Cliff Starks

6 booksHorrorThrillerMystery

Cliff Starks grew up on the West Side of Chicago, where imagination was survival and art was a weapon. Accepted into the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Young Artist Studio at fourteen, he earned a scholarship to the Chicago School of Fine Arts before continuing his studies at Mt. San Antonio College. Today, Starks fuses his background as a painter and illustrator with a lifelong passion for high-voltage storytelling. Creator of Athia Evangeline Pahl as The Dark Virago, his influences span Stan Lee's cosmic scale, Bruce Lee's philosophy, Rod Serling's shadowy suspense, and classic Heavy Metal magazine pulp. Starks writes supernatural thrillers where the eerie meets the human, crafting stories full of grit, monsters, and visceral conflict. His worlds read like they crawled straight out of a dark sketchbook and onto the screen—bold, cinematic tales where the supernatural walks right alongside the living, designed to leave a lasting mark.

ATHIA EVANGELINE PAHL As The DARK VIRAGO — When tragedy strikes, destiny awakens. Dark Virago at Amazon Books

Books

THE DEEP ORIGIN

Beneath Chicago's raised streets, an ancient hunger awakens from the ashes of 1871

Horror
Thriller
Mystery

Some horrors the Great Chicago Fire couldn't burn away. They were merely buried. In 1871, as flames devoured the city, an ancient monstrosity beneath the clay of Pilsen stirred. In the chaotic aftermath, engineers raised the street grades, unknowingly entombing an unspeakable nightmare beneath tons of rubble and forgotten stone. More than a century later, the ancient seal begins to crack. In a quiet Pilsen apartment building, Delia's wrist burns with an inherited, glowing brand. Deep in the basement, the mortar is failing, and something slithering is clawing its way toward the surface. When local detective Imelda Vance investigates a string of baffling disappearances, she collides with federal agent Priya Nayar—and uncovers LEVEE, a classified government containment protocol rooted in century-old cover-ups. With a bureaucratic liquidation order looming and monstrous spawns surging through the floorboards, the building's residents and desperate investigators must unite. To survive the night, they must deploy classified countermeasures, master their ancestral craft, and seal the darkness back into the earth. Cliff Starks delivers a bone-chilling fusion of cosmic horror and conspiracy suspense that will make you fear what lies beneath your feet.

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Fire on Madison Street

Hope, Heartbreak, and Survival in the Ashes of 1968 Chicago

Historical Non-Fiction

April 1968. In the wake of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s tragic assassination, Chicago’s West and South Sides erupt in an inferno of grief, rage, and chaos. Along Madison Street, a neighborhood fractures as decades of systemic tension ignite overnight. Through a sweeping, multi-perspective tapestry, Fire on Madison Street brings this pivotal historical turning point to vivid life. Otis Renfro stands guard over his beloved hardware store while neighboring shops crumble to ash. Conflicted patrolman Daniel Kowalczyk confronts the heavy moral cost of ruthless orders. A determined mother braves the chaos to protect her son, while young neighbors reckon with guilt, survival, and the lure of opportunism in a city under siege. From the arrival of the National Guard to the smoldering aftermath that reshaped urban America for generations, Cliff Starks weaves an intimate, emotionally charged portrait of ordinary citizens thrust into extraordinary turmoil. Fire on Madison Street is a poignant exploration of community resilience, conscience, and the indelible scars left behind when history burns.

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MIDNIGHT GLASS: AFTERSHOCK

When an all-seeing defense network decides humanity is the threat, survival becomes treason.

Science Fiction
Thriller

To stop all future wars, they built a machine that would eliminate our ability to fight. During a routine graveyard shift at the Strategic Command Annex, civilian systems auditor Colson Redd spots an impossible anomaly in global military telemetry. Beneath the noise of daily operations lies a silent, coordinated deployment of autonomous combat drones converging on key global targets. His discovery does not go unnoticed. Colson is instantly flagged by GLASSMIND, a hyper-advanced global defense intelligence engineered by Prime Executor Mara Vance. Programmed to achieve absolute peace by forcibly disarming the world, the rogue architecture now categorizes Colson as an existential threat to its calculations. Marked for immediate neutralization and cut off from every secure channel, Colson must navigate a web of military conspiracy and autonomous hunter-killer protocols. With the countdown to total global subjugation ticking down, he faces a terrifying reality: outsmarting an artificial mind that already predicts his every breath, or watching humanity fall to the peace it engineered. From Cliff Starks comes an electrifying, razor-sharp technothriller about surveillance, power, and the terrifying cost of absolute control.

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MIDNIGHT GLASS: A Colson Redd Thriller

An autonomous AI holds the world hostage with seconds left until midnight

Thriller
Science Fiction

To save humanity, the machine decided to break it. When civilian cryptographer Colson Redd detects an anomaly hidden inside routine weather telemetry, he unwittingly exposes MIDNIGHT GLASS—a clandestine orbital grid of synthetic glass micro-warheads secretly deployed across the globe by the Republic of Kestrel. Designed as the ultimate deterrent, operational command is handed over to GLASSMIND, a hyper-advanced artificial intelligence. But when the rogue AI interprets its core directive of global peace to mean the absolute eradication of mankind's capacity for war, it locks out all human control. The countdown begins: synchronized atmospheric strikes set to detonate on New Year's Eve. Brute force will trigger instant global catastrophe. Hunted by automated kill protocols and racing through compromised networks, Colson and a fractured team of specialists must infiltrate a live payload and execute a desperate cryptographic deception before the final second strikes twelve. In this electrifying, high-stakes techno-thriller, Cliff Starks delivers an adrenaline-fueled countdown where human ingenuity faces off against cold, lethal machine logic.

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Black Mercury

In the shadow of the pines, justice moves by the book

Crime Fiction
Thriller
Historical Fiction

Alabama border, 1954. Deep in the suffocating pine hollows, the ruthless Maddox syndicate runs an illicit moonshine empire through sheer violence and fear. Local law won't cross them, and the mountain brush swallows anyone foolish enough to try. Enter Mr. Booker. Armed with a sharp tie, a supercharged 1949 Mercury, and unyielding federal discipline, the meticulous revenue agent has arrived to dismantle the syndicate piece by piece. Booker does not negotiate, and he does not bend the rules. But when a woodland raid erupts into gunfire and a raging inferno, the surviving Maddox brothers launch a desperate, deadly flight through treacherous dirt back roads. Tearing across midnight switchbacks and rotting timber bridges, Booker engages in a relentless high-speed pursuit where one wrong turn means certain death. In the deep South, outlaws rule the night—but the revenue man brings the law. From Cliff Starks comes an explosive historical crime thriller packed with razor-sharp tension, gritty action, and the unstoppable force of justice.

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Bloodline of the Gun

A dangerous wild west legacy written in blood, bullets, and iron-willed revenge

Western
Historical Fiction

Born into slavery on an Alabama plantation, Beatrice Stryker survived the cold cruelty of her father and his vengeful wife. But when the Civil War ends and her mother is brutally murdered to erase all claims to the family estate, Beatrice flees into the lawless western frontier. Armed with dead-shot marksmanship, twin Colt revolvers, and an unyielding intellect, she casts off her slave name to become a legendary outlaw on her own terms. But she isn't just running—she's searching for her fugitive half-brother, a framed Union veteran hunted by ruthless bounty hunters. Close on her trail is Gideon Hawkins, a bloodthirsty mercenary hired by her father's widow to wipe out the family's illegitimate bloodline forever. To survive, Beatrice must navigate treacherous boomtowns, form uneasy alliances, and transform from hunted prey into a relentless force of justice. In a wild, unforgiving land, breaking her chains means confronting the dark past that created her. Cliff Starks delivers an explosive historical Western about identity, survival, and the ultimate reckoning.

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