A grieving man and his nephew hunt down a myth in this gothic Western adventure for fans of Karen Russell and Victor LaValle.
THE GREAT WORK
by Sheldon Costa
Quirk Books, November 2025
(via Frances Goldin Literary)
Alone in a frontier town in the brand-new state of Washington, Gentle Montgomery is grieving his best friend. Liam, a self-taught alchemist, was killed when he tried to capture a creature that shouldn’t exist: a giant salamander that drives men mad. When Gentle’s nephew Kitt arrives at his doorstep, the two set out together to track the monster down, so they can use its blood in an alchemical formula that will bring Liam back to life.
It’s a hard and haunted journey through the Northwestern frontier. The salamander produces surreal nightmares and waking dreams of a blighted, burning future. And Gentle and Kitt soon find themselves pursued by a bloodthirsty hunter, a sadistic judge, and a doomsday cult, all of whom have their own plans for the river monster. Armed with nothing but Liam’s alchemical notebooks, they must not only find the salamander but learn to understand it—and the terrifying visions it causes—before it’s too late.
Unsettling and profound, THE GREAT WORK is an arcane adventure through the wilderness of friendship and the rotten heart of the early American empire.
“The Great Work is a vision of America as both homeland and horror story. And it also is just a good ol’ page turner, the kind of dark tale that delivers on every promise it makes.” — Joseph Fink, co-creator of Welcome to Night Vale
“Costa’s rip-snorting debut is a wild ride through freaky old America: backwoods alchemists, a sadistic reverend judge, an animalistic cult, and a quest for a primeval monster of nightmares come together in a hell-for-leather frontier yarn packed with action, wonder, and heart.” — James Kennedy, author of Bride of the Tornado “A moody, atmospheric, and singular novel which navigates corners of American history through the complicated territory of horror, the monstrous, and the heroic.” — Kelly Link, best-selling author of The Book of Love
Sheldon Costa is a writer originally from Post Falls, Idaho. His fiction has appeared in or is forthcoming from Electric Literature, Michigan Quarterly Review, Conjunctions, The Georgia Review, and Crazyhorse, among others. He is a winner of the AWP Intro Journal Project, the 2018 Helen Earnhart Harley Creative Writing Fellowship Award, and the Cream City Review’s 2019 Summer Prize in Fiction, judged by Ramona Ausubel. He holds an MFA from the Ohio State University and lives in rural Missouri with his wife and three cats. This is his debut novel.
It’s been years since Ellie has fished the Alaskan waters—not since her mother died, not since her father took to drink, and not since the birth of her five-year-old son. She’s been living half a life, working a cubicle job in a small fishing town and drowning in debt while barely having the energy to be a single mom to Drew. When she finds her father lying in an alleyway, she learns he’s done the unforgivable. Pete has gambled away the family legacy, the fishing boat and license, and unless he can come up with fifty thousand in two months, the bookie will get everything, Pete will be homeless and Ellie and her son will be stuck in the grinding cycle of poverty. Ellie agrees to fish the season with her dad, bringing Drew on the boat as they chase the pipe dream of making enough money to pay off the debt. Ellie is used to the 20-hour days and the back-breaking work, and she’s used to risking her life to find the biggest catch. What she’s not used to is accepting help from others, and definitely not from a secretive homesteader who seems to have demons of his own. Ellie’s growing attraction and the dangerous Alaskan waters are the least of her worries, though. Because Ellie is hiding secrets of her own and, as the date with the bookie draws closer, she is at risk of losing it all. 
A secret love story.