The Dreadful Fate of Jonathan York: A Yarn for the Strange at Heart

Originally published online as “No Story, No Room,” Merritt’s print debut follows the misadventures of a meek store clerk named Jonathan York, whose life takes a turn for the worse—or does it?—when he gets lost in a forbidding swamp. Along with three strange travelers, Jonathan finds his way to the Cankerbury Inn, whose elderly owners demand a story in exchange for a night’s stay. While Jonathan’s companions share accounts of diabolical ice-cream factories, daredevil undersea escapades, and alien abduction/vivisection, Jonathan’s dull life leaves him without anything to contribute. All that changes when he is tossed back into the swamp, falls in with merciless thieves, outwits a giant terrapin, and more. Terrifying and skillfully drafted, Merritt’s illustrations conjure a world of hideous creatures replete with tentacles, saberlike fangs, and leering eyes. References to Sean Connery and Willy Wonka sit a bit oddly in the Lovecraftian gothic world Merritt has created, and underneath all the supernatural horror, the message that what doesn’t kill, digest, or zombify you makes you stronger (and gives you a story to tell) is actually quite conventional. Ages 8–12. (Oct.)