Tidepool

Book excerpt: "Part Thomas Ligotti, part Penny Dreadful, Tidepool, is a novel about the gravitational forces of fate, pulling characters in against their will, with readers only able to sit and watch the catastrophe unfold. This is the compelling force of all great horror, to hope for rescue even when we know it will not come, to want to escape even as we turn the next page. Willson wields a deft hand of darkness and humanity in this compelling debut." - Jaye Viner, author of Jane of Battery Park If ye give not willingly, the Lords will rise... In 1913, Henry Hamilton disappeared while on a business trip, and his sister, Sorrow, won't rest until she finds out what happened to him. Defying her father's orders to remain at home, she travels to Tidepool, the last place Henry is known to have visited. Residents of the small, shabby oceanside town can't quite meet Sorrow's eyes when she asks about her brother. When corpses wash up on shore looking as if they've been torn apart by something not quite human, Sorrow is ready to return to Baltimore and let her father send in the professional detectives. However, after meeting Ada Oliver, a widow whose black silk dresses and elegant manners set her apart from other Tidepool residents, Sorrow discovers Tidepool's dark, deadly secret. With this discovery, some denizens of Tidepool-human and otherwise-are hell-bent on making sure Sorrow never leaves their forsaken town. Lovecraftian dark fantasy gets a modern treatment in this terrifying debut novel.