Winner Fiction: Anthologies The 2020 Best Book Awards
A neighborhood won't let its residents forget the past. One taste draws two lovers into a nightmarish addiction. A harsh winter forces strange creatures down from the mountains.
At sea level, where it's safe, things like this can't happen. But when you're sky high in Denver, Colorado, anything goes...including your sanity.
Beware of Terror at 5280', a horror fiction anthology featuring dark tales set in and around Denver and the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, penned exclusively by local authors.
Edited by: Josh Schlossberg, Gary Robbe, Melinda Bezdek, Bobby Crew, Desi D, Lisa Mavroudis, Thomas C. Mavroudis, and Jeamus Wilkes.
Finalist Fiction: Anthologies The 2020 Best Book Awards
Singing specters, secret passageways, unsolved clues, abandoned mansions, old photo albums and hidden motives are all found in the four stories making up this unique collection, Mysterious Tales of the Unexplained. A young sleuth solves a mystery surrounding a creepy, community theatre in Break A Leg & Knock 'Em Dead. She then goes on to investigate the apparent suicide of a wealthy factory owner in House up on the Hill. In Picture on the Wall, a mother/daughter restoration team experience ghostly encounters in an old, abandoned mansion. And six young friends go on a mystery weekend at a spooky inn, deciphering clues and exploring the mysterious property, only to find much more going on than they thought.
Finalist Fiction: Anthologies The 2020 Best Book Awards
Candy Floss Collection is a set of three previously released, bestselling novels: Low-Fat Love, Blue, and Film. Together these novels create an overarching message about what it truly means to live a “big life” and the kinds of relationships we need with others and ourselves along the way. This is not a trilogy. This collection can be understood as installation art. Written with humor, cultural insight, and a wink, we follow each female protagonist and cast of offbeat characters as they search for love, friendship, and a sense of self. The characters must learn to mind the gap between their lives as they are and as they wish them to be, to chase their dreams even as they stumble on their insecurities, and to never settle for low-fat love.
Finalist Fiction: Anthologies The 2020 Best Book Awards
This collection is Jadi Campbell’s fourth book and her first finished work in four years. She completed many of these stories during the coronavirus lockdown. From tales of Eddie, high on LSD and trapped by “What Died in the Fridge”, and a compulsive gambler hiding during a Category Five storm in “Better Weather”, to the luminous title story of two strangers meeting by chance in the backwoods during a pandemic, her stories describe the pain and humor of being alive. Included in this collection are “Rules to Live By”, a funny and deeply thoughtful story about what we choose to teach our children. The author examines our responsibility to others when a hunter is shot and left for dead in “The Green Under the Snow”. In “Do Dreams Float?” a wife considers a hit-man’s offer of revenge. And the eternal search for happiness is carried out by a gloomy little girl nicknamed “Princess Rain Clouds”.In ten stories, Campbell paints vivid descriptions of everyday life in strange times. Whether during the upheaval of the last century or the present COVID-19 crisis, The Trail Back Out guides the reader through a labyrinth of questions about how to live and love.
Finalist Fiction: Anthologies The 2020 Best Book Awards
"I am dragon. I am free. You are mine to protect."
A truth-seeker becomes imbued with the power to tip the scales of justice.
A headstrong privateer tempers her courage in the heart of a violent storm.
A pair of mittens leads to a family history rich with dragons.
Sparks fly when a chronically single pilot finally meets her match.
Enter the world of Dragons Within: a place where woman and dragon are one in the same: reigning strong, fierce, and free. Forging bonds with the world of mankind, these unconquerable beings discover a love for the vulnerable, the fragile, the broken.
A pregnant goddess seeks refuge for her children during war. A telepathic soldier finds the courage to claim her humanity. A dragon in human form uses her gifts to protect abuse victims in need. A girl chases a soldier through a desert wasteland to find her missing brother.
Featuring twelve new and emerging speculative fiction writers, this power-driven book delves deep into the journey from treasure hunter to guardian, mercenary to savior, fire-breather to martyr. Transforming rage into righteousness, the women of Dragons Within claim their people, pledging their lives to...guard their own.
Finalist Fiction: Anthologies The 2020 Best Book Awards
“Would you like to feel it even more? We can go out from behind the rocks and you can see what it looks like falling on the rest of the world.”
The little one hesitated. He did not know how it would feel falling down on all of him. But this was an Adventure, after all. And he would not know unless he tried. He nodded firmly. He would not be frightened of the thing called rain! He was a brave elfling!
If there is one thing elflings are known for, it is their insatiable curiosity—but sometimes that curiosity can lead them through dangerous doorways and into strange, new, terrifying worlds. The question is: Will they survive? And if the elflings survive, how will their poor parents and guardians fare?
