The Bird Eater

Twenty years ago, the mysterious death of his aunt left Aaron Holbrook orphaned and alone. He abandoned his rural Arkansas hometown vowing never to return, until his seven-year-old son died in an accident, plunging Aaron into a nightmare of addiction and grief. Desperate to reclaim a piece of himself, he returns to the hills of his childhood, to Holbrook House, where he hopes to find peace among the memories of his youth. But solace doesn’t come easy. Someone—or something—has other plans.Like Aaron, Holbrook House is but a shell of what it once was, a target for vandals and ghost hunters who have nicknamed it “the devil’s den.” Aaron doesn’t believe in the paranormal—at least, not until a strange boy begins following him wherever he goes. Plagued by violent dreams and disturbing visions, Aaron begins to wonder if he’s losing his mind. But a festering darkness lurks at the heart of Holbrook House…a darkness that grins from within the shadows, delighting in Aaron’s sorrow, biding its time.

From the Publisher

I wanted to be scared. It’s important to remind myself of this when I look back at beginning Ania Ahlborn’s The Bird Eater. I asked for it, and Ania answered. The Kindle First selection committee wondered if I thought The Bird Eater was too scary to be included in the program. “Yes,” I said, “and that’s why we should include it.” Let’s be absolutely clear here, folks: this is a horror story, but it’s more than that—it’s a great novel. If you are afraid of the dark, the best way to overcome it isn’t to hide away but to turn on a light. And that’s what The Bird Eater is like—you aren’t just reading it, you’re facing it. Ania challenges familiar horror tropes in her writing, and in The Bird Eater she trains her pen on the haunted-house story. Her protagonist, Aaron, must endure unimaginable loss as a child and then as a father. After twenty years, he returns home, where hallucinations mix with flashbacks, ghosts with reality, and Ania’s prose coils around itself until the reader is breathless. Then there are the dead birds. Ornithology students should probably be wary, although the way in which Ania incorporates flight and winged imagery is both beautiful and macabre, such as comparing a pair of bloody handprints to “a butterfly under glass.” The Bird Eater is one to read on a windy night, when the trees bend and the shuffling of leaves could be mistaken for the flapping of wings. Welcome to the darkness. - Alex Carr, Acquiring Editor

About the Author

Born in Ciechanów, Poland, Ania Ahlborn is also the author of the horror thrillers Seed and The Neighbors. She earned a bachelor's degree in English from the University of New Mexico, and enjoys gourmet cooking, baking, drawing, traveling, and watching movies, and exploring the darkest depths of the human (and sometimes inhuman) condition. She lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with her husband and two dogs.

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