From Bram Stoker Award®-Winning author, Mercedes M. Yardley, a Southern Gothic where The Lovely Bones meets The Lottery, in DARLING [Black Spot Books, August 23, 2022], when a troubled woman returns to her malevolent Louisiana hometown, suspicions of a serial killer arise after her daughter goes missing and other gruesome discoveries are made.
Cherry LaRouche escaped the claws of DARLING, Louisiana at sixteen. When she is forced to return after her mother’s death, Cherry and her children move back into her childhood home where the walls whisper and something sinister skitters across the roof at night. While Cherry tries to settle back into a town where evil spreads like infection, the bodies of several murdered children turn up. When Cherry’s own daughter goes missing, she’s forced to confront the true monsters of DARLING.
A southern gothic with the notes of nightmare and whimsy that are the hallmark of Yardley’s writing, DARLING is a story of motherhood. Like most mothers, Cherry LaRouche will do anything to keep her beautifully broken son, Jonah— inspired by Yardley’s real-life special needs son—and her tiny daughter, Daisy, safe from the evils of DARLING.
Mercedes M. Yardley is a Bram Stoker Award®-winning dark fantasist who wears poisonous flowers in her hair. She is the author of Beautiful Sorrows, the Stabby Award-winning Apocalyptic Montessa and Nuclear Lulu: A Tale of Atomic Love, Pretty Little Dead Girls, and Detritus in Love. She won the prestigious Bram Stoker Award® for her novella Little Dead Red and was a Bram Stoker Award® nominee for her short story “Loving You Darkly.” Mercedes lives and creates in Las Vegas.
BLACK SPOT BOOKS Black Spot Books is a women-owned, author-centric traditional press specializing in award-winning and bestselling speculative fiction, dark fantasy, and horror. Learn more about Black Spot Books at www.blackspotbooks.com and connect with Black Spot Books on social media @BlackSpotBooks.
