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Hellbound Books - James Longmore & Xtina Marie
HellBound Books are the veritable tour de force in the Independent publishing world - For eight years and counting, we have published novels, novellas, and bestselling anthologies of exemplary horror, bizarro, and all things dark - the type of tales from exciting new authors guaranteed to keep you wide awake in the small hours and checking the inky-black, coagulating shadows beneath your bed just one last time before you dare sleep...
We are incredibly Proud to be champions of the newest, brightest upcoming authors as well as home to more established writers. Our objective is to bring to you - our wonderful readers - the very best in the dark genres. We are proud to say all HellBound Books titles are available in traditional-sized paperback and eBook (along with a few very special hard cover books), too and that we never - ever - use Artificial intelligence in any HellBound book's prose or cover art, nor do we condone its use in any way. So, Please do take a little of your time to peruse our ever-expanding bookshelf...
Xtina Marie is an avid horror and fiction genre reader, who became a blogger; who became a published poet; who became an editor; who now is a podcaster and an aspiring novelist—and why not?
People love her words. Her first book of poetry: Dark Musings has received outstanding reviews. It is likely she was born to this calling. Writing elaborate twisted tales, to entertain her classmates in middle school, would later lead Xtina to use her poetry writing as a private emotional outlet in adult life—words she was hesitant to share publicly—but the more she shared; the more accolades her writing received.
Her first novel: Desiree is well under way.
James hails originally from Yorkshire, England having relocated with his family to Houston, Texas in 2010. He was honored to become a US citizen in 2022. He has an honors degree in Zoology and a background in sales, marketing, and business. James is a former Affiliate Member of the Horror Writers Association.
An accomplished, published author (and publisher in his role as co-founder partner in HellBound Books Publishing LLC), and ghostwriter of popular fiction, James writes across an incredibly wide range of genres and subjects in novel, shorts story, and screenplay formats. To date, he has four novels, five novellas, and a whole slew of short stories published by various publishers (many can be found in his first collection, Blood and Kisses). He also runs and co-hosts the popular ppodcast/radio show (The New Panic Room), which is used to promote HellBound Books and indie authors, artists, audiobook narrators, and publishers of all genres.
James has been working full time as a freelance ghostwriter (and editor) for over a decade. He is quite the chameleon when it comes to writing: James is able to adapt to a wide range of styles and genres, is incredibly thorough in his research (he's renowned for his details, which bring stories leaping from the page!), extensive vocabulary, and he always keeps the client's "voice" when ghostwriting. Clients love him - especially with that Northern British accent (as an ex-pat, James is most proficient at writing in both UK and US styles – he also has clients in Australia who love his style!) and enthusiasm for every writing project he takes on.
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Meredith Doench - Never Say Die
34:58|Detective Rory Scott was in college when six-year-old Savannah Armitage vanished and the body of a missing teen was found nearby in a shallow grave. The case went unsolved, but Rory’s mother's partner, Stephen, was convicted in the court of public opinion. When Rory’s mother refused to leave him, Rory broke familial ties.Six years later, Rory has built a life with her girlfriend Cade. When another child disappears and the unidentified body of a missing teen is found nearby, Rory knows it’s more than a coincidence. She steps in as the lead investigator, determined to find the killer and bring home the missing girls. As media swarms law enforcement for details, the state steps in, and a rookie special agent yanks Rory’s case.In a renegade move, Rory teams up with Savannah’s mother, a woman still desperate to find her daughter alive. When the investigation leads to the two people Rory most wants to avoid—her own mother and Stephen—Rory must face the fallout of her estrangement.As Rory’s personal and professional lives converge, it’s a race against time to find the connection between the cases and bring the killer to justice.
J.T. Pattern - None Witness
34:22|NONE WITNESSBook One of the Killian Kane SeriesWhen the Church cannot forgive, it resolves.Killian Kane was never meant to survive his childhood.The son of a Chicago Outfit enforcer, he was raised inside a world where violence was currency and silence was survival. By seventeen, he was already cleaning what powerful men left behind. Then he vanished—erased from the criminal underworld by a secretive, Vatican-adjacent authority known only as the Resolution Office.They did not save him.They remade him.Now Killian serves as a Custodian, an operative tasked with containing the unforgivable. He does not kill. He erases evidence. He constructs plausible truths. He ensures the world never learns what the Church itself cannot survive revealing.For years, Resolution has kept its secrets buried.Until a priest in New York commits a brutal, ritualized murder.Killian is dispatched to contain the scandal. But what he finds is not a crime of passion. It is a message.Soon, similar killings emerge across Chicago, Milwaukee, and Indianapolis. Each murder is more public. More symbolic. More deliberate. The killer is not hiding.He is escalating.The man responsible is Lucien, a brilliant and charismatic priest who believes murder is not sin, but sacrament. He targets clergy the Church quietly protected—men whose crimes were buried through settlement, silence, and reassignment. Lucien believes he is delivering divine justice.And he knows things he should not know.He knows about Resolution.He knows about its methods.He knows about Killian.As Killian closes in, the Resolution Office assigns him an Instrument—an assassin authorized to perform Terminal Resolution. Forced into partnership with sanctioned violence, Killian begins to uncover a truth more terrifying than Lucien’s crusade:Resolution did not just recruit him.It engineered him.Now hunted by the system that created him and pursued by a killer who believes himself chosen, Killian must confront the possibility that he was never meant to serve justice.Only to contain it.Because when Resolution fails, there are none left to witness.
Sam Wiebe - Guns Across the River
24:21|Sam Wiebe’s gripping sixth Wakeland novel delivers a taut, atmospheric mystery that dives into corruption, crime and family secrets deeply rooted in Vancouver’s underworld.On a dark night in False Creek, a distraught young woman jumps from the Granville Bridge. PI Dave Wakeland rescues Nicola Havoc from the water. Yet what seems like attempted suicide is even more sinister: Nicola is running away from someone. But who?Soon Wakeland and his partner Jeff Chen are pulled into a case that leads from Vancouver’s back alleys to the hills of the Fraser Valley. Nicola may hold the key to unlocking a billion-dollar construction scandal and a gun-running ring—if Wakeland can protect her from her own violent family.
Matthew Hughes - Yalum
28:47|Yalum Erkatchian is captain and part owner of the space yacht Peregrinator when a distant relative lures him into returning to the planet he fled twenty-five years ago to escape a matriarchal cult. But it’s a trap and Yalum is forced into a quest to recover a sacred relic that pitches him into a desperate struggle for survival.And then it gets worse, because he discovers that the entire universe is about to be upended by a sudden switch of its operating system from cause-and-effect rationalism to willpowered magic. Yalum and his friends try to prepare to survive, but a new threat emerges: someone has been planning to ride the new reality into a tyranny of spellslinging aided by a bored demon.
Maria Jane - Perfect Secrets
16:25|Lawyers assume their clients don’t tell them everything.Elle Moore assumes she’ll never escape her past.Desperate for a fresh start, Elle jumps at the chance to work for Watson Clarke, a prestigious law firm offering a near-free path through law school. It’s everything she’s ever wanted.There’s one complication: Tanner Clarke, the firm’s magnetic young heir.Elle’s mother has spent years warning her daughter about lawyers, and her own ex proved those warnings right. Tanner should be the last man she lets close—but resisting him is harder than passing the bar on the first try. Tanner? He’s trying to find his footing in the shadow of his late father, but the moment Tanner meets the elusive Elle, he’s pulled into her orbit.Their connection grows fast and bright until Elle meets Tanner’s mother.Accusations fly. Old wounds split open. Suddenly, Elle is tumbling through a flood of hidden ties and painful truths, each one cracking the fragile trust between them.Tanner reels as everything he thought he knew comes into question.What did Elle know? Did she ever really love him?Perfect Secrets is a standalone romance in the Perfect romance series by award-winning author Maria Jane.Dive in to discover whether Elle and Tanner rise together or get pulled under by the secrets threatening to drown them both.
Joe Clifford - The Skeleton Theory
34:30|He failed to catch the killer. Now, he’ll rewrite reality to save his daughter.Jericho "Echo" Keane is a broken man. Disgraced from the SFPD and living in self-imposed exile in a shipping container, he is tortured by the memory of the Mission Street Killer who murdered his thirteen-year-old daughter, Olivia. Driven by failure and consuming guilt, Echo's only reason for getting out of bed is the slim chance he might not let the morning win.But one desperate encounter at a grief meeting changes everything. A gaunt stranger offers Echo the impossible: a chance to manipulate the "Mandela Effect" and bring back his daughter. This is no dream—it's a brutal reality where time can be "rewound" and consequences altered.Teaming up with Michelle Vale, a mother whose own daughter was the killer's first victim, Echo throws himself into a temporal war. He finds himself hunted by shadowy military-trained mercenaries hired by the ruthless E-Skinz corporation. To protect the new timeline and save the girls, Echo must become the rogue operator he never was.A mind-binding supernatural horror thriller that asks how far you would go to save the ones you love, even if it means dying a villain in the process. Find out the answer today and read into the night!
Dwayne Brenna - The Laundryman
27:26|In the frozen heart of the 1883 Canadian frontier, a single death unveils a darkness that could consume a town—and the men sworn to protect it.Corporal Belvedere, a Mountie scarred by a brutal past, and Surgeon Virgil Montgomery, a newcomer haunted by his own doubts, are drawn into a murder investigation in the isolated settlement of Prince Albert. As winter’s grip tightens, the killing exposes a web of secrets buried beneath the snow, threatening to unravel the fragile order of the North-West Territories.In a community steeped in mistrust, Belvedere’s unyielding quest for justice collides with Montgomery’s struggle to uphold his oath to do no harm. Each clue they uncover draws them deeper into a maze of deception, where allies and enemies blur and every step risks a deadly reckoning. As the ice on the North Saskatchewan River begins to crack, they must confront a truth that could cost them their lives—or their souls.A gripping tale of vengeance and redemption, The Laundryman plunges you into a world where justice battles betrayal, and the truth lies buried in a frozen wilderness.
A.L. Jensen - Hygge and Homicide
34:25|Escape to the charming small town of Lakewood in this delightful Scandinavian-inspired cozy mystery!When talented interior designer Minna Halonen returns to her idyllic northern hometown after decades away, she's ready for a fresh start. Recently divorced and with her daughter grown, Minna eagerly takes over Nordic Cozy, her mother Elsi's beloved home décor shop, embracing the hygge lifestyle and peaceful natural surroundings she'd forgotten she missed.Partnering with her lifelong friend Christie, a creative event planner with an eye for detail, Minna pours her heart into transforming an old lakeside property into Hygge House—a cozy retreat for workshops, gatherings, and the perfect blend of Scandinavian comfort and woodland charm.But on Grand Opening morning, Minna's dreams of a tranquil new beginning crumble when she discovers a dead body on her doorstep! With whispers spreading through Lakewood's tight-knit community and business grinding to a halt, Minna must channel her designer's eye for detail into amateur sleuthing.Can this middle-aged entrepreneur catch a killer and restore harmony to her picturesque hometown? Or will Minna's second chance at happiness be cut tragically short?Hygge and Homicide is the first book in the delightful Hygge House Cozy Mystery series—where murder meets Scandinavian comfort in a rustic northern town.
Lindsey Danis - Out On The Road
26:33|Queer people spend around $100 billion annually on travel, and are twice as likely as the general population to hold a passport. In short, they love to travel! Despite their lavish spending, queer travelers are often underserved. They are either overlooked when it comes to travel guides, or are encouraged to stick to a handful of "safe” destinations. This conventional wisdom doesn't build their confidence or validate their identities. Nor does it teach them how to advocate for themselves as travelers or plan off-the-beaten-path adventures to new places. And, with the advent of anti-LGBTQ+ policies across the United States and elsewhere, travel has become more fraught than ever for queer individuals. Weaving personal experience with data and interviews, (Out) On the Road empowers LGBTQ+ travelers to face their fears, expand their comfort zones, find community, and thrive on the road. This book provides readers with a framework for planning travel, navigating risks, and becoming self-reliant. Written in a tone that centers female and nonbinary points of view, (Out) On the Road offers a deep dive into the queer travel experience.