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A Novel
by Laura Cranehill
Sorrowland meets Manhunt in this literary horror debut in which an isolated newlywed—covered in mushroom growths like all the other wives in her community—strikes a precarious balance between following her husband's strict rules and pursuing an intense connection with a woman who makes her question everything.
Forbidden from leaving her house from girlhood until marriage, Nicole has only her mother's lessons and what she can see from her bedroom window to draw on in forming her view of the world, and of herself. Taught that the mushrooms which cover the women in her village are repulsive and dangerous, she conforms to a rigid set of rules to protect herself and those around her.
When her wedding day arrives, Nicole moves from one prison to another—an empty mansion on the very outskirts of town belonging to the husband she's been promised to since birth. As she haunts the edges of Silas's unknowable life and decaying home, maintaining control over her own transforming body becomes increasingly impossible. And when another wife with rebellious tendencies pays Nicole an unexpected visit, something within her cracks open. Their furtive explorations yield confusing answers, unearthing the long-buried secrets of the generations of resentful brides that came before. Unmoored, angry, and at last awakened, Nicole must reckon with who she really is, and perhaps, give in to what she truly wants.
Raw, visceral, and relentless, Wife Shaped Bodies is an exploration of gender, power, and community through the lens of mycological body horror and an ode to the unsettling beauty of the natural world.
"Cranehill's lyrical and disquieting debut combines myth, science, and gorgeously rendered body horror…Cranehill's prose is stunning, rendering Nicole's physical and emotional landscape—and the bizarre topography of her skin—lush, verdant, and strange. Frequent dream sequences add to the slippery, surreal feeling of the plot. Fans of feminist horror won't want to miss this." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Mesmerizingly immersive, atmospheric, and unsettling...The resulting tale will weave its way into readers' bodies, leaving an unforgettable mark. For those who enjoyed the cultish, post-apocalyptic world of Agustina Bazterrica's The Unworthy (2025) and Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach series." —Booklist
"Astonishingly beautiful, strange, and haunting, Wife Shaped Bodies is a gorgeous and terrifying ode to the natural world without and within, and what it might mean to forsake manmade communities in search of other ways of entanglement. I loved this defiant work about the dangers of fitting into another's need and the loss and loneliness of being a woman, a mother, a creature that is alive." —Ling Ling Huang, author of Natural Beauty
"Delving into the untamed potency of the collective feminine, Wife Shaped Bodies is an exquisite scream into the void." —Maggie Su, author of Blob
This information about Wife Shaped Bodies 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.
Laura Cranehill is an amalgamation of horrific faceless things who lives in the Pacific Northwest with her spouse and three children. She is a writer and poet whose work has been published in Strange Horizons, Vastarien, ergot., PANK, and multiple award-winning anthologies. Wife Shaped Bodies is her debut novel.
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