Black Sheep

Harrison (Such Sharp Teeth) has earned a reputation for writing stories about complicated women spiked with a hefty dose of the supernatural, and this deliciously spooky outing is no exception. Heroine Vesper is a waitress with a bad job and a worse attitude who lost all her friends and family when she left her insular religious community six years ago, looking for freedom and her absent father, who mysteriously disappeared from her life. She’s sure she’ll never be allowed to return—until she receives an unexpected wedding invitation: her close friend and cousin Rosie is marrying the boyfriend Vesper left behind. Half heartbroken and half desperate to see who bent the rules to invite her, Vesper goes home to a rapturous welcome from everyone except for her cold and distant mother. In fact, they’re all almost too glad to see her, their smiles too wide, their conviction too firm: Vesper is home, they say, because the Lord wills it—and there is no escape from the will of their Dark Lord, Satan. Harrison finds new ways to press on the bruise of growing up as an outsider, delivering small-town religious horror with wit as sharp as a ritual dagger piercing through a bleeding core of familial trauma. This deserves to be front and center in any bookstore Halloween display. Agent: Lucy Carson, Friedrich Agency. (Sept.)