The hair-raising Appalachian legend about a monster who feasts on guilty hearts comes chillingly to life in When the Night Comes Knocking. This is the kind of book you canโt turn the pages quickly enough because every chapter leaves you desperate to know what happens next. And yet, once you reach the end, youโre left wanting more.
Estranged siblings Thomas and Jane have stopped at Blackwellโs Country Store in the north Georgia mountains during an uncomfortably silent drive. Jane has not spoken to Thomas since the accident that nearly cost them both their lives.
While they are in this store with a few other people, something life-changing happens. A man stumbles into the store, but he is not alone. He has a mutilated body with him and is screaming that they have to get away from the monster out there. Of course, this stuns everyone. And they really arenโt sure what to do.
So no one really takes this manโs mad ravings seriously, but then the next person who leaves the store is killed. Maybe heโs not so crazy?
But life is about to become very interesting for everyone inside the country store, and their problems with each other and with themselves have to take a back burner if they want to stay alive.
The beast out there in the mountains feeds on guilty hearts, and everyone trapped inside the store is a possible victim. As they begin to turn on each other, some begin to wonder if the beast has made it inside the store and is just toying with them. Will anyone escape and get out alive?
If you are a fan of horror books that keep you on the edge of your seat, you will love this book. It puboishes on October 20, but you can preorder it now so that you will have it on the day it is published. And once you start reading it, you wonโt be able to put it down until youโre done.
Amazon Link: https://amzn.to/4peI0lE
Favorite Sentences
The wrongness in the air rivals the coppery smell of blood, assaulting her senses so that only churning nausea remains.
The set of closed blinds blows gently forward from the wind, while handfuls of bloodred leaves have been swept inside, scattering across the floor like a trail of dying rose petals.
The words meet his chest swiftly, and for a moment he is breathless, suspended in that terrible, endless darkness inside the car while the smoke catches and the pain seems too infinite to bear.
When it turns, she finally sees the entirety of its hideous form, like a humanโs body was submerged in the worldโs darkest shadows, then pulled and stretched out far too thin.
About the Author
Katherine Daniel is a fiction writer based in Atlanta, Georgia, where she loves to explore the dark and twisty parts of what it means to be human through storytelling. She received a bachelorโs degree in English and creative writing from Georgia State University and is represented by Cheyenne Faircloth of Handspun Literary Agency. Her debut horror novel When the Night Comes Knocking is being published by Penguin Random House on October 20th, 2026.
