Announcing Our Upcoming Catalogue Until Fall 2027!

DarkWinter Press is excited to announce the authors and their books that we've secured as of now for the remainder of 2026 until Fall 2027! There's something for everyone in this fantastic list of upcoming titles!

September 2026: Cindy Matthews, Audrey Droop: Stories

In Audrey Droop: Stories, Cindy Matthews brings together a cast of unforgettable characters whose lives are changed in an instant and shaped by the consequences for years afterward.

A boy carries the burden of a tobogganing accident that alters a friend's future. A new mother discovers that surviving childbirth can be as transformative as becoming a parent. A grieving brother watches a final video of his sister. A student’s obsession with a celebrated athlete collides with reality. Throughout the collection, people grapple with betrayal, grief, illness, longing, family conflict, and the small acts of courage that make survival possible.

Threaded throughout the collection is Audrey Droop, a woman whose sharp observations, stubborn convictions, and occasional acts of grace connect many of the stories. Whether as participant, observer, confidante, or catalyst, Audrey leaves an imprint on the lives around her.

Rich with humour, heartbreak, and humanity, these stories explore how ordinary people navigate extraordinary circumstances. Set in a fictional Canadian small town, Audrey Droop: Stories is a compelling, poignant collection about resilience, connection, and the enduring marks left by the choices we make and the chances we take.

"Grief, power, unresolved guilt. In Audrey Droop: Stories, Matthews explores the emotions we all experience in our everyday lives with events as simple as a toboggan ride and as serious as sisters sharing a traumatic past. In “Witness,” she presents us with the emotion of grief as a result of a split second accident. In “Objects of Her Desire,” we are reminded how memories linger not just in emotions, “the disease doesn’t just take me,” but in the objects of our pasts, the glittering jade baubles. The author’s use of powerful imagery deepens our understanding of the characters’ feelings. These stories remind us that we are not alone. We are all one." 

–DorothyJane Kavanaugh, author of Little River Bridge

Audrey Droop: Stories has just been released and you can purchase it here!

October 2026: Ed Seaward, London Gothic

In 1975, John Caine and his nineteen year old son Ricky bury a woman near a clump of trees in an open field on the rural outskirts of London, Ontario. In 1984, seventeen year old Bethany Caine is haunted by the disappearance of her mother nine years previous. Her father and brother insist Thelma Caine abandoned them one night, evidenced by her brief goodbye note. Having already escaped the house dominated by her brutish father to live with her lover, university student Angela, Bethany presses much older brother Ricky to reveal what actually happened to their mother.

Structured along alternating timelines, with chapters exploring the Caine family in the 1970s interspersed with chapters set around the Victoria Day long weekend in 1984, London Gothic unfolds a story of violence and incest as those who truly love and support Bethany attempt to uncover the mystery of Thelma Caine’s disappearance.

"London Gothic is a propulsive read, moving deftly between past and present to tell a compelling story of the darker side of urban life. It explores a family scarred by abuse, the burden of generational male violence, and the devastating toll of secrets that demand to be revealed." — Lucian Childs, co-author of Confluence

November 2026: Joelle Circe, The Profiler's Shadow

Mary Dubois’s quiet life as a writer shatters when the Sûreté du Québec arrives at her door. A killer is staging gruesome tableaux in the Québec wilderness, and he’s left a message: he will only communicate with Mary. Mary, a former profiler, must leave her hard-won seclusion to hunt a monster who seems to know her every move and weakness.

Reunited with her ex-lover, Officer Teresa Cook, and confronting the open hostility of her old tormentors in the police force. Mary finds herself drawn deeper into a web of psychological warfare. The killer’s notes are not just clues, they are invitations into a shared, violent history she never knew she had. To stop the slaughter, Mary will have to turn her terrifying insight inwards to her own bloodline—before she becomes his final masterpiece…

"With her debut novel, The Profiler’s Shadow, Joelle Circé introduces readers to a new heroine to root for: Mary Dubois, a former profiler, now a successful author. Circé offers up a twisty plot full of surprises, and a cast of exciting characters—most notably Mary, who is battling her past traumas while racing to find a serial killer before he adds her to his list of victims. The Profiler’s Shadow proves to be a welcome psychological crime thriller with a protagonist who is an intriguing and resilient transgender woman. In today’s divisive world, we need more characters like Mary and more voices like Circé’s."

— Robyn Gigl, Author of the critically acclaimed Survivor’s Guilt , one of TIME Magazine’s ‘100 Best Mystery & Thriller Books of All Time’

December 2026: Meg Freer, Doors Left Open

Doors Left Open is a poetry collection that invites the reader into a deeply felt, spiritual world of eco-poetry, poetry of place, and inward and outward observations from points of contemplative stillness. The target audience is fairly broad, that is, anyone interested in the psychology of human nature and their interactions with the environment.

Doors Left Open is structured like a musical work in four sections (Largo, Capriccio,

Rhapsody, and Arabesque), bracketed by a Prelude and Coda that reflect the musical themes throughout. Other themes include aging, cognitive decline, loss, memory, and sensual dream worlds. This collection of 68 poems develops like an accumulation of musical phrases and ends with associative poems on intertwined themes of endings as well as the potential beginnings offered by doors left open.

"The textured and evocative poems in Meg Freer's “Doors Left Open” invite us into the musicality of her poet’s voice, the depth of her witness as an Eco-poet, and the breath of empathy she has for all things human. Structured as four seasons, these four quartet sections “sing alleluia from head to foot.” Filled with dreamscapes and portals, these poems explore epiphanies —in everything from a moment in a memory care home to an instant noticing cyclists moved to tears by a symphony. The speaker asks the existential question why do poets write poems, then lists the myriad ways in which the speaker is “in love with everything” – from paper to prayer, fever-dreams to eagle’s flight, from noticed shopping lists to whispered love notes. This beautifully orchestrated debut collection is filled with 'words to read over and over.'”

 —Kate Marshall Flaherty, author Digging (Aeolus House); Reaching V (Guernica Editions)

January 2027: M.G. Turner, City of Dark Dreams: Tales from Another New York

Incorporating elements of mystery and shades of the macabre, M. G. Turner’s stories explore themes of life and death, inquire whether mortality can be circumvented, envision dreams impinging on reality, and examine the uncanny in the everyday. Melding the tales into a unified whole is the setting, the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and an imagined college, Hudson University, which features in many of the stories and introduces a dark academia motif. Intriguing characters populate this world, crisscrossing, intersecting, and influencing each other’s lives, akin to the storytelling in David Lynch’s classic TV show Twin Peaks. 

“This eerie anthology of interconnected tales has an elegant, timeless quality, evoking shades of Peter Straub, Robert Aickman and M.R. James in its uncanny and beautifully unsettling portrait of Manhattan's Upper West Side.”

—Dan Chaon, author of One of Us  

“Elegant and erudite, M. G. Turner’s stories are an eerie, urbane, out-of-time conjuring of Faustian academics, grieving widows, and the undead. City of Dark Dreams: Tales from Another New York is deeply unsettling, a breathtaking debut—postmodern Poe at its finest.”

—Carol Bruneau, author of Threshold and The Little Way

February 2027: John Harvey, "Listen to Your Dreams!" Cried the Muse (to the poet mired in drunken despair)

It's the early 1980s, and Thomas Roberts has dropped out of university twice, has a terrible job, sex avoids him, he hurts himself, drinks too much, and says inopportune things at inopportune times...and worst of all, he wants to be a writer. He struggles with undiagnosed depression ("everything's great!") but his Dream Mentors and Muse are there to guide him, Will he listen to them and save himself from a life of drunken despair?

"John Harvey was the lead singer of a fantastically unusual band called the Hated Uncles. Their music was disjointed, weird, abrasive, thoughtful, debauched, messy, entertaining, strangely beautiful, insightful, and not to everybody’s taste.

John Harvey’s debut novel is disjointed, weird, abrasive, thoughtful, debauched, messy, entertaining, strangely beautiful, insightful, and not to everybody’s taste. Just as it should be!"

—Jamie Tennant - author/broadcaster/journalist

March 2027: Emily De Angelis, For the Sake of Mercy

It’s her last year of high school and young poet Mercy Prayer has a plan. She’s lived with her

grandparents since she was six years old, when her mother died and her father went to prison for the second-degree murder of her disabled twin sister, Grace. Mercy can’t forgive him even though ghostly Grace, who inhabits her bedroom, tells her she must. This summer he’s coming up for parole and wants to be a part of her life again. She’s determined to be out of her grandparent’s house and on her own by July. Poetry will be the way out.

Her plan is simple: a poetry independent study course, a mentor who writes Japanese form

poetry, a chapbook manuscript, a summer poetry internship and acceptance to university with her best friend Ida. Grace will come too. Maybe? But then her grandfather is diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. As his health deteriorates and her plan goes awry, Mercy realizes that the plan is not as important as the planning. She learns to live, heal and forgive through her poetry.

"Oh yeah, you need For the Sake of Mercy! Told with skill, and devotion to story, and spilled from a heart that, swear-to-God, feels what you feel, this is a full tissue box read. Experience joy, tenderness, love, and budding romance with a feisty teen who is everything. You’ll be very glad you got to know Mercy Prayer when the last page is turned. Not a single regret for the time spent, that’s a promise."

—Vera Constantineau, former Poet Laureate of Greater Sudbury, ON. Haiku poet.

April 2027: Paul Edward Costa, Black Pasture Insurgent

“Defenestration is always on the table." 

-Fellow Attendee at the After Party for a Toronto Book Launch (Autumn, 2025)

Rooted in punk ethos through political or social satire and allegories aimed at rulers/ruling systems, Black Pasture Insurgent explores how these sustained, rebellious efforts affect those undertaking them. The poems – sometimes literal and direct, sometimes rooted in myth or allusion – are designed for a narrative accessibility that invites the reader to directly face ideas present on these pages.

May 2027: Gregg Norman, With Horses in a Storm

A poetry collection that vary widely in subject matter. From life on the prairies to foreign ports of call, from nostalgia to current world events, from the wonders of the natural world to the esoteric, there's something in this collection for every reader to enjoy.

June 2027: Kate Henderson, Dogleg

Dogleg is the story of a slow-moving train and its assortment of passengers. In a near-future environment of constant flooding, the rails have become treacherous, but provide one of the only remaining means of transportation. Thurston Divack, the train's sole conductor, battles anxiety and phantom pain, and struggles to keep his passengers happy. When a passenger makes it clear she needs to arrive at their destination in time for her wedding, everyone on board must decide whether to stay safe, or to hurtle forward through a dangerous, curving leg of the trip. The camaraderie among the passengers helps Thurston cope. So does the kindly ghost of a coyote. And so, for better or for worse, does the oxycodone.

"Kate Henderson takes us on a journey towards a wedding, on a train familiar and strange. Dogleg reads like a fable and a mystery, but also like a warm and funny story told in a quiet saloon. There’s humour here, humanity, and a sense of something big playing out. A train ride to somewhere inevitable, to a question: what is the value of a life without risk? There are observations and sentences to love in this book, and a voice that I admire."

—Colin McAdam, Giller long-listed author of Daphnis and Chloe

"With the character sensitivity of Gabrielle Roy and the wry humour of Stephen Leacock, Kate Henderson’s Dogleg tells the story of a group of strangers on a dilapidated train, finding community among figurative and literal collapse. Told from the perspective of the idiosyncratic, ingenious, and oxy-addicted conductor, Thurston Divack, Dogleg offers a tender examination of the fleeting encounters in our lives that teach us about who we are, and what we want. Wonderfully bizarre and heartwarming, Henderson charms in this marvellous debut."

—Hollay Ghadery, Giller long-listed author of The Unravelling of Ou

August 2027: Heather Babcock, The Memory of Crows

For most of her life, Abbey Hudson lived in the shadow of her sister Cora, a local celebrity who was as cruel as she was charismatic. A year after Cora’s suicide, Abbey finds herself feeling lost and adrift. Lonely and in need of connection, she moves to Niagara Falls in the hopes of reuniting with her niece and nephew, Taffy and Tommy: the twins who were taken from Cora by Child Services eighteen years prior. They don’t know that Abbey’s coming however, or that she even exists. On a moonlit stroll through the historic Drummond Hill Cemetery, Abbey discovers a dark family secret as she unwittingly becomes the catalyst for a similar tragedy.

Peppered with Abbey’s wry observations about aging and sexuality, The Memory of Crows is both a noir tale of sibling rivalry and a meditation on grief and forgiveness.

"How do you process the grief of losing a larger-than-life sister who took her own life? From the first page, Babcock’s novella takes hold of you and doesn’t let go. Smart, visceral and darkly humorous, it explores the complexities of grief after a sibling’s shocking death—the subtle permutations of love and hate, and the haunting memories that offer little solace or clarity as you try to move on. Babcock is a gifted stylist; her poetic voice and vivid metaphors render her scenes memorable. As she writes, “I still have Cora. I can’t get rid of her” and this book will leave you thinking about their unbreakable bond long after the final page."

—Diane Bracuk, author of Middle-Aged Boys & Girls

"Babcock digs deep in this poignant novel of loss that explores the complicated relationship of sibling rivalry and the emotional tug of war between remorse and relief. Set amongst the flashy wax museums and faded motels of old Niagara Falls, the memorable cast of characters in The Memory of Crows will draw you in and grip at your soul until the very last word."

—Priya Ramsingh, author of The Elevator and Brown Girl in the Room

September 2027, Tina McFarlane, Finding Rae

Finding out you’re the daughter of a pureblood werewolf comes with baggage.

Rae Clarke always felt like an outsider in her small town of Parson’s Cove, Nova Scotia. And the changes she went through as she grew up didn’t help. It wasn’t until her mother, Jocelyn, told her the truth about her father that Rae began to understand why she was different. Armed with this new knowledge, Rae moves to Halifax to learn more from family friend Zeke Manchester. For the first time in her life, she feels like she belongs. But her world is turned upside down with the unexpected arrival of her long-absent father. And he didn’t come alone. Pulled into a personal vendetta, Rae must confront her family’s past and learn what it means to be her father’s daughter.

What do you think? Isn't this an incredible line-up? We can't wait to get these amazing books out into the world!