Blackfire Rising

by Elizabeth Donald

The dead know no peace.

It was an experiment. A way to create a better soldier. Colder, more efficient.

But some things shouldn’t be altered, and some creatures are best left to myth. The dead know no peace, and they are coming for Sara Harvey.

Sara has faced the Cold Ones again and again, losing friends and comrades in a running battle to keep the world safe from the monsters released by an experiment that should never have happened. Again and again, Sara is drawn back into Blackfire, as it hunts the things that hide in the shadows.

The clock is ticking, and the slaughter has begun.

And you shouldn't have to pray to just stay dead. From award-winning horror author Elizabeth Donald comes a compendium of the entire Blackfire series... so far.

326 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 30, 2025

About the author

Elizabeth Donald is a dark fiction writer fond of things that go chomp in the night. She is author of the Blackfire urban fantasy series and Nocturne vampire mystery series, as well as other novels, novellas and stories in the horror, science fiction and fantasy genres. She is a three-time winner of the Darrell Award for speculative fiction and finalist for the Prism, Imadjinn and Knost awards, and more recently received the Mimi Zanger Award for fiction. She is the founder of the Literary Underworld small-press cooperative; an award-winning journalist and essayist with more than 25 years in journalism; a nature and art photographer; freelance editor and writing coach. She holds a masters degree in media studies and MFA in creative writing from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, and teaches journalism and English composition at several St. Louis colleges. She serves as president of the St. Louis Society of Professional Journalists and vice president of the AWP Adjunct Writers Caucus, and is a member of the national SPJ Ethics Committee, Association of Writers and Writing Programs, Authors Against Book Bans, Authors Guild, and more writing and trade organizations than is healthy. She lives with her family in a haunted house in Edwardsville, Illinois. In her spare time, she has no spare time. 

Reviews

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

So good. So scary!

This book is a collection of all of Elizabeth's Blackfire story, and it is scary. Of course, at times it touching and at times it's hilarious, but overall it's scary. The Cold Ones are some of my favorite scary monsters and I love all the other mythology, especially our local Piasa Bird.

[Angelia Sparrow · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been following Blackfire since the first Novella, The Cold Ones,

This is an organized compilation of all the previous Blackfire stories, including new ones, woven into a single narrative.

Join Major Sara Harvey as she and her team of operatives help keep people safe from the supernatural threats no one actually believes in. But Harvey is burned out and broken from the loss of her first team, and in no shape to help train a new one. Doesn't matter. The critters are still out there, and Blackfire needs her.

Elizabeth Donald gets better with every book.

[Alejandro Gonzalez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent

Vivid characters and an intriguing story are what this story does perfectly. It's not perfect, but none of the flaws are major.