Jen Julian

An impulsive young outcast confronts his small town’s dark secrets in this atmospheric and haunting debut horror novel from brilliant new voice Jen Julian.

＂Drenched in dread and yearning, Red Rabbit Ghost is the kind of Gothic novel that you don’t so much read as inhale. I loved it.＂ ― Kelly Link, author of The Book of Love

＂Deeply immersive and darkly mysterious. Certain to be one of the year’s standout horror reads.＂ ― Craig DiLouie, author of Episode Thirteen

Eighteen years ago, an infant Jesse Calloway was found wailing on the bank of a river, his mother dead beside him. The mystery of her death has haunted him all his life, and despite every effort, he has never been able to uncover the truth.

Now someone is promising him answers. An anonymous source claims that they’ll tell him everything. But only if he returns to the hometown he swore he’d left in the rearview.

But in Blacknot, North Carolina, nothing is as it seems. It’s a town that buries its secrets deep. Jesse’s relentless investigation garners attention from intimidating locals, including his dangerous ex-boyfriend. And he’ll soon discover that this backwater town hides a volatile and haunting place on its desolate edge.

The Night House is calling. Some secrets are better left buried...

＂At once elegiac and deeply visceral. A bittersweet ode to all the ways in which a place can haunt us long after we’ve departed―and transform us when we return.＂ ― Georgia Summers, #1 international bestselling author

＂Julian weaves a dark spell with the bones of southern gothic storytelling and gorgeous prose. To enter this haunted swamp of a novel is to lose yourself in cosmic mystery.＂ ― Andy Marino, author of The Swarm

Jen Julian’s previous publications include a short story collection, Earthly Delights and Other Apocalypses (Press 53, 2018), which was the winner of Press 53’s Short Fiction Prize, as well as work in numerous literary journals, most recently a story in Third Coast Magazine, which received distinction in Best American Short Stories 2023. Jen holds a PhD in English from the University of Missouri and an MFA in Fiction from UNC Greensboro. A 2016 Clarion Alumna, she has contributed fiction both to the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and the Texas Book Festival. These days, Jen lives in the mountains of North Georgia with her enormous ginger cat and teaches creative writing at Young Harris College.