From the author of the award-winning 2018 queer antebellum epic Drapetomania, which was called ‘a masterpiece’ by Patrik-Ian Polk and ‘a dazzling work of imagination’ by Michael Eric Dyson, from ‘an author working at the height of his powers’ (Financial Times) and ‘a master novelist’ (Huffington Post), comes a new novel of race, madness and the uncanny in contemporary America.
**PUBLICATION DATE: February 3, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-7397739-3-9
RRP: $15.99/£13.99 p/back
AVAILABLE TO PRE-ORDER VIA THE FOLLOWING LINKS:
UK: Amazon/ Waterstones
US: Amazon/ Barnes & Noble
MOTHER OF SERPENTS
Brooklyn-based poet DuVone Mapley-Stevenson is already struggling with fragile mental health when his white husband Jack gets a promotion that means they must relocate to all-white Kwawidokawa County, upstate Maine. At first it seems this could be a fresh start for the financially-stretched family, even if the house Jack has found them is suspiciously cheap...
Determined to make the most of the move for the sake of their young son, stay-at-home dad Vone is at once destabilized by the racial, cultural and geographic isolation. When strange sights and sounds start to press in on him, he initially doesn't dare share with Jack what he at first assumes must be recurring delusive thinking. And then he starts to fear that the increasingly threatening phenomena are real.
This sets off a series of terrifying events that collapse the borderlines between sanity and reality, myth and science, and escalate into a life-and-death battle between the monsters who roam the mind and those that slither across the boundaries between their worlds and our own...
Fusing a convincing portrait of psychosis and its aftermath with occult and indigenous lore, the legacy of witch trials, gothic Americana and the lived experiences of a multicultural queer family in a world of racial and social discord, award-winning John R. Gordon's new novel of unease will set your pulse racing and have you looking over your shoulder for things glanced in mirrors.
PRAISE FOR GORDON'S OTHER WORK
Drapetomania is “a masterpiece” (Patrik-Ian Polk); “a dazzling work of imagination” (Michael Eric Dyson) and “a riveting, masterful work” (Alexis De Veaux)
Hark is “audaciously provocative, spooky and sexy all at once” (Craig Laurance Gidney)
Skin Deep is “thought-provoking and funny, subtly erotic and in-your-face nasty by turns, often deeply touching and at times, surprisingly wise.” (Larry Duplechan)
JOHN R. GORDON lives in Shepherds Bush, London, England. He is a screenwriter, playwright and the author of nine novels, Black Butterflies and Warriors & Outlaws, both of which have been taught in the USA; Faggamuffin, Colour Scheme, Souljah, Drapetomania and the interracial YA romance Hark. He writes for the world’s first Black gay television show, Patrik-Ian Polk’s Noah’s Arc, for which he received an NAACP Image Award nomination. He is the creator of the Yemi & Femi comic, for adult readers.
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