Early ReviewersDeAnna Knippling

Jayla Jackson is a witch. Or is she?

She dresses in black, has zero friends, is super-smart, and doesn’t fit in. But that doesn’t make her a witch... right?

When Jayla’s English teacher makes her class start writing in journals for class—but says they don’t have to tell the truth in them—Jayla boldly declares that she’s a witch. She starts making up spells, talking about her familiar (a ghost cat), and writing stories about all the terrible things she’s done. She didn’t mean to hurt anyone, she says, but that doesn’t make her feel any better.

Her English teacher just smiles and praises her for being creative. But Jayla has real secrets hiding underneath her made-up confessions. There is a witch in town. And Jayla must face her if she wants to save her family and her new friend, Lola, too.

A middle-grade novel about finding one’s own strength in the face of overwhelming magic. Read it now!

Revenge Is Best Served for Dessert...

With her first cooking class (as a teacher!!!) coming up, her catering business starting to take off, and her heart starting to recover from her divorce, Sam Genoise wants nothing more than an easy night of blogging at her playful foodie website, FoodSlutOnline.com. Then a Horrible Internet Troll does the unthinkable: he threatens her soufflés. Sam blows it off as a prank...but two batches of soufflés fall. During her cooking class. After she just tried to explain to her students that soufflés are easy. Sam Genoise's soufflés don't fall. Ever.

Now Sam's out for revenge, investigating ex-husbands, ex-chefs, so-called friends, and movie-star foodies while a serial dessert killer slaughters her best work. Will Sam be next? An offbeat cooking cozy, first in the Sweet Granadilla series, for foodies with an adventurous palate.

Dames, detectives, and deception…magic meets the decadence of the Roaring Twenties in ten tales of glitter and jazz. The year is 1929. It’s two months after the financial collapse on Wall Street, and the world is bating its breath, unsure of what will happen next. Is it the end of an era? At the Honeybee’s Sting, a speakeasy in the basement of a laundry, a group of unusual figures meets to discuss the past—and perhaps some possible futures: the Detective turned writer, the Dame who’s older than she looks, the Vampire who’s been riding the financial markets for generations, the Spy from across the ocean, the Actress who’s only just learned the truth about Hollywood, and more. But one of their number is missing, a man connected to the mob, a man who holds the prize for a mysterious storytelling contest—a prize that can give you your heart’s desire. Ten stories, woven together in the style of The Canterbury Tales, follow the contest along a long, dark night where nothing is what it seems and the best way to tell the truth is to lie. Pour yourself a cocktail and join us at the liar’s table for the divine, the slapstick, the tragic, the transcendent 1920s today!

Fiction Writers: Lost? Stuck? Stressed? What writer hasn't asked themselves how they will know when their story is ready to publish? Or how to handle feedback about their stories? Or what to do if they get stuck? Or, worse, makes a mistake that causes a social media outburst? Writing Craft Volume 1: Are You Ready to Publish? & Other Burning Questions will answer those questions and more, and give practical advice on a few topics that most writers don't think about ahead of time, like: How to set up reading goals that help you understand the genres you want to write in. How to study fiction in a way that improves your craft and helps you assess others' advice. How to start addressing the business aspects of a writing career so you don't get lost in the promotional weeds. And, perhaps even more importantly, why. Writing Craft Volume 1 is all about the care and feeding of writers, the big (and small) issues that can derail a career before it even gets started. But it also provides fundamental concepts about business and craft that can start (gently!) improving your career in the slow, everyday steps that make for lasting and versatile changes. We'll even talk about how to move forward with your work when all you can see are its imperfections. If you're struggling to turn a gift for writing into a sustainable, repeatable practice that doesn't depend on mood or inspiration, Writing Craft Volume 1: Are You Ready to Publish? & Other Burning Questions provides a road map for clearing practical and creative blockages out of the way, while introducing craft-development strategies that will last a lifetime. If you're feeling like you can't write better because you're not writing much at all, Writing Craft Volume 1 is where to start. Join DeAnna Knippling, veteran writer and ghostwriter of over 70 novels, on a deep, analytical, curiosity-driven dive into the fundamental concepts of good fiction writing in the Writing Craft series. Not only is Writing Craft a handbook breaking down well-known fiction techniques from pacing to red herrings, but at its heart, it is a method to research and invent your own. Above all, Writing Craft is a book about writing that doesn't just tell you what to do…but addresses and explores the reasons why, so you can decide for yourself. Buy a copy today, and start understanding why you feel lost—stuck—and stressed by one of the most enjoyable activities known to humankind: playing make-believe.

Her daughter went through an alien portal... ...but only her body came back. Three alien portals open on Earth, leading to unknown worlds. The first portal leads to a world of ice and snow. The second portal killed everyone who went through it. So far. The third portal leads to a war...and all wars need soldiers. Young people. Kids. Your kids. Dorey's mother sends her off to war, which is bad. But then the aliens send her back. Returning home isn't always easy...especially for those you return to.

Jake’s brother died a month ago, in Afghanistan. Now something that looks a lot like Dave has come back to haunt him. A creepy horror tale about what finds us when we’re vulnerable, on Halloween.

What makes the fae so terrifying is how subtle they are… One foggy night, Lee Warnick waits for her dad to come home from the factory. Lately, more and more people have been disappearing from her small town, and she feels that her family might be next. No one else will talk about it, but Lee knows the truth: the fae have been abducting people, on the nights when the fog rises up. Haunted by nightmares and terrified for her family, Lee must find a way to keep the faeries from striking again… A night full of primal dread…and horrifying illusions.

A haunting tale of a monster who lived inside mirrors, and the ghost he left behind when he died… What would you do to get rid of an abusive ghost? When Michael's father died, he left behind a grown-up family shattered by years of his broken, abusive, alcoholic behavior—and a legion of adoring fans who hung on every word of his stories. They called him creative. But the truth was that Michael's father had the ability to violate the boundary between one side of the mirror and the other, traveling between reflections and watching, and interfering, with other people's private lives until there was little of the man left—only a monster. Now the man is dead. But part of the monster has been left behind…

The year is 1816, in Northamptonshire. A red, spiderwebbed haze covers the sun. Temperatures drop, fields flood and freeze, grain rots on the stem. The people are starving, and even the wealthy and titled are affected by shortages. Sickness spreads as a red fungus overtakes fields, seals over windows, and infiltrates cellars. On the way back from the Napoleonic Wars in France, Marcus, the younger son of the Earl of Penderbrook, returns to find his brother dead, the estate covered in fungus, and his father sinking into madness. The last thing Marcus wants to do is be responsible for Penderbook; he wants only to spend the rest of his life playing cards, drinking, and seducing other men's wives. But even the responsible life of an heir escapes from his grasp, as his brother's body disappears, his father turns violent, and pale monsters horrify the countryside. As Marcus pieces together the truth, he discovers a past more tainted with evil than he could have suspected. From the family wine cellar to the folly behind the house—from the pond where he played as a child to the new cotton mill built along the stream— None of what happens at Penderbrook is innocent. And the monstrosities that have been committed may still be carried in Marcus's blood… A tale of transformation and terror, set in the year Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein. 

Once upon a time... Napoléon Buonoparte did not ally himself with the armies of France during the French Revolution, but sought power instead in Britain, where his subtlety and planning was met with reticience and phlegmatism. The British feared Napoléon's infamous Corsican temper, and worried that it would lead him to vendetta--and not capable leadership. Would he betray them to France unintentionally? Although he had proved himself capable in various matters, Napoléon knew that he would be once again tested before the British would commit. His plans hung upon the outcome of a single ball: a man who could not organize a pleasant country ball surely could not be relied upon to lead an army. His plans were in place, his resources martialed... ...and then he met a bookish young woman named Jane Austen. This short, sweet romance is an alternate history of what might have happened, if Napoléon had not met his Josephine and gone to France, but allied himself elsewhere.

What does normal even mean...and why does it seem so fake? Let me tell you... 31 tales of normal things gone wrong. Everything from coffee to gift cards to having friends over. 31 innocuous, even delightful things that are supposed to be able to replace happiness, job satisfaction, and a sense of purpose. 31 atmospheric tales about good things gone wrong--horribly, weirdly wrong. When the world has gone completely nuts, even the normal looks strange. (Teens and up.)

Cherry-juice, clocks, windup cats, wicked fountains, traitors, queens, headless rabbits, twists and reversals...a steampunk adventure! England, 1901. Alice Liddell Hargreaves, the girl who inspired the Alice in Wonderland books, has all grown up. She is married and has three rambunctious boys, an excellent husband, a wonderful house. A good life. Why, then, does she regret never having gone through the painting that Mr. Dodgson, otherwise known as Lewis Carroll, gave her for her wedding? When she touches it, the pigment melts away and a portal opens--to Wonderland. But she always turns back. Meanwhile in Wonderland, a terrible curse had been inflicted on the inhabitants. For half the day, they are banished to the opposite side of Wonderland, where everyone is made of clockwork and forced to work until sunrise, winding the Master Chronometer that powers them all. And if they don't? The entire world, and everyone in it, will wind down. And if they do? The same thing is going to happen anyway. Because the Master Chronometer is breaking down, and only Alice can save it...

Before Lewis Carroll wrote Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, he was humble Charles Dodgson, mathematician at Christ Church college...and a zombie. Kept sane by a serum, chained to an iron ball, considered one of the finest amateur photographers in Britain, and friend to the three charmingly edible daughters of his superior and owner, Dean Liddell, Mr. Dodgson has quite the story to tell. And at least one of the girls, Alice, is entirely willing to listen. Even if it means that her strange zombie friend should have to be killed.

A collection of short horror, ghost, and dark fantasy stories for adults, woven together by a flock of crows, telling stories to entertain a girl trying to survive a tragedy... It was we crows who took your daughter, in case you were wondering. She didn’t run away. We had--I had--been watching her for some time, listening to her tell stories in the grass behind the house. She would sit near the chicken coop and watch the white chickens pick at the dirt, pulling up fat worms and clipping grasshoppers out of the air as they jumped toward the fields. Some of them were good stories. Some of them were bad. But that’s what decided it, even more than any issue of mercy or salvation or anything else. Crows are, for one, possessive of stories. And also by then I had pecked almost all the elders into coming to listen to her at least once, except Facunde, who was then mad and responded to nobody’s pecking, not that I had had the courage to exactly take my beak to her. “She is like a daughter to me,” I had pled with the others. “She listens.” They laughed at me, they rattled their beaks, they came and heard her and were convinced, or at least bullied into pretending they were convinced. We took her on the same cold winter day that you traded your son to the fairies, the wind blowing in cold gray threads, ruffling our feathers. It had snowed a few days before that, a storm that had killed your husband, or so it was said. The wind had snatched the snow out onto the prairie, hiding it in crevices. It had been a dry year, and even though it was still too cold to melt the snow, the thirsty dirt still found places to tuck it away in case of a thaw. I stamped my feet on a sleeping branch while the others argued. Some argued that we should wait for spring. So many things are different, in the spring. But old Loyolo insisted: no, if we were to take the child, we would have to take her then and there: there had been at least one death already, and no one had heard the babe’s cry for hours. We covered the oak trees, thousands of us, so many that the branches creaked and swayed under our weight. I don’t know if you noticed us, before it was too late. You were, it is to be admitted, busy. The girl played on the swings, rocking herself back and forth in long, mournful creaks. She wore a too-small padded jacket and a dress decorated in small flowers. She was so clean that she still smelled of soap. Her feet were bare under their shoes, the skin scabbed and dry, almost scaly. Her wrists were pricked with gooseflesh, and her hair whipped in thin, colorless threads across her face as the wind caught it. The house had the smell of fresh death, under the peeling paint and the dusty windows, and seemed to murmur with forgotten languages, none of which were languages of love or tenderness. Afternoon was sinking into evening. The girl’s breath smelled like hunger. “Now!” called old Loyolo, at some signal that not even I could have told you. And thousands of birds swept out of the trees toward her. From the middle of it, I can tell you, it seemed a kind of nightmare. Wings in my face, claws in my feathers. The sun was temporarily snuffed out, it was a myriad of bright slices reflected off black wings...