New York Times best-selling author Andrew Shafer (How to Survive a Sharknado and Other Unnatural Disasters) is gifting us with some good old holiday horror in his upcoming novel Secret Santa, which is set during the horror publishing boom of the 1980s.
The novel follows Lussi Meyer who, after spending half a decade editing some of the biggest names in horror, joins the prestigious Blackwood-Patterson to kickstart its new horror imprint. Since the illustrious Xavier Blackwood died and his party-boy son took over, things have been changing around the office, and Lussi’s coworkers don’t seem to take too kindly to her—even if it’s her books that are keeping the company afloat.
Then Lussi receives a creepy gnome doll at the company’s annual holiday gift exchange, cementing her belief that her colleagues consider her a joke. But the events that follow are no joke. Without explanation, those same colleagues start dropping like flies—everything from heart attacks to food poisonings—while Lussi’s gnome sits quietly on her shelf.
One of Lussi’s closest friends, the fabulous but underrated author Fabien Nightingale, soon recognises that supernatural forces are at play. The only question is, does Lussi really want to stop the gnome from working its magic?
The 240-page novel will be released by Quirk Books on November 10th. Final cover art is not yet available.
Words: Samantha McLaren (@themeatispeople)
