Black Sheep

Vesper Wright left her small New Jersey hometown on her eighteenth birthday, putting the cult-like religious community of her childhood behind her. Six years on, she drifts between waitressing jobs, and she has just been fired when an invitation arrives in the mail.

Her cousin Rosie, who was once close to her as a sibling, is about to marry Brody, Vesper's former boyfriend. Vesper vows to stay away. The wedding is being held at the family farm, though, and her mother Constance is waiting there. Constance once worked as a horror-movie scream queen and has always kept her daughter at arm's length.

Back among the relatives and neighbours she fled, Vesper learns that the community's rituals are stranger and more dangerous than she remembered. The family secrets, including the question of who her father was, were never buried as deeply as she had hoped.

The narration is cynical and darkly funny, and the horror is supernatural and gory. The book is a standalone, published by Berkley in 2023. What waits at the farm may keep Vesper from ever leaving a second time.