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John F Leonard
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Bad Pennies: A Supernatural Horror Novel (The Scaeth Mythos Book 1) Kindle Edition

by John F Leonard (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 39 ratings
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Seeing a stranger die is the worst thing that Chris has ever witnessed. Picking up the dead man’s wallet is a mistake, a moment of weakness.
That’s all it takes, one impulsive act, for reality to unravel.
Because pocketing the wallet is only the beginning.


Dark forces swim below the surface of the world...
They change their shape but never go away...
They find a way through...

Chris Carlisle experiences an everyday horror. A morning starts out bad and gets worse.
Wrong place at the wrong time and life takes a wrong turn.
But even the blackest clouds have silver linings. He gets a little slice of luck to balance out the horror.
Just goes to show, bad often comes bundled with good.
Sometimes, they bleed into each other until you can’t tell them apart.

That’s where the strangeness begins, when the miraculous starts to rub shoulders with the mundane and monstrous.

Chris has stepped onto a long road that leads to a hideous and horrifying destination. Dark and dangerous stops are dotted along the way. The pavement is crumbling and craziness shining through the cracks.
Enough for him to question his sanity and come to the conclusion that madness may be the easiest way out.
Sometimes need and greed get mixed into a deadly and deceptive cocktail.

He’s going to discover that dark and dreadful things lurk within spitting distance of the ordinary and routine.
That there are levels of horror and layers of knowledge which defy any rational explanation.
Impossible creatures crawl along the shady seams of the world.
Monsters wait in the shadows.
The walls of reality are thinner than we know. In places, they’ve been hollowed to a hazy veil that struggles to hold back the horror of what lies on the other side.

Chris is going to get a glimpse of an eternal darkness.
Become acquainted with a supernatural hunger that has endured aeons and echoes down the ages.

HE’S GOING TO ENCOUNTER THE SCAETH. A CREATURE THAT IS OLDER THAN TIME AND TWICE AS MERCILESS.

Chris thought life was grim. He has no idea.
He thought he was hard up. He doesn’t know what debt is.
They say that money is the root of all evil. They also say that the bad penny always turns up. That’s so true. Those crappy coins have a nasty habit of coming back.

BAD PENNIES is the first book of the SCAETH MYTHOS, a terrifying vision of horror that will haunt your dreams.

Advanced Reader Comments:

“The Scaeth is the most terrifying creature you’ll find between the pages of a book.”

“Bad Pennies unfolds like a dark flower.”

“Horror novels need a certain coldness. Bad pennies chills to the bone.”

“An introduction to a new level of evil. The Scaeth defies classification. Bad Pennies shamelessly blends supernatural horror, science fiction alien and dark fantasy with a bewitching logic and naked human need.”

"Ronald Hodge is awful - I love him! A wonderful horror character. Memorable, he deserves his own book."

John F Leonard’s chilling horror novel BAD PENNIES is a deeply disturbing tale of darkness and need that will stay with you long after reading.
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  1. Print length
    302 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publication date
    September 29, 2017
  5. File size
    2000 KB
  6. Page Flip
    Enabled
  7. Word Wise
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  8. Enhanced typesetting
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Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0762HPJ8Y
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ (September 29, 2017)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 29, 2017
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 2000 KB
  • Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 302 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 39 ratings

About the author

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John F Leonard

John F Leonard

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John messes around with words for a living. He was born in England and grew up in the industrial Midlands. That was where he learned to love scrawny cats, the sound of scrapyard dogs and the rattle and clank of passing trains.

His official education mostly involved English, Art and History. Everything else came later. The employment record is somewhat difficult to summarise. Chequered is probably a good word for it. Shop worker and office boy, sculptor and odd-job man, fraud investigator and thief. It’s all the same, when you boil it down. Pay your way and try to have a good day.

He enjoys apocalyptic stuff, horror, comedy and football (not necessarily together). A family man, John now lives a few miles from the old Victorian house in which he was born. Scribbling scary stories seems to keep him vaguely sane (accurate at time of writing). Current projects include more tales from the Dead Boxes Archive, another everyday cosmic horror novel from the Scaeth Mythos, and new books set in the post-apocalyptic world of Collapse.

Catch up on Twitter: @john_f_leonard

Visit the website: johnfleonard.com

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
39 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Zane Summerfield
5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Read!
Reviewed in the United States on August 21, 2018
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I’m a big fan of this author, his books are all outstanding. Every read is like a brand new experience. This one was exceptional and unique. I really enjoy the way this author writes. His style, his telling and his character building. All perfect.

Stories like this, by this author is what make great horror reading, touching on the supernatural and making it just that extra bit creepy. Nailed it! Outstanding character building and realism that draw you in and keep you fully engaged.

This book will leave you feeling the very emotions that the protagonist feels and sees. Lingering afterthoughts will continue long after you’ve finished this story. Disturbing but in a good way, one that makes you think long after you’ve finished.
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Paul Briggs
4.0 out of 5 stars An everyman's descent into nightmare
Reviewed in the United States on November 21, 2017
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I almost didn’t read this book. The ads were intriguing, but the description on Amazon was frustratingly vague. So I looked at the preview, and found an introduction that told me what genre this was, and the author’s own thoughts on the main character and the themes of the book. This was followed by an opening epigram that took up six paragraphs. And then another epigram. Just when my patience was coming to an end, I got to the part of the book where the actual story began. Once I started reading, I couldn’t stop and I had to buy it.

Chris Carlisle is a man in a bad situation—maybe not as bad as he thinks it is, but still afraid of losing a job he hates and earns not enough money at. One Sunday, parked in the only space he can find and running to work so he won’t be late, he sees a man in black who seems to be in an even bigger hurry—such a hurry, in fact, that this man doesn’t look both ways before crossing the street and is struck and killed by a van. Only after the police have taken his statement and left does Chris find the stranger’s wallet. There’s nothing in it but a promisingly mysterious club membership card… and a healthy wad of money.

In a moment of weakness, Chris does the wrong thing. He pockets the wallet and its contents.

In spite of this, Chris is a basically decent and smart guy who feels bad about what he did but is now afraid of getting into trouble if he goes to the police. When he realizes that the wallet refills itself with cash at regular intervals, he checks first to see if the money is real, then when and how often the money appears. He also considers how to account for this new income stream to the tax authorities and others who might be curious. (I love a protagonist who thinks.) Unfortunately, it doesn’t occur to him until later to wonder what he’s expected to do in return for all this money… or what the man in black might have been running from that morning.

There’s a lot to recommend about this book. John F Leonard shows great skill in characterization, making Chris Carlisle and the people around him come alive. Leonard not only describes the setting well enough to make you feel like you’re there, he seamlessly fuses the decay of the post-industrial surroundings with the corruption of the supernatural evil that empowers the wallet. (This book is part of something called the Scaeth Mythos, which at the moment appears to be sort of “Needful Things” meets “The Holders.”)

My one complaint (about the story itself, not the ads and previews) was the foreshadowing. A little hint of what’s coming is okay every now and then, but when the author jumps in repeatedly to assure us all that very bad things are in store for our hero, it gets a little intrusive.

I would be lying if I said I didn’t anticipate the ending, but there is one twist that I didn’t see coming. That twist will probably be divisive—for me, it made me see the earlier parts of the story in a new light.

To close, “Bad Pennies” has a quality I particularly like in horror. Instead of leaving you feeling superior to the hapless protagonist, it leaves you thinking “that could be me.”
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Red Butler
5.0 out of 5 stars For the LOVE of money is the root of all evil
Reviewed in the United States on June 14, 2018
Review of Bad Pennies by John Leonard
When you have a writer such as this, beyond intelligent with a wry, dry sense of hysterically funny humor that concocts a scathing and horrific look at filthy lucre, the mammon beast, one has to bite. This is about bad decisions and consequences of benchmark horror genre proportions. Leonard delivers a big terrifying pug mashing tale, showing off a great mind for grinding creepy detail. A tale of the common man and dubious tempted wrongdoing, where perhaps any one of us could have been the key character. There is a remarkable sense of deep suffocating paranoia of moral turpitude conveyed throughout this freaky tale, which caused me to step away from the story in actual dread of circumstance for the lead. I paced and felt disturbed. Yet the reader is drawn back for the hallucinatory story of profound nightmares that propels one into plenty of strange trips into another gray gloomy dimension of reality. This is not for the weak and the suggestive, the diapered, or nut less. Shocking descriptiveness, often comedic in its bold truthfulness, having both the working class eye of realism espoused with elegant prosaic wonder is what this author’s trademark bears. Amazing! There is this age old wisdom of how corporations work, relationships, getting ahead in life, and especially what money in our society actually means that makes you wonder if Leonard is not about to have his 500th birthday. The action scenes are clear and riveting. The story builds with great intensity. There is this very entertaining streak of rebel in the author as he constantly calls things for what they actually are with a forceful venom and a prescient sense of disgust, from having seen it all too much. After a truly dark and dangerously insidious tale (where so much of it rings true that it disturbs and invades one’s comfort zones), the ending is somewhat predictable, yet nonetheless chilling and thought provoking. The fabulous book cover art is also proof of a discerning author, never discount Mr. Leonard; at your peril otherwise.
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Top reviews from other countries

Morgan K Tanner
5.0 out of 5 stars A supernatural awesome novel!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 30, 2018
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When a book’s title has the sub-heading ‘A Supernatural Horror Novel’ my interest is always piqued. Add to that the promise of a whole new mythos inside (this one’s entitled The Scaeth), I’m practically salivating like a cannibal in the wake of a nuclear aftermath. Sometimes I’m left disappointed, but this time? Definitely not.

John F Leonard has composed a corker here! Labelled as part of the Scaeth Mythos, the only disappointment I had was that it’s a recent book. Meaning I can’t go and blitz through all the other volumes in this terrifying saga. If this had been written, say 10 years ago, there’d be plenty of other titles to get my teeth into. But if that’s my only complaint, this one must be pretty darn kick ass!

So what’s going on then? Well, upon finishing the book I re-read the introduction from the author. It put it better than I ever could, but here goes anyway.

Chris Carlisle is pretty luckless in life. A crappy job, a crappy flat, a crappy bank balance, and a (not crap, but not great either) relationship with his parents. In fact the only shining light in his existence is his wonderful and beautiful girlfriend, Becca. Chris can’t believe he bagged such a hottie, way out of his league, but she’s really into him. It makes life worth living.

It’s these feelings he has for his girlfriend that drive the story on and stop you thinking ‘what a loser’ as he assesses how dire his life generally is.

When a van knocks down a mysterious man in black, Chris is the only witness. The horror of the crash seems to ingrain itself in his psyche and he can almost taste the death in the air. But then he notices that the man has dropped his wallet, although it was probably the last thing on the man’s mind as he was thrown throw the air like a sodden bag of bones. It seems so easy to just grab the wallet and run. But Chris is a good guy, should he really do such an immoral thing?

Before he’s had chance to think about it, the wallet’s in his pocket and he’s off to the aforementioned crappy job.

There’s something weird about the wallet, though. It’s exquisite in design and seems very expensive. But it’s the weird, clandestine logo on it that brings a feeling of disconcerting dread to Chris. He manages to put these thoughts from his mind, though and takes out the sizeable wad of cash in there. Come on, he’s broke, wouldn’t you do the same?

This is where Chris’ journey takes a strange turn. The wallet replenishes itself with fresh money every six hours. After not very long at all, Chris is sitting on a rather large pile of cash. He still feels bad about what he did, but at this rate he’s going to be a multi-millionaire in a couple of years.

I suppose he should have known that this ‘luck’ would come at a price, though. A creepy voice in his head from an unknown source basically tells him as such.

And so we are introduced to The Scaeth. A demon, an alien, a monster; whatever he is, he exists in a different world to our own, one littered with the bones and screams of his victims. Portals to this place appear to Chris who believes he’s actually going insane. Then there’s the cat that appears on his doorstep, watching him with eyes more shifty than a cat’s usually are. Or is it a furry spider hybrid-type thing? Whatever it is, it’s got big teeth and tentacles!

The grimy, run-down parts of town, as well as Chris’ flat, are described in such detail you can almost smell the squalor. As for the openings into this other world; harrowing is a good word.

This was a great read and is well recommended to those who enjoy – er, supernatural horror. The realistic setting and characters add to the atmosphere, so much so it seems as though these things of nightmares might not be a million miles away from our own world. Frightening stuff indeed.

There is a lot of humour in here, too. Although a lot of the similes and thoughts of Chris are, in another context, chuckle-out-loud funny, I found myself too engrossed in the horrors of the story to actually laugh. And that says a lot.

Top marks, I can’t wait for the next instalment!
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Bad Pennies.
Reviewed in Australia on March 18, 2018
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A great Story if not a little disconcerting!
I certainly will be following this Author closely and look forward to reading more.
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Terry Tyler
4.0 out of 5 stars Lad Lit meets Horror/Supernatural
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 31, 2018
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Chris Carlisle is an ordinary guy doing an ordinary sales job that he hates, with a couple of mates that he sometimes loves and sometimes loves to hate, and a gorgeous girlfriend: the nauseating Becca. She was meant to be nauseating, I think - any woman who calls their boyfriend 'special fellow' and 'my special man' all the time... Chris is always skint, and doesn't bother to clean up unless he's likely to have company. He's a nice guy; you can't fail to like him, with all his flaws. The scene-setting was quite long and fully sketched, which I liked; I'm not one who needs to be plunged into action on page one.

At the end of most chapters are hints that danger is around the corner, in a 'little did she know this was the last time she would see him' sort of way. I liked this; I thought it added to the suspense and made me want to keep turning the pages, and it worked along with the slightly comic book tone of the novel.

Chris's life changes when he discovers a bulging wallet, the property of a man he saw run over. It's not just an ordinary wallet...and Chris little understands that, by claiming it as his own, he has opened doors that should have remained shut. There are some good dark and dingy descriptive pieces in the book, particularly a scene featuring a detective in the home of the repulsive Ronald Hodge, in the bleak and mysterious Empire Road.

I enjoyed the 'real life' elements of this book most, and the darkly comedic side. I liked the whole 'totally ordinary guy in super-weird extraordinary circumstances' thing. John F Leonard has a witty, easy-to-read writing style, with some good turns of phrase:

'No milkman in his right mind would have delivered to Brabham Building, Ashton High Street. Even the postmen wanted stunt doubles and danger money.'

'...tall wide and ugly in every way you could imagine. He looked like he ate BMWs for breakfast'

My general feel about the novel as a whole was that it needs another tidying-up draft, and perhaps the intervention of a more experienced copy editor/proofreader, to sort out the lack of vocative commas and the few editorial errors, and cut some of the funnies that need a bit of fine-tuning. All of this would have made it the book it deserves to be. There is no doubt that Mr Leonard is a talented writer, and I enjoyed it. I did guess the twist, from early on, but it's well done and was in no way obvious; my mind jumps ahead when I'm watching TV shows, too. I especially appreciated the well-thought out last chapter and a great epilogue that definitely makes you want to see what happens next!
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The Grim Reader
4.0 out of 5 stars Scaeth!!
Reviewed in Australia on March 22, 2018
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John F Leonard leaves behind the apocalypse and settles into creating his own mythos with the novel Bad Pennies. I’ve read a couple of John’s stories now including Call Drops and the novella 4 Hours. Call Drops, in particular, really worked well for me. I enjoyed John’s storytelling style, his witty humour and his obvious ability to spin a good yarn. Call Drops is a great way to introduce yourself to Leonard’s Scaeth mythos which is explored much further here with Bad Pennies.

Poor Chris Carlise. His life is pretty shit, his job is a chore, he’s broke and he lives in a dump. One day, Chris is minding his own business when he sees a man hit by a van. Said man loses his wallet in the accident. Chris can’t believe his luck, so he picks up the wallet and from here on in Chris’ life turns down a dark path, one that involves the mysterious horror that is the Scaeth! Chris Carlise is a solid character, really quite likeable despite his flaws, but it is The Scaeth that steals the show. The Scaeth is a terrific creation: sly, manipulative, fearsome, this character has all of the characteristics a good antagonist needs, I loved every scene with it in. Greed seems to be the overarching theme here and I found myself questioning exactly what I’d do given the situation Chris finds himself in.

Now, Bad Pennies is a novel and novels are perhaps my least favourite format to read. That said, this is a good one. Leonard’s story is heavy on atmosphere (which I love with my novels) and has a vibe similar to that created by Lovecraft and Chambers in their works. Once you get over the slightly sluggish start to the novel the pacing settles down quite nicely. I found Bad Pennies to be a little slow initially but that’s probably down to the fact that I read mostly novellas and short story collections, and that my patience with novels is almost non-existent. That being said by the end of the book I was well satisfied with what I’d read.

Overall, Bad Pennies is a very solid novel from John F Leonard. It is one built upon the foundations of good characterisation and a foreboding and dark atmosphere. If this sounds like your bag then definitely check it out.

4/5 dark portals from the Grim Reader.
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R.H.Hale
5.0 out of 5 stars An thoroughly intense and vicious ride
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 11, 2019
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From the very first chapter, Leonard’s writing draws you in - and keeps you there!
In summary, after witnessing the horrific death of a stranger hit by a van, protagonist Chris Carlisle happens upon the deceased’s wallet, loaded with cash, which he regrettably keeps and, whenever emptied, mysteriously refills itself within hours. Gradually it becomes clear that the terrible price he pays for this seemingly endless stream of cash involves servitude to a monstrous being - the Scaeth - who dwells in a hellish dimension from which it can manipulate and hunt you at will.
I stormed through this book and, even as the protagonist’s plight grew more hopeless and his situation more desperate, still found myself rooting for him despite his folly.
As the danger mounts and beastly creatures creep ever closer to the protagonist, the reader is likewise drawn right in along with Chris until on the edge of their seat. This book steals the reader from their safe heaven of reality and puts them tottering on a precipice of constant threat, shoulder to shoulder with its protagonist.
Leonard creates equally strong characters in the very impressive, bitchy if quite admirable Liz Gil (who reminds me a little too much of a HR manager I used to know!), and the utterly revolting Ronald Hodge whom I could practically smell through the pages of my Kindle screen.
Overall an intense and vicious ride, packed with horror, suspense and a writing style that often reminded me of Stephen King’s work.
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