Soft Light, Sharp Teeth
ROWAN TAYLOR BOOKS
Welcome to the quiet horror of Rowan Taylor — where memories linger, love unravels, and the line between presence and absence is never quite clear. These are stories that don’t scream — they whisper, weep, and wait in the silence.Here, hauntings are intimate. Familiar faces become unfamiliar. Rooms remember. And some doors never close.Rowan Taylor writes unsettling fiction that blends psychological dread with the supernatural, exploring what it means to forget—and to be forgotten. She is also known as Tracy Fobes, author of eight award-winning paranormal romances published by Simon & Schuster and Leisure LoveSpell. Fobes has also independently published numerous romantic suspense stories, including Hard Charger and Billionaire’s Hidden Heart.As Fobes, she wrote of witches, grimalkins, haunted seas, and dangerous love. As Rowan, she steps fully into the dark.She lives near Philadelphia, owns too many books and too few flashlights, and believes the scariest monsters are the ones who know your name.
Noted by Critics
Rowan Taylor’s horror fiction has received two Editor’s Picks from BookLife Reviews (Publishers Weekly) and an A-rating for Croatoan, praised for its emotional intensity, atmospheric craft, and unforgettable imagery. Her screenwriting has been optioned twice, underscoring a body of work that blends cinematic tension with immersive, character-driven dread.
True death comes with forgetting
The Memory Keeper
Acclaim for The Memory Keeper:A BookLife/Publishers Weekly Editor's Pick“Taylor’s gripping haunted house gothic creates an immersive reading experience that honors the pleasures of the genre while plumbing the weight of grief and trauma. The storytelling is assured and often electric, thanks to shivery detail...”
— BookLife Reviews (Publishers Weekly)Read the full BookLife review“Quietly unsettling and deeply human—horror that creeps under your skin rather than lunges for your throat.”
— IndieReader
A descent into oblivion and the hunger of the forgotten.The first doorway into the Oblivion Cycle...Archivist Mara accepts a quiet contract to catalog the crumbling Dumont estate. She expects solitude and routine; instead she finds a house steeped in silence, where the walls listen and the mirrors shift when no one is looking. The longer she stays, the more her own reflection falters. Her memories bend, her thoughts blur, and the line between herself and the presence within the house begins to dissolve. Somewhere in its history, a woman named Isabelle Dumont was erased—and Mara senses that same fate closing in.What haunts the estate isn’t a ghost. It’s a patient predator, practiced in the art of rewriting lives, and it has set its sights on her.The Memory Keeper is a gothic psychological horror about coercion, haunting, and the violence of being forgotten. It's the first novel in Rowan Taylor’s chilling new series The Oblivion Cycle— standalone horror novels united not by character or plot, but by a single devouring idea: what if identity is not a fixed truth, but prey?Each book opens a different doorway into oblivion, revealing how the self can be stolen, rewritten, hollowed out, or willingly surrendered.
A voyage into madness and the unknown
CROATOAN
Acclaim for Croatoan:“Taylor evokes a frightening metamorphosis during the voyage, with John’s physical countenance undergoing startling changes—‘His body bulged like a wineskin stretched too far. Flesh rippled. Bones cracked. A new limb tried to push through his back before collapsing into muscle again’—even as he gains surreal powers that risk Kit’s own life. New terrors are unleashed on nearly every page, as Taylor gradually nudges Kit toward his greater destiny. The reckoning he must face thrums with horror, but Kit’s journey is ultimately one of sacrifice and purpose, rooted in a heritage rich with ancient secrets and meaning.”
—BookLife Reviews (Publishers Weekly)Read the full BookLife review
The sea takes what it wants, and it always collects its due.The second doorway into The Oblivion Cycle...Kit Cabot stows away on the clipper Apollyon for one reason: to save his uncle, Captain John Cabot. Ever since John carried a strange red pearl out of a sea cave, something in him isn’t right—his eyes gleam with a red-black swirl, his words hit like a physical blow, and the name he murmurs, Croatoan, makes hardened sailors go quiet.As the crew whispers mutiny and the lash sings on deck, Kit and his few allies hunt the pearl’s origins, only to learn it isn’t a jewel at all but a window—an invitation—and something on the other side has noticed them. Storms close in; the coast grows treacherous; and John’s humanity thins to a terrible calm.To save his uncle—maybe even his soul—Kit must decide how far he’ll go, and what he’ll become, in a battle where obedience means doom and defiance is the only prayer left.Croatoan is a fast-paced nautical horror about loyalty, corruption, and the price of holding onto someone who’s already slipping away. It's the second novel in Rowan Taylor’s chilling new series The Oblivion Cycle— standalone horror novels united not by character or plot, but by a single devouring idea: what if identity is not a fixed truth, but prey?Each book opens a different doorway into oblivion, revealing how the self can be stolen, rewritten, hollowed out, or willingly surrendered.
Some friendships refuse to stay buried
DEAD FRIENDS FOREVER
Acclaim for Dead Friends Forever:A BookLife/Publishers Weekly Editor's Pick
“As Lily falls ever deeper into the swamp’s thrall, its secrets drive a powerful question: how much of herself is she willing to sacrifice to solve the mysteries of her brother’s death and Amelia’s disappearance? As usual, Taylor skillfully molds imagery and language to convey the ethereal yet sinister beauty of her book’s setting, sweeping readers into each scene as unwilling participants in the horror, anxiety, and dread stalking Lily.”
— BookLife Reviews (Publishers Weekly)Read the full BookLife review
Dead Friends Forever began its life as a feature-length screenplay that was optioned twice for development, with a projected budget of $3 million. Read the IMDB Listing.The story’s haunting blend of Southern gothic atmosphere and psychological dread drew early attention from producers seeking elevated horror with emotional depth. Now adapted as a novel, Dead Friends Forever expands the world and characters that first caught Hollywood’s eye, delivering the same slow-burn terror and heart-wrenching humanity that defined its screen origins.
A tale of ghosts, betrayal, and the bayou's unforgiving dead.
The Third Doorway Into The Oblivion CycleLily swore she’d never return—not after Amelia vanished, and the angel statue was set in the garden to mourn what could never be recovered. But when her brother’s body is pulled from the swamp, the past drags her back.The house waits for her, sagging beneath silence, steeped in damp earth and secrets. Aunt Clara still tucks away letters and photographs in drawers, as if hiding the past will keep it from finding them.It begins with small intrusions: a locket engraved MINE turning up where it doesn’t belong, Polaroids whose flash reveals more than darkness, and the sight of Amelia—smiling as she once did, though the girl before Lily is not the cousin she lost.Every night the angel moves. One day it stands in the garden, the next in the cemetery, then ankle-deep in the swamp. Lily cannot tell if it is coming for her, or if she is already caught inside its gaze.In the bayou, the dead do not rest. They wait for you to remember them—and to finish what you began.Dead Friends Forever is a slow-burn Southern Gothic horror about memory and guilt, the corrosive pull of the past, and the dangerous comfort of letting the dead back in. It's the third novel in Rowan Taylor’s chilling new series The Oblivion Cycle— standalone horror novels united not by character or plot, but by a single devouring idea: what if identity is not a fixed truth, but prey?Each book opens a different doorway into oblivion, revealing how the self can be stolen, rewritten, hollowed out, or willingly surrendered.
Now available across all major bookstores:
The Oblivion Cycle
The Oblivion Cycle is a series of standalone horror novels united not by character or plot, but by a single devouring idea: *what if identity is not a fixed truth, but prey? Each book opens a different doorway into oblivion, exploring how the self can be stolen, rewritten, hollowed out, or willingly surrendered.Like Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy and Caitlín R. Kiernan’s Tinfoil Dossier, The Oblivion Cycle is a thematic series. Every novel is complete on its own, yet each reveals another face of the same ancient hunger.
Doorways Into Oblivion
🜂 Memory – stolen, replaced, rewritten until the self becomes a stranger wearing your skin.🜄 Body – possessed, consumed, transformed, proving that flesh remembers what the mind denies.🜃 Relationship– friendship transmuted into sacrament or sacrifice, revealing that devotion is the surest path to ruin.These books may be read in any order. Individually, they are ghost stories, possession tales or psychological nightmares. Together, they map the many ways the human soul can be unmade.
Doorways in This Series
#1: The Memory Keeper
#2: Croatoan
#3: Dead Friends Forever
Rowan's Haunted News - November 2025
November may not be as loud as October, but it’s a month soaked in shadows. All Souls’ Day lingers in the air. Bram Stoker’s birthday passes like a whisper from the crypt. And the days grow shorter until memory feels like its own kind of haunting.So brew something dark and settle in — I’ve got some news from the world of ghosts and the supernatural.
Hi friends,
There’s a lot happening in the world of Rowan Taylor this month, so here are the highlights:
From Nov. 24 – Dec. 1, all Rowan Taylor EPUBs are just $0.99.
The Memory Keeper: Kindle Unlmited.Croatoan: Kindle UnlimitedDead Friends Forever: Kindle Unlimited, Apple Books, Google Play, Barnes & NobleMonsters rise. Prices fall.
BookList/Publishers Weekly Reviews for The Memory Keeper and Croatoan
Both The Memory Keeper and Croatoan continue to find their readers, and recent reviews have been especially kind — including a BookList/PW Editor’s Pick. It’s great to see two such different doorways into oblivion resonate:The Memory Keeper — a quiet unraveling of identity inside a house that remembers too much.Croatoan — a storm-tossed descent into loyalty, corruption and the monstrous entity steering Captain John Cabot.Click the book covers to read the reviews.
Dead Friends Forever on IMDb
My bayou ghost novel is officially listed on IMDb, which still makes me smile every time I see it. If you’d like to take a peek, you can find it here:👉 IMDb
🎧 Audiobook in Production: The Memory Keeper
Big news: the audiobook edition of The Memory Keeper is underway.I’ll share more soon — narrator details, early clips, and release timelines — but for now, let’s just say hearing Mara’s story aloud is… chilling in the best possible way.
🖋️Behind the Pages
November has always felt like a hinge between worlds. Maybe that’s why so many of my stories begin with people trying to remember — or trying desperately to forget — the dead.I’m deep into drafting Smithfield, the next doorway in The Oblivion Cycle, coming Spring–Summer 2026. This doorway opens into a quieter, more unsettling haunting — a place where memory feels unreliable, the familiar becomes strange, and the self has to fight to stay intact.Nothing in Smithfield is wrong outright… it just feels slightly sideways, as if something beneath the surface is waiting for you to notice it.
💀 Other Haunted Paths to Explore
If you’re still hungry for hauntings, I’ve gathered a few other shadows worth exploring this month. Check below for links!
Featured Read: Secrets of the Ancient Ram Inn
Explore one of England’s most haunted places in this chilling look at the Ancient Ram Inn. Built on a pagan burial ground and crossed by ley lines, it’s a hotspot of ghostly activity. From the Silent Watcher in the attic to the Witch’s Room and the Sacrificial Pit, every corner holds a story of lingering spirits and dark history.
Check it out!
👻 A Final Whisper
November is a lantern-lit month — a place where the dead lean close and memories get louder. Thank you for carrying these stories with you into the dark.Until next time,
Rowan Taylor--
Haunted Tales for Haunted Nights