2025 Locus Award for Best Horror Novel (finalist)
An instant USA Today bestseller!
From Gretchen Felker-Martin, the acclaimed author of Manhunt, comes a vicious new novel about a group of teens who must stay true to themselves while in a conversion camp from hell.
"A soaring, boundless ode to queer survival. It's flat-out mesmerizing."—Paul Tremblay, author of The Pallbearers Club
Something evil is buried deep in the desert. It wants your body. It wears your skin.
In the summer of 1995, seven queer kids abandoned by their parents at a remote conversion camp came face to face with it. They survived—but at Camp Resolution, everybody leaves a different person.
Sixteen years later, only the scarred and broken survivors of that terrible summer can put an end to the horror before it's too late.
The fate of the world depends on it.
“Tense and frighteningly visceral, Cuckoo is a masterwork of body horror thrumming with high octane viciousness.” —Eric LaRocca, author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke
Also by Gretchen Felker-Martin:
Manhunt
Black Flame
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Genre: Horror
From Gretchen Felker-Martin, the acclaimed author of Manhunt, comes a vicious new novel about a group of teens who must stay true to themselves while in a conversion camp from hell.
"A soaring, boundless ode to queer survival. It's flat-out mesmerizing."—Paul Tremblay, author of The Pallbearers Club
Something evil is buried deep in the desert. It wants your body. It wears your skin.
In the summer of 1995, seven queer kids abandoned by their parents at a remote conversion camp came face to face with it. They survived—but at Camp Resolution, everybody leaves a different person.
Sixteen years later, only the scarred and broken survivors of that terrible summer can put an end to the horror before it's too late.
The fate of the world depends on it.
“Tense and frighteningly visceral, Cuckoo is a masterwork of body horror thrumming with high octane viciousness.” —Eric LaRocca, author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke
Also by Gretchen Felker-Martin:
Manhunt
Black Flame
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Genre: Horror
Praise for this book
"Cuckoo is a nest of guts so red and inviting you'll find yourself slurping out of it like pasta before you know what's in your mouth. No other author can make the beautiful so grotesque, nor the grotesque so beautiful." - Meg Elison
"Cuckoo is vile, repulsive, putrid, and utterly without restraint--a relentless assault on the senses. I devoured every word, and they devoured me. Filthy, degenerate art at its finest." - Hiron Ennes
"Cuckoo is, like Felker-Martin's previous novel Manhunt, absolutely masterful. It is gory and horrifying and brash. It is a parable slicked with blood and viscera. It is a condemnation of the ways the world tries to force queer people to become shadows of themselves by abandoning who they are. This book will leave you gasping and yearning, and it will stay on your mind long after you turn the last page." - Roxane Gay
"Tense and frighteningly visceral, Cuckoo is a masterwork of body horror thrumming with the high octane viciousness of a Richard Laymon novel while maintaining the literary sophistication of a piece penned by Clive Barker or Poppy Z. Brite." - Eric LaRocca
"Cuckoo is a cry of grief and rage and, at its heart, a tribute to the queers who cup their hands around the guttering flame of hope and refuse to let it die. Brutal, relentless, terrifying, startlingly beautiful--I dare you to put this novel down." - Carmen Maria Machado
"Cuckoo is the gory, gooey, visceral horror story our present moment demands. It's an exploration of survival and loss in the teeth of interlocking material systems of violence like transphobia, homophobia, and racism. And it's also a radically queer homage to--or reimagining of!--some much-beloved genre classics, likeInvasion of the Body Snatchers." - Lee Mandelo
"An instantly absorbing battle cry. Felker-Martin nests seamless psychic links with Lisa Tuttle and Stephen King, forming her unique nightmarish bear trap and fighting it with sustained, justified rage. Through all of Cuckoo's visceral brutality, it's the moments of kindness and bravery that broke my heart." - Hailey Piper
"This vivid, unsettling, character-rich novel grabs you by the throat and won't let go." - Lucy A Snyder
"Vividly gruesome and carefully observed, Cuckoo will be splattered across the inside of your skull long after you've set it down. Beneath the viscera and relentless prose, a vital heart beats within." - Andrew F Sullivan
"Beyond being just a really fucking good horror novel, Cuckoo is monumentally important. Felker-Martin wrote a gut-twisting banger of a book that makes fleshy the anti-trans movement." - Chelsea G Summers
"Cuckoo is a breathtaking novel of body horror; a heartbreaking, angry, terrifying, unflinching indictment of Christian America's cruelty; and it's a soaring, boundless ode to queer survival. It's flat-out mesmerizing." - Paul Tremblay
"Cuckoo is vile, repulsive, putrid, and utterly without restraint--a relentless assault on the senses. I devoured every word, and they devoured me. Filthy, degenerate art at its finest." - Hiron Ennes
"Cuckoo is, like Felker-Martin's previous novel Manhunt, absolutely masterful. It is gory and horrifying and brash. It is a parable slicked with blood and viscera. It is a condemnation of the ways the world tries to force queer people to become shadows of themselves by abandoning who they are. This book will leave you gasping and yearning, and it will stay on your mind long after you turn the last page." - Roxane Gay
"Tense and frighteningly visceral, Cuckoo is a masterwork of body horror thrumming with the high octane viciousness of a Richard Laymon novel while maintaining the literary sophistication of a piece penned by Clive Barker or Poppy Z. Brite." - Eric LaRocca
"Cuckoo is a cry of grief and rage and, at its heart, a tribute to the queers who cup their hands around the guttering flame of hope and refuse to let it die. Brutal, relentless, terrifying, startlingly beautiful--I dare you to put this novel down." - Carmen Maria Machado
"Cuckoo is the gory, gooey, visceral horror story our present moment demands. It's an exploration of survival and loss in the teeth of interlocking material systems of violence like transphobia, homophobia, and racism. And it's also a radically queer homage to--or reimagining of!--some much-beloved genre classics, likeInvasion of the Body Snatchers." - Lee Mandelo
"An instantly absorbing battle cry. Felker-Martin nests seamless psychic links with Lisa Tuttle and Stephen King, forming her unique nightmarish bear trap and fighting it with sustained, justified rage. Through all of Cuckoo's visceral brutality, it's the moments of kindness and bravery that broke my heart." - Hailey Piper
"This vivid, unsettling, character-rich novel grabs you by the throat and won't let go." - Lucy A Snyder
"Vividly gruesome and carefully observed, Cuckoo will be splattered across the inside of your skull long after you've set it down. Beneath the viscera and relentless prose, a vital heart beats within." - Andrew F Sullivan
"Beyond being just a really fucking good horror novel, Cuckoo is monumentally important. Felker-Martin wrote a gut-twisting banger of a book that makes fleshy the anti-trans movement." - Chelsea G Summers
"Cuckoo is a breathtaking novel of body horror; a heartbreaking, angry, terrifying, unflinching indictment of Christian America's cruelty; and it's a soaring, boundless ode to queer survival. It's flat-out mesmerizing." - Paul Tremblay
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Used availability for Gretchen Felker-Martin's Cuckoo