The Sunken, the Adored

A chilling Lovecraftian horror novel from the author of Midnight Rooms, in which a recently freed enslaved woman seeking a new beginning in 1800s Venice discovers that the mysterious plague that claimed her former enslaver may have followed her across the Atlantic—and now haunts the city’s canals.

Venice, early 1800s. Mercy arrives in Italy as the sole survivor of a doomed voyage, carrying only two precious possessions: one of the world’s earliest cameras capable of producing daguerreotype plates and a letter of introduction intended for the man who once enslaved her.

The letter leads her to Umberto, an anatomist who had hired her former enslaver to photograph dissected corpses. With his photographer dead and no one else to complete the work, Mercy reluctantly takes his place. In return, Umberto introduces her to the Contessa, a British aristocrat who welcomes Mercy into her lavish Venetian home as both photographer and guest.

For the first time in her life, Mercy begins to experience the promise of freedom. Surrounded by artists, aristocrats, and eccentric companions, she embraces her newfound identity while forging unexpected friendships. But beneath Venice’s beauty, something ancient and ravenous lurks in the labyrinth of canals. The same sinister force that crossed the sea with Mercy now stalks the city—and seems inexorably drawn to her.

As Mercy struggles to uncover the truth behind the growing horror, she must confront an even more terrifying possibility: that the darkness threatening everyone she has come to care about may somehow be connected to her own past.

Dark, atmospheric, and utterly original, The Sunken, The Adored is an unforgettable blend of historical fiction and cosmic horror that is as unsettling as it is impossible to put down.