the land. The Imperial Court seems unaware of their peril, but Kirin and Lia — who have barely survived the Mor and made their way to the City — know the danger all too well! When Kirin discovers a necromancer who seems to possess her power over blood, she hopes he can help her understand her strange magic. Meanwhile, the deadly Mor are assaulting the walls of the city that shelters them. |
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 Fountain Society  |
Fountain SocietyAuthor: Craven, Wes |
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Ohio Connection: Wesley Earl Craven was born and grew up in Cleveland, Ohio.
As a film director, Wes Craven gave you nightmares and made you scream. As a novelist, he’ll thrill you with a shocking tale born in cutting-edge science and bred in eternal fear. Hope for an ingenious superweapon is dying as physicist Peter Jance’s health fails. But with one brilliant, controversial, and top-secret operation, new life is granted: . . . to the U.S. military’s dream defense system . . . to a torrid love triangle transcending time and memory . . . and to a cold and unspeakable government conspiracy to create an elite circle of immortals. |
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 Shatterday  |
ShatterdayAuthor: Ellison, Harlan |
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Ohio Connection: Harlan Ellison was born and grew up in Cleveland, Ohio.
Shatterday is a revolutionary classic from Harlan Ellison, science fiction’s most controversial author. This collection of sixteen visionary stories remains as scathing and influential today as when it was initially published. Read as fanatically by intellectuals as by college students, these category-defying stories combine ironic humor, sardonic social criticism, and intense self-revelation; from “Jeffty is Five,” the tragedy of an innocent child wrenched out of an idyllic past, to humanity’s encounter with dangerously seductive aliens in “How’s the Night Life on Cissalda?,” culminating in “Shatterday,” the dark allegory of an identity-stealing doppelganger replacing his inferior twin. Back in print for the first time since its stunning debut in the early 1980s, this incendiary collection is reestablishes its legendary author at the cutting-edge of the short story form. |
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 Wild Things  |
Wild ThingsAuthor: Finlay, Charles Coleman |
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Ohio Connection: Charles Coleman Finlay lives somewhere in Ohio.
Charles Coleman Finlay’s first story “Footnotes” consisted entirely of footnotes describing a future disaster. When it was published in 2001 it puzzled many readers who wondered if he knew how to tell a story. A few months later his novella “The Political Officer” answered many of their questions. The deep space adventure about loyalty and betrayal made the Hugo and Nebula ballots, and helped make Finlay a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Now this first collection shows the full range of his storytelling skills. A young Percival visits Faery years before he meets the Fisher King. A future earth is populated by only two kinds of people, homosexuals and hydrosexuals. The hostess of an island bed and breakfast shines with a deadly inner light. Two people on an asteroid colony risk everything to bring their families back from the brink of starvation. A zombie art teacher undertakes a quest for a really hot girl and a nice set of wheels. Three spies enter the abandoned city of Khorpis Kharn to kill a transfigured sorcerer. The slave Gabriel Prosser seeks his freedom in an America where Washington died in office and his successors drove Jefferson into exile. These fourteen stories traverse the entire landscape of imagination–from alternate history to Arthurian romance, from sword and sorcery to space opera, from horror to the home next door. “I suspect he’ll turn out to be a writer like Kate Wilhelm or Fritz Leiber, who is good in whichever field he turns to,” –Gordon Van Gelder, Editor, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction Table of Contents:
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 Fever in the Blood  |
Fever in the BloodAuthor: Fleming, Robert |
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Ohio Connection: Robert Fleming was born and grew up in the Cleveland area. Eddie Stevens is burning inside . . . and he’s burning mad at the world. He’s mad at the family he lost — his parents and sisters viciously killed by a gang in their own home; and he’s mad at the foster family that rescued him — headed up by a powerful Harlem congressman who sees Eddie as a campaign ploy. Mainly, Eddie is mad at himself, for getting caught by the cops with blood on his hands. Blood he should have washed off right away. He was sloppy this time. It won’t happen again. Because Eddie knows the fever that ignites his rage is wasted — unless it’s put to use. And he intends to put it to use again and again. . . . |
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 Secrets of the Bones  |
Secrets of the BonesAuthor: Jacobs, Teri A. |
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Ohio Connection: Teri A. Jacobs lives and writes in the Cincinnati, Ohio area. The Grigori, fallen angels, have escaped their prison in heaven and once again seek to spawn ravenous sons — giants of the Old Testament. Rani, their prey, their pawn for exquisite pain and sex, becomes the mother host of horrors. But she is another’s pawn as well. One man, master in the art of necromancy, murdered her son years before and holds his tortured soul ransom. Her life for his peace. Because within her flesh and bone lie divine secrets and the keys to controlling the angels. Power he craves. Power she possesses, power that manifests in the deadliest ways. Delve into the Secrets of the Bones, into this apocryphal covenant of gods and monsters, into this disturbing Dark Testament of madness and magick, blood and blasphemy . . . |
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 Vyrmin  |
VyrminAuthor: Lazuta, Gene |
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Ohio Connection: Gene Lazuta lives in Cleveland, Ohio.
Long-infected with the genes of the vyrmin — an evil, werewolf-type race — the townsfolk of Harpersville run wild when the Dark Time arrives. |
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 The Best of Curse of the Spawn  |
The Best of Curse of the SpawnAuthor: McElroy, Alan |
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Ohio Connection: Alan McElroy was born and grew up in Cleveland, Ohio.
Meet new Spawns and delve deeply into the cast and characters of the regular series Spawn mythos as well. The Best of Curse of the Spawn features 23 handpicked issues of this series written by popular Cleveland author Alan McElroy. Featuring the stunning artwork of industry favorites Dwayne Turner and Danny Miki. |
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 Badlands  |
Badlands (The Philadelphia Series #4)Author: Montanari, Richard |
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Ohio Connection: Richard Montanari was born and lives in the Cleveland Heights area.
In each soul, a secret . . . Philadelphia homicide detectives Kevin Byrne and Jessica Balzano’s first assignment from the Cold Case files is the brutal murder of a young runaway. The lifeless body of Caitlin O’Riordan was found carefully posed in a glass display case in the desolate Philadelphia Badlands but, as Byrne and Balzano rapidly discover, she was just the first pawn in the killer’s twisted game . . . A mysterious phone call leads them on a scavenger hunt for a second victim. This time a young girl has been dismembered, her body parts left in three boxes in the basement of a deserted house. More clues lead to other victims and, as the body count rises, it becomes clear that there is a serial killer on the loose, hell-bent on completing the ‘performance’ of a lifetime. As more runaways vanish, Byrne and Balzano come to realize that the homicidal mastermind plans to complete seven depraved tricks in his dark and dangerous magic act. With Balzano increasingly obsessed by a case that haunts her, and Byrne struggling with a loss of his own, the stakes are mounting. But this is one game they can’t afford to lose . . . |
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 Beloved  |
BelovedAuthor: Morrison, Toni |
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Ohio Connection: Toni Morrison was born and grew up in the Lorain area.
Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe’s new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. Filled with bitter poetry and suspense as taut as a rope, Beloved is a towering achievement. |
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 Disappearing Nightly  |
Disappearing Nightly (The Manhattan Magic Series #1)Author: Resnick, Laura |
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Ohio Connection: Laura Resnick lives in the Cincinnati area. She also publishes under the name of Laura Leone.
From the Editors of Barnes and Noble: The message, it turns out, is from Maximillian Zadok, a 350-year-old magic practitioner who is also a member of the Magnum Collegium, a centuries-old group dedicated to fighting Evil. With the help of Max (and a misfit group of drag queens, dancing cowgirls, and pretentious magicians), Esther finds the answer in the unlikeliest of places . . . A delightful melange of amateur sleuth mystery, romance, and urban fantasy, Disappearing Nightly should appeal to fans of Resnick’s previous critically acclaimed fantasy works (In Legend Born, The Destroyer Goddess, et al.), as well as followers of her romance novels (Fallen from Grace, Fever Dreams, et al.) written under the pseudonym Laura Leone. Starring in the first installment of a new series called Manhattan Magic, feisty Esther Diamond is a protagonist as quirky as Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse, as deeply intuitive as Sujata Massey’s Rei Shimura, and with the sex appeal of Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake. Readers will anxiously await her return. |
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 Installing Linux on a Dead Badger  |
Installing Linux on a Dead Badger (And Other Oddities)Author: Snyder, Lucy A. |
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Ohio Connection: Lucy A. Snyder lives in Columbus, Ohio with her husband and fellow writer Gary A. Braunbeck Installing Linux on a Dead Badger (and other Oddities) is a collection of Lucy Snyder’s humorous essays, fiction and articles, some culled from places like “Strange Horizons” and “Spacesuits and Six-Guns” and some brand new. This collection of thirteen short stories, articles and essays from Lucy A. Snyder will appeal to any fan of zombies, aliens or installation manuals. Here’s what Wikipedia said about Lucy, last time we checked: “Lucy A. Snyder is an American science fiction, fantasy, humor, and nonfiction writer. She grew up in San Angelo, Texas but moved to Bloomington, Indiana for graduate studies at Indiana University and currently lives in Columbus, Ohio with her husband Gary A. Braunbeck. Snyder served as an editor for HMS Beagle, an online bioscience publication produced by Elsevier. She has also contributed technical articles to publications such as Electronic Products.” Table of Contents:
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 Eye Candy  |
Eye CandyAuthor: Stine, R. L. |
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Ohio Connection: R. L. Stine was born and raised in the Columbus area. Lindy Sampson is a twenty-three-year-old New Yorker with a problem: She’s too beautiful. Guys are intimidated by her. Her roommate suggests Internet dating and writes a Personal ad for Lindy, calling her “Eye Candy.” The responses pour in. Suddenly, Lindy is dating four guys at once — and having the time of her life. Until she gets a terrifying note that warns: “Don’t say no, Lindy. Keep going out with me. I’ll mess you up if you ever say no.” Which one of her admirers is a deadly freak? Lindy is now forced to say yes to everything the four men ask of her — dates, invitations to spend the night, anything. From the East Village to the Hamptons, panic and paranoia shadow her every move. Lindy suspects everyone, even the one person she thought she could trust. But Lindy Sampson doesn’t know the half of it — and what she doesn’t know could kill her. . . . |
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 Blood and Rust  |
Blood and Rust: Two Novels of the Cleveland UndeadAuthor: Swiniarski, S. A. |
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Ohio Connection: Steven A. Swiniarski was born and lives in the Cleveland area. He publishes under the names of S. Andrew Swann, S. A. Swiniarski and Steven Krane. Finally back in print, The Raven and The Flesh, The Blood, and The Fire are two boundary-breaking novels set in Cleveland, Ohio — but is this an average American city with hardworking families striving to fulfill the American dream — or the kind of town where death is anything but final and one’s neighbors may not be as normal as they seem? The Flesh, The Blood, and The Fire: The Raven: |
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 Cross County  |
Cross CountyAuthor: Waggoner, Tim |
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Ohio Connection: Tim Waggoner lives in the Dayton area. When surviving gets this hard, death comes easy . . . Cross County’s secrets run deep. Settlers first came here hundreds of years ago, taking the land from local tribes sworn to guard its dark secrets. The Cross family now holds the power in the region. When a grisly murderer, hearkening back to a series of killing from years ago, shakes the community, it’s up to the local sheriff to get to the bottom of things before it’s too late. Part murder mystery, part supernatural terror, Cross County will appeal to fans of Greg Iles and Patricia Cornell, as well as horror fans who love Stephen King and Dean Koontz. |
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Summary:
Title List:
1. Tapestry of Dark Souls by Elaine Bergstrom
2. Coffin County by Gary A. Braunbeck
3. Number 121 to Pennsylvania and Others by Kealan Patrick Burke
4. Nights of Sin by Matthew Cook
5. Fountain Society by Wes Craven
6. Shatterday by Harlan Ellison
7. Wild Things by Charles Coleman Finlay
8. Fever in the Blood by Robert Fleming
9. Secrets of the Bones by Teri A. Jacobs
10. Vyrmin by Gene Lazuta
11. The Best of Curse of the Spawn by Alan McElroy
12. Badlands by Richard Montanari
13. Beloved by Toni Morrison
14. Disappearing Nightly by Laura Resnick
15. Installing Linux on a Dead Badger by Lucy A. Snyder
16. Eye Candy by R. L. Stine
17. Blood and Rust by S. A. Swiniarski
18. Cross County by Tim Waggoner
