Debra Castaneda

Los Angeles, 1948. Lily Bantacorte's life at home is unbearable. Her little brothers are demanding and her lecherous stepfather won't leave her alone. So Lily turns to her estranged aunt in Chavez Ravine for a place to stay, but her timing couldn’t be worse. Lily isn’t the only new arrival in Chavez Ravine. La Llorona, the legendary ghost of Mexican folklore, has taken up residence too. Aunt Lencha is a famous healer, and maybe even a witch, and the community is counting on her to save them from the ghostly weeping woman. As encounters with La Llorona escalate, Lily must confront her fears and beliefs if she’s going to survive.

Before Dodger Stadium, dark forces terrorized Chavez Ravine Los Angeles, 1952. When her father is attacked under mysterious circumstances, 22-year-old Trini Duran must return home to Chavez Ravine, a neighborhood mostly abandoned after the government sent letters to residents demanding that they leave. Only two hundred stubborn holdouts remain. While the Mexican American community fights to save their homes, they face a new threat that is even harder to combat than the politicians who want them gone. Trini discovers the city and the supernatural have joined forces against her old neighborhood—monstrous creatures emerge at night, terrorizing the holdouts. Trini, a handsome community organizer, a healer with dubious skills and a ragtag group of fighters, take up arms against the elusive enemy. But to stop the demon invasion, Trini must decide how far she’s willing to go to save the place she once left behind.

When a massive storm surge hits the central coast of California, the ferocious surf destroys buildings, floods streets, and washes up something sinister from the depths of the Monterey Bay. Peter, a retired state lifeguard, knows the water better than anyone. Carla, owner of a beach-side restaurant, is still mourning the loss of her son in a boating accident. While both love their quaint small town with spectacular views, their personal lives are as complicated as the changing weather forecasts. After a mysterious creature in the water kills two men, Peter and Carla are plunged into a living nightmare as a massive tidal surge traps them and their friends in a battered, unstable building. While the storm rages through the night, they discover something horrifying swims between them and escape, just waiting to attack anyone within reach. They need to make life or death decisions to survive. But first, they need to make it to morning. Inspired by real events, A Dark and Rising Tide is part of Debra Castaneda’s Dark Earth Rising series of standalone novels. Read the books in any order.

Eight miles of mystery. One night of terror. Residents trapped in a remote neighborhood confront the unimaginable in this horror novel from award-winning author Debra Castaneda. The salt marsh at Devil’s Landing is home to a terrifying urban legend. Adam Gray knows the old stories about the Slough Devil, the missing children, and the mutilated animals. But the naturalist and wilderness survival expert doesn’t believe in monsters. Not even when a tourist on his boat sees a strange creature in the tidal channel and captures it on video. When Adam moves into a controversial housing development next to the marsh, shocking new evidence emerges, and it’s not long before he’s confronted with a series of horrifying and unexplained events. It takes Christina, his feisty new neighbor, to get him to believe something lurks in the slough. Something disturbed by the new community. When a massive storm maroons the residents, Adam and Christina find themselves trapped and tested in a fight for their lives.

A beautiful forest. A terrifying legend. It’s 1986. Two strangers, hundreds of miles apart, grapple with disturbing incidents in a one-of-a-kind quaking aspen forest. Knox is a new Forest Service ranger assigned to a vast, remote territory in Utah. Sandy is a producer fighting for her place in a tough TV newsroom. Both have heard about the shadowy figure believed to menace visitors to the forest. When a man disappears and reports of the Root Witch begin coming in, Knox and Sandy are plunged into a living nightmare. Their lives converge on Halloween. Sandy sends a news crew to investigate the sightings. But when the team goes missing, and a shocking video surfaces revealing the ghastly truth, Knox and Sandy face the biggest decision of their lives. This novel is based on a short story, "The Root Witch: An Urban Legend Caught on Tape." Content warning: Animal death; anxiety; profanity

“The horrible figure from the Prestwich Tunnel hovered there. Not a ghost. Something between a badly disfigured man and a monster. There was a limit to what the human mind could comprehend, and the ghastly thing standing before her was beyond that limit.” In 1985, the Copper Man killed Leah Shaw’s twin brother, Liam, in the mining town of Tribulation Gulch. Three decades later, Leah is an environmental reporter back in her Wyoming hometown, covering the reopening of the copper mine. But when people literally drop dead around her, Leah can’t believe it’s the work of the Copper Man. After all, he’s dead…right? Except Leah can’t stop seeing shadows, and creepy copper nuggets are showing up everywhere. Workers say the mine is haunted, and the words “I CURSE THIS PLACE” are appearing all over the mine—the very words the Copper Man scrawled on a bridge before jumping to his death. Has the Copper Man come back for Leah, aiming to finish what he started 35 years ago? Is Leah’s young daughter in danger? And what other secrets are waiting for her among the dusty hills of Tribulation Gulch? A gripping tale of revenge with a compelling cast of characters. From the author of The Root Witch and The Devil’s Shallows comes the latest Dark Earth Rising novel.

Forest. Fungi. Family secrets.Reporter Maria Hart ventures into the depths of Nils Forest chasing a news story about a violent storm, but she never returns. Within months, four other people will also disappear in the woods.Tech mogul David Eager lives at the forest’s edge. He is haunted by Maria’s disappearance, and something more. Fungus is common in the foggy woodland, but now it’s behaving in unnatural ways, creeping onto his property and into his dreams.Maria’s friend, Amy Matthews, hears strange rumors about Nils Forest and, motivated by a dark secret, decides to investigate for herself. It’s no easy task. The terrain is notoriously rugged. But Amy is cunning and determined to find her former roommate, dead or alive.Amy’s not alone. Maria’s mother, desperate for answers about her daughter, joins the search.Together, they journey into the heart of Nils Forest where they make a chilling discovery—there’s a new fungus in these woods, and it has transformative powers. As they push deeper into the trees, they uncover a terrifying, mind-bending force. Her name is The Spore Queen.

"Debra Castaneda is extremely talented at writing creepy, atmospheric folk horror." - PopHorror.comDecades before a deadly attack wipes out a neighborhood along Roy’s Slough, a circus ship crashes ashore at Devil’s Landing.Among the wreck’s a young woman from the mountains of Mexico seeking to free her captured lover, a vile ringmaster, and creatures that howl in the night.The lifeboats carry more than the circus troupe to the fog-shrouded harbor on the central coast of cages, secrets, and a lifetime of resentment.Hoping to fund the rest of their journey, the circus performers put on a show in the isolated village, but when a new animal act debuts, things go horrifyingly wrong.The events that follow reveal the depth of the ringmaster’s ambition, the true nature of the beasts, a test of Ana Maria’s love, and the real story behind the deadly Slough Devils of Devil’s Landing.Read the origin story of the creatures in Debra Castaneda’s coastal horror novel, The Devil’s Shallows, part of the Dark Earth Rising series of standalone novels. Read the books in any order.