Black Flame

A queer horror novella about the occult, cult cinema, queer desires and other things left on the cutting room floor. Perfect for fans of Paul Tremblay and Cassandra Khaw. From the USA Today bestselling author of CuckooEllen, a deeply closeted lesbian spends all her time in solitude, restoring films at a failing archive in 1980s New York City.When a group of German academics present her with a print of an infamous exploitation film believed to have been destroyed during the Holocaust, Ellen finds herself forced to confront her own repressed sexuality. And the more she works on the restoration, the more obsessed she becomes with its depictions of occult practices and queer debauchery.She's soon convinced that the depraved acts portrayed in the film are not fiction, but reality.And that they're happening to her.

"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"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 ofA Certain Hunger"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