Skip to content

Be Still My Unbeating Heart

Pages
336
Published
2026
Language
English

Synopsis

A cozy vampire vacation mystery set in a seaside Italian village, featuring a reformed vampire, his magical talking cat, and a handsome, brooding detective. Bastian may be a vampire, but he doesn’t bite. . . . Not anymore, at least. These days, Bastian just wants to live his best undead life: visit charming Italian villages, maybe dance in the square with a cute boy, all with Whitby, his best friend (and magical talking cat) by his side. What he doesn’t want? To stumble across a dead body on the beach, a girl who appears to have been killed by a vampire. It wasn’t Bastian. He swears—on his own grave. But the local police chief doesn’t trust Bastian, or any vampire, for that matter, so he assigns detective Nico De Luca to keep an eye on him until his trial. And while Bastian normally wouldn’t complain about having a gorgeous, mysterious man by his side, he has more important things to worry about, because the police chief has called the Vampire Council, and if the real killer is still at large when they arrive, the whole town could be in danger. As more bodies begin to pile up, Bastian, Whitby, and De Luca must get to the bottom of who in Vernazza is framing vampires, before it’s too late. Charming, twisty, and laugh-out-loud funny, Be Still My Unbeating Heart by Josh Winning is a delightful romp through a swoon-worthy magical murder mystery.

About the author

J
Josh Winning

Josh Winning is a British writer of horror and fantasy whose fiction centres queer characters. He grew up in Suffolk and spent years as a film journalist for Radio Times and Total Film; he also co-hosts the Charmed Chat podcast. His novels include The Shadow Glass, Burn the Negative, which was long-listed for a Bram Stoker Award, the summer-camp slasher Heads Will Roll, and Be Still My Unbeating Heart. He lives in East Anglia.