A New York Times Best Horror Fiction of the Year Selection • Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Horror • A Parade Best Horror Books of the Year Selection“A gruesome, action-packed monster novel about a mother and daughter with a terrible secret, on the run from an obsessed and crumbling detective . . . Terrific.” —The New York Times Book Review
In Stuart Neville’s horror debut, a mother's undying love and a daughter's insatiable hunger carve a bloody trail across the highways of the Southwest.
On a cold December night, single mother Rebecca Carter drives her van into a snowbank to avoid hitting an elk on a desolate mountain highway. She is at the end of her rope, out of money and food. Still, she refuses help from a passing stranger. Rebecca’s adolescent daughter, Moonflower, is on the run from a grisly secret, and the last thing they can afford is to be remembered.
Meanwhile, Special Agent Donner of the FBI has been hunting down a gruesome serial killer who drains their victims of blood before severing their spinal cords. As Agent Donner’s investigation brings him closer to the Carters, the life that Rebecca has fought so hard to hold together for her daughter becomes increasingly imperiled.
In this riveting, blood-soaked take on the vampire myth, nobody is safe and nothing is certain—not even the line between predator and prey.
"On a snowy December night, single mother Rebecca Carter drives her van into a snowbank to avoid hitting an elk on a desolate Colorado mountain highway. She is at the end of her rope, out of money and food; her adolescent daughter, Moonflower, is on the run from a grisly secret, and the last thing they can afford is to be remembered by anyone they meet. As Rebecca tries to dig her van out of the snow, a man in a pickup truck stops and offers her a tow. Rebecca declines, but this chance encounter with a stranger will destroy the life she has fought so hard to hold together. Now her worst fears come to life as she is caught between a ravenous predator and a fate worse than death. Rebecca would die to protect her daughter, but dying wouldn't be enough to satisfy this monster . . . On the other side of the country, FBI agent Marc Donner has a break in a serial killer case he has been tracking for two years"--
