When a petrified corpse lands on Medical Examiner Dr. Laura Powell’s autopsy table, she fully believes it’s a fossil. Strangely, all the evidence suggests otherwise, as the man on her table was killed in an automobile accident earlier that very day. Now the body has turned into a hard stone-like substance.
Her investigation takes her out of her hometown into the dangerous territory of a religious sect, to the inner workings of Thurmond Biotech, a tight-lipped pharmaceutical corporation determined to deliver the world’s first anti-ageing drug. What Laura finds there is more horrifying than anything she could have imagined.
Vicious, deadly creatures are killing the residents of Valley Grove, their toxic venom changing the victims in strange ways. Laura has to find a way to stop these creatures before they spread through the rest of the Hudson Valley. She’ll have to trek to the heart of the creature’s den to end the bloodshed for good.
Why we’re excited about this book:
Bram Stoker Award-nominated author Nicholas Kaufmann consistently delivers the scares across the entire spectrum of horror fiction. The author of Hunt at World’s End, Dying is My Business, Die and Stay Dead, 100 Fathoms Below (with Steven L. Kent), and The Hungry Earth, Kaufmann’s short-fiction is collected in Still Life: Nine Stories, and has been featured in such anthologies as Giving the Devil His Due, Come Join Us by the Fire, and Zombies Vs. Robots: This Means War! among others. With his latest, Kaufmann returns to the world of Dr. Laura Powell with a pulse-pounding story of deranged cult leaders and biotech gone horribly wrong. Ray Garton (Live Girls, Ravenous) says this about Kaufmann’s work: “Nicholas Kaufmann offers up an unputdownable blend of gruesome body horror and fast-paced suspense.”
Why Nicholas is excited about this book:
“Dr. Laura Powell was never meant to be a recurring character. She and the other residents of the fictional Hudson Valley city of Sakima were only supposed to appear in a single book, The Hungry Earth. However, when I was discussing my ideas for The Stone Serpent with my agent and told him I wasn’t sure what my entry point into the story would be, it was his idea to bring back Laura. It worked perfectly. I’m excited for readers to meet up with her again in this new novel!”
Unleashing from Macabre Ink 29 November 2022, The Stone Serpent by Nicholas Kaufmann is available for pre-order now.
BOB PASTORELLA