"This guy has a wonderfully twisted mind! Buckle up for a scary ride." - Peter James, International bestselling crime thriller authorDeeds of Darkness is the best short fiction by award-winning author William Burton McCormick. A collection of twenty-four globetrotting stories of suspense, mystery, crime, espionage, horror, and historical genres from the pages of *Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, The Saturday Evening Pos...

Ilya Dudnyk, a corrupt but romantic Russian police inspector, is trapped inside his oligarch employer’s Siberian mansion with an unknown killer, a duplicitous Latvian journalist chained to his arm, and an apocalyptic insect plague raging for hundreds of kilometers beyond the smoke barriers and barricaded windows. Can Ilya track down the killer before he is the next victim? Or will the endless swarms find a way inside and all are consumed by a hundred trillion ravenous, blood-sucking mosqui...

A revelatory account of how African Independence was systematically undermined by the United States."Fascinating information, original research, and bold ideas." —NPR**"A triumph of archival research." —**JacobinIn 1958 in Accra, Ghana, the Hands Off Africa conference brought together the leading figures of African independence in a public show of political strength and purpose. The charismatic Kwame Nkruma...

Eight stories selected for summer adventure and travel, with a mechanical elephant, a hidden treasure horde, a unicorn wandering the Old West, a train ride that brings a whole new meaning to time zones, and, of course, just a touch of the Lovecraftian Pastiche.The Stories:The Rat and the Frog by Emma WhitehallThe Steam Elephant by Stephen R SouthardDoc Borden's Hard Luck Hoss by Julie FrostGentlemanly Horrors of Mine Alone by Donald J Bing...

Lost is more than just a popular television show; it's a complex examination of meaningful philosophical questions. What does good versus evil mean on the island? Is it a coincidence that characters John Locke and Desmond David Hume are named after actual philosophers? What is the ethics of responsibility for Jack?An action-adventure story with more than a touch of the metaphysical, Lost forces viewers to ask difficult questions of themselves just as the story ask...

Black Mask, the greatest American detective magazine of all time, is back with another issue. This time around, it includes nine new stories in the Black Mask vein by Brian Townsley, Jane Jakeman, Brian Stanley, Hannah Honeybun, William Burton McCormick, Frank Megna, Jonathan Sheppard, Michael Bracken, Jim Doherty, as well as a new article on Raymond Chandler’s The Little Sister by Katrina Younes. In addition, Boris Dralyuk has kindly supplied his translation of Isaac Bab...

Afghanistan, 2022.You can check out any time you want.But you can never leave.Two decades ago, the United States invaded Taliban-controlled Afghanistan to fumigate a rat's nest of international terrorists. And then it left.Now the Taliban are teetering on the edge of a fresh civil war, and a new breed of militants is growing out of the fertile ground of chaos. One group makes the Taliban regime look like kindergarten teachers by comparison. It's known as Isl...

World War III and its aftermath of all-consuming fire left civilization on the brink of extinction. But John Thomas Rourke, the ex-CIA Covert Operations Officer, weapons specialist, and survival expert—still lives, fighting the elements and the odds.And those odds have never been more heavily stacked against Rourke than when he finds his son mortally wounded and Natalia and all of his family kidnapped by a Russian foe, long thought dead.As Rourke's son hovers between life a...

"Three men want one empire……but only one can have it.Prometheus returned to his solar system, and de Finita’s forces prepare to defend what’s theirs.The AllSeer’s return threatens to conquer both militaries in one genius move. He’ll obliterate Mars and force Prometheus to make an impossible choice:Save his friend or save his insurrection.Will de Finita bend the knee or watch billions burn alive beneath the AllSeer’s magnificent power?Will Pro...

"If you come after the CIA’s most feared assassin, there’s one cardinal rule: Don’t miss.America is under attack. Thousands lie dead after simultaneous strikes across the country. The day will come to be known as Bloody Monday.Jason Trapp, codename ‘Hangman’, was a covert operative whose feats became the stuff of legend. He was the tip of the spear—the man his country unleashed when all hope was lost.Six months ago, someone sold him out. The Agency listed him as kil...

Hands bleeding, joints aching, John Rourke watches the remaining space shuttles of the Eden Project fleet land. But what kind of world have they returned to? A Soviet madman bent on world domination, a Nazi resurrection and one of the Eden crew murdered within the first day of the fleet's return.John Rourke, The Survivalist, must serve as judge, jury and executioner in the pursuit of justice and the defense of freedom in The Survivalist 12: The Rebellion.

Welcome to Black Cat Weekly #52.This week, our acquiring editors have outdone themselves—Michael Bracken has an original story by William Burton McCormick, “House of Tigers,” which was a Black Orchid Novella Award finalist. Though it didn’t win, it’s a great story. (Competition is fierce for this particular award, since it judged by Linda Landrigan, editor of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. I won the first Black Orchid for my story “Horse Pit,” and I haven’t dared ent...