“A grotesque beauty in the vein of Guillermo del Toro, matched only by Carly Racklin's elegant prose." —Rachel Bolton, author of Please Serve Cold and Moonglow

Perfect for fans of Mike Flanagan and Caitlin Starling as well as readers of atmospheric horror, religious horror, and small-town gothic fiction.

No one mourns the living dead.

In the isolated town of Cairney, the Angel of Death, under specific circumstances, allows the dead to return to life — but not always as desired. For Friede Inkerman, pianist to Cairney’s sacred funerals, Death’s gift is a curse, not a blessing. All she wants after being murdered by her wife and resurrected against her will is to finally rest in peace, free from the grief and suspicion that ostracize her from the rest of her death-worshipping town.

On Allhallowsmas, Friede’s hope of passing on to eternal rest is dashed when Death’s sacred relic is stolen and the acolyte who guards it is brutally slain, putting all the dead souls in Cairney at risk of fading into oblivion at sunset. Friede also can't ignore how much the murder resembles her own — an echo too haunting to dismiss.

Clinging to her last happiness, her oldest friend Bastian, Friede descends into Cairney’s secrets to set things right and see her last wish granted. But Cairney is a town where nothing stays buried forever, and Friede’s search for answers unearths a plot born of ritual magic and twisted devotion that threatens everything she holds dear in her dead heart.

An elegantly haunting, visceral work of supernatural horror blending gothic mystery and slow-burn psychological terror about a devout small town’s reckoning with death and the love that transcends it.