2035 A.D. After the 2nd American Civil War Jack Pasternak, a laid-back California doctor, receives a garbled distress call from his fiancée in Maryland before her transmissions stop altogether. Unfortunately for Jack, citizens of the Blue States are no longer allowed to cross Red America. He is faced with an impossible choice: ignore his lover’s peril or risk his own life and sanity by venturing into the dark heart of The Red States. When the armies of the Mexican Reconquista come marching into Los Angeles, Jack’s hand is forced and he heads east in an old-fashioned gas guzzling car. Stephen Kozeniewski, writer of Brian Eater Jones, The Ghoul Archipelago and Billy and The Cloneasaurus, brings an epic future adventure.

“Once you get to earth orbit, you’re halfway to anywhere in the solar system.”
— Robert A. Heinlein

Sinister Grin Press invites you to enjoy a special reading journey with this small collection of science fiction.

Stars and Sigils by William Meikle
Heroes Are Made by J G Faherty
Daedalus by Jeremy Henderson
Thousand-Yard Zoom by Konstantine Paradias
To Do Your Duty by Ramon Rozas III

In Weyrd County, New Jersey, a UFO crashes into the Pinelands. Rumors soon spread throughout the county that the craft’s occupants have escaped.

As panic spreads, Bud McCracken, pest exterminator, picks up a last-minute overtime assignment, and his client turns out to be his former grade school teacher Alice Cranberry. Bud soon discovers that the ‘pest problem’ at Alice’s house is not of this world. Meanwhile, Alice picks up where she left off decades ago belittling Bud every chance she gets.

Bud knows there’s only one way to deal with his childhood trauma. But Alice, under the aliens’ telehypnotic spell, won’t go without a fight.

All life comes from the sun. Sometimes, death comes with it.

Filled with hope and compelled by fear, four would-be heroes are driven from their home planet in a desperate bid to save their civilization from extinction. But survival takes on a whole new meaning when a malfunction sends their ship plummeting toward Earth.

Surviving the crash is only the first obstacle on their path to salvation. The marooned aliens soon discover that Earth’s beautiful exterior masks an ugly foundation, a place inhabited by a warrior race that’s on a path toward self-destruction.

Brimming with action and intrigue, People of the Sun is sure to entice fans of dark fantasy and sci-fi thrillers such as Watchmen and I Am Number Four.

“Jason Parent has penned a thought-provoking, gripping scifi thriller. This isn’t your grandma’s alien invasion. My own world stopped the moment I stepped into People of the Sun. Lovers of science fiction, horror and even super heroes will revel in this roller-coaster of a tale. A true must-read!” Hunter Shea, author of We Are Always Watching and The Jersey Devil

“With his own indelible blend of tension and dark humor, Jason Parent’s latest page-turner reminds me of what you’d get if you crossed Isaac Asimov with Kurt Vonnegut. In addition to being fast-paced and wildly entertaining, Parent’s novel also offers the occasional flash of insight into the human (and not-so-human) condition, and displays Parent’s talent for turning a given genre on its head.” -Michael Meyerhofer, author of The Dragonkin Trilogy

Survivors from an almost absolute genocide flee through space/time to make an attempt at propagating their species. The architects of their race’s destruction realize that their mission was incomplete. The resulting conflict will be waged on our home planet where a troubled physicist, his young neighbor, and an artificial intelligence may prove to be key in deciding the outcome.

City stands in the irradiated dunes of America, nearly two centuries after the Final War. The wall surrounding it is a buffer for the wasteland inhabitants who covet entrance, and a trap for the citizens smothering in its polluted air and drowning in its blood-filled streets. Stone is a criminal for hire. Robbed of his loved ones and scarred almost beyond recognition, he navigates City’s darkest corners, doing some of its darkest deeds. In this collection, he’ll pursue an elusive thief, bent on raising an army of juiced up mutants. He’ll break into the office building of a mysterious corporation, only to find the executives are less into sending faxes and more into performing hexes. In the final chapter, he’ll track a man through the Alleys of South City with the help of his tech savvy partner, Megan, and together they’ll face the sentient darkness of City’s deepest underbelly, and confront the violent potential of City’s most dangerous cults. Part Blade Runner. Part Sin City. Stone Work is an action-packed ride through the rain-slicked streets of a dark, unforgiving urban landscape, rife with sadistic criminals, inter-dimensional abominations, and a creeping darkness that seeks to erase the last, now almost mythical traces of human goodness left in a world always teetering over the edge of its own extinction.

Doctoral student Paige Ambroziak is a “station bunny” – she’s never set foot off the deep space outpost where she grew up. But when she’s offered a small fortune to join a clandestine salvage mission, she jumps at the chance to leave the cutthroat world of academia behind. Paige is convinced she’s been enlisted to find the legendary Manifest Destiny, a long-lost colonization vessel from an era before the corporations ruled Earth and its colonies. Whatever she’s looking for, though, rests in the blood-like seas of a planet-sized organism called a fleshworld. Dangers abound for Paige and her shipmates. Flying outside charted space means competing corporations can shoot them on sight rather than respect their salvage rights. The area is also crawling with pirates like the ghoulish skin-wrappers, known for murdering anyone they can’t extort. But the greatest threat to Paige’s mission is the nauseating alien parasites which infest the fleshworld. These lamprey-like monstrosities are used to swimming freely in an ocean of blood, and will happily spill a new one from the veins of the outsiders who have tainted their home. In just a few short, bone-chilling hours Paige learns that there are no limits to the depravity and violence of the grotesque nightmares known as…THE HEMATOPHAGES.

Even as a young woman, Tanner is haunted by childhood nightmares of alien abduction. She’s trying to find her place in college, but a series of bizarre murders on campus isn’t helping her paranoia. Tanner just desperately wants to be normal, but finds herself in the center of a celestial game, the players beyond comprehension. The terrifying truth spans across humanity, and there is no hope, there is no tomorrow. There is darkness in every room.