In-Store Launch: The Unmothers

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In this raw and lyrical folk horror novel, a journalist sent to a small town begins to unravel a dark secret that the women of the town have been keeping for generations.

Marshall is still trying to put the pieces together after the death of her husband. After she is involved in a terrible accident, her editor sends her to the small, backwards town of Raeford to investigate a clearly ridiculous rumor: that a horse has given birth to a healthy, human baby boy.

When Marshall arrives in Raeford, she finds an insular town that is kinder to the horses they are famous for breeding than to their own people. But when two horribly mangled bodies are discovered in a field—one a horse, one a human—she realizes that there might be a real story here.

As she’s pulled deeper into the town and its guarded people, her sense of reality is tipped on its head. Is she losing her grip? Or is this impossible story the key to a dark secret that has haunted the women of Raeford for generations?

Unbearably tense and utterly gripping, this atmospheric tale of female rage, bodily autonomy, and generational trauma hails the arrival of a masterful storyteller.

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Leslie J. Anderson’s writing has appeared in Asimov’s, Uncanny Magazine, Strange Horizons, Daily Science Fiction, and Apex, to name a few. She writes for the popular podcast The CryptoNaturalist. She also hosts and produces Cartoon Crosstalk Columbus for Cartoon Crossroads Columbus.

Her collection of poetry, An Inheritance of Stone, was released from Alliteration Ink and was nominated for an Elgin award. Poems from it have won 2nd place in the Asimov’s Reader’s Awards, and were nominated for Pushcart and Rhysling award.

Leslie has a Creative Writing MA from Ohio University and currently works as a marketing and communications manager for a financial consulting firm. She lives in Ohio in a small, white house beside a cemetery, with three good dogs and a Roomba.