Lone Women

A Horror Western from award-winning author Victor LaValle. 
Best Book of the Year: Esquire, Washington Post, Vulture 
 
'Deftly weaves history, horror, suspense, and the perspectives of those rarely recorded in the West.' The New York Times 
 
'This moody and masterful western fires on all cylinders.' Publishers Weekly 
 
'His best novel yet.' Gabino Iglesias, author of House of Bone and Rain 
 
Blue skies, empty land—and enough wide-open space to hide a horrifying secret. 
A woman with a past, a mysterious trunk, a town on the edge of nowhere. 
 
Montana, 1915. When the US government offers Americans free land to those who can tame it, Adelaide Henry leaps at the chance. She’s fleeing from California and the family home that was left behind in flames. With no choice but to run, Adelaide becomes a ‘lone woman’, a female homesteader staking her claim on the unforgiving Montana soil. 
 
Yet, no matter how far she goes, Adelaide’s past is not so easily left behind. With her is an enormous steamer trunk that must stay closed at all times, and a secret inside that destroyed her family. 
 
But secrets cannot be stay locked up forever, and it isn’t long before her fellow homesteaders notice what Adelaide has desperately tried to hide – wherever she and her deadly cargo go, tragedy and terror follow. The American West is lonely and brutal, and that which Adelaide has tried so hard to escape may be the only thing that will help her survive. 
 
FINALIST FOR THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE 
FINALIST FOR THE LOCUS AWARD 
LONGLISTED FOR THE MARK TWAIN AMERICAN VOICE IN LITERATURE AWARD 
 
***Readers love Lone Women*** 
 
'A haunting historical horror novel about isolation, survival, and monstrous secrets in the American West. Dark, powerful, and deeply unsettling.' FIVE STARS 
 
'This was an excellent experience and I really love LaValle’s storytelling.' FIVE STARS 
 
'I thoroughly enjoyed this wonderful mix of historical fiction, western folklore, and… horror.' FIVE STARS 
 
'Amazing!!! Emotional, moving, unexpected, sometimes brutal.' FIVE STARS

The combination of LaValle’s agile prose, the velocity of the narrative and the pleasure of upended expectations makes this book almost impossible to put down...deftly weaves history, horror, suspense and the perspectives of those rarely recorded in the West.

A counter to the typical homesteading narrative, this moody and masterful western fires on all cylinders. Readers are sure to be impressed.

Highly recommended for historical fiction readers just as much as die-hard horror fans.

Holy hell this is an entertaining and unexpected story... I highly recommend this book to horror fans who enjoy horror sub-genre fusion, strong female protagonists, and short, buzzy chapters that keep you glued to the pages.

Sadie Hartmann, award-winning author of 101 Horror Books to Read Before You're Murdered

Expect richness, surprise and beauty from this visionary new rendering of the historic American West.

Victor LaValle is an outstanding storyteller known for his gripping narratives and the elegant flair he brings to speculative fiction. In Lone Women...he mixes these elements with historical fiction and commentary on racial tensions in 1915 Montana to deliver his best novel yet.

Gabino Iglesias, author of The Devil Takes You Home

A corrective to the founding myth of America, a book filled with bloodshed and pain, but always holding out for the hope of a happy ending.

Infused with creeping dread and chilling horror...it's an excellent novel that blurs genres and looks at early-20th-century America from a perspective that's been ignored for far too long.

Horror readers should be well-acquainted with the works of Victor LaValle.

Wow! The story, the unexpected setting, the reveal—just wow. Victor LaValle has a method of storytelling where he pulls you into an otherwise ordinary world, with only hints of the horror lurking beneath. But once that horror reveals itself, there’s no going back—and you’re eager for more. This tale of a young Black woman on the run, who ends up in Montana in the early 1900s, and the secret she drags along with her, is engrossing and chilling from start to end.

Victor LaValle is the author of eight works of fiction: five novels, two novellas, and a collection of short stories. He has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a World Fantasy Award, a British Fantasy Award, an American Book Award, two Bram Stoker Awards, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the Key to Southeast Queens. His novels have been included in best-of-the-year lists by the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, The Nation and Publishers Weekly, among others. The Devil in Silver is soon to be a major TV series. He lives in the Bronx with his wife and kids and teaches at Columbia University.

A Horror Western from award-winning author Victor LaValle which blends shimmering prose, an unforgettable cast of adventurers who find horror and sisterhood in a brutal landscape, and a portrait of early-twentieth-century America like you’ve never seen. 
 
Blue skies, rolling plains – and enough wide-open space to hide a horrifying secret. 
 
Montana, 1915. When the US government offers Americans free land to those who can tame it, Adelaide Henry leaps at the chance. She’s fleeing from California and the family home that was left behind in flames. With no choice but to run, Adelaide becomes a ‘lone woman’, a female homesteader staking her claim on the unforgiving Montana soil. 
 
Yet, no matter how far she goes, Adelaide’s past is not so easily left behind. With her is an enormous steamer trunk that must stay closed at all times, and a secret inside that destroyed her family. 
 
But secrets cannot be stay locked up forever, and it isn’t long before her fellow homesteaders notice what Adelaide has desperately tried to hide – wherever she and her deadly cargo go, tragedy and terror follow. The American West is lonely and brutal, and that which Adelaide has tried so hard to escape may be the only thing that will help her survive.

The Devil in Silver

The Devil in Silver is a terrifying and empathetic exploration of the horrors of institutional neglect, and the courage it takes to slay our demons – both real and imagined. Perfect for fans of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. 
 
***With a foil design behind the jacket, and an exclusive foreword by Stephen Graham Jones*** 
 
'LaValle’s imagination is matched only by his narrative daring.' Paul Tremblay, New York Times bestselling author of Horror Movie 
 
'Victor LaValle has been out here changing the horror game on the literary side for a long time.' Tananarive Due, award-winning author of The Reformatory 
 
New Hyde Hospital’s psychiatric ward has a new resident. It also has a very, very old one. 
 
When an altercation with the police leads to Pepper being mistakenly admitted to a mental institution in Queens, NYC, he doesn’t expect to stay there long. It will be a matter of days, he believes, until the misunderstanding is ironed out and he is released. 
 
But as those days stretch into weeks, blurring into a cycle of bad food, endless hallways, and an ever-increasing mixture of sedatives, Pepper realises that the system isn’t just broken – it’s forgotten him. He must fight through the chemical haze to hold on to his sanity, but he has worse problems. There are rumours that a devil stalks the wards after dark – a monstrous figure with the body of an old man and the head of a bison. 
 
As more patients begin vanishing, and the overworked staff cover up their disappearances, Pepper must unite the other inmates and kill the monster that’s hunting them. 
But what can destroy the devil? 
 
***Readers love The Devil in Silver*** 
 
'I was hooked straight away.' FIVE-STARS 
 
'An unsettling and troubling read, but one with tremendous heart and deeply memorable characters.' FIVE-STARS 
 
'I was impressed with the quality of the writing. It’s intense, often frightening.' FIVE-STARS 
 
'This was my first Victor LaValle book and it will certainly not be my last.' FIVE-STARS

A fearless exploration of America's heart of darkness...A dizzying high-wire act.

It's simply too bighearted, too gentle, too kind, too culturally observant and too idiosyncratic to squash into the small cupboard of any one genre, or even two.

Embeds a sophisticated critique of contemporary America's inhumane treatment of madness in a fast-paced story that is by turns horrifying, suspenseful, and comic.

LaValle uses the thrills of horror to draw attention to timely matters. And he does so without sucking the joy out of the genre. . . . A striking and original American novelist.

LaValle hooks the reader deep into his increasingly eldritch thriller.

Wonderfully creepy and impossible to put down.

SOON TO BE THE NEXT INSTALMENT IN THE TERROR TV ANTHOLOGY SERIES. 
 
New Hyde Hospital’s psychiatric ward has a new resident. It also has a very, very old one. 
 
When an altercation with the police leads to Pepper being mistakenly admitted to a mental institution in Queens, NYC, he doesn’t expect to stay there long. It will be a matter of days, he believes, until the misunderstanding is ironed out and he is released. 
 
But as those days stretch into weeks, blurring into a cycle of bad food, endless hallways, and an ever-increasing cocktail of sedatives, Pepper realizes that the system isn’t just broken – it’s forgotten him. He must fight through the chemical haze to hold on to his sanity, but he has worse problems. There are rumours that a devil stalks the wards after dark – a monstrous figure with the body of an old man and the head of a bison. As more patients begin vanishing, and the overworked staff cover up their disappearances, Pepper must unite the other inmates and kill the monster that’s hunting them. But what can destroy the devil? 
 
The Devil in Silver is a terrifying and empathetic exploration of the horrors of institutional neglect, and the courage it takes to slay our demons – both real and imagined. 
 
£12.99

New Hyde Hospital’s psychiatric ward has a new resident. It also has a very, very old one. 
 
When an altercation with the police leads to Pepper being mistakenly admitted to a mental institution in Queens, NYC, he doesn’t expect to stay there long. It will be a matter of days, he believes, until the misunderstanding is ironed out and he is released. 
 
But as those days stretch into weeks, blurring into a cycle of bad food, endless hallways, and an ever-increasing mixture of sedatives, Pepper realises that the system isn’t just broken – it’s forgotten him. He must fight through the chemical haze to hold on to his sanity, but he has worse problems. There are rumours that a devil stalks the wards after dark – a monstrous figure with the body of an old man and the head of a bison. As more patients begin vanishing, and the overworked staff cover up their disappearances, Pepper must unite the other inmates and kill the monster that’s hunting them. But what can destroy the devil? 
 
The Devil in Silver is a terrifying and empathetic exploration of the horrors of institutional neglect, and the courage it takes to slay our demons – both real and imagined.

Victor LaValle

This ingenious recasting of an H.P. Lovecraft classic is as creepy as it is thought-provoking.

The Ballad of Black Tom stands on its own as a compelling weird tale of Jazz-age New York City, but its penetrating examination of Lovecraft’s creations and how they reflect racism’s profound influence on our cultural imagination is where it really shines.

Ingenious... darkly witty... The writing is full of rage and passion: love for the vanished culture of 1920s Harlem and love — conflicted — for crazy Lovecraft.

LaValle's novella of sorcery and skullduggery in Jazz Age New York is a magnificent example of what weird fiction can and should do.

Laird Barron, author of The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All

Holds all the horror of the cosmic void that has made the Lovecraft mythos such an enduring cultural artifact, placing it deftly amid the very real terrors of life for a young black man in a racist society.

LaValle cleverly subverts Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos by imbuing a black man with the power to summon the Old Ones, and creates genuine chills with his evocation of the monstrous Sleeping King.

Elizabeth Hand, author of A Haunting on the Hill

LaValle has taken Lovecraft’s most notorious tale and reframed it for us as an even more horrifying story, exceptionally well-written with the utmost attention to detail... The horrors of the story are both real and imagined for the reader, as we confront racism head-first with some nasty dealings in the arcane arts designed to wake up the sleeping ‘Elder Gods’.

'LaValle’s novella is set nearly a century ago, but it couldn’t be more relevant.' Slate 
 
People move to New York looking for magic and nothing will convince them it isn't there. 
 
Charles Thomas Tester hustles to put food on the table, keep the roof over his father's head, from Harlem to Flushing Meadows to Red Hook. He knows what magic a suit can cast, the invisibility a guitar case can provide, and the curse written on his skin that attracts the eye of wealthy white folks and their cops. 
But when he delivers an occult tome to a reclusive sorceress in the heart of Queens, Tom opens a door to a deeper realm of magic and earns the attention of things best left sleeping. 
 
A storm that might swallow the world is building in Brooklyn. Will Black Tom live to see it break?

Victor LaValle

Praise for The Ballad of Black Tom

This ingenious recasting of an H.P. Lovecraft classic is as creepy as it is thought-provoking.

The Ballad of Black Tom stands on its own as a compelling weird tale of Jazz-age New York City, but its penetrating examination of Lovecraft’s creations and how they reflect racism’s profound influence on our cultur ...

Ingenious... darkly witty... The writing is full of rage and passion: love for the vanished culture of 1920s Harlem and love — conflicted — for crazy Lovecraft.

This ingenious recasting of an H.P. Lovecraft classic is as creepy as it is thought-provoking.

The Ballad of Black Tom stands on its own as a compelling weird tale of Jazz-age New York City, but its penetrating examination of Lovecraft’s creations and how they reflect racism’s profound influence on our cultur ...

Ingenious... darkly witty... The writing is full of rage and passion: love for the vanished culture of 1920s Harlem and love — conflicted — for crazy Lovecraft.

This ingenious recasting of an H.P. Lovecraft classic is as creepy as it is thought-provoking.

The Ballad of Black Tom stands on its own as a compelling weird tale of Jazz-age New York City, but its penetrating examination of Lovecraft’s creations and how they reflect racism’s profound influence on our cultur ...

Ingenious... darkly witty... The writing is full of rage and passion: love for the vanished culture of 1920s Harlem and love — conflicted — for crazy Lovecraft.

Books by Victor LaValle

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