A small Alaska town is upended when a boy is found with his throat ripped out, no blood found in his body. It’s been twenty-five years since Deadhart have seen a killing of this nature. But they know those responsible: The Colony, an exiled community of vampyrs that make an old mine settlement in the woods home.
Detective Barbara Atkins is a specialist in these kinds of killings. She’s brought in to say for certain this is the work of The Colony. The townspeople are set in their ways, but soon Barbara isn’t sure. Enlisting the help of a former sheriff, Jenson Tucker, Barbara is determined to find the truth. With Tucker barely surviving the previous investigation years ago, he’s become a recluse, and this current investigation might be a little too close to home.
They dig into the town’s history, uncovering secrets best left alone. Then another body is discovered. As the snow gets heavier and the nights turn longer, a killer is stalking Deadhart. Two communities circle each other for blood, and time is running out.
Are they hunting a bloodthirsty monster . . . or a twisted psychopath? And which is more dangerous?
Why we’re excited about this book:
Within a few years, C.J. Tudor has staked her territory in the horror fiction world. Tudor is the author of The Chalk Man, The Taking of Annie Thorne, The Other People, The Drift, and The Burning Girls (now a series streaming on Parmount +), and a collection of short-stories A Sliver of Darkness. With her latest, Tudor delivers a vampyr novel set in a frozen landscape, with community tensions rising as the nights grow longer. Ava Glass (Alias Emma, The Traitor) says: “C. J. Tudor is a genius. The Gathering kept me on the edge of my seat to the very last page … A tour de force!”, and Stuart Turton (The Seven and a half Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle) says: “C. J. Tudor is getting better and bolder with every novel, and the bar was pretty high to start with. The Gathering is an incredibly exciting novel, tightly plotted and brilliantly tense, with an atmosphere you could eat with a spoon.” Publishers Weekly (in a starred review) says: “Vampires, or ‘vampyrs’, roam the earth—and provoke heated political debate—in this wildly imaginative supernatural thriller from Tudor … This frostbitten procedural is a bloody good time.”
Releasing from Ballantine Books 9 April 2024, The Gathering by C.J. Tudor is available for pre-order now.
BOB PASTORELLA