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by Jo Kaplan
When a metal band's lead singer vanishes in the woods, the mushrooms in the forest might know more than they're letting on in this mycelium-metal horror novel from Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author Jo Kaplan.
The dead collect in low places. That's what Brynn Werner, lead singer of metal band Queen Carrion, wrote in her notebook before she vanished while staying at a cabin in Oregon's Umpqua National Forest.
A year later, on the anniversary of her disappearance, the rest of her bandmates visit the cabin to remember her and find a way to move on. But tensions arise over who should be their new singer and who is responsible for Brynn's disappearance—tensions that boil over as they realize not all is as it seems at Trail Creek Cabin.
Strange entries in the guestbook write about visions of a pale form that moves through the trees, figures wearing gas masks lurk in the distance, and there's a strange fungus growing from the wall of a tunnel in the cabin's basement. Then they hear Brynn's voice echo impossibly through the forest—and the pale form that emerges from the trees is her perfect likeness. Is it her ghost…or something else?
Brynn knew there was a secret in these woods. It's why she chased her muse here to finish her masterpiece. The Midnight Muse is an alluring and grotesque dissection of self and fungus. Kaplan delivers an ominous spiral of psychological torment as the members of Queen Carrion slip into a more natural skin.
"Kaplan serves up an eerie feast for the senses in this addictive horror novel." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"This immersive tale is uneasy from its first pages and builds to all-out visceral terror with well-executed body horror and well-placed twists. Kaplan's solid horror novel will have wide appeal for fans of many of its subgenres, such as sporror, cursed bands, and something-in-the-woods-is-trying-to-kill-you." —Library Journal
"The Midnight Muse is a found footage fruiting body of a haunted novel, a heavy metal mycelium monstrosity—imagine Iron Maiden replacing its lead singer with the Blair Witch—that echoes through your skull long after reading it." —Clay McLeod Chapman, author of Wake Up and Open Your Eyes
"Fetid, cosmic, and distinctly human, The Midnight Muse is a corpsepaint-daubed reimagining of the urge to create art as an infection. It asks what happens when those compelled by its charge are consumed by its creeping compulsion. A must-read." —Zachary Ashford, author of Polyphemus
This information about The Midnight Muse 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.
Jo Kaplan is the Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author of It Will Just Be Us and When the Night Bells Ring. Her short stories have appeared in Fireside Quarterly, Black Static, Nightmare Magazine, Vastarien, Horror Library, Nightscript, and numerous other anthologies and magazines. In addition to writing, she teaches English at Glendale Community College and is the co-chair of the Horror Writers Association's Los Angeles chapter. She also plays cello in both the Symphony of the Verdugos and the band Guerra/paz.
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