Cuckoo

An instant USA Today bestseller!A Best Book of 2024 (NPR)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 ClubSomething 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 SpokeAlso by Gretchen Felker-Martin:ManhuntBlack Flame

ROXANE GAY, New York Times bestselling author of The Bad Feminist

"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."

PAUL TREMBLAY, author of The Pallbearers Club

"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."

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY (STARRED review)

“[An] ambitious and devastating coming-of-age tale...Laying bare grief, terror, and the tenderness that makes it all matter, this is horror at its best.”

PASTE MAGAZINE

“One of the most important voices in modern horror.”

CARMEN MARIA MACHADO, author of Her Body and Other Parties

"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.”

CHELSEA G. SUMMERS, author of A Certain Hunger

"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."

NPR

“A great work of horror.”

ERIC LAROCCA, author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke

“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.”

BOOKLIST

“Felker-Martin’s action-packed and intricately plotted second novel fairly vibrates with rage at those who seek to harm or fail to protect queer kids…. Kaleidoscopic and precise and suitably gross.”

ANDREW F. SULLIVAN, author of The Marigold

“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.”

HAILEY PIPER, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Queen of Teeth

"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."

CRIMEREADS

"A queer conversion camp thriller that is truly terrifying to read. Felker-Martin writes with sensitivity and righteous fury about the many torments the teenage characters are forced to endure in the name of heteronormativity."

HIRON ENNES, author of Leech

"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."

LUCY A. SNYDER, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Sister, Maiden, Monster

"This vivid, unsettling, character-rich novel grabs you by the throat and won't let go."

TONY TULATHIMUTTE, author of Private Citizens

"With her newest book, Felker-Martin appoints herself the new High Priestess of splatter. Cuckoo serves up frantic action, cosmic body horror, and a level of profane, lusty carnage that would put a fundie in intensive care. And at the center of it all is a story of love, hate, and sacrifice that spares no suffering, but takes no pity. Bring tissues and a raincoat."

MEG ELISON, author of Number One Fan

"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."

MATTIE LUBCHANSKY, author of Boys Weekend

“I’ve been waiting impatiently for Felker-Martin’s next book since the millisecond I put down Manhunt and I wasn’t disappointed. Cuckoo is equal parts intensely tender and turbulently gross. Well-observed, enthrallingly paced, and downright brutal exactly where it needs to be.”

LEE MANDELO, author of Summer Sons

"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, like Invasion of the Body Snatchers."

MAX BOOTH III, author of Abnormal Statistics

"Burning with rage and sick as hell in the best way, Cuckoo is only further evidence that Felker-Martin is one of the best horror novelists working today. All hail the queen of body horror!"

RYAN NORTH, author of Dinosaur Comics

"Visceral, vivid, intense, and intensely memorable, Cuckoo is a remarkable and beautiful story of horror and queer justice."

AUBREY GORDON, Your Fat Friend

"Felker Martin is a master of building tension, and of illustrating the horrors that play out all around queer and trans people every day. Cuckoo is required reading for any thriller fan."

NABEN RUTHNUM, author of Helpmeet

"Cuckoo is brutal, confrontational, and gory, yet every page is informed by deep compassion. A compressed epic of oppression, revenge, and solidarity."

TREVOR HENDERSON, author of Scarewaves

"With its wonderfully drawn cast of characters, Cuckoo deftly slips beneath your skin and squeezes your heart before violently erupting into something rotten and razor-toothed. A ferocious read, and an incredible follow-up to Manhunt."

MAYA DEANE, author of Wrath Goddess Sing Praise for Manhunt: #1 Best Book of 2022 (Vulture) • A Best Horror Novel of All Time (Cosmopolitan) • One of the Best Horror Novels of 2022 (Esquire, Library Journal, Paste, and CrimeReads) • A Top 10 Horror Debuts of 2022 (Booklist) • A Goodreads Choice Award nominee for Best Horror • A Best Book of 2022 (Tor.com) • A Best SFF Book of 2022 (Gizmodo)

"Felker-Martin's Cuckoo is as grotesque as it should be, but the weakness the monster exploits is human longing, human empathy, human love. The monster haunts our protagonists for decades through their yearning to see each other and be seen, a yearning which transcends their brokenness. I am more haunted by this book’s beauty and generosity than by the titular monster and its faceless vessels."

About the Author

GRETCHEN FELKER-MARTIN is a Massachusetts-based bestselling horror author and film critic. Her debut novel, Manhunt, was named the #1 Best Book of 2022 by Vulture, and was one of the Best Horror Novels of 2022 by Esquire, Library Journal, and Paste. Her sophomore novel, Cuckoo, debuted on the USA Today bestseller list. You can read her fiction and film criticism on Patreon and in TIME, The Outline, Nylon, and more.

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