Chanticleer Book Reviews

Tag: Paranormal

The 2021 CIBAs Finalists for Fiction!
A Huge Congratulations to all of the Chanticleer Int’l Book Awards (CIBAs) Finalists!

Every tier of the CIBAs is an important one, though few manage to rise this far in the ranks.

For our Fiction Authors, this post has links to all of the Finalist Awards for the 16 CIBA Divisions we have for fiction. We will have a separate post for Non-Fiction and one more post for the Shorts Awards for both Individual Works and Collected Works, as well as the Series Book Awards.

All Finalists in attendance will be recognized at the Chanticleer Authors Conference, and we will announce the Winners at the CIBAs Ceremonies on Saturday, June 25th at the Chanticleer Banquet. We can’t express how excited we are to be able to do this in person with our fully vaccinated and boosted staff in a healthy metro area.

Now let’s take a step back and look at where we came from to make this happen.

The remaining tiers are the First Place Winner, the Grand Prize Winners, and finally, the coveted Overall Grand Prize Winners. The Overall Grand Prize Winner takes home the $1000 and more! See the Book Award details here.

Now, presenting the links to the Fiction Awards Finalists
The Official 2021 CIBA Lists of the First Place and Grand Prize Winners for all Divisions of the CIBAs will start to be posted June 29th, 2022.

Now Accepting Entries into the 2022 CIBAs.

If you don’t submit, you can’t win!

We have badges available starting with the Short List. If you need a digital badge reflecting your tier level, please email info@ChantiReviews.com with your division and rank, and we will send you one as soon as possible.

The 10th Anniversary Chanticleer Authors Conference is June 23-26, 2022

Don’t Delay, Register Today!

Goodreads Icon

Make sure your Award gets the attention it deserves on Goodreads.com

In the Librarian Manual on Goodreads, you can go to your Book Edit Page — Literary Awards.

You want to list the Award for Chanticleer International Book Awards (CIBA) Winners, and be sure to include the year and what place you received. For example:

The year Long List, Short List, Semi-Finalist, or Finalist.

Note from Goodreads: “To add a new award or edit an existing award, you’ll need help from one of our volunteer librarians or a staff member.” For assistance, post in the Goodreads Librarians Group.

Always double check that you’ve written everything correctly before posting it. The search function for Awards on Goodreads is both case and punctuation sensitive.

The Overall Grand Prize Winner for the 2020 CIBAs was Rebeca Dwight Bruff’s book Trouble the Water

This year we introduced the Non-Fiction Division for Military and Front Line Book Awards. These books focus on Narrative Non-Fiction that highlights the lives of service members, medical workers, and generally those who engage in public service. This is a division we’ve been waiting to launch for years, and we felt this was the year to make it happen. While we still are updating our site for this division, all 24 of our other CIBAs are now accepting entries for 2022.

The competition is already heating up!

Submit today!

Remember, you don’t have to be present to win, but it sure is a lot more fun! The CIBAs Ceremonies will also be livestreamed for those who can’t attend in person. Information about how to watch will be sent out by the week of the Conference to all finalists.

The esteemed WRITER Magazine (founded in 1887) has repeatedly recognized the Chanticleer Authors Conference as one of the best conferences to attend and participate in for North America.

Join us for our 10th annual conference and discover why!

Featuring: International Best Selling Author Cathy Ace along with experts in the business and marketing and promotion for authors from Kickstarter to Hindenburg.
May 18, 2022
SOULMATED (Joining of Souls Book) by Shaila Patel – Paranormal Romance, YA Paranormal, Coming of Age

Eighteen-year-old Liam Whelan must balance the pressure and danger of his new role leading his entire empath clan while searching for a fabled ‘soulmate’ in Shaila Patel’s paranormal romance novel, Soulmated.

Since the age of six, guided by his father’s visions, Liam and his family have traveled across the United States, moving from town to town searching for the girl destined to “join” with Liam. However, no empath in centuries has found a soulmated union. No one knows what joining actually means. Liam tires of his parents’ search for what he considers a fantasy girl, but he agrees to give up one more year of his life. The family moves to North Carolina for Liam’s senior year.

Laxshmi Kapadia will graduate a year early. Her mother, an overprotective and overbearing widow, plans Laxshmi’s entire life. Either her daughter attends med school or marries a proper Indian boy. Neither prospect appeals to Laxshmi, who wants to major in dance and doesn’t even want to start dating, let alone get married. So, when she meets the handsome new boy two doors down from her house, she doesn’t understand why he’s so drawn to her, unaware of her latent empathic abilities.

Liam marvels at Laxshmi’s power, smitten with her mesmerizing eyes. But as the two become closer, a strange power begins to emerge, a force that threatens their lives and draws the attention of the enemies that Liam must face as a leader.

Liam and Laxshmi bear the weight of responsibility, both to the family and themselves.

At barely eighteen, Liam has to prove himself worthy to lead his clan. He embraces the great honor but fears the added burdens of becoming the “prince.” In addition to his rigorous schooling, he constantly reviews the financial documents of his people to be sure of their success. His heightened empathic abilities make him an asset to the entire empath world and a dangerous wildcard. Liam doesn’t want to control the Group of Elders, but his father pushes him toward that future. This responsibility combines with his remarkable potential, and Liam becomes lost in his abilities.

Laxshmi struggles under no less responsibility.

Her father died five years ago, and since then, Laxshmi’s mother has focused entirely on her. Mrs. Kapadia struggles financially and determines that her daughter must do better by becoming a doctor or marrying a wealthy man. Though she balks at her mother’s control, Laxshmi can’t help but feel she must be the dutiful daughter to keep a promise made to her father. Can Laxshmi give up on her dreams for the sake of her mother? Laxshmi honors her mother’s wishes to stay away from all boys, especially those who are non-Indian, though it means she may be missing out on a genuine love with Liam.

Ironically, both Liam and Laxshmi find a certain freedom in the responsibility of a relationship with each other. Though they must invest great emotion, they make that trade for the chance to choose their paths. Rather than being burdened by another’s emotions, they make each other stronger.

Shaila Patel’s Soulmated won 1^st Place in the 2015 CIBA Paranormal Book Awards for Supernatural Fiction.

February 11, 2022
ABIGAIL’s WINDOW by Susan Lynn Solomon – Romantic Fantasy, Paranormal & Urban Fantasy, Paranormal Romance

Katy Novacs is haunted, both by her past and the laughing specter that reminds her of it. When her friends bring her to Niagara-on-the-Lake in the hopes of lifting her spirits, she finds that their inn has a ghost of its own who has a tale that might save her.

Katy comes to the Niagara Inn in a mire of sorrow, fear, and trauma. Though her friends try to help her move forward with her life, to fall in love and open herself up to other people again, Katy’s stay at the inn only seems to drain her further. Both she and her friends question her sanity as she becomes certain that she’s sharing a room with the spirit of a dead woman, but when Abigail eventually reveals herself, it is to tell Katy a story that she needs to hear—that of Abigail’s life.

One hundred and fifty years ago, Abigail Kirby finds her own love in Will Bender. They cross the lines of class to be together, but Abigail’s story doesn’t end when she wins Will’s heart; there are far greater struggles, sorrows, and the dark shadows of the past waiting to fall upon her. What strings have fate wrapped around Abigail, and will Katy be able to find the message that she so desperately needs?

Abigail’s Window is threaded through with evocative descriptions. The cold and snow of Niagara-on-the-Lake surrounds the Niagara Inn, which is built up with foreboding and emotional energy that suffuses parts of the old house. Abigail’s story is even more expansive in its description, building the whole town as it was long in the past; this old picture gives the reader a strong sense of Abigail and the world that she lived in, from the small social circles of Niagara-on-the-Lake to an exploration of the far-reaching American Civil War.

Susan Lynn Solomon creates animated, complex characters whose personalities show through in everything they do and say. Katy’s emotional exhaustion is palpable on the page, shading the entire beginning of the story; her narration is intimately understandable even at its most troubled. Her experiences show a deep alienation from the people around her and draw the reader into her world which is, at least early on, truly private. Among that fear and isolation from Katy’s struggles, the story introduces a slow, powerful development of the friendship and emotional connection that Abigail and Katy share as they tell each other what they’ve both been through; their life stories carry parallels that help them understand one another while remaining distinct characters with their own voices and ways of seeing the world.

The reader learns the mysteries of Katy and Abigail at the same time the two women learn them, their stories interwoven. The pacing of Abigail’s Window is excellent. The story takes its time revealing Abigail, giving space for Katy to settle into the house and teach the reader about herself. Katy’s fear of the ghost doesn’t change to comfort all at once, but over time as Abigail becomes more and more present. Once they begin sharing, both of their stories are given the space they need to be told, to explore the feelings within them and show the reader who these characters were before they came to share a bedroom in the Niagara Inn. Those stories come together as Abigail’s Window picks up the pace for a tense and affecting climax.

Common themes connect Abigail and Katy. Abigail’s story is marked by fate, how what happened to her before could only have led to what came after, and how she tried to fight against it. Katy struggles to accept the love that’s waiting for her because of her own past. Abigail’s Window doesn’t shy away from the deep emotional pain of its characters, but the story is strung together with the idea that a true connection with someone else has the power to heal the soul, and the trust that love will survive, no matter what else.

Abigail’s Window is a touching, fascinating story of two wonderful characters, and the connection they form across a century and a half. This novel by Susan Lynn Solomon won Grand Prize in the CIBA 2019 Paranormal Awards for supernatural fiction.

March 22, 2021
PROMISE of TOMORROW (Rimrock Book 1) by T.K. Conklin – Historical Romance, Western Romance, Paranormal

Shyfawn Tucker and her friend Mabel just wanted a little excitement, a chance to see New Orleans, but after their arrival, they are drugged, kidnapped, and taken to the rugged, lawless town of Larksdale. They are to work as prostitutes in a saloon owned by their kidnapper, a ruthless man named Jared. Soon Shyfawn learns that she will be saved from servicing Jared’s clientele, but will become the virgin singer to draw more patrons to the already-thriving business. Mabel, however, suffers a terrible fate, and Shyfawn vows to protect as many of the women forced into service as she can.

Unbeknownst to Shyfawn, her older sister Jo is planning a rescue mission. Jo enlists the help of David and Matthew Reeves, brothers who own ranches near Rimrock, several days’ ride from Larksdale. Matthew reluctantly agrees although he barely knows Jo and goes along to keep David safe more than anything, but as soon as he sees the captivating Shyfawn, he can’t keep his eyes or mind off of her. A difficult mission is made even more impossible when Jared vows to never stop looking for Shyfawn, and not even the undeniable attraction between Matthew and Shyfawn will be enough to keep her safe.

Promise of Tomorrow is set in the American West, in the 1830s. It’s a rough and tumble community that places women as property. T. K. Conklin paints an authentic picture of the Old West, even though at times, we may cringe at the treatment women endured. Women were considered property, often bought, sold, raped, and disowned for the crime of being taken advantage of. Shyfawn’s story of abduction exemplifies this sad scenario. Though the author spares her heroine the burden of rape, Shyfawn is still a captive, a prisoner, kept for the entertainment and profit of Jared, who treats most of “his” women as disposable, and she is under constant threat of rape if she misbehaves. Though she escapes, Shyfawn knows her past involvement, though completely involuntary, with the saloon will forever taint her reputation and will make finding a decent husband nearly impossible. Townspeople will judge regardless of her guiltless purity, and she can never return to her hometown of Charlotte. Even Matthew worries about what her reputation will do for his own when he brings her to work as a cook at his ranch.

A surprising plot element is a connection the Tucker sisters have to the paranormal. All three sisters have some “otherworldly” ability. To mention more here might be a dead giveaway!

Conklin has done a great job at creating a world in the same vein as Deadwood – jacked up on romance. Even as the author gives us scenes of trauma true to the Old West, she elevates the positive themes of family, belief in better days, and finding one’s purpose in life. Shyfawn never feels sorry for herself despite the horrors around her. Her optimistic attitude leads her to shake off her sadness and look for the good in virtually everyone. She befriends the ranch hands despite their sordid pasts and even manages to see good in some of the men who hold her captive. She is able to remain positive when her chances are bleak, and her playfulness with everyone–especially Matthew–gives the novel humor and creates a fun, good ole fashioned Western.

Promise of Tomorrow by T. K. Conklin won the CIBAs 2018 First Place in the LARAMIE Awards for Western Fiction and placed as a Semi-Finalist in the CIBAs 2019 Chatelaine Awards.

December 22, 2020
SHE SEES GHOSTS – Part of the Adirondack Spirit Series by David Fitz-Gerald – Historical Fiction, Paranormal Fiction, Civil War Fiction

A gentle and patient story, She Sees Ghosts is a unique addition to the historical fiction genre. Take a break from the hectic modern world and get transported to a simpler time where the full effect of the industrial revolution has yet to change America’s face forever.

Mehitable lives with her large loving family in a small town in New England and has been hiding a secret her whole life. She sees the spirits of the departed and wishes they would leave her alone. The town is busy getting ready for the upcoming New Year celebration, which will not only mark the start of a new century but also happens to be Mehitable’s sixteenth birthday. On the cusp of adulthood, all around Mehitable, there is talk of love and marriages, but she does not feel ready and wants to keep enjoying her current life.

After Mehitable rejects the troublesome Anson Smudge, tragedy strikes. Anson accidentally starts a fatal fire that claims Mehitable’s family’s lives, leaving her to face the turn of the century alone. Years pass, and she slowly learns to live with her grief but is still visited by the ghost of Anson every night. After moving with her friend Polly and her husband Reuben to rural upstate New York, Mehitable begins to see countless souls of soldiers from past wars, and there she finds her calling. By helping these lost souls, will Mehitable find a way to move on?

She Sees Ghost is a perfect choice for readers who like multifaceted stories with paranormal elements, historical fiction, and Christian influences. Fans of coming-of-age stories will especially like She Sees Ghosts as the story centers around Mehitable’s struggles and her journey to help lost souls. Some books are driven by action, while others allow the characters to unveil the truth behind their pain. This is a story more akin to the latter. Fitz-Gerald weaves characters that will live in readers’ hearts long after putting the book down.

David Fitz-Gerald has a knack for writing historical fiction with supernatural influences. She Sees Ghosts is the second in the ongoing Adirondack Spirit Series. In this installment, time is a big theme. Mehitable’s story begins at the turn-of-a-century, where she grows up hearing stories of the fight for independence. She experiences a cultural tradition for storytelling where people look into the past for lessons to bring into the future.

A story about love, loss, and the various forms grief can take over the years, Fitz-Gerald’s She Sees Ghosts is a compassionate tale about a woman using her unique gifts to help those around her, living or long passed.

November 10, 2020
The MADWOMAN of PREACHER’S COVE by Joy Ross Davis – Paranormal Ghost Thrillers, Occult Fiction, Witch/Wizard Thrillers

Award-winning author, Joy Ross Davis’ latest work, The Madwoman of Preacher’s Cove, ventures beyond the paranormal into the surreal. Like Medusa on a bad hair day, the lives of characters are intertwined and twisted in a snaky snarl of conflicting human desires, terrifying inexplicable events, and the lingering afterlives of ancient, supernatural beings.

Davis gifts us with a 21st-century legend, replete with mythological themes and creatures, and snippets of folklore and superstition melded with documented vagaries of weather, obscure herpetology, and creates a mystical potion worthy of Circe. In other words, Davis gives us a thrilling read!

Rumors about suspicious deaths have put Preacher’s Cove, Alabama, a small, historic town notorious for powerful, killer storms, on the map. Hap Murray, Huntsville’s Channel 12 field reporter, with family ties to the Cove, arrives in town on assignment, armed with only limited knowledge of the town’s history of inexplicable deaths. The rumors speculate that the local pastor may be involved.

Hap meets the beautiful, provocative owner of Cove’s Inn, Libby Arbuckle, when he first arrives. She is a woman with many secrets—a woman with a history. When Libby, along with Chief of Police Riggs, join Hap in the search for the truth, their ensuing relationship proves integral to Hap’s investigation.

During his stay, Hap experiences supernatural events that sometimes make him question his sanity, and he already has issues. Like PTSD, he is plagued by periodic, severe headaches accompanied by fragmented, bizarre visual and auditory hallucinations along with phatomasia, he smells things that are not there, which renders him anxious, fearful, and confused. These are never far from his mind, along with the guilt he feels over losing the love of his life and their child through his own failure to act.

Little does Hap know that the affliction and emotional angst he experiences are pieces of the puzzle he’s challenged to solve. Or, that when Preacher’s Cove welcomes him, a chain of events are triggered that change the shape of residents’ lives forever, in ways that no one could ever predict.

Joy Ross Davis has crafted an eerie, twisted plot where reality is warped—slightly out of focus, keeping the reader off-balance and engaged. The Madwoman of Preacher’s Cove satisfies dreamers’ needs for a taste of magic, the desire for good to triumph over evil, and the reassurance of a benevolent all-powerful being that is always available.

The Madwoman of Preacher’s Cove won Grand Prize in the CIBAs for Paranormal Fiction.

October 20, 2020
SOUL SEEKER by Kaylin McFarren – Occult Horror, Paranormal Romance, Occult Fiction

The realms of demons and angels clash, as the possibility of romance, plunges the beings of Hell into chaos. Kaylin McFarren’s Soul Seeker follows the otherworldly set as they flee for their lives, uncover millennia-old secrets about one another, and face the possibility of love in a very dangerous world.

But first, the demon, Crighton, wreaks havoc on his human target, a man named Poe, devastating the man and his family. You could say, Crighton’s at home collecting wicked souls for his boss, Lucifer. His villain persona is put into question when he meets the angel, Ariel. At first, Crighton believes the angelic Ariel would make an excellent prize for the prince of darkness, as the demon is well aware that his master adores ruining pretty things. However, when an undeniable attraction emerges between them, they wrestle with each other, pitting strength against strength. Beware any who would do anything to tear these two apart—that would spell certain death.

McFarren leads us into Hell through the mechanisms of secret societies and across the earth’s crust, ever raising the stakes for her leading duo. Crighton and Ariel discover what a union between angel and demon truly means, and what has been conveniently left out of their histories.

Soul Seeker paints an intimate view of a supernatural world, seen through the eyes of characters who know it well—though not so well that there aren’t mysteries to yet uncover. In McFarren’s world, demons are more than just evil beings, but as those who suffer, desire, and ones with whom we empathize. More than any character, Crighton embodies the conflict between cruelty and mercy. Angels aren’t monolithic either. Indeed, McFarren portrays her cast of heavenly dwellers with their own doubts and failures that make them real and emotionally affecting characters, especially as Ariel learns that Crighton isn’t quite the monster she first sees him as.

Ariel and Crighton run through a thrilling and fast-paced narrative, full of ever-present tension and half-victories. The story keeps a brisk pace, and Kaylin McFarren builds on this momentum as the pages seem to turn by themselves, creating a sophisticated and remarkable otherworldly conclusion.

At its heart, this story is concerned with the personal thoughts and feelings of its characters. Crighton and Ariel become the emotional heart of the story as they slowly try to grow to accept each other, and change to meet their new challenges, but many of the characters are given space to grow and understand one another, providing a heartwarming journey alongside the fighting of demons, the family turmoil, and the enticing mysteries of Soul Seeker. In short, Kaylin McFarren has done it again! Those looking for a new, otherworldly thriller series, need look no further than Soul Seeker.

Order here.

October 7, 2020
PATH of the HALF MOON by Vince Bailey – Historical Fantasy, Supernatural Thrillers, Historical Thrillers

After being charged with burglary and attempted arson, fifteen-year-old African American boxer, Curtis Jefferson, has been sent to Fort Grant, a juvenile detention area in Arizona in Vince Bailey’s Path of the Half Moon.

All of the creepy stories and whispered warnings about the former US military outpost used by the US cavalry to eliminate the Apache a hundred years ago pale in comparison to the truth Curtis finds there. Curtis faces racism from both inmates and guards, to make matters worse, he is also very aware of the presence of something not of this world. He quickly discovers (though he doesn’t want to admit it) that he is sentient to the fort’s bloody past atrocities. As the site where Pinal and Aravaipa Apaches were slaughtered, the fort seems to be a crossroads where past and present meet. From mournful coyotes to hundreds of circling vultures, Curtis can’t escape the strange visions and events inside and outside the fort. When he attracts the unwanted attention of Harvey Huish, an inmate with unusual abilities, Curtis creates a powerful enemy bent on revenge and humiliation.

A major theme of the novel is the power of language.

It appears in numerous aspects of the plot from the Apache cursing the white man’s cunning use of his complicated and deceitful tongue to Randy’s appreciation of Howard Cosell’s elevated vocabulary. The frame-story technique within the novel establishes the concept of storytelling and the influence of words. Curtis’s story is narrated by Vince, Curtis’s new friend, who relays it to the reader at the same time Curtis is telling him. As a natural-born storyteller, Curtis is the storyteller in town, and Vince sees the story as a treasure, a jewel, that Curtis has seen fit to share with him and thus sees himself as somehow honored in receiving the tale. Vince values the story as more than just words; it makes him more significant for having heard it. Though the story is unbelievable at times, Curtis does what all great storytellers do – he creates a suspension of disbelief, granting the listener the right to believe, to feel that “[a]ll things are possible,” an idea repeatedly given by various characters within the story. Through the telling, Curtis finds solace in giving his outlandish tale an authentic voice.

The theme of language also appears later in the character of Will Farnsworth, Harvey’s tortured attorney. As the newest and most talented attorney in the firm that represents the Huish family, Will has been given the unachievable task of pacifying Harvey during his imprisonment at Fort Grant. Like many lawyers, Will uses words in “purposed profusion,” trying unsuccessfully to befriend Harvey and later intimidating him with language. He attempts to use his words as weapons, rather than tools for communication, a failure which leads to his enslavement to the abhorrent Harvey.

Another aspect of the novel is the blurring of time.

The sinister fort itself is one part of this theme because it seems to exist in two time periods, its tragic past and its purposeful present. Curtis repeatedly sees images of days past that cross into his present-day 1960s. In fact, his first day at the fort, he witnesses a hanging from the Indian uprising days. Later, Curtis crosses this boundary himself and crosses paths with a murdered Apache boy. The Headmaster, Roy Whitcomb, known by all as the Lieutenant, never leaves the fort but is stuck it seems within Fort Grant’s time loop, effectively becoming “the man in the maze,” the Pima tribal emblem. He is forever trapped within the maze’s limitations and obstacles, unable to make the right choices and find his way into the next plane, the gift of a better existence. The very retelling of Curtis’s story symbolizes this blurring of time as well. During the entire story, Vince’s watch remains fixed when Curtis begins his tale, time seemingly suspended along with his disbelief.

Path of the Half Moon won First Place in the CIBA 2018 Paranormal Awards for supernatural novels.

August 23, 2020
CELIA’s HEAVEN by Nancy Canyon – Magic Realism, Family Saga, Contemporary Literature

It’s as if a large chunk of her heart was wrenched away in an instant. Celia’s twin sister died suddenly in a terrible accident. Now Celia is haunted by this dear sister who is gone forever. Moreover, the emotional distance between herself and her parents, the only family that’s left behind, is painful. From her hell on earth, she yearns for her own, Celia’s Heaven, where all could be right again. But the road to Heaven is paved with broken promises and a shattering revelation.

Celia leads an unsatisfying life. The residents in her town are repulsed by her because she works as a stripper. Her father berates her for her life choices. She gets it, but she makes good money, and money is hard to turn down. Although Celia’s boyfriend asks her to marry him, she still likes to be with other men and acts on her impulses. Amid the emotional chaos, Celia continues to look for a miracle. The only thing on the horizon, however, is the worst winter snowstorm in years, and it could be deadly.

On the anniversary of her twin’s death, Celia reminisces about the times the two shared together. But something weird is happening, she is seeing glimpses of her twin – even hearing messages from her. What is she trying to say? Is there some warning to communicate? Or is it some secret she needs Celia to know? Her sister’s spirit is restless, and Celia is trying to understand and help. Perhaps by helping her sister, she will be helping herself as well.

Nancy Canyon’s beautifully written story has a smooth, crisp, surface tone with an underlying, pulsing energy. Fascinating, conflicted characters will grab any reader’s interest right from the start. Even the dialogue is masterful for what is said and what is left unsaid. All in all, Canyon shines at painting detailed, intense character portraits that spring to life and find their way right into the heart of the reader. Each character struggles to reconcile the choices they’ve made that affect them and those around them. But now they face fears about what is to come. The powerful writing takes the reader into the intimate journeys of Celia, her boyfriend, and others including her sister. These are women and men who live in quiet desperation, and thoughtfulness, praying for a better life and hoping to survive.

Set against a backdrop of a nightmarish snowstorm, Canyon’s characters are put to the test, trying to survive the current situation that seems to have supernatural strength and the emotional turmoil they each face. Is peace a possibility? Is happiness and love too much to hope for? Celia’s twin may know something that will change lives forever if only Celia discovers the key to unlock her message.

Celia’s Heaven won First in Category in the CIBAs 2013 PARANORMAL Awards.

July 17, 2020
HENRY CASTLEWAITE and the PORTRAIT of DOOM by Richard Groseclose – Children’s Fantasy Books, Paranormal & Urban Fantasy for Children, Children’s Fantasy & Magic Books

When 11-year-old orphan Henry Castlewaite is delivered to his new foster family in tiny, rural Terwilliger Tennessee, the only sure thing is he is back in the town where he grew up, but that’s about it. After a terrible accident, Henry is suffering from amnesia and doesn’t remember that he’s a wizard, no matter how many times his chaperone from the Castle Family Trust tells him that this is so.

But Henry is a wizard who doesn’t remember anything about his powers or his past, only that he will see his best friend Gwendolyn on the school bus in the morning. It is also clear that while Henry may not remember much about Terwilliger, the residents of the little town remember a lot about him. Especially his new family, where the other boys tease him unmercifully and the local gossip girls haven’t decided whether they have crushes on him or want to vilify him at every turn.

He even has mortal enemies he does not recall. But he also has another friend, Ben, who seems to come from an even stranger background than Henry. And who appears to have amnesia as well.

On the run from those bullies, Henry and Ben discover the old mining tunnels under the school along with the evil wizard who seems to have convinced most of the teachers that Henry needs to be captured and brought to him – clearly not for Henry’s own good.

Once Henry, Ben, and Gwendolyn realize that they have all lost parts of their memories, they stop trusting the adults around them and are determined to find out the truth for themselves. They are all in danger.

The development of this world where our hero can see the magic hidden in plain sight certainly weaves its own spell. In short, Groseclose presents a fun, adventure-filled new series that promises to fill the gap in children’s fantasy literature left by Rowling’s last book in the Harry Potter series. That’s a big gap, but readers who zipped through the Potter world and those who’ve not had the opportunity to dive in will surely feel at home here. After all, it’s not every day readers experience the pandemonium that ensues when a two-headed dragon is brought to life in the middle of an art museum!

As Henry and his friends delve ever deeper into the strangeness of the world that the adults are attempting to hide from them, they uncover deep secrets, hidden depths, and evil witches and wizards who look to Henry to resurrect a long-dead mystery. And they’re not planning to let anyone stand in their way.

In this world of candle spirits, hidden portals, memory enhanced letters, and time-traveling magical creatures, Henry and his friends take on a quest that will save the world – or end it. Each twist and turn in the story opens up a new world of adventure, even as it shakes our heroes’ world to its foundations.

Readers seeking stories that weave magic, adventure, friendship, and danger surrounding a Boy-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, complete with evil wizards and desperate quests, need to look no further than Henry Castlewaite for their next reading adventure.

July 15, 2020