“With his latest, Smith delves into nightmarish cosmic dread while maintaining his trademark descent into human depravity.”
A woman treks to a remote mountain locale to bury evidence of a terrible crime, and an aspiring serial killer walks the exact same trail. When an unnatural storm transports them to a field shrouded in mist that rolls on for miles in all directions, they find themselves in front of a towering skyscraper.
The plaque on the door reads MONSTROUS, hinting at the cosmic horrors lurking within.
Have they been delivered to this strange place for a chance at redemption, or for some ultimate form of punishment not available to earthly forces? Will they ever know the truth?
Why we’re excited about this book:
Across over fifty horror and crime novels and novellas, two-time Splatterpunk Award winner Bryan Smith has been dishing out bloodcurdling horror and always delivering the goods. The author of 68 Kill, Depraved, The Killing Kind, Last of the Ravagers, From the Void, Suburban Gothic (with Brian Keene), The Freakshow, The Unseen, and the Drayton Falls series amoung others, Smith’s 68 Kill was adapted for the screen, winning the Midnighters Award at the SXSW film festival in 2017. With his latest, Smith delves into nightmarish cosmic dread while maintaining his trademark descent into human depravity. Brian Keene (The Rising) says: “With Monstrous, Bryan Smith delivers what might very well be the best novel of his career. A staggering work of cosmic horror along the lines of Brian Lumley, but pure 100% Bryan Smith. Must read!”, Tim Waggoner (Lord of the Feast) says: “The horrors Bryan Smith conjures in Monstrous are both imaginative and terrifying. This unforgettable descent into cosmic dread is a weird and unsettling masterpiece!”, and Mary SanGiovanni (Strange Stones) says: “Bryan Smith has written a masterwork of cosmic horror, a swirling vortex of the surreal and the gritty, the beautiful and the terrible, the disorienting and the distorted into one cohesive and utterly terrifying story. Forget your understanding of reality; it’s the plaything of something Monstrous. This is cosmic horror at its best.”
Why Bryan’s excited about this book:
I’m excited about Monstrous for a number of reasons, two of which stand clearly above the rest. The first is that this novel marks a return to working with esteemed genre editor Don D’Auria, who was my original editor during my years of publishing with Leisure Books. This is our first time working together again in well over a decade. The other standout reason for excitement is that this is a special book on a personal level, one that is more ambitious and fantastical than a lot of my recent work, exploring surreal, cosmic themes. It’s the kind of thing I’ve yearned to write for a long time, and I consider it one of my best novels.
Forthcoming from Flame Tree Press 22 September 2026, Monstrous by Bryan Smith is available for pre-order now.
BOB PASTORELLA
