Color Of Evil Series Boxed Set by Connie Corcoran Wilson
Publisher: Quad Cities’ Press (Aug, 2017)
Category: YA, Psychological Paranormal Thriller
Tour Dates: Oct/Nov, 2017
Available in: E-book, 725 Pages
THE COLOR OF EVIL series presents you with characters who live, breathe and die in small town Cedar Falls, Iowa. Tad McGreevy, the focus of the series, has a paranormal power, Tetrachromatic Super Vision, that allows him to see auras that tell him whether a person is good or evil. At night, in horrifying nightmares, Tad relives the crimes of the evil-doers. Eventually, becomes the target of a particularly lethal antagonist, Michael Clay (aka Pogo the Clown) who wants to eliminate the teen-aged boy. In three books, we witness the power of evil faced off against a good-hearted young boy who just wants to protect those he loves.
Beginning with the first manifestations of this supernatural power at the age of 8, the book quickly takes us forward to the high school years of Tad and the band of friends we come to know well. We follow their progress from their junior year of high school through graduation with danger always lurking in the background. As others have said, it’s quite a ride.
Begin the journey today with this specially-priced trilogy: THE COLOR OF EVIL; RED IS FOR RAGE; and KHAKI=KILLER..
“THE COLOR OF EVIL series is old-school psychological horror, artfully blended with new-school shocks and twists. Bravo!” —Jonathan Maberry, New York Times best-selling author, multiple Bram Stoker winner.
Praise for Color Of Evil Series Boxed Set
by Connie Corcoran Wilson
‘The book has all the elements of a compelling mystery and an inventive paranormal twist. One must credit Wilson for treating her teenage protagonists with respect, as they face adult dilemmas and resolve them with maturity and grace.”- Kirkus
“Connie Corcoran Wilson weaves a deftly fine scalpel in an age where a crude blade is more the norm. Her work is a smooth, subtle hybrid mix of science fiction, thriller, and horror that realizes a unique and pointed vision in the great tradition of Phillip K. Dick and Ray Bradbury. Her voice is a wonder to behold, at once dark and somber while maintaining a glimmer of hope that shines in the hearts of her heroes, who cling to the light. Like Stephen King, nothing escapes her discerning eye, the result of which is tale after tale that bleed life onto the page, both literally and figuratively.”–Jon Land, bestselling author of the Caitlin Strong Series
“Wilson’s characters come alive on the page. Comparisons to Stephen King, Dean Koontz and Philip K. Dick aside, Wilson has spent 33 years teaching students in this age range. She knows what she is talking about.”–Gary Braver, author of “Flashback” and 8 other thrillers.
About Connie Corcoran Wilson
Connie (Corcoran) Wilson (MS + 30) graduated from the University of Iowa and Western Illinois University, with additional study at Northern Illinois, the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Chicago. She taught writing at six Iowa/Illinois colleges and has written for five newspapers and seven blogs, including Yahoo, which named her its 2008 Content Producer of the Year. She covers politics and entertainment and writes for The Movie Blog, QuadCities.com and her own blog, WeeklyWilson.com.
She is a member of ITW (International Thriller Writers) and a member of IWPA (Illinois Women’s Press Association, Chicago chapter), which awarded her its Silver Feather Award in 2012 and 2014, MWA (Midwest Writers Association), AWP (American Writing Program) and MWC (Midwest Writing Center), which named her its Writer of the Year in 2010. She has won numerous E-Lit awards, a NABE Pinnacle award, an ALMA (American Literary Merit Award), Lucky Cinda competition and two IWPA Silver Feather Awards (2012, 2014).
Her stories and interviews with writers like David Morrell, Joe Hill, Kurt Vonnegut, Frederik Pohl, William F. Nolan, Anne Perry, r. Barri Flowers, Valerie Plame, Allen Zadoff and Jon Land have appeared online and in numerous journals.
Her work has won prizes from “Whim’s Place Flash Fiction,” “Writer’s Digest” (Screenplay) and she has 30 published works. Connie reviewed film and books for the Quad City Times (Davenport, Iowa) for 12 years, wrote humor columns and conducted interviews for the (Moline, Illinois) Dispatch.
Connie has three ongoing series: THE COLOR OF EVIL, HELLFIRE & DAMNATION (short stories organized around the crimes or sins punished at each of the levels of Hell in Dante’s Inferno) and THE CHRISTMAS CATS, which she writes for her granddaughters. (www.TheColorOfEvil.com; www.RedIsforRage.com; www.KhakiEqualsKiller.com; www.HellfireAndDamnationTheBook.com; www.TheXmasCats.com)
Connie lives in East Moline, Illinois with husband Craig and in Chicago, Illinois and Austin, Texas. Son Scott and wife Jessica and granddaughters Ava and Elise live in Austin and her daughter, Stacey, currently flies for Southwest Airlines and flies from Denver, Colorado.
Connie on Twitter Connie on Facebook Connie on Pinterest
The Color of Evil (Book 1)
Tad McGreevy has a power that he has never revealed, not even to his life-long best friend, Stevie Scranton. When Tad looks at others, he sees colors. These auras tell Tad whether a person is good or evil. At night, Tad dreams about the evil-doers, reliving their crimes in horrifyingly vivid detail.
But Tad doesn’t know if the evil acts he witnesses in his nightmares are happening now, are already over, or are going to occur in the future. He has no control over the horrifying visions. He has been told (by his parents) never to speak of his power. All Tad knows is that he wants to protect those he loves. And he wants the bad dreams to stop.
At Tad’s eighth birthday party (April 1, 1995) in Cedar Falls, Iowa, the clown his parents hire to entertain Tad’s third-grade classmates is one of the bad people. Pogo, the Killer Clown (aka Michael Clay) is a serial killer. So begins 53 nights of terror as Tad relives Pogo’s crime, awakens screaming, and recites the terrifying details to his disbelieving family. The situation becomes so dire that Tad is hospitalized in a private institution under the care of a psychiatrist–who also does not believe the small boy’s stories.
And then the police arrest Pogo, the Killer Clown.
Flash forward to the beginning of Tad’s junior year in high school, 8 years later. Tad is 16 and recovered from the spring of his third-grade year. When Michael Clay was caught and imprisoned, the crime spree ended and so did Tad’s bad dreams.
Until now, in the year of our Lord 2003, when evil once again stalks the land.
This is a terrifying, intense story of the dark people and places that lurk just beneath the surface of seemingly normal small-town America. As one reviewer says, “Wilson nails the darkness beneath the surface of small-town Midwestern life with an intense story based on fact.”
Tad must wage a silent war against those who would harm the ones he loves. A battle to the death.
Amazon Barnes and Noble Goodreads
My Review
4 stars
Tad McGreevy is 8 years old and has to ability to see colors around people which corresponde to the different people’s behaviors. For example, emerald green people seem to be the best people, red can mean violence, and black can mean sickness or be suicidal. The clown that Tad’s mother has hired is a shade of khaki, the sign of a murderer. After this party, Tad has nightmares of the clown butchering people. No one believes him and he spends a week in a mental institute. Of course the kid was right and no one wants to accept the truth, even after being proven.
Fast forward 8 years and Tad is now in high school. He has a love interest, Jenny that is dating the school bully, Jeremy. Tad sees red around Jeremy and is trying to protect Jenny but Jenny is displaying typical battered wife syndrome. Then there is Tad’s best friend Stevie who has been abused by the principal, several students, and ends up disappearing. If that was not enough, Michael Clay, aka Pogo the Killer Clown has escaped and is planning on killing Tad.
This was an interesting, dark read. You can’t help but feel for poor Tad, how shattering to have those you love not listen to you and lock you up in a mental institute. I could feel bad for Jenny for the situation she was in but at some point you can only care for a person so long when it is evident that she never wanted to really change. Then there is Stevie. The poor kid has gone through hell, literally.
There are brutal murder scenes and horrible situations that are well written in this story. They are well portrayed and get you fully invested in them. I will admit that there were times when the story started to really drag but would pick up again. There was also some repetition that was starting to wear my patience too.
Over all I really liked this story and am eager to see what is in store for Tad, Stevie, Jenny and the lot in the next book.
Red is for Rage (Book 2)
RED IS FOR RAGE is the second book in the award-winning THE COLOR OF EVIL series. It was named the winner in the Thriller category of the Pinnacle book award by NABE (National Association of Book Entrepreneurs) in 2013.
At the end of Book One (THE COLOR OF EVIL), Stevie Scranton, best friend of Tad McGreevy, went missing. Best friend Tad McGreevy, who has the ability to see auras around others that lead him to “see” the crimes of the evil-doers, vows to do everything he can to find Stevie. In their search, they discover a monster every bit as dangerous as Pogo, the killer clown, and must confront him in order to save Stevie.
Pogo, from Book One, still is a threat, hoping to kill Tad to keep his freedom, since he thinks Tad has the power to turn him over to the police. Now, Tad must learn to harness his unique gift. Stevie’s fate hangs in the balance as well as his own life.
Amazon Goodreads
My Review
4 stars
Stevie is still missing and Tad is willing to do anything to find him. Tad teams up with Charlie Chandler, a retired policeman, and a group of people to hunt Stevie down. Instead they find a killer even more deranged than Michael Clay. Clay is still on the hunt for Tad thinking that if he kills Tad he can be free to go on his killing spree again. It’s going to be up to Tad to get control of his power before he loses everything.
You are dropped right back into the story just a couple months after The Color of Evil and you hit the ground running. Tad needs to get himself in order because the storm is coming. Then there is Daniel Malone. I have to give Connie Wilson kudos, she can sure write about sick and twisted people.
This is a great thriller that is not as bloody as The Color of Evil but us just as dark and demented. It is easy to get into this story and hard to stop reading. There were a couple parts that didn’t ring true, like how easily Stevie seemed to get over his prior 9 months. But then again the kid has been dealing with the like for a long time.
I think that you could easily jump into this story without being too lost but reading the books in order will give more depth to the story. I can’t wait to see how this comes to an end.
Khaki = Killer (Book – 3)
KHAKI = KILLER, the third novel in THE COLOR OF EVIL series, follows young Tad McGreevy and friends at Cedar Falls’ Sky High Lab School through the second semester of their senior year.
Recently named a “PageTurner” by Shelf Unbound magazine and NABE Pinnacle Thriller winner, the series details the adventures of the young man (Tad McGreevy) with the power to detect auras around others (Tetrachromatic Super Vision) and to relive the crimes of those with “the color of evil” in his dreams. Khaki = Killer.
Amazon Barnes and Noble Goodreads
My Review
4 stars
The small town of Cedar Falls Iowa has been turned on its head. Head cheerleader, Melody Harris Carpenter, has fallen from the top of a pyramid and is now in a coma and shortly thereafter two of her friends have disappeared. It seems that two of her friends have disappeared. The question is who did it, why, and where are the girls.
At the same time Michael Clay is back and going to stop Tad in one way or another. Tad and Stevie are determined to find the missing girls and will have to call in help. As the different threads of the story start wrapping together and the action gets ramped up.
Prepare for a fast race to the cliff hanger ending and if Clay is finally going to get his wish and kill Tad or will the missing girls be found in time. This is all based in a small town so you will have the daily dramas of teen pregnancy, marriage, and other regular stories added in to spice up the whole book.
I have really enjoyed this series. It starts out with a blood, horrible serial killer and the one person that can see what he does and has the possibility to stop him. There is a lot of horrible things happening around town that will keep you guessing as you rush to the end of this book.
The Color of Evil Box Set
In the 3 novels that comprise THE COLOR OF EVIL SERIES, we follow the adventures of Tad McGreevy, the young boy who can see auras around others and, from this, dreams of the crimes of the evil-doers in vivid nightmares. We take Tad and his best friend Stevie Scranton and their high school friends through their junior and senior years of high school, when evil stalks the land and Pogo, the Killer Clown, terrorizes the small Midwestern town of Cedar Falls, Iowa.
Amazon Goodreads
My Review
4 stars
This is a killer collection about Tad McGreevy and his amazing ability to see colors around people. These colors tell Tad about what kind of person they are. If they are emerald green they will be some of the best people that you meet, black could mean illness or suicide, and the worst color if khaki green for killers. At Tad’s 8th birthday party he meets the clown Pojo and gets violently sick. Then for almost two months he has horrible dreams of the clown brutally killing people. No one wants to accept this and he ends up spending a week in a mental institute.
Now, 8 years later Tad is in high school and dealing with the regular drama until Michael Clay escapes and is planning on killing Tad. But you also have Tad’s best friend disappearing a romantic interest, Jenny, dating the school bully.
We then follow along as Tad goes on the hunt for Stevie and Michael. But there is so much more happening in this little town. Finally we see everything start coming together and the stories wrapped up after hitting bottom.
I really enjoyed this series and think this is the best way to enjoy this series. You will get the full immersion and can truly get wrapped up in Tad and everyone else’s lives as they try to survive this small town.
This is one series that you need to check out. I think you may have a new favorite series.
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by Connie Corcoran Wilson Tour
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I received The Color of Evil Box Set from Teddy at Premier Virtual Book Tours for free. This has in no way influenced my opinion on these books.
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