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Darling

Mercedes M. Yardley

This Southern Gothic cautionary tale captures the small town suspense of Ashley Winstead’s Midnight is the Darkest Hour and the frightening homecoming of T. Kingfisher’s A House with Good Bones in a domestic thriller where magic surrealism meets haunted house, proving that some pasts are best left behind you. Darling has its demons.

Cherry LaRouche escaped the claws of Darling, Louisiana at sixteen. When she returns after her mother's death, Cherry and her children are forced into a nightmare where evil spreads like infection and the house itself demands her bones.

While Cherry tries to separate fact from fantasy, the locals discover the bodies of several murdered children. When Cherry's own daughter goes missing, she's forced to face everything she had fled from and confront the true monsters of Darling. From Mercedes M. Yardley, three-time Bram Stoker Award winner for Little Dead Red, Love is a Crematorium, and “Fracture,” comes a stunning revised edition of Darling. This Southern Gothic tour de force is the first novel in the interconnected world of The Hunger Garden, where demons and delights both await you.

GenresLiterature & FictionGenre FictionHorrorGothic

606 pages

English edition · First published 2026 by Ruadán Books · ISBN 9781968143114

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