“With his latest, Burke takes us to a besieged island and the women left behind to face ancients horrors hellbent on vengeance.”
Life on the Irish island of Winding Gale had always been difficult. Now, immediately after World War II, the island is dying, with the young either dead or moving on for better lives elsewhere, leaving only a few adults behind.
Then, when the men of the island mysteriously disappear while fishing, the woman in town must face something new yet unfathomably ancient.
A greenish mist rolls in and cuts the island off from the mainland. Strange spiral symbols appear in the sand, made from fish and stone. Alluring voices lure the remaining residents from their home, calling them to walk into the sea. Old sea vessels lurk in the fog.
This is Samhain, when the pall between the living and dead is the thinnest. Something is rising from the depths, forcing the women into a war.
… specters of the past will rise to take their vengeance in blood.
Why we’re excited about this book:
No stranger to the horror fiction scene, Kealan Patrick Burke has been consistently knocking it out of the park for years. The author of Sour Candy, The Turtle Boy, Kin, The Tent, Master of the Moors, Secret Faces, and Blanky, Burke’s short fiction has appeared in such publications as October Screams, Lullabies for Suffering, Cemetery Dance, and Garden of Fiends, among others. Burke is also a cover designer as well as an editor, having edited Quietly Now, Night Visions 12, and Taverns of the Dead. With his latest, Burke takes us to a besieged island and the women left behind to face ancients horrors hellbent on vengeance. Nathan Ballingrud (Cathedral of the Damned) calls The Widows of Winding Gale “ … one of the best horror stories I’ve read in a long time. It is many kinds of horror story as a ghost story, a sea monster story, a town under siege story, a story about grief and thwarted dreams, a story about profound isolation. You’re in for a treat.”, and Philip Fracassi (The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre) says the book is “a terrifying aquatic hellscape, an insane mashup of monsters and folklore and the occult, with a black, briny beating heart bursting with vengeance and death. A cold, wet, tentacled nightmare that will haunt you.”
Releasing from Elderlemon Press 10 March 2026, The Widows of Winding Gale by Kealan Patrick Burke is available for pre-order now.
BOB PASTORELLA
