From the nationally bestselling author of Chef’s Kiss and A Lady for All Seasons, a COVID-conscious trans romance in which a cryptid hunter searching for a mythical lake monster finds love with a grumpy skeptic.

Twenty-something Nathan Camber is fresh out of both grad school and ideas on what to do next. Dealing with a dire job market is hard enough as a gay neurodivergent man—so he doesn’t. Instead, he decides to pursue his lifelong hyperfixation: cryptids. Leaving the city behind for the rugged, pine-scented landscape of upstate New York, Nathan sets his sights on the Salamander Man, a Nessie-like local legend with none of the Loch Ness clout. (Start small, his therapist always tells him!) But Nathan’s new fifty-something landlord, Mack, is a grumpy, grizzled, handsome skeptic who wants to protect his peaceful isolation and hard-earned safety deep in the woods.

Nathan refuses to settle for a lackluster, normie life, though, and convinces the stoic recluse to help him find the creature. As the hunt (and their growing attraction) heats up, Nathan and Mack realize there’s more than one mystery to uncover in the lake. But if the secrets they’re keeping from each other come to light, they might both get dragged under. Kinky hijinks and monstrous mayhem abound in this queer, trans love story for our bizarre modern age.