The first book in a duology, this propulsive and wickedly funny mystery-horror novel from a well-connected author has huge commercial appeal.
BLESS YOUR HEART
by Lindy Ryan
Minotaur Books, April 2024)
It’s 1999 in Southeast Texas and the Evans women, owners of the only funeral parlor in town, are keeping steady with…normal business. The dead die. You bury them. End of story. That’s how Ducey Evans has done it for the last eighty years, and her progeny—Lenore the experimenter and Grace, Lenore’s soft-hearted daughter—have run Evans Funeral Parlor for the last fifteen years without drama. Ever since That Godawful Mess that left two bodies in the ground and Grace raising her infant daughter, Luna, alone. But when town gossip Mina Jean Murphy’s body is brought in for a regular burial and she rises from the dead instead, it’s clear that the Strigoi—the original vampire—are back. And the Evans women are the ones who need to fight back to protect their town. As more folks in town turn up dead, and Deputy Roger Taylor begins asking way too many questions, Ducey, Lenore, Grace, and now Luna, must take up their blades and figure out who is behind the Strigoi’s return. As the saying goes, what rises up, must go back down. But as unspoken secrets and revelations spill from the past into the present, the Evans family must face that sometimes the dead aren’t the only things you want to keep buried. A crackling mystery-horror novel with big-hearted characters and blood-soaked Southern charm, Bless Your Heart is a gasp-worthy delight from start to finish.
Lindy Ryan is a Bram Stoker Awards®-nominated and award-winning editor, author, director, and professor. Ryan served from 2020 to 2022 on the Board of Directors for the Independent Book Publishers Association and was named one of Publishers Weekly‘s 2020 Star Watch Honorees. Currently, she is the co-chair of the Horror Writers Association Publishers Council. Ryan is a regular contributor at Rue Morgue, the world’s leading horror culture and entertainment brand, Booktrib, and LitReactor. Her articles and features have appeared on NPR, BBC Culture, Irish Times, Daily Mail, and more. In 2022, she was named one of horror’s most masterful anthology curators and has been declared a « champion for women’s voices in horror » by Shelf Awareness (2023).
Iggy Guerra is out of prison, but his homecoming is anything but smooth. His beloved mother is gone, his grief-stricken father, Armando, is deep in debt, and they are about to lose the butcher shop that has been in their family for generations. Iggy must earn his father’s lost trust in order to save La Carnicería Guerra from the threats imposed by a new rival business, a vigilante activist, and big-game hunter Orin, who has dragged Armando into his dangerous money-making schemes deep in the Everglades, where more than secrets are buried. Iggy will wrestle with the beauty and the danger of the place he calls home as he tries to save his family—without losing himself forever. Sharp as a butcher knife gleaming in the Miami sun, Alejandro Nodarse’s BLOOD IN THE CUT opens onto a deeply personal vision of the streets and swamps of Miami, where the roots are crooked but strong as mangroves._JPG.jpg)
Viola Reyes is annoyed. Her painstakingly crafted tabletop game campaign was shot down, her best friend is suggesting she try being more “likable,” and school running back Jack Orsino is the most lackadaisical Student Body President she’s ever seen, which makes her job as VP that much harder. Vi’s favorite escape from the world is the MMORPG Twelfth Knight, but online spaces aren’t exactly kind to girls like her—girls who are extremely competent and have the swagger to prove it. So Vi creates a masculine alter ego, choosing to play as a knight named Cesario to create a safe haven for herself. But when a football injury leads Jack Orsino to the world of Twelfth Knight, Vi is alarmed to discover their online alter egos—Cesario and Duke Orsino—are surprisingly well-matched. As the long nights of game-play turn into discussions about life and love, Vi and Jack soon realise they’ve become more than just weapon-wielding characters in an online game. But Vi has been concealing her true identity from Jack, and Jack might just be falling for her offline.