Book Recommendation by Tamara Thorne – IMAGINARY FRIEND by Stephen Chbosky

Stephen Chbosky’s second novel, IMAGINARY FRIEND, (coming October 2019) is the real thing. As I began reading this book I felt that thrill you get when you realize you’ve just discovered something brilliant. In fact, I felt a lot like I did the first time I picked up a Stephen King novel. It’s a big ambitious novel about a boy, a small town, and the supernatural terrors lurking all around him. It puts me in delicious mind of books like Summer of Night, Boy’s Life, and Something Wicked this Way Comes.

For more: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/tamara-thorne?list=reviews

The Ghosts of Ravencrest is 99 Cents!

Today only, the complete novel, The Ghosts of Ravencrest, is just 99 cents on Amazon.  This novel is the first in our series, The Ravencrest Saga. The sale celebrates the first two episodes of the next novel in the series, The Witches of Ravencrest which, like The Ghosts of Ravencrest, is being released first as a serial novel. WoR #1: Grave Expectations and WoR #2: Dead of the Night are now both available.

When Tamara and Alistair began The Ghosts of Ravencrest, they were thinking of going heavy on paranormal erotica. By the third installment, they were too in love with the story – and it was growing by leaps and bounds – to try to push the erotic aspects so they went back and toned them down slightly when they released the full novel. (But when you read the chapter called Awakening, you’ll see that it’s still a sizzler. Seriously, they’ve had several letters from readers saying it cured their non-orgasmic woes.)

As The Ghosts of Ravencrest progressed, their mutual love of the Gothic came to the fore. By the fourth installment they had travelled back in history to meet several of the ancestors who haunt Ravencrest during the present day.

 

The Ravencrest Saga is the tale of Belinda Moorland, a young woman who takes a position as governess to handsome millionaire Eric Manning’s two children. Within the halls of Ravencrest – the mansion was brought over stone by stone from England to the California coast in the early nineteenth century – Belinda encounters much more than ghosts, from the seemingly evil Mrs. Heller to the mysterious and knowing head butler, Grant Phister. But it is Eric Manning himself who captivates Belinda.

Secrets lurk within Ravencrest’s historic halls; secrets that have been buried for years but are coming to life around Belinda. The nightly erotic visits from Thomas Manning – he’s been dead for centuries – terrify and excite Belinda. When Mrs. Heller sends the governess into the old east wing for school supplies, Belinda encounters the most horrifying entities she’s ever seen … and she will have to face them again in order to save a tiny spirit in a red dress who has been searching for her parents for centuries.

As time goes on, Grant reveals a few of his secrets to Belinda and she and Eric Manning begin taking morning swims in the ornate indoor pool together … until something unspeakable happens…  Belinda learns more of the secrets of Ravencrest, about the hidden abilities within herself, and falls hard for Eric Manning. But is love enough to conquer the ghosts and other creatures that walk the corridors of Ravencrest? It’s time to find out!

And don’t forget to pick up a copy of the new Thorne & Cross thriller, MOTHER

 

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Holiday Sale

Now through New Year’s, four classic Tamara Thorne novels are on sale for only $2.99 a piece on eBook.

Haunted is the tale of horror writer David Masters who buys Baudey House, the most haunted  mansion in California. He and his equally skeptical daughter, Amber, are in for the ride of their lives when ghosts of mass murder victims from the 1800s and 1900s begin haunting them, and the succubus, Christabel, takes a very special interest in David. Click the pic to buy.

Moonfall is a murderous tale of witchcraft and mystery in a small apple-growing community famous for its Halloween celebrations and apple pies. But there is also St. Gertrude’s School for Girls, haunted and horrific, run by a mother superior with a Ph.D in discipline and keeping minors in bondage. Click the pic to buy.

Eternity is a thrilling whodunit that takes place in the northern California mountain town of Eternity. Newly transplanted sheriff, Zach Tully, finds himself in a snowy hell full of townsfolk as crazy as the residents of Shady Pines Sanitarium. There are two Elvises, Ambrose Bierce is the mayor, and the postmistress looks an awful lot like Amelia Earhart. And there’s a serial killer in town who claims to be Jack the Ripper… Click the pic to buy.

Candle Bay is the story of the vampiric Darling Family, who run the Candle Bay Inn nestled on the foggy California coast. The Darlings take what sustenance they need from sleeping guests and fine bottles of very red “wine.” Then trueborn vampire Julian Valentyn shows up with a bottle of addictive Elixir that allows the vamps to come out in the daylight … and plays havoc with their hungers. Click the pic to buy.

Pleasure on the Prairie

Pleasure on the Prairie – The Wilder Side of Laura Ingalls Wilder

We are proud to announce our first narrative non-fiction book, Pleasure on the Prairie: The Wilder Side of Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Laura Ingalls Wilder is fondly known for her Little House on the Prairie books where she told stories about growing up in the latter half of the 19th century. The last book in the series recounted the first four years of her marriage to Almanzo Wilder and was only discovered and published many years later.

Laura did not choose to write about the years when she and Almanzo ran the Rocky Ridge Health Sanitarium. But now the story can be told.

What few people know about Laura and Almanzo Wilder is that after they built their home, Rocky Ridge Farm, they also built a health sanitarium of the kind so popular around the turn of the century. early 20th century. Best described as a small private version of John Harvey Kellogg’s famous Battle Creek Sanitarium (as depicted in the book and movie, The Road to Wellville). Here, the Wilders helped people improve their health through diet, exercise and certain medical practices. Unlike Kellogg, they did not eschew meat, but taught their guests how to combine their carnivorous appetites more properly with fruits and berries rather than the typical use of heavy grains or starchy potatoes as accompaniments to animal protein.

The Rocky Ridge regimen also included twice daily colonics that were infused with herbs that included peppermint, cayenne, chamomile, and cannabis.

Rocky Ridge Health Sanitarium was a happy place, not a stern one, and guests were encouraged to fraternize in special “Felicity Rooms.” Laura and her husband felt that physical release was one of the keys to good health and to that end, they saw to it that each Felicity Room had luxurious patchwork quilts, lace curtains, and brass bedposts that could be used in a variety of ways to increase physical pleasure.  Each room included a bonnet handmade by Laura or her daughter to be hung on the doorknob to signal to housekeeping and colonic therapists that the guests within were “engaged.”

At the Rocky Ridge Health Sanitarium, they promised – and delivered – pure prairie satisfaction and now, for the first time, Wilder’s journals of these missing years have been translated into a novel-length narrative non-fiction work by the writing team of Alistair Cross and Tamara Thorne. Pleasure on the Prairie will include illustrations by the late Richard Scarry, who passed away in 1994 before he was able to complete his graphic novel, Erotic Adventures at Rocky Ridge. Pleasure on the Prairie is almost completed, and with its release this fall, we will give away the original bonnets that Laura made for the Felicity Rooms.

This fall, look for Pleasure on the Prairie: The Wilder Side of Laura Ingalls Wilder at fine bookstores everywhere.

Noel Hynd joins Thorne & Cross: Haunted Nights LIVE!

Noel Hynd has more than five million books in print. Most of his books have been in the action-espionage-suspense genre (Flowers From Berlin, Truman’s Spy, Murder in Miami, Hostage in Havana) but others (Ghosts, The Prodigy, A Room For The Dead and Cemetery of Angels) are highly acclaimed ghost stories.

He is also a former contributor to Sports Illustrated and several other national magazines. His 1988 non-fiction book, The Giants of The Polo Grounds, was an Editor’s Choice of The New York TIMES Review of Books in 1988.

Mr. Hynd was born in New York City, is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, and lives in southern California between Los Angeles and San Diego with his wife Patricia.

Along with his wife, Patricia White, Mr. Hynd is also the co-founder of Red Cat Tales, LLC, an independent publishing imprint in Los Angeles. Red Cat Tales publishes genre fiction (including much of Mr. Hynd’s backlist) and graphic novels in translation. The RCT list can be found at www.RedCat.Tales.com.

Join us tomorrow night at Thorne & Cross: Haunted Nights LIVE! at 9:00 pm Eastern, 6:00 pm Pacific, where we’ll be talking to Noel Hynd about writing, reading, and things that go bump in the night! This link will go live then! http://www.blogtalkradio.com/authorsontheairbookstoo/2014/12/05/noel-hynd-joins-thorne-cross-haunted-nights-live

Halloween, Greenjacks, and Other Bad Things

Tamara Thorne’s tale of Halloween terror, Bad Things, is based on a childhood game she played as twilight stole the day away. She loved to sit on the swing in her backyard and watch as shadowed breezes swirled through bushes and flower beds. She imagined little creatures she called greenjacks cavorting and playing among the leaves and flowers, and pretended they watched her, too, giggling and whispering.  They weren’t evil, exactly, nor were they to be trusted.

Later, Tamara became entranced by the tales of green men and loved to go the museum and study English tapestries, always looking, often finding, the mysterious Green Man lurking among the trees. For Bad Things, she drew on folklore about this lusty earth elemental, from the Green Knight in Arthurian legend, to Greek satyrs, Robin Hood, and all other forms. She tooks those and made up her own green man, Big Jack. His minions are the greenjacks, and if you’re lucky – or unlucky – you just might see them, especially around Halloween. If you do, be very careful, because they know, and they will want you for their own.

Bad Things is the story of one such encounter.  It’s on sale now in all e-readers.

BIG JACK

Winter cold, winter dreary

Winter leaves

No sap, no fool

Winter bones

No need to panic

Big Jack sleeps, the little ones too.

~

March buds, April flowers

May blood

So green, so new

Springs veins pump

And children panic

Big Jack wakes, the little ones too.

~

Summer heat, summer passion

Summer nights

So hot, so hungry

Dark desires

The children cower

Big Jack stands, the littles too.

~

Autumn red, autumn brittle

Autumn cravings

So harsh, so clear

Child, run

Before he gets you

Big Jack walks, the little ones, too.

~

~

Bad Things by Tamara Thorne

The Piper clan emigrated from Scotland and founded the town of Santo Verde, California. The Gothic Victorian estate built there has housed the family for generations, and has also become home to an ancient evil forever linked to the Piper name. . .

As a boy, Rick Piper discovered he had “the sight.” It was supposed to be a family myth, but Rick could see the greenjacks–the tiny mischievous demons who taunted him throughout his childhood–and who stole the soul of his twin brother Robin one Halloween night.

Now a widower with two children of his own, Rick has returned home to build a new life. He wants to believe the greenjacks don’t exist, that they were a figment of his own childish fears and the vicious torment he suffered at the hands of his brother. But he can still see and hear them, and they haven’t forgotten that Rick escaped them so long ago. And this time, they don’t just want Rick. This time they want his children. . .