Double Trouble: Two Submissions Windows in 2026

Black Beacon Books will be open to submissions for two anthologies later this year, Lighthouses 2 and Tales from the Ruins 2, and the talented Greg Chapman will be making his mark once again by providing the cover art.

Check the submissions page for the full guidelines, and if you haven't read the first volumes, we highly recommend doing so. We'll be on the hunt for original and exciting mysteries, thrillers, and horror tales that fit the theme of each anthology. Get writing!

Fortitude and Courage Competition - June 2026

Do you like your fiction full of adventure, intrigue, and with strong female protagonists? That's what Karen Bayly does best! For your chance to win a print copy of both Fortitude and Courage, simply send the answer to this question to blackbeaconbooks@gmail.com before the date in question.

What remarkable event took place in London two hundred years ago on the 28th of June, 1826?

Novelette Announcement: Torched by Benedict J. Jones

Black Beacon Books is pleased to announce that the third Kindle-only novelette for 2026 will be published on the 2nd of June. 

Forget shopping sprees at Harrods and high tea at The Ritz, Benedict J. Jones serves you London at its hottest and hardest in TORCHED, the latest crime caper featuring ex-con private eye, Charlie Bars.

This Kindle-only novelette from Black Beacon Books strips Benedict J. Jones bare and exposes him at his hardboiled best. If you're no stranger to London's underbelly, you'll feel right at home with Charlie Bars in The Big Smoke's dodgy pubs, greasy burger and kebab joints, and dirty warehouses. If you've never seen beyond the veneer of Buckingham Palace and Notting Hill on a spring morning, brace yourself for this butcher's hook at the metropolis as you've never glimpsed it in your wildest nightmares, for the world of Charlie Bars is as bent as a nine bob note, innit?

The first fire was down the Blue, then the Dickens got hit, and now a mansion block near Dock Head has been set ablaze. An arsonist is targeting a Face’s "business assets" and Charlie Bars has been hired to track The Torch down before London goes up in smoke like 1666 revisited.

Be warned, TORCHED is a Molotov cocktail of a crime caper, recommended for hardened noir thugs only. If you can't take the heat, get out of Jones' kitchen!

New Release - You Only Fall Once

YOU ONLY FALL ONCE by Bruce W. Most is out now as an ebook from Amazon 

Available with Kindle Unlimited

New York City detective Ray Sanford hates heights. He doesn’t even like to fly. When assigned to investigate a murder at one of the world’s tallest residential buildings, he’s freaked out to discover that the victim is a window washer hanging dead on the outside of the building—97 floors up!

YOU ONLY FALL ONCE, a Kindle-only novelette, is the latest mystery thriller from Bruce W. Most. To solve the murder in this short mystery, Detective Sanford must push aside his acrophobia to answer two baffling questions: Why would someone kill the window washer while he’s dangling outside the building? And how did the killer manage to commit the impossible murder and escape unnoticed when access to the high-security apartments involved a daisy-chain of elevators and restricted key cards?

Novelette Announcement: You Only Fall Once by Bruce W. Most

Black Beacon Books is pleased to announce that the second Kindle-only novelette for 2026 will be published on the 28th of April. 

Detective Ray Sanford dropped a five-dollar bill into the coffee can of a panhandler sitting by the 57th Street subway entrance on Sixth Avenue, and turned west onto 57th. Ahead rose his destination, one of the tallest luxury high-rises in the world. Supertalls they call them these days. He’d read that one in Dubai stood 163 stories. That’s nuts. The only way he’d be that high off the ground would be in a jetliner, and even that would require meds.

Thus begins this thrilling short mystery set in one of New York's tallest towers, the latest offering from Iowan crime writer Bruce W. Most.

Who would want to kill a window washer, and how did the murderer leave the supertall unnoticed?

This gravity-defying mystery will give even the most ardent crime readers a bout of vertigo. Recommended for fans of Alfred Hitchcock's films, Perry Mason and Columbo, and the fiction of Rex Stout, Ellery Queen, and Raymond Chandler. 

 

The Detective's Dozen: Twelve Mystery Puzzles

Mystery hounds of the world, you've already read and enjoyed the first three volumes of The Black Beacon Books of Mystery... haven't you? The mystery continues later this year in the fourth volume with twelve all-new mystery puzzles.

We're thrilled to announce the stories accepted...

A Noteworthy Murder by Jon Matthew Farber
Karen's Key by Robert Petyo
Lena Baits a Trap by Edward Lodi
The Case of the Ghost Slipper by Cameron Trost
The Peculiar Case of the Toad in the Hole by DJ Tyrer
Our Lady of the Swans by Mike Adamson
Nero Knows by Robb White
Concerning the House on Ninth Street by Z. M. Renick
The Case of the Vanishing Wife by Paulene Turner
Benediction of Stone by S. B. Watson
The Fall by Christina Hoag
The Murder of a Perfectly Nice Wife by Albert N. Katz

More mysterious news soon!

No Laughing Matter

"And then the lights went out. Not just the main lights, but every piece of electrical equipment in the tent. I was swallowed by the vast, silent void, my senses shocked. A loud crack, like a pistol shot, broke the silence..."

HOW CAN AN ELEPHANT DISAPPEAR INTO THIN AIR DURING A CIRCUS PERFORMANCE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DESERT?

Laughing Matter, an Impossible Crime by S. B. Watson, is out now for just 99 cents, or FREE with your Kindle Unlimited subscription.

When Whinnaker sets his circus up on the edge of the South Australian desert, a forty-minute drive from Whyalla, the crowds know they will be amazed, bedazzled, and entertained. There will be clowning around, gravity-defying acrobatics, and spellbinding magic... but they aren't expecting an elephant to disappear into thin air, and they certainly aren't expecting a murder to take place right under their noses!
How did Ling, the star Asian elephant, vanish from the big top tent without a trace? How was a murder committed at the very same time? Will the police be able to solve both seemingly impossible mysteries?

Roll up! Roll up! Mystery hounds and sofa Sherlocks of the world. We need your help solving this mind-bending puzzle. Two spectacular crimes committed in front of a crowd of witnesses. This is no laughing matter!

Laughing Matter is the first Kindle-Only "Bang for your Buck" Novelette of the year, available exclusively from Black Beacon Books.

Three Crime Novelettes

Black Beacon Books is pleased to announce the three novelettes that will be published this year as part of our Kindle-Only Novelettes range. The idea of this range is provide an opportunity for authors to publish tales that sit between the short story and the novella in terms of length, because here at Black Beacon Books, we recognise that this a wonderful length for storytelling and yet one that is undervalued in the publishing world. These novelettes will be exclusively electronic; Kindle and Audible. 

The novelette acceptances for 2026 are... drum roll...

Laughing Matter by S. B. Watson.

An impossible crime featuring a disappearing elephant in the Australian desert.

Torched by Benedict J. Jones.

A fiery hardboiled romp across London.

You Only Fall Once by Bruce W. Most.

A New York City police procedural that defies gravity but not belief.

We'll be kicking things off with S. B. Watson's novelette, which despite the title is no laughing matter!

More news very soon.