"Moving with the relentlessness of a winged insect coming straight for your face, Andy Marino's The Swarm is a fiendishly compelling assault on the senses. Its procedural elements are reminiscent—in all the best ways—of horror classics like The Wolfen or The Manitou, while its more apocalyptic scenes are as thrilling as the best that subgenre has to offer. This is a weird, wild ride you'll want to revisit more than once every seventeen years."—Nat Cassidy, author of Nestlings

"Relentless, brutal, and brilliant! Andy Marino's The Swarm reads like an apocalyptic tour de force, a Michael Crichtonesque fever dream that goes all the way with its terrifying premise. A five-star read."
 —Craig DiLouie, author of How to Make a Horror Movie and Survive

"The literary equivalent of swallowing a wasp that's crawled inside your Coke can, The Swarm is a burst of bright, unexpected, feverish prose blazing straight across your brain-pan. If you like that kind of thing (and I very much do) then do yourself a favor and read this book." —Nick Cutter, author of The Troop

“Marino’s work is unlike any others in the genre—horrifying, complex, fascinating, and utterly unique.”—Hannah Whitten, New York Times bestselling author of The Foxglove King

“Andy Marino’s The Swarm is gruesomely visceral and painfully heartbreaking; an ambitious, terrifying tale that will burrow beneath your skin only to lay eggs that will hatch as nightmares. It’s a no-holds-barred apocalyptic epic that will forever change the way you view the status—and future—of humans on this planet.”—Phllip Fracassi, author of Boys in the Valley

"Creepily good ... Marino juggles a great cast of characters and does a superlative job of creating an atmosphere of fear, paranoia, and claustrophobia."

"A visceral, disturbing story about the power of art and ritual."

“It Rides a Pale Horse is a bizarre thrill ride from beginning to end. Captivatingly surreal.”

"Marino offers horrors both existential and visceral. From a stunning opening, the sense of dread just builds and builds."

"Odd and dark and fascinating . . . Not quite like anything I've ever read before. A strange, compelling, late-night page-turner. It kept me reading way past my bedtime."

"Andy Marino’s The Seven Visitations of Sydney Burgess is a gripping portrait of addiction and an innovative take on demonic possession, delivering a shocking ending and powerful themes of how love heals but can also be corrupted."

2024-08-03
Cicadas hasten the end of the world in this unnerving novel.

In Fort Halcott, a small city in upstate New York, police officers Vicky Paterson and Ken Grimes investigate a dead body found with its fingernails, toenails, and teeth cleanly removed and no sign of insects feasting on the remains even though the woman has clearly been dead for several days. Elsewhere in town, Will Bennett and Alicia Bennett, a divorced pair of “fixers,” track down a young woman who’s fallen in with something called the Order of Hemiptera. When they encounter the cult, it’s in the midst of a bizarre ritual that changes something in Will, prompting him to occasionally utter things like “The signal begins in the soil.” Gradually our heroes note that the hum of cicadas is omnipresent, a year ahead of their scheduled appearance. Readers who savor bugs and body horror will find plenty to enjoy here, though if you find these things icky you may get nightmares. Gradually the scope of the novel widens to incorporate the perspectives of Rebecca Perez, a forensic entomologist, and Anton Hajek, the founder of a possibly failed tech company. (The board meeting that introduces the company feels a bit digressive but also provides some of the funniest moments in the book.) As the reason cicadas are attacking people becomes clear and the scope of the problem expands far beyond one city in the Adirondacks, Marino weaves in more and more elements, from mysterious World War II–era experiments to philosopher Timothy Morton’s concept of the hyperobject. It’s a lot—at one point, a character summarizes the story thus far as “Possible occult bug ritual sparks a mutant cicada uprising. Comm networks go down. Unknown force cordons off the entire city”—but the book’s blend of ambition and viscera works more often than not.

Shaggy, kinetic, and relentless.