Cinderwich

“Who put Ellen in the blackgum tree?”  

Decades after trespassing children spotted the desiccated corpse wedged in the treetop, no one knows the answer. 

Kate Thrush and her former college professor, Dr. Judith Kane, travel to Cinderwich, Tennessee in hopes that maybe it was their Ellen: Katie’s lost aunt, Judith’s long-gone lover. But they’re not the only ones to have come here looking for closure. The people of Cinderwich, a town hardly more than a skeleton itself, are staunchly resistant to the outsiders’ questions about Ellen and her killer. And the deeper the two women dig, the more rot they unearth … the closer they come to exhuming the evil that lies, hungering, at the roots of Cinderwich. 

Available for wholesale via Diamond Book Distribution.

Reviews

"Cinderwich is a fantastic, spooky treasure from Cherie Priest—a mystery wrapped in Appalachian lore and family secrets, with so much heart. An absolute must read."
—Fran Wilde, double Nebula winner and author of The Book of Gems

"Cinderwich is, at its heart, a compelling story of loss and the lengths we'll go to reckon with it, and it's a hell of a creepy ghost story too."
—Kelly Baker, author of Final Girl: And Other Essays on Grief, Trauma, and Mental Illness

"A maestro of the uncanny, with Cinderwich Cherie Priest weaves a masterful tapestry of the extraordinary and the everyday, flipping the small-town mystery on its head. The book reads like a cozy, the way you’d feel wearing your favorite sweater. Her storytelling prowess draws readers into its intricately crafted world. With each page turned, Priest proves herself a visionary wordsmith. A wild, entertaining ride, Cinderwich resonates long after the last page is turned."
—Maurice Broaddus, Stoker Award finalist and author of Sweep of Stars

"Cinderwich is one of those atmospheric stories where the unease comes from inside as much as from an external threat. It's a ghost story, in the truest sense and I loved the questions it asked. It's a quiet story about grief and the ripple effects trauma leaves on the the people surrounding the trauma. It's a moody, atmospheric tale that delivers fear and hope."
—Mary Robinette Kowal, Hugo Award winner and author of The Calculating Stars

"How about a road trip to a creepy, old town full of secrets with your two best friends to solve a murder-mystery. Earl grey tea, ghosts, and secrets—a perfect cozy horror/mystery to read during Halloween. No bookmark required."
—Sadie Hartmann, Stoker Award finalist and author of 101 Horror Books to Read Before You’re Murdered

Excerpt

The first Ellen Thrush has probably been dead all this time—and it’s not that I don’t care, exactly. I care, I think. I’m curious, at least. But thank God, no one expects me to get too worked up about it. She vanished before I was born, and all I have of her is an old picture or two and her name. My mother gave it to me when I was born: two years, one month, and thirteen days after Ellen mailed a Christmas card to my grandmother. In it, she wrote that she was happy, and she wished the family a wonderful new year.

There’s evidence to suggest she didn’t mean the last part, but it’s not for me to say. Maybe she was a bigger person than I am.

Frankly, I’d be surprised.

We are too much alike, as my mother and grandmother have never failed to remind me. When I did good things—when I finished my master’s degree, when I bought my house with my own money—then I was so very much like my long-lost Aunt Ellen. She had such an independent spirit after all! But when I did things the Thrushes didn’t like, somehow it was still the same story: when I dropped out of my doctorate program, when I got a DUI, when I came home with a girl instead of a boy. Oh yes. So much like my no-good, pervert of an aunt, may she rest in peace wherever she lies.

That’s when they’d pretend that I never switched to using my middle name. They’d call me by her name, with a sneer just loud enough to be heard. Even after I got my sober-for-a-year chip. (I shouldn’t have bothered. I threw it away.) Even after I brought home another boy or two, like I was trying to maintain a balance on some ledger. It never seemed to matter.

So I don’t see the Thrushes very much—not anymore. I didn’t go missing like Aunt Ellen; I just quit coming home.

Plenty of people said that’s exactly what Ellen did; she ran away from home, if you can call it that when a woman’s an adult in her twenties. But I don’t believe it. Sure, I fantasized more than once about walking away from Thrush House myself, leaving behind everyone who ever called it home. Of course, I understand the urge to quit arguing, to quit participating in the endless escalation of whose feelings are hurt most, and why, and by whom. Absolutely, they are exhausting women who deserve one another.

I can truly imagine there’s a world where my aunt Ellen might have had it up to here, packed a suitcase, and rode off into the sunset with her thesis advisor slash girlfriend—an esteemed professor of women’s history at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.

But not this world. I don’t believe that Ellen ran away, and I don’t believe that she’s alive anymore either.

I don’t believe she would have abandoned Judith.

About the Author

CHERIE PRIEST is the author of two dozen books and novellas, most recently the Booking Agents mysteries Grave Reservations and Flight Risk. She also wrote gothic horror projects The Toll, The Family Plot, and the Philip K. Dick nominee Maplecroft; but she is perhaps best known for the steampunk pulp adventures of the Clockwork
Century, beginning with Boneshaker. Cherie lives in Seattle, WA, with her husband and a menagerie of exceedingly photogenic pets.