★ 06/10/2024

In this ambitious and devastating coming-of-age tale, Felker-Martin (Manhunt) digs into the trauma of growing up in a culture that wants queer youth erased and replaced. In 1995, a group of seven teens are abducted and brought to a conversion camp based at a remote ranch, where they face brutal punishment from camp leaders and cruel counselors. As the group unravels the otherworldly horror at the heart of the camp, they must fight for their lives in the desert, hundreds of miles from anywhere. Sixteen years after their escape, those left alive realize that the entity that failed to claim them remains, and they reunite to confront the Cuckoo one last time. Comparisons to Stephen King’s It feel inevitable, owing to the story structure and themes of childhood trauma and the camaraderie of the marginalized, but Felker-Martin surpasses her influences to create something fresh, brutal, and utterly singular. No punches are pulled, either in terms of violence or emotional impact, and the ending offers no pat answers, trusting readers to draw their own conclusions. Laying bare grief, terror, and the tenderness that makes it all matter, this is horror at its best. (June)

"Cuckoo is, like Felker-Martin's previous novel Manhunt, absolutely masterful. It is gory and horrifying and brash. It is a parable slicked with blood and viscera. It is a condemnation of the ways the world tries to force queer people to become shadows of themselves by abandoning who they are. This book will leave you gasping and yearning, and it will stay on your mind long after you turn the last page."

—ROXANE GAY, New York Times bestselling author of The Bad Feminist

"Cuckoo is a breathtaking novel of body horror; a heartbreaking, angry, terrifying, unflinching indictment of Christian America's cruelty; and it's a soaring, boundless ode to queer survival. It's flat-out mesmerizing."

—PAUL TREMBLAY, author of The Pallbearers Club

“[An] ambitious and devastating coming-of-age tale...Laying bare grief, terror, and the tenderness that makes it all matter, this is horror at its best.”

—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY (STARRED review)

“One of the most important voices in modern horror.”

—PASTE MAGAZINE

"Cuckoo is a cry of grief and rage and, at its heart, a tribute to the queers who cup their hands around the guttering flame of hope and refuse to let it die. Brutal, relentless, terrifying, startlingly beautiful—I dare you to put this novel down.”

—CARMEN MARIA MACHADO, author of Her Body and Other Parties

"Beyond being just a really fucking good horror novel, Cuckoo is monumentally important. Felker-Martin wrote a gut-twisting banger of a book that makes fleshy the anti-trans movement."

—CHELSEA G. SUMMERS, author of A Certain Hunger

“A great work of horror.”

—NPR

“Tense and frighteningly visceral, Cuckoo is a masterwork of body horror thrumming with the high octane viciousness of a Richard Laymon novel while maintaining the literary sophistication of a piece penned by Clive Barker or Poppy Z. Brite.”

—ERIC LAROCCA, author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke

“Felker-Martin’s action-packed and intricately plotted second novel fairly vibrates with rage at those who seek to harm or fail to protect queer kids…. Kaleidoscopic and precise and suitably gross.”

—BOOKLIST

“Vividly gruesome and carefully observed, Cuckoo will be splattered across the inside of your skull long after you’ve set it down. Beneath the viscera and relentless prose, a vital heart beats within.”

—ANDREW F. SULLIVAN, author of The Marigold

"An instantly absorbing battle cry. Felker-Martin nests seamless psychic links with Lisa Tuttle and Stephen King, forming her unique nightmarish bear trap and fighting it with sustained, justified rage. Through all of Cuckoo's visceral brutality, it's the moments of kindness and bravery that broke my heart."

—HAILEY PIPER, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Queen of Teeth

"A queer conversion camp thriller that is truly terrifying to read. Felker-Martin writes with sensitivity and righteous fury about the many torments the teenage characters are forced to endure in the name of heteronormativity."

—CRIMEREADS

"Cuckoo is vile, repulsive, putrid, and utterly without restraint—a relentless assault on the senses. I devoured every word, and they devoured me. Filthy, degenerate art at its finest."

—HIRON ENNES, author of Leech

"This vivid, unsettling, character-rich novel grabs you by the throat and won't let go."

—LUCY A. SNYDER, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Sister, Maiden, Monster

"With her newest book, Felker-Martin appoints herself the new High Priestess of splatter. Cuckoo serves up frantic action, cosmic body horror, and a level of profane, lusty carnage that would put a fundie in intensive care. And at the center of it all is a story of love, hate, and sacrifice that spares no suffering, but takes no pity. Bring tissues and a raincoat."

—TONY TULATHIMUTTE, author of Private Citizens

"Cuckoo is a nest of guts so red and inviting you'll find yourself slurping out of it like pasta before you know what's in your mouth. No other author can make the beautiful so grotesque, nor the grotesque so beautiful."

—MEG ELISON, author of Number One Fan

“I’ve been waiting impatiently for Felker-Martin’s next book since the millisecond I put down Manhunt and I wasn’t disappointed. Cuckoo is equal parts intensely tender and turbulently gross. Well-observed, enthrallingly paced, and downright brutal exactly where it needs to be.”

—MATTIE LUBCHANSKY, author of Boys Weekend

"Cuckoo is the gory, gooey, visceral horror story our present moment demands. It's an exploration of survival and loss in the teeth of interlocking material systems of violence like transphobia, homophobia, and racism. And it's also a radically queer homage to—or reimagining of!—some much-beloved genre classics, like Invasion of the Body Snatchers."

—LEE MANDELO, author of Summer Sons

"Burning with rage and sick as hell in the best way, Cuckoo is only further evidence that Felker-Martin is one of the best horror novelists working today. All hail the queen of body horror!"

—MAX BOOTH III, author of Abnormal Statistics

"Visceral, vivid, intense, and intensely memorable, Cuckoo is a remarkable and beautiful story of horror and queer justice."

—RYAN NORTH, author of Dinosaur Comics

"Felker Martin is a master of building tension, and of illustrating the horrors that play out all around queer and trans people every day. Cuckoo is required reading for any thriller fan."

—AUBREY GORDON, Your Fat Friend

"Cuckoo is brutal, confrontational, and gory, yet every page is informed by deep compassion. A compressed epic of oppression, revenge, and solidarity."

—NABEN RUTHNUM, author of Helpmeet

"With its wonderfully drawn cast of characters, Cuckoo deftly slips beneath your skin and squeezes your heart before violently erupting into something rotten and razor-toothed. A ferocious read, and an incredible follow-up to Manhunt."

—TREVOR HENDERSON, author of Scarewaves

"Felker-Martin's Cuckoo is as grotesque as it should be, but the weakness the monster exploits is human longing, human empathy, human love. The monster haunts our protagonists for decades through their yearning to see each other and be seen, a yearning which transcends their brokenness. I am more haunted by this book’s beauty and generosity than by the titular monster and its faceless vessels."

—MAYA DEANE, author of Wrath Goddess Sing

Praise for Manhunt:

#1 Best Book of 2022 (Vulture) • A Best Horror Novel of All Time (Cosmopolitan) • One of the Best Horror Novels of 2022 (Esquire, Library Journal, Paste, and CrimeReads) • A Top 10 Horror Debuts of 2022 (Booklist) • A Goodreads Choice Award nominee for Best Horror • A Best Book of 2022 (Tor.com) • A Best SFF Book of 2022 (Gizmodo)

04/01/2024

It's the summer of 1995, and teenagers from all over the United States are being forcibly taken to Camp Resolution, a gay-conversion camp hidden in the Utah desert, miles from civilization, with no contact with the outside world. Told by the full cast of well-drawn and authentic characters and in three distinct parts—a stage-setting prologue set in 1991, the meat of the novel set at camp, and an action-packed final section taking place in 2011—this is a novel where the pacing is brisk; the worldbuilding immersive; the plot intriguing, original, and existentially terrifying; and the emotions raw. Readers will quickly become invested in each of the teens, feeling their physical and psychological pain and ultimately rooting for them against all odds. Seething with anger at horrors both real and supernatural, Felker-Martin's novel sets out to incite readers and inspire them to protect queer kids. VERDICT No one writes like Felker-Martin (Manhunt), and her unrelenting and brutally honest novels are crucial inclusions to all horror collections. Pair with Chuck Tingle's Camp Damascus or Lucy Snyder's Sister, Maiden, Monster. This is also a great update to the classic film Invasion of the Body Snatchers.