Showing results by author "A.J. McCarthy" in All Categories

29 Brand-New Sci-Fi Horror Stories. The future is now, and it's not what we were promised. The optimistic science fiction of old was wrong. Progress is not linear, technology creates as many problems as it solves, and the concept of a better tomorrow has become an abstraction that is in no way guaranteed. When looking at the future now, we no longer ask what is possible, we wonder how we'll cope. Contained within this anthology are 29 never-before-published works by supremely talented authors.

In the heart of rural Maine, in the midst of the Great Depression and the final year of Prohibition, the McGinn family stands at a crossroads. The bond between Alder, Finn, and Lewin McGinn, the oldest sons of a widowed mother raising twelve children, is about to be tested in ways they could never have imagined.

Scare Street is proud to present 14 diabolical new tales in this bone-chilling collection. Each ghastly short story unleashes a new nightmare, ripped from the depths of your psyche. It’s almost as if this book has a mind of its own; a monstrous, disturbed mind, a mind full of dark dreams, and twisted nightmares.

Winner First Place BookFest Spring 2024: Multi-period Family Saga When alone in our thoughts, the mind turns to memories and choices made at the many crossroads in life. The world is changing fast for the McGinns; they have electricity and with that comes a radio to hear the news of the world. But the news outside of Maine is not very happy. The third book in the McGinn family saga follows the lives of the siblings' growth to adulthood, and the many challenges that come with the adult world. Mary relies on tradition and strength to shepherd her flock through marriages and death in ...

BookFest Fall 2024 Winner of two First Place Medals (Historical Fiction War & Military) and one Second Place Medal (Multi-period Family Saga) Sometimes the wounds you can’t see leave the deepest scars… In the throes of World War II, Mary McGinn finds herself at the heart of a global conflict, not on the front lines, but in the quiet battlefields of her own home. Widowed and left to raise twelve children on her own, Mary's life becomes a tapestry woven with threads of love, sacrifice, and unwavering determination. As the McGinn men scatter across the globe to serve in various branches of...

What dark secret is hidden in her past? What evil has been handed down through the generations? Emily Burton found happiness in a small, picturesque town on the west coast of Vancouver Island. Her sense of peace and security is shattered when she’s brutally attacked, and an innocent person is murdered. The authorities believe the incident is random, until Emily becomes the target of further violence and threats. With the help of her enigmatic neighbor, she uncovers an eerily similar crime that dates back 60 years. Could there be a connection between the two attacks?

It is October and Hope and her daughter, Cori, are settling into their new town. When Cori and her friends go to a spooky and haunted attraction for some Halloween fun, things take a strange and frightening turn which thrusts the Herring women into a mystery they want nothing to do with. There's also their resident ghost who needs help researching the past to uncover his killer. Will Cori and Hope be able to figure out what's going on before someone else loses their life?

First Place Winner 2025 BookFest Historical Romance, Second Place Winner 2025 BookFest Historical Fiction The beauty of being young is that every day is like the first day of the rest of your life. Set against the rugged cliffs and rugged life of a coastal Ireland village in 1906, The Robin’s Gaze follows the life of Alvin McGinn, a humble farmer with a love for family and Ireland itself. When Alvin meets Edna, a spirited girl selling fish in the village, their connection is immediate and profound. Their love blossoms amid the backdrop of sea spray and starry nights, promising a future as...

It is February in North Carolina and Valentine's Day is fast approaching. The holidays are hard for Hope since losing her husband, and this one, in particular, will be difficult. She and her resident ghost keep looking for clues to his hundred-year-old murder and as she continues to research her husband's death, she finds things that frighten her. If all that wasn't enough, Hope is worried about one of her students, and when one thing leads to another, she ends up embroiled in a mess of a situation.

"A potent, briskly-paced crime thriller featuring a detective whose vulnerability creates first-class suspense." –Best Thrillers Chantal Pouliot, of the Quebec police force, is relegated to mind-numbing desk duty because of a case that went wrong six months earlier. A break comes her way in the form of a white-collar cyber-crime case, something she hopes will help restore her status as an undercover detective. The downside is having to collaborate with an RCMP team that will join her in Quebec City. When the safe, tedious job she envisaged turns to murder with a potential link to ...

It is spring in North Carolina and Hope is planning new gardens for the yard of her century-old house. Teaching at the middle school, working part time in a bakery, and raising her daughter, Cori, leave little time for her to do research on two mysteries. But Hope and her resident ghost keep searching for clues to his hundred-year-old murder while she continues to look into the suspicious accident that took her husband's life. Hope has one more thing to worry about. Her friend and bakery owner, Edsel, is having the same dream every night where a ghost says she needs to speak to Hope.

After unexpectedly losing her husband, Hope Herring and her daughter, Cori, leave their home and move away to start over in a new town. With a heavy heart, a new house, a new job, and a new community, Hope is trying to settle in when she is reluctantly drawn into two mysteries. Will Hope and Cori find the clues to a killer before he or she strikes again?

Charlene Butler, a.k.a. Charlie, is beautiful, independent, and a successful pub owner in downtown Montreal, but prefers not to discuss her past, or the main reason for her success. When she anonymously receives strange letters and the police don’t show an interest in the case, she is convinced by Frank, her best friend, to hire a private investigator to help her solve the mystery. However, PI Simm seems to have a few secrets of his own.

It is a chilly winter season in North Carolina with Hope and her daughter Cori getting ready for the holidays. As she faces her first Christmas without her husband, Hope continues to search for the person responsible for her resident ghost's century-old murder. After interviewing a descendant of one of the suspects, trouble begins to brew with a false accusation, an unusual gift, and an unpleasant surprise. Will Hope be able to figure out what's going on without putting her own life in danger?

Trapped in a wintry setting and followed by two men determined to kill her, Victoria Anderson searches for someone who doesn’t want to be found. She drove the length of the east coast in a quest to find Danny Wilcox, intending to convince him to return to Florida with her. The drug lord, the most wanted criminal in the Province of Quebec, has other plans.

A former New York detective and a loving father is gunned down and killed by the Speed Killers Gang. While in the emergency room, the detective asks his son, Jeff, to find whoever shot him and bring him to justice. In spite of his young age, Jeff promises his father. Twenty-three years later, Jeff is now a detective, following in his father's footsteps, and ready to avenge the unsolved murder of his father and bring the killer to justice.

The Blue Jay's Call, Book Two of Alvin's Journey follows the McGinn brothers in their travels from Ireland to the new world. Alvin's sole focus is he destination in Maine, but his travels are derailed when his brother Kellen meets a young woman and delays their plans in Canada. After a near tragedy, Alvin continues his trek to Maine and is embraced by the McCall family. Arthur is his father's best friend and takes Alvin in as his own. He shows Alvin the town of Monroe with all of its many characters. When Alvin finally gets settled on his own farm, he is taught the ways of a Maine farmer by...

Murders or a series of coincidences? Charlie is worried her ex-PI husband, Simm, is bored with his new role helping her manage their pubs in Montreal. Offered the chance to investigate the disappearance of a man the previous year, Charlie convinces Simm to take the case. Charlie and Simm discover the case may involve a series of dubious vanishings that were written off as presumed drownings.

Shanna McGuire is convinced a strange man is following her. When he approaches her on the street, he shocks her with a story that makes her question her family history. She asks Simm to investigate the man's claim. A simple case of genealogy and the search for a possible treasure are perfect for Simm, a former private investigator, and his wife Charlie, both pub owners in Downtown Montreal.

First Place Winner, Fall 2023 Book Fest Award: Family Saga Every wedding seems like the beginning of a fairy tale, but sometimes the prince is actually a frog, or the big bad wolf. When Mary McGinn lost her husband, she was the mother of twelve children, and her oldest sons worked to provide for the family. She was always grateful for the sacrifices her children had made for the sake of their family, but now she needed to go back to work so that they could go on and live their lives. But finding work in depression-stricken Maine would not be easy for anyone in 1935, perhaps even more so for...