Sweet Success for Gwynne Stanker

Published August 21, 2025

Yippee! Gwynne Stanker’s novel, DARK MOUNTAIN, is a Gold Rush Award finalist in the 2025 Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers.

ABOUT THE BOOK  Ida Jane Wallace and her nephew Benjamin Allyson can throw their minds into animals or can far see both backward or forward in time, but such powers exact a terrible price–suicide. When Ida Jane’s gifted sister takes her own life, Ida Jane buries her own powers and swears to protect sixteen-year-old Benjamin. He has other ideas. He flaunts his powers, runs toward danger, and vows to face down the darkness that swallowed his mother and that has shadowed their family for generations. Now it’s happening again–secrets rising from the past, blood spilling in the present. Will they be next? They can’t run away. The haunts of Dark Mountain dwell just beneath their skin.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR  From the jungles and savannahs of Africa to the backwoods of the Ozarks, Gwynne Stanker’s characters stand right on the border of that no-man’s-land where races and cultures intersect–often violently–but where sometimes, just sometimes, they find their common humanity. Gwynne writes in both Literary and Dark Fantasy genres. She took top honors in The Zebulon for her novel THE SUN WALKERS and also has work in the anthology FRESH STARTS, Penumbric Speculative Fiction Magazine, and The Sunlight Press. DARK MOUNTAIN is her second novel. She lives in Colorado with her spouse and one bossy doggie. Be sure to follow her on Facebook

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