Author: Joseph Pietris

Articles / Reviews

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Epeolatry Book Review: Kill Radio by Lauren Bolger

Disclosure:

Our reviews may contain affiliate links. If you purchase something through the links in this article we may receive a small commission or referral fee. This happens without any additional cost to you.

Title: Kill Radio
Author: Lauren Bolger
Publisher: Malarkey Books
Genre: Horror
Release Date: 1st, April, 2023

Synopsis: When five-year-old Rory unearths his estranged father’s handmade crystal radio-which happens to patch straight through to Hell-violence and terror reign in the form of hellhounds, shadow figures, and demonic possessions.

Aided by a laconic fisherman and a charming warlock, Rory’s mother, Rachelle, must track down her ex, the only person who can shut down the radio before the worst denizens of Hell are unleashed on earth.

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Epeolatry Book Review: You are my Sunshine and Other Stories by Octavia Cade

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Our reviews may contain affiliate links. If you purchase something through the links in this article we may receive a small commission or referral fee. This happens without any additional cost to you.

Title: You are my Sunshine and Other Stories
Author: Octavia Cade
Publisher: Stelliform Press
Genre: Horror, Sci Fi, Fantasy, Solarpunk, Short Story Collection
Release date: 21st September, 2023

Synopsis: Sometimes change can hurt. This collection of short stories traces the growing pains of a new world, beginning with the death throes of our current way of life and ending with a world transformed by science and technology, and by grief, hope, love, and humanity’s will to transform. This is a collection that will both tear you apart and tend to your wounds. Cade’s beautifully wrought stories are informed by science, tracing the biological and emotional threads that bind us, human and non-human alike. Containing a brand new novelette in the Impossible Resurrection of Grief universe, You Are My Sunshine and Other Stories is a promise of what worlds are possible if we allow ourselves to change.

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Epeolatry Book Review: The Horror at Pleasant Brook by Kevin Lucia

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Our reviews may contain affiliate links. If you purchase something through the links in this article we may receive a small commission or referral fee. This happens without any additional cost to you.

Title: The Horror at Pleasant Brook

Author: Kevin Lucia

Publisher: Crystal Lake Publishing

Genre: vampire / occult horror

Release date: October 2023

Synopsis: This Halloween, a malevolent, creeping horror invades a small, isolated town nestled deep in the Adirondacks. It cares nothing for this town’s secrets, prejudices, or flaws. Its only desires are to consume everything in its path and spread, until nothing else remains.

It is ancient, pitiless, and unstoppable. It is the horror at Pleasant Brook.

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Epeolatry Book Review: The Massacre at Yellow Hill by C.S. Humble

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Our reviews may contain affiliate links. If you purchase something through the links in this article we may receive a small commission or referral fee. This happens without any additional cost to you.

Title: The Massacre at Yellow Hill
Author: C.S. Humble 
Genre: Weird West
Publisher: Cemetery Dance Publishing
Release Date: 17th April, 2023

Synopsis: When George Miller is killed in the mines of Yellow Hill, his wife and children are left to try and piece their lives back together. Tabitha Miller, George’s widow, is thrown into deeper chaos when she discovers that George’s death had nothing to do with the cave’s collapse, but was caused by some terrible predator deep within the earth. His death covered up by the mine’s Proprietor-Jeremiah Hart.

In nearby Big Spring, freed slave-turned-occult bounty hunter Gilbert Ptolemy arrives with his adopted son in search of a murderous vampire. New revelations in Yellow Hill draw the duo toward the struggling Miller family, the strange mine, and the horrors lurking within.

The Miller and Ptolemy families are pitted against mundane and supernatural forces in this Weird West adventure. Family struggles, heart-stopping gunfights, and nightmare creatures from dark realms abound in this award-winning novel from C.S. Humble.

“Humble writes with rare passion in the tradition of Robert E. Howard and a young Stephen King.” – Laird Barron, author of The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All

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Epeolatry Book Review: In The Scrape By James Newman & Mark Steensland

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Our reviews may contain affiliate links. If you purchase something through the links in this article we may receive a small commission or referral fee. This happens without any additional cost to you.

Title: In the Scrape
Authors: James Newman & Mark Steensland
Publisher: Cemetery Dance Publications
Genre: Coming of Age
Release Date: January, 21st, 2023
Synopsis: Note: This is a re-release of ‘In the Scrape‘ from a new publisher. Be sure to also check out our original review for quite a different view of the release! 

Most kids dream about a new bike, a pair of top-dollar sneakers endorsed by their favorite athlete, or that totally awesome videogame everyone’s raving about. But thirteen-year-old Jake and his little brother Matthew want nothing more than to escape from their abusive father. As soon as possible, they plan to run away to California, where they will reunite with their mother and live happily ever after.

It won’t be easy, though. After a scuffle with a local bully puts Jake’s arch-nemesis in the hospital, Sheriff Theresa McLelland starts poking her nose into their feud. During a trip to the family cabin for the opening weekend of deer-hunting season, Jake and Matthew kick their plan into action, leaving Dad tied to a chair as they flee into the night. Meanwhile, the bully and his father have their own plans for revenge, and the events to follow will forever change the lives of everyone involved . . .

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Epeolatry Book Review: Dark Dweller by Gareth Worthington

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Our reviews may contain affiliate links. If you purchase something through the links in this article we may receive a small commission or referral fee. This happens without any additional cost to you.

Title: Dark Dweller
Authors: Gareth Worthington
Publisher: Dropship Publishing
Genre: Sci-Fi Horror
Release Date: 28th February, 2023
Synopsis:  Captain Kara Psomas was pronounced dead when her research vessel slammed into Jupiter. More than a century later, the crew of the Paralus, a helium mining freighter, find a pristine escape pod with a healthy young girl nestled inside. A girl who claims to be Kara—and she brings a message of doom.
She says she has been waiting in the dark for that exact moment. To be found by that particular crew. Because an ancient cosmic being has tasked her with a sacred responsibility. She claims she must alter the Fulcrum, a lever in time—no matter the cost to the people aboard—or condemn the rest of civilization to a very painful and drawn-out demise.
She sounds convincing. She appears brave. She might well be insane.  

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Articles / Interviews

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An Interview With Gareth Worthington

Greetings and Welcome. Today I have a privilege to interview Gareth Worthington.

Gareth Worthington is the author of several books and series such as The Children of the Fifth Sun Series, It takes Death to Reach a Star Series, A Time for Monsters, and Condition Black. He holds a degree in marine biology, a PhD in Endocrinology, an executive MBA, is Board Certified in Medical Affairs, and currently works for the pharmaceutical industry. Gareth is an authority in ancient history, has hand-tagged sharks in California, and trained in various martial arts, including Jeet Kune Do and Muay Thai at the EVOLVE MMA gym in Singapore and 2FIGHT in Switzerland. 

His work has won multiple awards, including Dragon Award Finalist and an IPPY award for Science Fiction. He’s a member of the International Thriller Writers Association, Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and the British Science Fiction Association. Born in England, Gareth has lived around the world from Asia, to Europe to the USA. Wherever he goes, he endeavors to continue his philanthropic work with various charities. Find out more at www.GarethWorthington.com. 

Mr. Worthington’s latest release, Dark Dweller, hit shelves on February 28th 2023, and has already received numerous 5-star reviews, yours truly included [insert shameless plug for my own review]. Dark Dweller takes place in the future where Earth’s resources have become depleted. To restock helium, the crew of the Paralus travel to Jupiter for what should be a routine scoop. The discovery of an escape pod puts those plans on hold and leads to a fight for humanity’s salvation. 

Mr. Worthington, thank you for taking the time to answer some questions.

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Epeolatry Book Review: The Branding Ax by Justin Fulkerson

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Our reviews may contain affiliate links. If you purchase something through the links in this article we may receive a small commission or referral fee. This happens without any additional cost to you.

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Title: The Branding Ax
Author: Justin Fulkerson
Publisher: Independently Published
Genre: Horror
Release date: 12th August, 2022
Synopsis: For Dominic, the annual fishing trips with his grandfather Earl were usually uneventful. Now at eighteen, he knows this will be the last trip they take together because Earl has recently been diagnosed with dementia and his lucid time is running out.

Clearcutting has resumed in the Tongass National Forest in Alaska and, unbeknownst to Dominic, Earl has decided to sabotage the logging equipment nearby. When Earl returns to camp in a panic, raving about being attacked by something evil in the woods, Dominic fears his dementia has caused Earl’s delusion and as he tries in vain to calm him down, an explosion erupts in the distance clarifying to him what Earl has done.

Back in their tent, Earl succumbs to a heart attack. Dominic, afraid and alone, covers him and tries to figure out how he is going to get home. But Earl’s body does not remain dead very long. In the darkness of the tent, Dominic hears his corpse moving and realizes the nightmare has only just begun.

Pursued through the forest by his undead grandpa, Dominic struggles for survival as the wildfire rages. He will soon find out that an ancient evil has been stirred up by the activity and it is determined to protect its forest sanctuary at all costs.

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