Under The Dome by way of The Last of Us, as told around a beach bonfire with Stephen Graham Jones, Nicholas Belardes’s debut novel is an eco-horror book for our modern day. In a small, seaside town, what starts as a simple social media phenomenon gives way to a horrifying truth. People are not just, “deading,” aka taking disturbing pretend photos of their corpses: they are actually dying and returning. . . different with an agenda all their own. As the surrounding wildlife is strangely transformed by an unnatural contagion and the town comes under quarantine, those few who have not been infected and changed must find a way to survive, escape, or die trying. At points claustrophobic and haunting, soulful and melancholic, The Deading lyrically explores the disintegration of society, the horror of survival and adaptation, and the unexpected solace found through connections in nature and between humans.
Archives
THE EYES ARE THE BEST PART
My Sister, The Serial Killer meets Crying in H-Mart in this debut psychological horror novel by Korean-American author, Monika Kim. Ji-Won’s life falls apart in the wake of her Appa’s affair and subsequent departure from the family. When the obnoxious, womanizing George enters her life, courting her Umma and pushing into the family, Ji-Won begins to dream of eyes, brilliant blue eyes, eyes just like his. And along with those eyes, a terrible hunger. A brilliantly inventive, subversively feminist novel about a young woman unraveling, Monika Kim’s The Eyes Are the Best Part is a story of a family falling apart and trying to find their way back to each other, marking a bold new voice in horror that will leave readers mesmerized and craving more.
The Pomegranate Gate
The first adventure in the Mirror Realm Cycle, a Spanish Inquisition-era fantasy trilogy inspired by Jewish folklore, with echoes of Naomi Novik and Katherine Arden.
Toba Peres can speak, but not shout; sleep, but not dream. She can write with both hands at once, in different languages, but she keeps her talents hidden at her grandparents’ behest.
Naftaly Cresques sees things that aren’t real, and dreams things that are. Always the family disappointment, Naftaly would still risk his life to honor his father’s last wishes.
After the Queen demands every Jew convert or face banishment, Toba and Naftaly are among thousands of Jews who flee their homes. Defying royal orders to abandon all possessions, Toba keeps an amulet she must never take off; Naftaly smuggles a centuries-old book he’s forbidden to read. But the Inquisition is hunting these particular treasures—and they’re not hunting alone.
Toba stumbles through a pomegranate grove into the mirror realm of the Mazik: mythical, terrible immortals with an Inquisition of their own, equally cruel and even more powerful. With the Mazik kingdoms in political turmoil, this Inquisition readies its bid to control both realms.
In each world, Toba and Naftaly must evade both Inquisitions long enough to unravel the connection between their family heirlooms and the realm of the Mazik. Their fates are tied to this strange place, and it’s up to them to save it.
Brimming with folkloric wonder, The Pomegranate Gate weaves history and magic into a spellbindingly intricate tale suffused with humor and heart.