A woman arrives alone at a Best Western seeking respite from an emptiness that plagues her. She has fled to the California high desert to escape a cloud of sorrow for both her father in the ICU and a husband whose illness is worsening. What the motel provides, however, is not peace but a path, thanks to a receptionist who recommends a nearby hike.
Out on the sun-scorched trail, the woman encounters a towering cactus whose size and shape mean it should not exist in California. Yet the cactus is there, with a gash through its side that beckons like a familiar door. So she enters it. What awaits her inside this mystical succulent sets her on a journey at once desolate and rich, hilarious and poignant.
This is Melissa Broder at her most imaginative, most universal, and finest. This is Death Valley.
'A journey unlike any you've read before' Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, author of Chain-Gang All-Stars.
'Vulnerable, witty, trippy and conceptually dazzling all at once' Kimberly King Parson, author of Black Light.
A grisly series of murders across London is baffling local authorities. Eyewitnesses describe suspects who are only partially visible - one appears to have no feet, another no head, a fourth is missing his entire right side. These murders are neither straightforward nor easily explained, which means there are only two people fit to investigate: DS Jamila Patel and DC Jerry Pardoe, who are used to tracking spirits intent on causing mayhem... When two children go missing, finding themselves lost in another time period altogether, the investigation leads to the discovery of a violent entity. One who has been killing for much longer than anyone first realised and has no plans to stop...