Brood

Two teenagers struggle with a horrific family legacy in the sequel to Chase Novak's novel, Breed. Thirteen years ago, a radical fertility doctor helped bring Adam and Alice Twisden into the world. The treatment came at a great cost: it turned the twins' parents into barbarous animals and threatens to transform the children, too. As Adam and Alice find themselves on the brink of maturity, they starve themselves in a desperate attempt to stop their bodies from changing. Will they succumb to the same bodily horrors that destroyed their parents? Their aunt, Cynthia, who has always wanted to be a mother, oversees renovations to the Twisden family's Upper East Side residence-violently torn apart by the children's parents -- and struggles to give her niece and nephew the unconditional love and stable home life they never had. Meanwhile, in the world outside, the forces of good and evil collide as a troop of wild teenagers, growing steadily in number, threatens to invade the calm refuge Cynthia is so determined to construct behind the safety of the Twisdens' walls. As New York City transforms into a battleground, Adam and Alice will have to decide where their loyalties lie. They are determined to lead normal lives -- and yet their unnatural urges, which grow ever stronger by the day, can only be stifled for so long...

Colin Dwyer, NPR

"[Novak's] prose sings with joy when he describes the snap of a bone, delights - and disturbs - when he dredges dark humor from the aftermath. Simply put, the people-eaters bring out the best in Chase Novak."

BookPage

"Gruesome and grimly funny"

Booklist

"Like all good literary horror, a sense of foreboding piggybacks on a layer of strong emotion, and here it's tweaked by the characters' desperate, haunting desire for connections."

Publishers Weekly

"A satirical supernatural thriller . . . Genuine rat-inspired horror."

Kirkus Reviews

"Novak ably combines realism and the supernatural."

About the Author

Chase Novak is the pseudonym for Scott Spencer. Spencer is the author of eleven novels, including Endless Love, which has sold over two million copies to date, and the National Book Award finalist A Ship Made of Paper. He has written for Rolling Stone, the New York Times, the New Yorker, GQ, and Harper's. Mulholland Books published his horror novel Breed in September 2012.

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