Freakslaw

“THIS BOOK IS EVERYTHING . . . an ode to Tod Browning’s Freaks, Kathryn Dunn’s Geek Love, and Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes . . . Grotesque, creepy, and celebratory, Freakslaw is sure to be one biggest books of the year (and possibly, one of the defining novels of the century).” —CrimeReads

An LGBTQ Reads Most Anticipated 2025 • A CrimeReads and Goodreads Most Anticipated Horror Novel of 2025 • A Storizen and Read Jump Scares Best Horror Book of April 2025 • An Autostraddle Most Anticipated Queer Book of April 2025

In this riotous horror debut, a traveling carnival of troublemakers arrive in a small Scottish town and perform their favorite pastime: revenge.

It is the summer of ‘97 and the repressed Scottish town of Pitlaw is itching for change.

Enter the Freakslaw—a travelling carnival of deviant queers and architects of mayhem. There’s Gloria, fortune teller and worm charmer; her daughter Nancy, a contortionist witch; big-hearted tightrope walker, Werewolf Louie; not to mention illusionists and conjoined twins, Cass and Henry, and tattooed human pincushion, the Pin Gal. Against Pitlaw’s miserably grey landscape, the carnival shines electric and bright, and it doesn’t take long for the town’s teenagers to be seduced by its neon charms and the possibility of escape.

But beneath it all, these newcomers are harboring a darker desire: revenge. Revenge for being cast out, never allowed to settle, punished for purely existing. And as tensions reach fever pitch between the stoic, unwelcoming locals and the dazzling intruders, a violence that has been bubbling for centuries is about to be unleashed . . .

Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love meets Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus in this sizzling debut by a writer as captivating as she is incisive, as wild as she is precise. Read this and try not to run away with the Freakslaw. Go on. We dare you.