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by Gretchen Felker-Martin
One woman's deadly obsession with a haunted archival film precipitates her undoing in Black Flame, from the USA Today bestselling author of Manhunt, Gretchen Felker-Martin.
The Baroness, an infamous exploitation film long thought destroyed by Nazi fire, is discovered fifty years later. When lonely archivist Ellen Kramer―deeply closeted and pathologically repressed―begins restoring the hedonistic movie, it unspools dark desires from deep within her.
As Ellen is consumed by visions and voices, she becomes convinced the movie is real, and is happening to her―and that frame by frame, she is unleashing its occult horrors on the world. Her life quickly begins to spiral out of control.
Until it all fades to black, and all that remains is a voice asking a question Ellen can't answer but can't get out of her mind.
Do you want it?
More than anything?
"Felker-Martin's stunning prose is equal parts grotesque and lyrical as she turns an unflinching gaze on the extremes of compulsion and desire on the way to a truly devastating climax. The story threads the difficult needle of presenting unsympathetic characters and complicated relationships without compromising its vision, and the results are spectacular." ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Nasty, erotic, kinky, vicious, suspenseful....Felker-Martin uses the trope of the cursed movie and creates something utterly unique that manages to horrify, beguile, and empower in equal measure. If you are going to read one horror book this year, make it this one." ―Johanna Van Veen, author of My Darling Dreadful Thing
"Black Flame is a literary razor blade raked right over the reader's eyeballs, Un Chien Adalouing the shit out us with nearly every page. Gretchen Felker-Martin is ready for her close-up, and this book further testifies to her blood red reign as horror's enfant terrible." ―Clay McLeod Chapman, author of Wake Up and Open Your Eyes
This information about Black Flame was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Gretchen Felker-Martin is a Massachusetts-based bestselling horror author and film critic. Her debut novel, Manhunt, was named the #1 Best Book of 2022 by Vulture, and was one of the Best Horror Novels of 2022 by Esquire, Library Journal, and Paste. Her sophomore novel, Cuckoo, debuted on the USA Today bestseller list. You can read her fiction and film criticism on Patreon and in TIME, The Outline, Nylon, and more.
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