by Luke Larkin
First published 2026
Charlie spends her days skinning animals while her father hunts in the Montana wilderness. At twelve, she knows loneliness better than schoolbooks. The forest around their cabin grows stranger each day, filled with twisted creatures like four-winged owls and two-headed boars. When a monstrous beast drags her father into the darkness, Charlie sets out to find him. She joins forces with an Englishman tied to a secretive occult society and a Northern Cheyenne policeman wrongly exiled for a crime he never committed. The three prepare to face the creature that took her father. But Charlie must confront a harder question: does her distant, cold father deserve rescue? Luke Larkin combines Western adventure with supernatural terror in this debut novel about isolation and the bonds that connect us.
Genres: adventure, fantasy, horror, supernatural, dark-fantasy
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, gritty, haunting, isolated, suspenseful
Tropes: found-family, quest-narrative, reluctant-hero, unlikely-allies
Setting: Montana, cabin, forest
Period: contemporary
336 pages · Paperback · Hyperion Avenue
Content warnings: animal-death, death, violence