A young musician.
A greasy gas station bathroom.
An unseen assailant.
Now he’s trapped inside the bathroom, and has to figure out which is worse: the horrors outside the door, or the horrors rapidly skittering down the walls inside.
Why we’re excited about this book:
If there’s one thing horror readers know about Nat Cassidy, it’s that he consistently delivers the goods when it comes to visceral, nightmarish horror. The author of Mary, Nestlings, and When the Wolf Comes Home (releasing April 2025), and From the Cassidy Catacombs, Vol. 1: “Generation” / “The Art of What You Want”, Cassidy is considered one of New York City’s rising playwrights, and has acted in such television productions as Blue Bloods, The Good Fight, and Quantico, among others. With his latest, Cassidy puts readers in the last place in the world they’d want to find themselves, with nasty horrors on both sides of the door. Ai Jiang (Linghun) says: “Rest Stop is an absurdist carnival, a suffocating funhouse filled with the watching eyes of nightmares and generational trauma that is equal parts gritty and witty. A fast-paced tale that wraps together hallucinatory, adrenaline-driven survival and endurance, illuminating the bloodiness of creation, and reflecting, quite literally, the desperation and struggle of humanity.”, and Tyler Jones (Burn the Plans) says: “Nat Cassidy’s Rest Stop is a lean, mean, and claustrophobic fever dream of blood and venom. It’s everything you’re afraid of (and oh so much more) when you pull into a lonely gas station in the middle of the night. As sharp as broken glass, this blood-soaked novella is equal parts slasher and self-realization. With keen insight into the pains of overtaking our former selves, and how much it can hurt to become someone better, Cassidy keeps the pedal to the metal in a unbearably tense story that rushes headlong into the unexpected. Rest Stop is a punk rock guitar solo—fast, brutal, and melodic—and Cassidy is the one shredding his fingers on the strings. One of my favorite reads of the year.”
Releasing from Shortwave Media 15 October 2024, Rest Stop by Nat Cassidy is available for pre-order now.
BOB PASTORELLA