“With this short novel, Thorn tackles unknown sentient horrors, teenage rage, violence, and toxic masculinity in a stunning and intimate debut.”
Alienated from his parents and peers, Mark is a troubled teenager looking for a way to escape all the pressure.
With two of his friends, Mark discovers a strange shack in a suburban field, the perfect getaway place for them to smoke cigarettes and get away from it all.
Inside the shack, Mark finds more peace than ever before.
But the shack is aware … sentient and hungry.
It wants an exchange for its services … there’s always a price to pay.
Why we’re excited about this book:
Mike Thorn is an upcoming horror writer already making waves in the horror fiction scene. The author of the collections Dreams of Lake Drukka & Exhumation and Darkest Hours, Thorn’s short fiction has graced the pages of Vastarien, Tales to Terrify, Praire Gothic, Dark Moon Digest, Unnerving Magazine, and The NoSleep Podcast, as well as numerous other publications online and in print. With this short novel, Thorn tackles unknown sentient horrors, teenage rage, violence, and toxic masculinity in a stunning and intimate debut. Daniel Goldhaber (director of Cam) calls it “A terrifying descent into suburban addiction and male shame, Shelter for the Damned is a gripping, uncanny tale cut from the same cloth as Stephen King and John Carpenter.”, and John Claude Smith (Occasional Beasts: Tales, Riding the Centipede) says: “Impressive is an understatement. Mike Thorn is a fresh voice in horror with a distinct vision well worth your attention.”
Why Mike’s excited about this book:
“Shelter for the Damned signals my effort to build on many of the things that have always drawn me to suburban horror narratives. It’s a novel full of pain, anger, and sadness, but I hope that readers will also find it a purely absorbing, scary story. In my effort to depict a “damned” character’s arc as something both claustrophobic and subtly cosmic, I drew on a wide range of influences, from Jim Thompson and Hubert Selby Jr. to Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft.”
Forthcoming from JournalStone 26, February 2021, Shelter for the Damned by Mike Thorn is available for pre-order now.
BOB PASTORELLA
