Two years ago Shad Jenkins went to prison for assaulting his
sister’s attacker. Now he has returned to the southern mountain town of Moon Run Hollow, only to find that Megan is dead. No one knows how she died–or why she was found on Gospel Trail Road, a dirt path leading up to the gorge high above the Chatalaha River, where victims of yellow fever were once brought to die.
Navigating a world filled with abnormal children and clandestine snake handlers, one that is slowly being poisoned by illegal moonshine, Shad must pierce the townsfolk’s superstitions and terrible secrets to find out the truth about his sister’s death. But the Blood Dreams he’s suffered from since childhood have taken on an eerie urgency, revealing to Shad the nightmarish form of an unseen adversary. Plagued by the wraiths that haunt the hollow, Shad finds himself increasingly unsure of his own sanity as he begins to piece together what may have happened to his sister–and who exactly his enemy is....
“There are plenty of horror writers who can effectively conjure spooks and evoke squalor and desperation, but few can match Piccirilli's skill with words….One of the great strengths in the book is its supporting cast, deftly drawn individuals with their own histories, fears, and motivations…. .NOVEMBER MOURNS is dark, ambiguous, strange, and sometimes surprisingly sweet. The horror here is as much about lost opportunities and failed attempts at salvation as it is about monsters and killers. If EudoraWelty had written about wraiths and haunted hills, it might have sounded like this. The taint in the land brings William Faulkner to mind, while the taint in the people is pure Flannery O'Connor. Piccirilli has taken Southern Gothic imagery and woven it with his own poetry to create something uniquely his own, a book of terrible beauty and beautiful terrors.”—Locus
"Brilliant and deeply unsettling."--Poppy Z. Brite, author of Liquor and Prime
“No one writes like Tom Piccirilli. He has the lyrical soul of a poet and the narrative talents of a man channeling Poe, William Faulkner, and Shirley Jackson....As terrifyingly surreal as an evening alone on the razor-thin boundary between reality and nightmare.”
–T. M. Wright, author of A Manhattan Ghost Story
“Piccirilli creates a geography of pain and wonder, tenderness and savageness. There is as much poet as popular entertainer in Piccirilli’s approach.”–Cemetery Dance
“A novel of supreme and mesmerizing power that reads like a head-on collision between Flannery O’Connor and M. R. James...A masterpiece.”–Gary A. Braunbeck, author of In Silent Graves