Interview with a Vampire meets Heavenly Creatures in Sara McCarry’s queer gothic New Adult thriller. Full of undying loyalty, loss, and creatures with teeth, Possession Island is a darkly funny ode to the lengths we’ll go to for the people (and monsters) we love.

POSSESSION ISLAND
by Sarah McCarry
Wednesday Books, Fall 2026
(via Writers House)

What was it my mother said? Like a woman, a vampire is made, not born. She is a creature of her own invention.
And in all the best stories, the monster always wins.
As she should.

Twenty-year-old Angela Bell comes home from college to her family’s mansion on a remote Pacific Northwest island, haunted by the legacy – and fans – of her late mother’s wildly successful vampire novel. When her estranged best friend Mo is murdered, Angie winds up in the crosshairs of the bungled police investigation.

Determined to clear her name and avenge Mo’s death, Angie finds herself entangled with Sally, a high school nemesis with more than a few secrets of her own. As Angie and Sally delve deeper into the sinister underbelly of their small town, Angie’s forced to reckon with one question: How far is she willing to go for the women she loves?

Fiendishly clever, sharp-sighted, and surprising, POSSESSION ISLAND combines the knife-edge suspense and revamped gender stereotypes of Gone Girl with a gothic horror twist.

Sarah McCarry is the author of the novels All Our Pretty Songs, Dirty Wings, About A Girl, and The Darling Killers; the editor and publisher of the chapbook series Guillotine; and the Executive Director of the Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick Foundation. Her work has been shortlisted for the Lambda Award, the Norton Award, and the Tiptree Award. She received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Joint Quantum Institute, the Launchpad Writers’ Workshop, and The Arctic Circle. She’s taught letterpress printing, writing, and zine-making across the United States.