“With this unique collaboration, Howley and Willcocks turn a pleasant visit to a charming city into a nightmarish and bloody harvest ritual.”
A town steeped in tradition. A festival built on hope. A legend that refuses to die.
Brackenholt is a small, secluded town in the middle of nowhere. Charli never wanted to visit the town, or spend a weekend picking pumpkins, or leave the city.
Of course, her fiancé and twin brother had other plans. Promising her countryside charm, crisp air, a weekend of peace—instead, they got something else entirely.
Brackenholt is too quiet, and the villagers all whisper about the legend of ‘Jack’. Halloween is getting closer, and the town harvest ritual is about to take a horrifying turn.
Charli soon realizes the festival isn’t about celebration. It’s about the feast.
Why we’re excited about this book:
The first in a two part series, just in time to get an early start on spooky season. R.P. Howley is the author of the Tales of the Broken Veil, ‘Welcome to Eldmere’, ‘Teeth and Bones’, and ‘Lingering Curses’, and Daniel Willcocks is the author of the When Winter Comes series, Sins of Smoke, Dream, They Rot (with Luke Kondor), The Caitlin Chronicles (with Michael Anderle), and editor of The Other Side, as well as part of Hawk & Cleaver, and the co-founder of the fiction podcast The Other Stories. With this unique collaboration, Howley and Willcocks turn a pleasant visit to a charming city into a nightmarish and bloody harvest ritual. Luke Kondor (The Run Fantastic) says: “It takes me back to the days of collecting all the Goosebump books as a child … but bloodier, stranger, and way, way more gross.”
Why R.P. and Daniel are excited about this book:
“Jack marks the first entry in the Twisted Tales series—a series of standalone novellas that harken back to the fanatic, gripping, heart-racing reads of the R.L. Stine Goosebumps era. It’s an idea that called to be written in 2021, and we are beyond excited to see it come to life this year. With Jack, we bring you a rural nightmare of epic proportions, with the hope that the smell of pumpkin will involuntarily trigger your gag reflexes.
Twisted Tales: The 90s called. They want their nightmares back.”
Releasing from Devil’s Rock Publishing 23 July 2025, Jack: A Folk Horror Halloween Story of Scarecrows, Rituals, and Rural Terror by R.P. Howley and Daniel Willcocks is available for pre-order now.
BOB PASTORELLA
