Illinois Authors

At fifteen, Amanda Grace was abducted on her way home from school. 738 days later, she escaped. Her 20/20 interview is what everyone remembers: Amanda describing the room where she was kept, the torn poster of TV heartthrob Chase Henry on the wall. It reminded her of home and gave her the strength to keep fighting. Now, years later, Amanda is struggling to live normally. Her friends have gone on to college, while she battles PTSD. She's not getting any better, and she fears that if something doesn't change soon she never will. Six years ago, Chase Henry defied astronomical odds, won a coveted role on a new TV show, and was elevated to super-stardom. With it, came drugs, alcohol, arrests, and crazy spending sprees. Now he's sober and a Hollywood pariah, washed up at twenty-four. To revamp his image, Chase's publicist comes up with a plan: surprise Amanda Grace with the chance to meet her hero, followed by a visit to the set of Chase's new movie. The meeting is a disaster, but out of mutual desperation, Amanda and Chase strike a deal. What starts as a simple arrangement, though, rapidly becomes more complicated when they realize they need each other in more ways than one. But when the past resurfaces in a new threat, will they stand together or fall apart?

Echelon Press, Laurel, MD : ©2008.

Rennie Harlow, is a fun-loving, recently scorned woman who's returned home from the big city and can't seem to stop finding dead bodies. The third one this year is that of the local pharmacist, Doc Hallacy. As Rennie delves deeper into Doc's death she is not surprised to find that things don't add up.

Hyperion, New York : 2012.

Ghost-talker Will and his cranky spirit-guide Alona Dare, who is still trapped in the body of Lily Turner a month after being hit by a bus, consult a psychic in their continuing effort to separate Alona's spirit from Lily's body.

Tor Nightfire [S.l.] : 2025

Cold Eternity is the newest action-packed space horror from S.A. Barnes, where desperation for eternal life leads to a fate worse than death... Halley is on the run from an interplanetary political scandal that has put a huge target on her back. She heads for what seems like the perfect place to lay low: a gigantic space barge storing the cryogenically frozen bodies of Earth’s most fortunate citizens from more than a century ago… The cryo program, created by trillionaire tech genius Zale Winfeld, is long defunct, and the AI hologram "hosts," ghoulishly created in the likeness of Winfeld’s three adult children, are glitchy. The ship feels like a crypt, and the isolation gets to Halley almost immediately. She starts to see figures crawling in the hallways, and there’s a constant scraping, slithering, and rattling echoing in the vents. It’s not long before Halley realizes she may have gotten herself trapped in an even more dangerous situation than the one she was running from….

Tor Nightfire 2022

A Best Book of 2022 by the New York Public Library • One of the Best SFF Books of 2022 (Gizmodo) • One of the Best SF Mysteries of 2022 (CrimeReads) • A GoodReads Choice Award finalist for Best Science Fiction! Titanic meets Event Horizon in this SF horror novel in which a woman and her crew board a decades-lost luxury cruiser and find the wreckage of a nightmare that hasn't yet ended. Claire Kovalik is days away from being unemployed―made obsolete―when her beacon repair crew picks up a strange distress signal. With nothing to lose and no desire to return to Earth, Claire and her team decide to investigate. What they find is shocking: the Aurora, a famous luxury spaceliner that vanished on its maiden tour of the solar system more than twenty years ago. A salvage claim like this could set Claire and her crew up for life. But a quick search of the ship reveals something isn’t right. Whispers in the dark. Flickers of movement. Messages scrawled in blood. Claire must fight to hold on to her sanity and find out what really happened on the Aurora before she and her crew meet the same ghastly fate. "Truly un-put-downable in its purest sense.” Chloe Gong, #1 New York Times bestselling author of These Violent Delights

Caroline must leave behind her fantasy world inspired by a 1990s television show and create a real life at college, despite her mother's concerns and her own self-doubt.

A young man struggles to move forward after the death of his twin brother in this “poignant and powerful” (Kirkus Reviews) coming-of-age tale about loss, redemption, love, and the moment you begin to see the world differently.Three minutes.Jacob Palmer died for three life-changing minutes.And when he woke up, nothing was the same. Elijah, his twin brother, is dead, and his family is broken. Jace’s planned future is crushed, along with his pitching arm. Everyone keeps telling him that Eli’s in a better place, but Jace isn’t so sure. Because in those three minutes, there was nothing.Overwhelmed by guilt and doubt, Jace struggles to adjust to this new version of the world, one without his brother, one without the certainties he once relied on. And then Thera comes into his life.She’s the last girl he should be turning to for help.But she’s also the first person to truly see him.

Tor Nightfire 2024

A crew must try to survive on an ancient, abandoned planet in the latest space horror novel from S.A. Barnes, acclaimed author of Dead Silence.An abandoned planet. A hidden past. A deadly danger.Psychologist Dr. Ophelia Bray has dedicated her life to the study and prevention of Eckhart-Reiser syndrome (ERS)―the most famous case of which resulted in the brutal murders of twenty-nine people. It’s personal to her, and when she’s assigned to a small exploration crew who recently suffered the tragic death of a colleague, she wants to help. But as they begin to establish residency on an abandoned planet, it becomes clear that the crew is hiding something.And Ophelia’s crewmates are far more interested in investigating the eerie, ancient planet and unraveling the mystery behind the previous colonizers’ hasty departure than opening up to her.That is, until their pilot is discovered gruesomely murdered. Is this Ophelia’s worst nightmare starting―a wave of violence and mental deterioration from ERS? Or is it something even more sinister?Terrified that history will repeat itself, Ophelia and the crew must work together to figure out what’s happening. But trust is hard to come by…and the crew members aren’t the only ones keeping secrets.

Ariane Tucker has finally escaped GTX, the research facility that created her. Now that she's on the run, Zane Bradshaw is the only person she can trust. He knows who-and what-she is and still wants to be part of her life.But accepting Zane's help means putting him in danger.Dr. Jacobs, head of GTX, is not the only one hunting for Ariane. Two rival corporations have their sights set on taking down their competition. Permanently.To protect Zane and herself, Ariane needs allies. She needs the other hybrids. The hybrids who are way more alien and a lot less human. Can Ariane win them over before they turn on her? Or will she be forced to choose sides, to decide who lives and who dies?

Hyperion, New York : c 2013.

At sixteen, Ariane Tucker has been careful to elude those seeking her since her escape from a genetics lab ten years earlier, but the attention of classmate Zane, both frightening and intoxicating, tempts her to risk violating at least one of her adoptive father's five simple rules.

After being on the run, Ariane Tucker finds herself back where she started--under the cruel control of Dr. Jacobs, head of the research facility that created her. Now she must participate in the upcoming trials; a deadly competition pitting her against other alien hybrids, each representing a rival corporation--

Hyperion, New York : ©2011.

Will gets involved with The Order, a group consisting of ghost-talkers like himself, as he continues to help spirits into the light, while Alona, his vain, self-centered, and cranky spirit guide begins to learn the value of helping others.

Former television star Calista Beckett is trying to live a normal life as a college student, but when her former costar, Eric Stone, shows up and tries to convince her to return to California, she becomes even more determined to keep him out of her life.

Hyperion, New York : ©2010.

After being hit by a bus and killed, a high school homecoming queen gets stuck in the land of the living, with only a loser classmate--who happens to be able to see and hear ghosts--to help her.

RuneStone Pub., Dover, N.H. : 2004.

Zara Mitchell's nightmares began when the Observers landed. These strangely vivid visions continue to haunt her nightly, leaving her terrified of the silver-eyed visitors and their true intentions. When one of the eerily beautiful beings shows up at her diner with the local sheriff, her world changes forever. The Observer insists that she come with him. He claims her life is in danger. But can he be trusted? After two years, Caelan's search is finally over. He's found her, the human female from the prophecy. She is the one thing he recognizes from his life before Earth, his only link to the truth. Now all he has to do is keep her alive long enough to find the clues to a past he can't remember and a future she fears.