A Misfortune of Lake Monsters

For readers who enjoy Harrow Lake by Kat Ellis, House of Hollow by Krystal Sutherland, Dark and Shallow Lies by Ginny Myers Sain, and The Lake House by Sarah Beth Durst.

"Nicole M. Wolverton confronts her lovable characters with that particular, skincrawly species of fear that comes with remembering what it's like to be hunted. Add a dash of Stranger Things shenanigans and you get a fun and absorbing read about friendship, family, and cryptids. Devil's Elbow is a great place to spend your day." -- Amelinda Bérubé, author of The Dark Beneath the Ice and the Bram Stoker Award finalist Here There Are Monsters

When legends bite back.

Lemon Ziegler wants to escape rural Devil's Elbow, Pennsylvania to attend college--but that's impossible now that she's expected to impersonate the town's lake monster for the rest of her life. Her family has been secretly keeping the tradition of Old Lucy, the famed (and very fake) monster of Lake Lokakoma, alive for generations, all to keep the tourists coming. Without Lemon, the town dies, and she can't disappoint her grandparents . . . or tell her best friends about any of it. That includes Troy Ramirez, who has been covertly in love with Lemon for years, afraid to ruin their friendship by confessing his feelings. When a very real, and very hungry monster is discovered in the lake, secrets must fall by the wayside. Determined to stop the monster, Lemon and her best friends are the only thing standing between Devil's Elbow and the monster out for blood.

Nicole M. Wolverton is the author of the adult psychological thriller The Trajectory of Dreams (2013) and served as the editor of Bodies Full of Burning (2021), an anthology of short horror fiction through the lens of menopause. She is a Pushcart Prize-nominated writer of short stories and writes creative nonfiction and essays as well. Her work has been published in over forty anthologies, magazines, and podcasts.