Daphne

A tie game with summer-­league rivals, friends and family in the bleachers, the ball in your hand at the free-­throw line, is no time to ask the rim a question. Yet that s what Kit Lamb does. Even as she lifts the ball, elbow in, left hand supporting, even as it seems like nothing could chop her focus, and nothing has yet, not in this game, not even when she made the and-­one that led to this moment. A question for the rim:

Will Daphne kill me?

Kit almost laughs as she releases the ball. There s a hitch in the shot to be sure. She s embarrassed of her own question, even if nobody else could ve heard.

The ball leaves her fingertips, the gym is haunted-­house quiet. But the question remains suspended in her head. And with it, the image of the woman Daphne, Kit s own idea of her, the horrid centerpiece of Natasha Manksa s Samhattan myth; Daphne in denim, Daphne with patches, Daphne the madwoman who smells of smoke and whiskey.

The ball goes through the net.

So, that s a yes. An answer Kit doesn t have time to think about right now.

Chaps inbounds quick from the baseline, but one second is not enough for their star forward to get off a full-­court shot.

Samhattan wins.

By one.

Kit is mobbed by her teammates. So many howling voices, so much love. None louder than Dana, who is as sweaty as Kit; Dana, who shot a meager one for eleven but got the steal that led to Kit s game-­winning three-­point play.

Legend! Dana yells. Legend!

Kit can t stop smiling. As they lift her up, as friends and schoolmates rush the floor. As music explodes through the gymnasium PA.

Even as she worries too.

Not about the answer the rim gave her. Not about that yes. Not yet.

For Kit Lamb, success never feels entirely true. In moments when she s supposed to be the winner, it s more like she s in a theatrical reproduction of someone else s victory.

LE-­GEND! the other ballers shout.

She can see the players from Chaps on their knees, yes, heads

Josh Malerman is a New York Times bestselling author and one of two singer-songwriters for the rock band The High Strung. His debut novel, Bird Box, is the inspiration for the hit Netflix film of the same name. His other novels include Unbury Carol, Inspection, A House at the Bottom of a Lake, and Malorie, the sequel to Bird Box. Malerman lives in Michigan with his fiancée, the artist-musician Allison Laakko.

Daphne is a superb serial killer novel and a great coming-of-age story. Josh Malerman delivers one of his best novels yet, and one of the most memorable villains in recent history. This is the literary equivalent of a defibrillator, and the shock will leave you feeling alive and wanting more. Gabino Iglesias, author of The Devil Takes You Home

Daphne is somehow both a terrifying serial killer story and a beautiful meditation on the psychic gulf between adolescence and adulthood. It left me sniffing for smoke and jumping at shadows. Delilah S. Dawson, New York Times bestselling author of The Violence

This terrifying little book will get you just like Daphne does first with curiosity, then fascination, and before you know it, you re sucked in deep, and it s too late. You ll be triple-checking the locks and sleeping with all the lights in the house on bright, too afraid to close your eyes. Peng Shepherd, USA Today bestselling author of The Cartographers

Welcome to Samhattan, Michigan, a place where Kit s ever-looming anxiety of senior year and the threat of a monstrous ghost stalking her teammates are equally real and terrifying. Daphne is both a new spin on the slasher genre and a deeply rewarding novel about the nature of the horrors inside us. Gwenda Bond, New York Times bestselling author of Stranger Things: Suspicious Minds

A swift and fierce novel about collective forgetting, repression, anxiety, and fear and above all a seemingly unstoppable villain . . . Sleek and scary, it looms larger and larger with every page. Brian Evenson, author of The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell

If you don t start your summer with a copy of this crinkled spine, worn pages, crammed in the back pocket of your jeans you re doing it all wrong. Daphne will scare the bejesus out of you. This is Malerman at his best. J. D. Barker, New York Times bestselling author of A Caller s Game

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