First published 2026
Luke Oshel's first date takes a disturbing turn when his crush vanishes from the restaurant bathroom, leaving behind a photograph that changes everything. The image shows Luke as a child standing near a corpse in his bedroom, with a masked figure lurking nearby. Luke remembers none of it. More photos surface, each one depicting him with murder victims, his body stained with blood. The evidence forces Luke to confront his buried fears about inheriting his father's violent nature. His father was a serial killer who drained his victims of blood before meeting his own end. Now fresh murders plague the North Georgia mountains, and all signs point to Luke as the perpetrator. His paranoia returns with crushing force despite years of therapy and substance abuse meant to bury his past. Luke must navigate the Appalachian landscape to discover the truth behind these accusations while protecting his ex-wife and young daughter from an emerging threat. His search leads him through centuries of hidden secrets as he grapples with fundamental questions about his identity and whether the darkness that consumed his father lives within him too.
Genres: mystery, crime, horror, adult-fiction, thriller, psychological-thriller
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, gritty, haunting, psychological, suspenseful
Tropes: false-accusation, family-secrets, past-trauma, unreliable-narrator
Setting: North Georgia mountains, Appalachia
352 pages · Hardcover · St. Martin's Press
Content warnings: mental-illness, murder, substance-abuse, violence