The Denizens
Just because it’s dead doesn’t mean it’s allowed to rest…
A small southern town surrounded by a living cemetery was the last place Sam Everett expected to find himself after the sudden death of his wife. Desperate to get away from the city and its memories, Sam flees to the tight-knit community of Maylene’s Hollow.
Except the Hollow holds a secret. The town won’t allow its dead to rest. Forced to wander the earth for hundreds of years, the denizens of the woods have had enough.
With the help of a mysterious widow who may also be a murderer, the town’s matriarch who seems to possess magical abilities, and an ornery giant who believes the dead may be right to rebel, Sam must learn to let go of the dead in order to truly live.
“Mesmerizing, with a quiet but profound sense of dread” -- Rachel Harrison, USA Today Bestselling author of Play Nice and So Thirsty
"The Denizens destroys you from the get-go, then has the audacity to resuscitate you with a simple flip of the page. LaFaro has the uncanny knack to equally decimate and resurrect his readers, chapter after chapter, a grief-stricken Prometheus, weighing his writing down with an ache that just keeps us coming back for more." -- Clay McLeod Chapman, author of Wake Up and Open Your Eyes
"The Denizens is a gripping, yet somber apocalyptic novel filled with the occult, the roaming dead, and disparate relationships mended and strained.” -- Ai Jiang, author of Linghun and A Palace Near The Wind
“Brennan LaFaro builds dread with the best of them, and The Denizens is a creeping and macabre passage through grief and regret, terror and devotion, hope and pain. What lurks on the outskirts of Maylene’s Hollow will come for you no matter how prepared you think you might be.” -- Christa Carmen, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Daughters of Block Island and How to Fake a Haunting
“Brennan LaFaro delivers a haunting Southern Gothic where grief, small-town secrets, and ancient horrors converge. In Maylene’s Hollow, the living and the damned walk side by side—and once you enter, the denizens never let you leave. Exceptionally terrifying!” -- Cynthia Pelayo, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Shoemaker’s Magician