The Hidden Gods of Appalachia - A Spicy Southern Gothic Folkloric Horror-Romance Novella

About:

A southern gothic folkloric horror-romance where a grief-scarred woman returns home to the Blue Ridge Mountains, only to uncover vanished loved ones, an ancient curse awakening beneath modern development, and a dangerously magnetic private detective who believes she may be the key to stopping what’s coming for them all.

The Hidden Gods of Appalachia blends the haunting and disturbing complex family dynamics of Stephen Graham Jones’s Mapping the Interior, the intimate and unsettling folk-horror atmosphere and creeping sense of dread of T. Kingfisher’s The Twisted Ones, and Brom’s Slewfoot, and the intense romance and emotional chemistry of Harley LaRoux’s Her Soul to Take, while maintaining a strange, atmospheric horror that is rooted in regional Appalachian lore.

Blurb:

Mama always said, "Don’t fly too far or you may forget where your nest is.”
So, naturally, I flew thousands of miles away—because when there’s nothing left in the nest, what else is there to do?

After her death, I couldn’t sit still.

And when my little brother Daniel disappeared two years later, I knew there was nothing left for me in North Carolina.
Oregon took me in, as well as I could’ve hoped for a lonely girl from Appalachia who showed up with only a single suitcase and the hollow ache that comes with a family that’s fallen apart.

But that was ten years ago.

Now, a random phone call has left me with more questions than answers.
A distant aunt’s passing has necessitated my return home to handle her final affairs, as I’ve been named her last living relative.

But there's more. . .

People are vanishing into the dense woods of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Strange sigils are being found all along the Parkway.
. . .And there's a private detective with a dangerous magnetism, who thinks I might be the only one able to help him work out why.

Home is nearly unrecognizable.
Industry and development have crept into the heart of something ancient, and it feels as though the old gods are angry. . .