Scott J. Couturier

SCOTT J. COUTURIER has distinguished himself with poems of uncanny beauty and dread, appearing in the pages of Spectral Realms, The Audient Void, Eternal Haunted Summer, and other journals of the Weird. His poems are singularly sensitive to the darker aspects of nature. Jackanapes Press is pleased to offer I Awaken in October-Couturier's first volume of poetry-which collects a cornucopia of seasonal horrors and autumnal delights. In I Awaken In October, rites of autumnal adulation are performed alongside offerings to every phase of the Year's Wheel, seasons sequentially explored through lenses of veneration, dread, and supernatural awe. All wending back to that most bittersweet of moments, when once more we awaken-just as the dead do-to October's majesty. Follow the path to Summer's end, where the last gold-litten days malinger into cobweb; where gleaming trails of jack-o -lanterns light the way; where Queen Mab and Cernunnos reign. With a foreword by Rebecca Buchanan, and an introduction by the author. Featuring 20 full-page illustrations by Dan Sauer.

For those who hunger for small bites of horror sweetened with black humor, this collection of Grim Tales and Gothic Fancies offers a satisfying repast: morbidly playful riffs on the faerie tales of the Brothers Grimm; darkly exquisite Gothic fables in both prose and verse; and hell-raising evocations of beings both demonic and diabolic. A rich feast of horrors leavened with wit, Book of Shadows offers a delicious glimpse into the decadent heart and mordant mind of Manuel Arenas. In "The Sanguinary Saga of Morbidezza Vespertilio, Vampiress," Arenas inverts "Sleeping Beauty" with more than a touch of Gothicism in the style of Hammer horror. With "Rosaire, Master of Wolves," he shows us the dark genesis and bloody destiny of a born werewolf. A lighter touch is used in "Gothilocks," a playfully sardonic update on "Goldilocks and the Three Bears." The dread demon of Christmas makes an appearance in "Greetings from Krampus," and in "Nativity in Black: An Anti-Christmas Story," we are presented with a dark celebration featuring all creatures great and infernal in a pageant-quite literally-from Hell. This volume is sumptuously illustrated by Dan Sauer, whose surreal images heighten the effect of the dark fantasies contained herein.

The third book in the Magistricide series. Following the terrors and travails of their all-too-recent adventures, the young mage Kelrob Kael-Pellin returns to his ancestral home in the Rolling Lands accompanied by Jacobson, a guildless and world-wearied sellsword. There, they are unexpectedly plunged into familial intrigue: Kelrob, having fallen ill on the road, is forcibly separated from Jacobson by his guilt-maddened father, Amon Kael-Pellin. As the mage struggles to recover from his deathly illness, the clan Kael-Pellin goes to war with itself, plunging the future of the family's noble lineage in doubt. To further complicate matters, strange reports arrive from the far-northerly, reviled Demesne Roc-Thalian, where Jacobson has been sent into exile...reports of whole herds of cattle slaughtered, drained completely of blood. Too, there are accounts of a dead man walking, of some unspeakable reanimate evil stalking the night...all too soon, Kelrob and Jacobson find themselves enmeshed in a web of dark magic and sinister intentions. Blasted by fate, haunted by arcane visions, they must plunge together into the hungering darkness, risking both life and soul as they strive to untangle the ghastly riddle of the Curse of Roc-Thalian... M "To merely call it Grimdark would be to fail to capture its strange, unsettling subtleties...it is assuredly both dark and grim. What it conjured for me was less Abercrombie and more Moorcock...this is deftly, tautly written Weird Fantasy, with the most intriguing magic system since Steven Erickson." - Phil Breach, author of The Arte Mephitic, co-author of North.

The second book in the Magistricide series. Tannigal is in flames, destroyed by the frenzy-inducing songs of the inhuman bard Tamrel. Kelrob, a young magician of great promise but limited experience, flees the city's ruin alongside his companions: Jacobson, a weary mercenary whose body has become Tamrel's vessel, and Nuir, the sheltered but willful daughter of a great merchant-lord. Their destination is the house of Madame Heretia, a disgraced archmage of unknown powers and dubious allegiance. As the lines between reality and illusion begin to blur, Kelrob finds himself lost in a web of conflicting temptations, and must choose where his ultimate loyalty lies. But he must choose quickly, for the Mask of Tamrel yearns to continue its apocalyptic song...

For 2,000 years the country of Thevin has been sealed off by the sorcery of a god-in-flesh known as the Gyre. Magic has been condensed into an azure metal, called chromox, which instantly manifests the wielder's will. Magisters and merchant-lords rule a world of harsh class divides; beyond the Ilark Mountains, a race of mindless men breed incessantly, intent only on Thevin's destruction. Born to a laird-lord of the Rolling Lands and trained as a magister from youth, Kelrob Kael-Pellin's life has been one of sheltered study. Chosen to train in the mind-warping Mentatis Discipline, his research has veered from the teachings of his Masters, and he travels north in frustrated disgrace. On Sowen Night, in the midst of strange revels, he meets Jacobson, a drunken sell-sword intent on his own death. When a possessed mask begins to steal the bodies of the living, the pair are forced into an unlikely companionship; together with Nuir, a willful woman of the desert-dwelling Jeneni, they must oppose the twisted music of the Mask of Tamrel. Should they fail, the songs of the Old Races will topple the Gyre and bring untold devastation to the fledgling species called Human...