Announcing Dead Silence, a New Novel from S.A. Barnes

sample heading

S.A. Barnes’ Dead Silence, a sci-fi horror novel with a chilling psychological twist, will be published by Nightfire in January 2022!

At the edge of the solar system, no one can hear you scream.

The Aurora, a luxury space-liner destined for a cruise of the solar system, has been missing for twenty years. Among the hundreds of presumed dead were passengers from society’s finest – celebrities, tech giants, influencers. Every last one… vanished.

So when Claire’s crew picks up an emergency signal in deep space, the long-lost Aurora is the last ship they expect to find. The salvage claim could be their best chance at extraordinary wealth, but it might mean missing their transport back home, and nobody can stand another minute out in the darkest corner of the universe – nobody, except Claire.  

Once onboard the ship, the crew realizes something is terribly wrong. Unspeakable horrors lurk in every shadow of the massive ship, and soon they each start experiencing violent hallucinations.   

Claire must fight to keep her sanity and get her crew back to safety – before they all meet the same ghastly fate as the Aurora passengers.

---

Here’s what Kelly Lonesome, senior editor at Nightfire, has to say about Dead Silence:

“Dead Silence was one of the first submissions I read for Nightfire, by myself in a hotel room. When I was too scared to get out of bed, it was obvious: I was hooked! S.A. Barnes lures you into this sci-fi horror story, and then supplies a steady stream of icy dread and jump-scares right up to the book’s thrilling conclusion. Dead Silence is like if The Shining took place on the Titanic, in space. It’s guaranteed to give you goosebumps and nightmares!”

And from S.A. Barnes:

“’Write about your obsessions.’ At some point, I must have stumbled across that writing advice. And I have a lot of them—obsessions, that is. (Ask me about bog bodies sometime. Seriously.) For Dead Silence, though, it was the sinking of the Titanic. I think it’s that combination of outrageous wealth, tragedy, and hubris that has always been so intriguing to me. When I was nine or ten, I remember coming across the National Geographic issue announcing that Robert Ballard had found the wreck and being absolutely fascinated.

In April 2017, I happened to be at the Titanic museum at the Luxor in Las Vegas on the day they opened a special exhibit of personal effects. Mundane items, but so powerful. Clothing, shoes, razors, eye glasses, postcards—all retrieved from the bottom of the ocean. It was both sad and chilling to realize the person who last folded those socks—balling them up to keep them together, just like I do at home—had no idea that they were about to die in such a horrific way. 

Dead Silence explores that idea with the discovery and subsequent exploration of the Aurora. The Aurora is a luxury spaceliner—the first of its kind—setting off on a cruise around our solar system. It’s full of the rich, famous, and infamous…when it vanishes. Twenty years later, when our beacon repair crew picks up an old distress signal and follows it, they find the Aurora. Going on board is necessary to support their salvage claim, but it also gives them the opportunity  to find out what happened to the Aurora, most famous missing ship in recent history. (Which, of course, is exactly when very baaaad things start to happen.) It’s my version of finding the sunken Titanic, set in space.”

---

S.A. Barnes works in a high school library by day, recommending reads, talking with students, and removing the occasional forgotten cheese-stick-as-bookmark. The author has published numerous novels across different genres. Barnes lives in Illinois with more dogs and books than is advisable and a very patient spouse.

Dead Silence will hit shelves on January 25, 2022!

---