Bright and energetic, Yetta has a wild spirit stifled by her mother’s fears, father’s rules, and the path that’s been placed before her. Yetta craves freedom, though her parents have reasons for the rules and restrictions. Fear has come to their shtetl. There’s talk of an impending attack, and Jews have been disappearing mysteriously as of late. And when the violence finally does come to their door, Yetta is killed.
Grieving, her father stumbles through his basic knowledge of arcane texts and ancient magic to bring Yetta Back. And miracuously, he does—Yetta is returned. She looks the same, but she is not who she once was. She can sense that her own family may be keeping secrets from her. The answers may lie with the creature in the woods, lurking beyond the shtetl―something that may be of her father’s making, and a being that has plans of its own.
Why we’re excited about this book:
It’s not too often that something from the academic world seeps into horror fiction, but when it does it sometimes arrives as one of the most anticipated novels of the year. Gabrielle Sher hails from New Jersey and her first novel originated from her actual doctorate dissertation, “Who Made Us Monsters? Narrative Psychology and The Female Jewish Gothic.” With her debut, Sher taps into Jewish history and ritualistic magic in this gothic novel of a grieving family who raise their daughter from the dead with painful and relentless consequences. Ruth Madievsky (All-Night Pharmacy) says: “I did not have ‘lush Jewish gothic horror novel’ on my 2026 bingo card, and now I can’t imagine my life without it. Odessa is resplendent and unputdownable.”, and Nat Cassidy (When the Wolf Comes Home) says: “Odessa is a triumph. Gabrielle Sher has given us, at once, a classic monster tale, a heartbreakingly relevant historical drama, a pulse-poundingly contemporary descent into horror, a timeless parable about the porous boundaries between atrocity and self-defense, and above all, a powerful reclamation of agency. Count me in for whatever Sher writes next.”
Releasing from Little, Brown and Company 21 April 2026, Odessa by Gabrielle Sher is available for pre-order now.
BOB PASTORELLA