The Ancestors

DEAD.

Some evils are so great that they transcend death. In Brandon Massey's "The Patriarch," a young writer travels to the hushed backwoods of Mississippi, where dangerous secrets surface as a generations-old feud comes to bone-chilling new life...

BURIED.

The souls of the mistreated always find a way to be heard. In L.A. Banks's "Ev'ry Shut Eye Ain't Sleep," violent visions haunt a man-until he's handed an opportunity to right the wrongs of the past and prevent unspeakable acts from occurring once again...

FORGOTTEN.

When horrors are covered up and lost, our ancestors must find a way-even in death-to tell their tales. In Tananarive Due's "Ghost Summer," ancestors haunt the nights of two children. And when a grisly discovery is made, these ancestors will make their mark on both the dead and the living...

Publishers Weekly

Talented African-American authors Banks (The Shadows), Massey (Don't Ever Tell) and Due (Blood Colony) explore ancestral roots in intriguing horror novellas. Banks puts a time-travel twist into "Ev'ry Shut Eye Ain't Sleep," in which antique dealer Abe Morgan helps a friend, Rashid Jackson, protect Aziza, Rashid's granddaughter, from "the shades" after Aziza inherits her grandmother's house. In Massey's "The Patriarch," a crime novelist brings his fiancée to Coldwater, Miss., to introduce her to his mom's kinfolk, but runs afoul of a powerful family secret. Due's "Ghost Summer," the best of the trio, also works as a YA novel. Davie Stephens, who's determined to become a 12-year-old ghost buster, and various family members find themselves haunted by a 1909 cold case in Graceville, Fla. All three contributors successfully combine scary themes with rich historical detail. (Dec.)

Brandon Massey lives near Atlanta with his wife, where he is at work on his next thriller.

L.A. Banks aka Leslie Esdaile Banks is a graduate of The University of Pennsylvania Wharton undergraduate program, and alumna of Temple University's Master of Fine Arts in filmmaking program. Winner of the 2008 Essence magazine Storyteller of the Year award, she has penned over forty novels and novellas within genres as diverse as romance, women's fiction, crime suspense, and dark fantasy/horror, and regularly contributes to magazines and newspaper columns. She writes and lives in University City, Philadelphia, with her daughter.

Tananarive Due is the American Book Award-winning author of several novels, including The Black Rose, My Soul to Keep, The Between, The Living Blood, and The Good House. She coauthored Freedom in the Family: A Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights. A former feature writer for The Miami Herald, she now lives in Los Angeles with her husband, novelist Steven Barnes.