Book Summary and Reviews of The Cellar Below the Cellar by Ivy Grimes

The Cellar Below the Cellar by Ivy Grimes

The Cellar Below the Cellar

A Folk Horror Novella

by Ivy Grimes

  • Published:
  • Mar 2026, 180 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

A playfully dark folk horror inspired by the fairy tale "Vasilisa the Beautiful" and the mythology around Frau Perchta, set under the blazing sky of endless auroras.

When a wild solar storm wipes out all electronics and traps Jane at her grandmother's house in the woods, she is forced to start a new life off-grid as part of a small, isolated community.

However, there is something very strange about her new neighbors, and the longer she lives under the eerie glow of the auroras, the more she feels her grandmother may be hiding unsettling secrets.

To have any hope in her new world, Jane must find the courage to step into her power and claim her identity, but that would mean facing whatever hides in the cellar below the cellar―a place that seems to be waiting for her.

Full of delightfully weird surprises and off-kilter characters, this adult coming-of-age story explores themes of female empowerment, spirituality, identity, and community. For fans of Kelly Link, Karen Russell, Ottessa Moshfegh, and Leonora Carrington.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Meanwhile, Jane's fretful but matter-of-fact narration of increasingly enchanted circumstances adds humor. Kelly Link fans won't want to miss this." ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Written like a vintage, delicate, and beautiful fairy tale, this novella is comforting and hopeful, even in its darkness. … Definitely on my favorites list." ―P.L. McMillan, author of Sisters of the Crimson Vine, host of the PLM Talks YouTube channel, and co-host of the Dead Languages podcast

The Cellar Below the Cellar possesses a wild sense of wonder married to a sense of menace―one juxtaposed against the other in a frame that keeps disappearing when you stare too long at the overlap of the two." ―TJ Price, author of The Disappearance of Tom Nero

This information about The Cellar Below the Cellar 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.

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Author Information

Ivy Grimes

Ivy Grimes is originally from Birmingham, Alabama and currently lives in Virginia. She has an MFA from the University of Alabama. Her stories have appeared in The Baffler, Vastarien, hex, Maudlin House, ergot., Potomac Review, and elsewhere. She is the author of the collection Glass Stories (Grimscribe Press) and The Ghosts of Blaubart Mansion (Cemetery Gates).

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