The Curse of Hester Gardens Book Launch

Join us for the launch of by Tamika Thompson in conversation with Angela Dalton author of To Boldly Go. They will be discussing a gripping, genre-bending haunted house novel set in a public housing community where faith and crime collide.
Nona McKinley raised three boys in the Hester Gardens section of Medford, Michigan, an impoverished community divided by those who follow their faith in God and those who turn to crime to survive. With her drug dealer husband behind bars and her eldest son shot to death at eighteen, Nona has devoted herself to ensuring her other children escape their brother’s fate.

Her second son Marcus is on the right path. He’s a valedictorian heading to an Ivy League school. He can get out.

But then, strange things start happening to Nona and other residents: mysterious footsteps are heard when she’s alone, people have phantom encounters in the streets, unattended appliances go off at all hours. Even more concerning is the state of Nona’s living sons. Her youngest, Lance, is hanging around with a bad crowd, and Marcus becomes moody and secretive. Sometimes he even seems to act like a different person entirely.

Nona has her secrets too. Her affair with the married church pastor has been weighing on her conscience, but that’s not the only guilt haunting her. She fears that someone—or something— is seeking revenge for an act she made in a moment of weakness to protect her family. And now everyone in Hester Gardens must pay the price . . .
About Tamika Thompson

Tamika is author of (Erewhon/Kensington, forthcoming 2026), Unshod, Cackling, and Naked (Unnerving Books), which is the 2024 Next Generation Indie Book Awards WINNER for Horror, and which Publishers Weekly calls “powerful,” “unsettling,” and “terrifying,” as well as author of Salamander Justice (Madness Heart Press). She is co-creator of the artist collective POC United and fiction editor for the group’s Foreword INDIES Award-winning anthology, Graffiti. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in several speculative fiction anthologies as well as in Andromeda Spaceways Magazine, Interzone, Prairie Schooner, The New York Times, and Los Angeles Review of Books, among others. Her long fiction tale, “Bridget Has Disappeared,” was translated to Italian for Independent Legions’ Molotov Magazine, her story, “The Sand Ate Her,” is available in audio format at the Creepy podcast, and her tale, “The Creak on the Attic Stairs” is available in The Rack, Volume II, edited by Tom Deady. Read more here.
About Angela Dalton

Angela Dalton is a children’s book author based in Oakland, California, and has a background in producing online kids’ games. She began writing at a young age and saw it as a way to create her own world. Her self-published picture book, If You Look Up to the Sky, was inspired by her grandmother and an early fascination with outer space and astronomy. Both traditionally and independently published, her work centers black children as main characters in spaces and represents them in ways she wishes she had seen growing up. Read more here.
About Chapter510
Chapter 510 is a made-in-Oakland youth writing, bookmaking & publishing center. Our teaching artists and volunteers work side by side with educators to provide a safe space and supportive community so Black, brown, and queer youth ages 8-19 can bravely write. Read more here.
About Sistah Scifi
Started in 2019 by Isis Asare, Sistah Scifi is the first Back-owned book store focused on science fiction and fantasy in the US as validated by the American Booksellers Association. Located primarily in cyberspace, Sistah Scifi launched three Sistah Scifi Book Vending Machines at Chapter510 located at 546 9th St, Oakland, CA 94607 and Northwest African American Museum and Distant Worlds Coffee in Seattle, WA in 2022. Read more here.

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