The Pen Names of Maroon House Press: Who Writes What
One publisher, twelve names. This is who writes what, and which book to open first.
Maroon House publishes across literary fiction, crime, gothic horror, paranormal romance and erotica. That range is deliberate, and it is why the catalog carries pen names rather than one byline on everything. A reader who came for Caribbean literary fiction and a reader who came for why-choose paranormal romance are not looking for the same book, and pretending otherwise serves neither.
The names below are how the House keeps that straight. For author photos, bios and every title in one place, see the full roster of Maroon House Press authors.
Literary fiction
Lorna Phillips
Jamaica-centered literary fiction about land, ancestry, water and generational memory. The novels sit in the interior rather than on the coast, in places where a family’s claim to its own ground was never properly written down.
Not an invented name. It is a Jamaican birth name, and here is why the Jamaica novels carry it.
Start with Swift River: The Water That Remembers — Portland Parish in the 1930s, three generations of women, and a river that keeps count.
Nikki Woods
The publisher’s own name, on Jamaican folklore-driven fiction and on nonfiction about over-functioning and recovery.
How a national radio career became this press.
Start with The Drowning of Maya Sinclair for the fiction, or The Strong One for the nonfiction.
J. Ellen Sussex
Quiet, interior Caribbean fiction about the lives history keeps in its margins.
Start with The Unsaid — twenty-three years of housekeeping, twenty years of a marriage with no paper, and one decision at the end.
Rae Baptiste
Multigenerational Caribbean family novels, steeped in nine-night ritual and the long argument over land nobody has a deed for.
Start with Kristion Rose Is Not Okay.
Crime and suspense
Miles Bishop
The Eli Mercer series. Procedural crime fiction where the institution is the second suspect, and usually the one that gets away.
Start with A Quiet Death, book one.
L.J. Porter
Literary mystery set in the American South, where the church and the city keep each other’s secrets.
Start with The Gospel According to Silence.
Elle Woodfield
Speculative thrillers about ordinary people pushed past their limits, in a Chicago that behaves like a living organism.
Start with Collision of Possibilities.
Gothic and horror
Miko Gray
Caribbean gothic horror for young adults, built on Jamaican duppy folklore rather than borrowed genre machinery. Atmospheric and fast, scary without splatter.
Start with The Night My Shadow Moved, book one of The Duppy Chronicles.
Paranormal romance and erotica
Nia Foxx
Why-choose paranormal romance built on pack bonds and mirror-realm magic.
Start with Marked by the Moon, book one of Bloodbound: The Black Hollow Chronicles.
Zhade
Paranormal erotica rooted in Caribbean folklore — elemental, ancestral, and set in a real Jamaican valley.
Start with Claimed by Water, book one of The Claiming Trilogy.
Chasity Rivers
Erotic romance that stays emotionally grounded, with mature heroines written as mature women rather than around the fact.
Start with Undone, book one of The Haven Trilogy.
Isaiah Cole
Literary erotica where the tension is patience rather than pursuit.
Start with I Learn Her Silence, book one of The Attention Series.
A pen name is not a disguise. It is a promise about what kind of book you are holding.
Why pen names at all
Readers navigate by author before they navigate by publisher. If one name carries a Jamaican literary novel about drowned villages and a why-choose paranormal romance, the name stops telling anyone anything — and the reader who loved one is handed something they did not want next.
Separate names let each list build its own audience, and let a reader who finishes one book know what the next one will be like. That is the commercial half of it. The other half is here.
FAQ
Why does Maroon House Press use pen names?
Readers navigate by author before they navigate by publisher. Separate names let each list build its own audience and tell a reader who finishes one book what the next one will be like, across literary fiction, crime, gothic horror, paranormal romance and erotica.
Is Lorna Phillips a pen name?
Not an invented one. Lorna Phillips is a Jamaican birth name, and it is the name on the press’s Jamaica-centered literary fiction, starting with Swift River: The Water That Remembers.
Which Maroon House Press author should I start with?
Start with Lorna Phillips for Caribbean literary fiction, Miles Bishop for crime, Miko Gray for young adult Caribbean gothic horror, Nia Foxx or Zhade for paranormal romance and erotica, and Chasity Rivers or Isaiah Cole for literary erotica.
Nikki Woods — the publisher behind the House, and how a national radio career became an independent press.
Maroon House Press books — every title in print.