Book Blitz & Giveaway: The Dead Hour by Thomas Grant Bruso

 

THE DEAD HOUR

by

Thomas Grant Bruso

LGBT paranormal horror

Publisher: JMS Books LLC

Publication Date: October 19, 2025

Page count: 291 pages

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SYNOPSIS:

PI Bradshaw receives a late night call from a client desperate to find her missing daughter. The woman asks to meet him at a storage unit in upstate New York. The woman hangs up before Bradshaw can inquire further. Woken by the jarring news, Bradshaw decides to meet the frantic, mysterious woman pleading for his help.

 

Working as a private investigator has its drawbacks. Bradshaw often receives prank calls from clients with run-of-the-mill requests and chooses his cases wisely. But there is something unusual and unnerving about this particular call. The hopeless plea in the woman’s voice and the anonymity of her demand ignite a maelstrom of questions.

 

While Bradshaw decides whether the call is worth pursuing, a young dead girl from the Other Side visits him, demanding attention and seeking help for the request he just received. Who is this spirit? What does she want? And how is she linked to the caller?

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ENJOY AN EXCERPT:

Thunder cleaved the sky, pulling me out of my foggy dream.

 

In the glass, a flash of white light and a dash of movement scurried past my periphery.

 

I shuddered at the pale flesh of a disfigured face sneering at me.

 

I turned.

 

Nothing -- a line of locked unit doors.

 

Then footsteps, sprinting away, and a gaggle of laughter from around the corner, along the corridor.

 

“Hello?” I yelled, chasing another phantom. My legs felt like rubber bands as I dashed to the end of the long hall. I stopped at the stairwell door, out of breath.

 

The sound footsteps seized. But intoxicating laughter followed.

 

“Who’s there?” I yelled. “This isn’t funny.”

 

A mockery of demonic laughter filled the air and cooled my skin.

 

I stepped back, drew a breath.

 

Behind me, one of the two elevators dinged. The doors opened.

 

Curiosity consumed me.

 

I should not have turned around to the sound.

 

The lights went out when I did, plunging me into complete darkness.

 

Up ahead, the exit signs flickered.

 

I reached into my coat pocket and gripped the small bottle of mace I carried with me when working cases. My heart thrashed behind my ribs, like a pack of hungry rats gnawing through the lining of muscles, tendons, and intestines.

 

A coldness coiled in the space behind me. A round of knuckles tapped against my head, and the sound of teeth clicked close to my ear. I ran toward the elevator doors. They closed before I reached it.

 

I banged hard on the doors and pressed the down button several times.

 

In the dim light of the corridor, I noticed shadowy movement from something skittering across the wall, a chittering screech of insectile legs rushing at me in the dark.

 

I raced a few feet to the left of the elevators to the stairwell door.

 

Locked.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Thomas Grant Bruso knew he wanted to be a writer at an early age. He has been a voracious reader of genre fiction since childhood.

 

His literary inspirations are Ray Bradbury, Dean Koontz, Stephen King, Jim Grimsley, Karin Fossum, and Joyce Carol Oates.

 

Bruso loves animals, reading books, and writing fiction, and prefers Sudoku to crossword puzzles.

 

In another life, he was a freelance writer and wrote for magazines and newspapers. In college, he won the Hermon H. Doh Sonnet Competition. Now, he writes and publishes fiction and reviews books for his hometown newspaper, The Press-Republican.

 

He lives in upstate New York.

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