From the New York Times bestselling author of My Dearest Darkest comes another incredible sapphic horror. When four best friends with a hunger for human flesh attend a music festival in the desert they discover a murderous plot to expose and vilify the girls and everyone like them. This summer is going to get gory.
THIS DELICIOUS DEATH
by Kayla Cottingham
Sourcebooks Fire, April 2023
Three years ago, the melting of arctic permafrost released a pathogen of unknown origin into the atmosphere, causing a small percentage of people to undergo a transformation that became known as the Hollowing. Those impacted slowly became intolerant to normal food and were only able to gain sustenance by consuming the flesh of other human beings. Those who went without flesh quickly became feral, turning on their friends and family. However, scientists were able to create a synthetic version of human meat that would satisfy the hunger of those impacted by the Hollowing. As a result, humanity slowly began to return to normal, albeit with lasting fear and distrust for the people they’d pejoratively dubbed ghouls.
Zoey, Celeste, Valeria, and Jasmine are all ghouls living in Southern California. As a last hurrah before their graduation they decided to attend a musical festival in the desert. They have a cooler filled with hard seltzers and SynFlesh and are ready to party.
But on the first night of the festival Val goes feral, and ends up killing and eating a boy. As other festival guests start disappearing around them the girls soon discover someone is drugging ghouls and making them feral. And if they can’t figure out how to stop it, and soon, no one at the festival is safe..
Kayla Cottingham is a YA author and librarian. Her first book, My Dearest Darkest, was a New York Times and Publisher’s Weekly bestseller. Originally from Salt Lake City, Utah, Kayla lives in Boston where she loves to go hiking in the woods, play RPGs, and snuggle on the couch with her ridiculously large black cat, Squid.
Finch Chamberlain is the newest transfer student to the ultra-competitive Ulalume Academy…but she’s also not what she seems. Months before school started, Finch and her parents got into an accident that should have left her dead at the bottom of the ocean. But something monstrous, ancient, and terrifying wouldn’t let her drown. Selena St. Claire sees right through Finch, and she knows something is seriously wrong with her newest classmate. But despite Selena’s suspicion, she feels inexplicably drawn to Finch, leaving her with a sinking feeling that from now on, the two will be unnaturally linked to each other. Then one night, Finch, Selena, and her friends accidentally summon a carnivorous creature of immense power from the depths of the school. Can Finch and Selena learn to work together to stop the horror they unleashed before it consumes them and the entire island?