Elderfly Press

Introducing Mother Monster, Father Fiend: An Anthology of the Monsters Who Raised Us

Some monsters live under the bed. Others tuck you in at night.

I’m excited to announce the publication of my newest anthology, Mother Monster, Father Fiend: An Anthology of the Monsters Who Raised Us, edited by me and published by Elderfly Press. This collection has been a particularly meaningful project because it explores something that can be difficult to talk about: the ways the people who raise us can also hurt us.

We tend to think of childhood as a time of safety and parents as the people who are supposed to provide that safety. But families are complicated, and not every child grows up in a home where love is unconditional or protection is guaranteed. Sometimes the people who are supposed to nurture us become the source of our deepest wounds. Sometimes those wounds follow us into adulthood. And sometimes breaking the cycle means confronting what happened and refusing to let it define what comes next.

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Writers on Writing

It Had to Happen: Time, grief, and the illusion of control

It Had to Happen begins with a devastating, almost clean fracture in a man’s life: Jack Utley loses his daughter just as his business is finally about to take off. In that moment, success and loss become entangled in a way that feels almost transactional—like one has been traded for the other. Jack is left doing what many grieving parents do in fiction and in life: trying to assign meaning to something that refuses to make sense. Then the story shifts into something far less predictable.

On the eve of his daughter Callie’s funeral, Jack encounters a mysterious woman. After that meeting, he wakes to find that time has somehow rewound itself to the morning of the accident. Suddenly, he is given what grief never allows in reality: a second chance. He saves his daughter’s life. But the novel is not interested in treating that as a simple gift.

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Find Your Next Read

7 cult novels that explore devotion, control, and transformation

If you’re looking for cult novels that blur the line between belonging and control, these are the stories that linger long after the final page. Cult fiction thrives on a particular kind of tension: the promise of safety, identity, or purpose slowly curdling into something far more unsettling. Across these books, communities offer transformation—but what they demand in return is often far more than anyone realizes at the start. The result is fiction that feels intimate, claustrophobic, and eerily plausible, where devotion becomes both the hook and the trap.

These seven novels approach cult dynamics from different angles—psychological, speculative, surreal, and apocalyptic—but they all circle the same question: what happens when the need to belong becomes stronger than the instinct to leave?

The cover of Make Me Better by Sarah Gailey

Make Me Better by Sarah Gailey

Sarah Gailey’s Make Me Better is an unsettling, slow-burn descent into the seductive promise of belonging, where healing and control gradually blur. Celia is a woman driven by an intense need for connection, whether through unstable romantic fixations or her fixation on motherhood as a source of permanence and identity. That vulnerability draws her to Kindred Cove, an invitation-only island sanctuary promising healing, purpose, and escape from a deteriorating outside world. But beneath its calm surface lies a tightly controlled system where resources, labor, and even children are shared, and every aspect of life is carefully managed.

As Celia is drawn deeper into the Cove’s orbit, the novel builds a quiet, creeping unease rooted in emotional manipulation and subtle ecological strangeness. Atmospheric and psychologically sharp, Make Me Better lingers in its central question: when belonging feels like salvation, how do you recognize the moment it stops being your choice?

Read my full review.
Buy this book.

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Writers on Writing

Occult satire, unreliable men, and a very bad cat: A deep view inside the novel, One Bad Cat

One Bad Cat is a novel that grew out of a simple premise and ended up somewhere far stranger, funnier, and more psychologically tangled than it first appeared. At its core, it’s an occult satire built around two intersecting storylines: a psychology professor who is turned into a cat by members of his coven, and a man trying to keep his life from falling apart after he lets a persistent stray cat into his apartment.

Dr. Stephen Scott begins the story in a position of intellectual authority. He’s a psychology professor with an interest in the occult, someone who believes he understands systems and people well enough to stay a step ahead. That control collapses when a group of female coven members cast a spell that transforms him into a cat. From there, his storyline tightens into something immediate and claustrophobic: a mind trapped in a body that no longer obeys it, focused on revenge, survival, and the recovery of a charm bag that contains the source of his power.

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Find Your Next Read

8 novels about billionaires, secret societies, and the ultra-rich behaving badly

The past few years have produced a surge of novels obsessed with the billionaire class, elite inner circles, and the terrifying ways extreme wealth reshapes morality. These books explore secret societies, inherited influence, cult-like organizations, and wealthy people so insulated from ordinary life that empathy itself begins to erode. Some focus on billionaires chasing immortality. Others examine the emptiness that comes from having unlimited access to pleasure, luxury, and power. Together, they tap into a growing cultural anxiety about what happens when the ultra-rich begin viewing the rest of society as something to manipulate, consume, or control.

If you love dark academia, literary thrillers, cult fiction, and stories about elite power structures operating behind closed doors, these recent novels belong on your reading list.

Salomé by Leslie Baird

Salomé explores what happens when the billionaire class becomes so detached from ordinary humanity that other people begin to look disposable. At the center of the novel is a secretive global network of ultra-wealthy elites connected by technology, power, and a shared obsession with transcending death itself.

These billionaires aren’t satisfied with controlling industries or governments—they want immortality so they may maintain that control forever, even if it means inhabiting the bodies of other people to achieve it. The novel turns extreme wealth into something genuinely monstrous, examining how unchecked privilege erodes empathy until human beings become little more than interchangeable commodities to be used, consumed, and discarded. Read now!

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Find Your Next Read

11 contemporary literary novels that explore grief, identity, ambition, and the quiet ways people come undone

Some contemporary literary novels announce themselves loudly, built around shocking twists or sweeping drama. Others work more quietly, slipping under your skin through emotional precision, unsettling atmosphere, and an understanding of how ordinary lives can become emotionally unbearable. The novels on this list belong firmly in the second category.

These books explore grief, isolation, class, motherhood, ambition, memory, friendship, and the impossible expectations people inherit from families and society. Some blur the line between realism and psychological horror. Others stay grounded in everyday life while exposing the emotional fractures hidden beneath routines, relationships, and carefully maintained appearances. What connects them is their interest in interior lives—the private fears, compulsions, disappointments, and longings people carry even when outwardly functioning just fine.

If you’re looking for contemporary literary fiction that feels emotionally intelligent, psychologically rich, and deeply human, these novels deserve your attention.

The cover of the novel Mercy Hill by Hannah Thurman features a tree.

Mercy Hill by Hannah Thurman

A tense and emotionally layered novel about family loyalty, inherited expectations, and the quiet damage caused by control disguised as care. Hannah Thurman explores how obligation and manipulation can shape entire lives, especially for women expected to endure without complaint. Mercy Hill is intimate, unsettling, and deeply perceptive about the ways families can trap people long after they believe they’ve escaped.

Read my full review.
Buy this book.

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Writers on Writing

If You Didn’t See It Coming: A psychological novel about family violence and the warning signs we ignore

A powerful psychological novel about domestic violence, generational trauma, and the warning signs we ignore. Amanda L. Webster shares the personal experiences behind If You Didn’t See It Coming and why fiction can reveal what statistics cannot.

If You Didn’t See It Coming is a psychological novel that explores domestic abuse, generational trauma, and the quiet warning signs that too often go unnoticed until it’s too late. Told through three interconnected perspectives, the story builds tension around a single, haunting certainty: someone is going to die. This isn’t a traditional mystery. It’s not about who did it. It’s about who will—and why.

Graphic that includes the book cover and a list of the following tropes: Multi-generational story, Domestic violence, Coercive Control, talks about the red flags we ignore. "You know someone is going to die-- you just don't know who-- or why."

The novel follows three generations of women—Marilou, Carrie, and Emma—each navigating her own version of control, fear, and survival. Marilou appears to have built the perfect life, but behind the façade is a marriage that has slowly eroded her sense of self. Carrie, her daughter, is doing everything she can to hold her life together after escaping an abusive relationship, only to have her ex forced back into her life through the legal system. And Emma, Carrie’s thirteen-year-old daughter, is caught in the middle—trying to make sense of attention, danger, and the complicated legacy she’s inheriting.

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Writers on Writing

Demons of the Night: A horror novel about good, evil, and finding your own path

Demons of the Night is a horror novel that asks: who gets to decide what is good and what is evil? It follows Docia, a young woman whose parents have gone to great lengths to hide the truth about who she really is. They want her to be a “good Christian woman” and believe secrecy is the only way to protect her. But their plan is about to backfire.

The cover of Demons of the Night was designed by my friend, author and artist Lance Savage, who created a fictionalized version of Holy Hill to reflect the novel’s dark atmosphere. Visit Lance’s website to see more of his work.

Docia longs for independence, for a life beyond her family’s overprotection. She wants normal experiences—friendships, romance, freedom. When Blane appears at a church lecture on demons, Docia is intrigued. But he’s there for the wrong reasons, and she quickly realizes that the life she desires may require confronting truths her parents have worked so hard to conceal. As the story unfolds, Docia must grapple with her identity, her morality, and the question of whether she can define herself outside the rigid framework her family imposes.

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Elderfly Press

Beautiful and Terrifying releases today: Step into the uncanny!

It’s here—and it’s been a long time coming. Beautiful and Terrifying: Tales and Visions from the Edge of the Uncanny officially releases today, and I couldn’t be more excited (or a little unsettled) to finally share it with you.

This anthology brings together a collection of short fiction, poetry, and black-and-white art that all live in that uneasy space where beauty and horror overlap. These are stories that don’t just aim to scare—they linger. They follow you. They ask you to look a little closer than you’re comfortable with.

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Call for Submissions

Beautiful and Terrifying releases April 23, 2026: A new anthology from the edge of the uncanny

Beautiful and Terrifying: Tales and Visions from the Edge of the Uncanny, the newest anthology from Elderfly Press, will be released on April 23, 2026, bringing together haunting fiction, poetry, and black-and-white artwork that explore the strange space where beauty and fear collide.

The cover of Beautiful and Terrifying: Tales and Visions from the Edge of the Uncanny, Elderfly Press’s upcoming anthology of eerie fiction, dark poetry, and black-and-white art, releasing April 23, 2026.

I’m thrilled to finally share the release date for this collection, which has been such a meaningful project to bring into the world. From eerie woods and submerged cities to folklore retellings, grief-soaked landscapes, and intimate encounters with the supernatural, this anthology embraces the unsettling and the sublime in equal measure.

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