JG Faherty Books in Order

JG Faherty was born in Olean, New York, and grew up mostly in Stony Point in the Hudson Valley. That part of New York, full of old ghost stories, strange local legends, and a lot of damp woods, left a mark on him early. Many of his books still carry that small-town unease, where ordinary streets sit right next to something older and much less friendly.

That landscape clearly stuck.

He has said that one of his earliest movie memories was seeing Planet of the Apes and Night of the Living Dead at a drive-in with his parents. He was already into Godzilla, Star Trek, and classic science fiction, but horror hit harder. He also read widely when he was young, moving from Poe, Shelley, and Stoker to later writers like Stephen King, Peter Straub, and F. Paul Wilson. It probably did not hurt that, as a kid, he liked spending time in a nineteenth-century graveyard.

Faherty studied biology at St. Bonaventure University and first tried writing horror in college. It did not go well, at least by his own telling, and he stepped away from fiction for about sixteen years. During that stretch he worked a long list of jobs, including lab tech, R&D scientist, photographer, zookeeper, teacher, marketing specialist, and resume writer. That mix of science, working life, and offbeat experience helps explain why his books can jump from grounded detail to full-on supernatural chaos so easily.

He came back to fiction around 2000, joined the Horror Writers Association, and kept building from there. Since 2003 he has published more than two dozen books, more than 100 short stories, and several collections. He has also spent years mentoring other writers and working on literacy programs, which tells you something useful about him: he is not only interested in horror as a genre, he cares about the reading life around it.

A good place to see his range is in a handful of titles. Carnival of Fear is exactly what the name promises, teens trapped in a demonic Halloween attraction, fast and nasty in a fun way. Ghosts of Coronado Bay shifts into YA paranormal territory, following Maya Blair, a teenager who can see and touch ghosts. The Burning Time brings ancient evil into a small New York town, while The Cure starts with a veterinarian who can heal by touch and then pushes that gift into much darker territory. Hellrider goes loud and wild with a murdered biker coming back for revenge, and Ragman folds an Egyptian curse into a modern horror thriller.

He does not stay in one horror lane for long.

What connects the books is the way Faherty likes to take a strong central hook and run it hard. Ghosts become solid. An exorcism echoes across decades. A curse wakes up in the present. A grieving woman discovers that healing and killing may be two sides of the same power. Readers who like his work often respond to that mix of familiar horror pleasures, monsters, haunted places, demonic forces, ancient grudges, with characters who still feel like people trying to get through a very bad week.

He is married, and in 2024 he moved to North Carolina's Cape Fear region after many years in New York. The setting suits him. He has written about loving guitar, photography, hiking, volunteering at wild animal preserves, bad sci-fi movies, and warm beaches. Even in the quieter details, you can see the same split that shows up in his fiction: part horror fan, part curious observer, part guy who seems perfectly happy if the day includes both a ghost story and a walk outside.