October - Hardcover

by Gregory Bastianelli (Author)

A magician and a dark evil at Halloween come together in an intriguing coming-of-age thriller.

Readers of Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes and All Hallows by Christopher Golden will love this. In 1970, four boys on the cusp of becoming teenagers notice strange events occurring in Maplewood, NH, timed with the late-night arrival of an old magician who has taken up residence in a boarding house in their neighborhood where one of the tenants is a reclusive pulp horror writer. The writer's fears have kept him from venturing outside in over forty years, fears linked to the magician's previous visit. As children go missing in town, the four boys try to piece together seemingly unrelated phenomena and realize dark forces are at work, but no one will believe them.

FLAME TREE PRESS is the imprint of long-standing independent Flame Tree Publishing, dedicated to full-length original fiction in the horror and suspense, science fiction & fantasy, and crime / mystery / thriller categories. The list brings together fantastic new authors and the more established; the award winners, and exciting, original voices.

Author Biography

Gregory Bastianelli is the author of the novels, "Shadow Flicker, "Snowball," "Loonies," and "Jokers Club." His novella "The Lair of the Mole People" appeared in the pulp anthology "Men & Women of Mystery Vol. II."

Publisher's Weekly described his "Shadow Flicker" as a "dark disturbing treat." Booklist stated: "This is a gripping horror story from an author who deserves a wider audience."

Publisher's Weekly said of "Snowball," that "Readers will be riveted by this genuinely scary holiday phantasmagoria." Rue Morgue Magazine said: "If you want Halloween-infused Christmas terror tale ... Bastianelli has got you covered ... with several feet of blood soaked snow." Horrornews.net has referred to Bastianelli as the "messiah of macabre."

He graduated from the University of New Hampshire where he studied writing under instructors Mark Smith, Thomas Williams and Theodore Weesner. He worked for nearly two decades at a small daily newspaper where the highlights of his career were interviewing shock rocker Alice Cooper and B-movie icon Bruce Campbell.

He became enchanted with the stories of Ray Bradbury as a young child, and his love of horror grew with the likes of Richard Matheson, Robert Bloch, Stephen King and Ramsey Campbell.

He lives in Dover, NH. He enjoys traveling, especially to Italy where he has visited his ancestral home and hiked the Path of the Gods on the Amalfi Coast and to the top of Mt. Vesuvius.

He is a member of the Horror Writers Association and the New England Horror Writers.