ELIZABETH BROADBENT
"A stunning debut with a narrative voice so strong, you'll feel the swamp breathing down your neck. Eerie and very moving."
—Tim McGregor, author of Eynhallow and Wasps in the Ice Cream
"Ink Vine is a lush and deliciously queer Southern Gothic romance about desire and the things we will do to sate it. Broadbent's richly drawn characters and smart, evocative prose gives new meaning to the phrase ‘blossoming love.’ Emerald's longing--for acceptance, for love, for something more--haunts every word and sets the stage for a beautiful narrative about acceptance, self-discovery, and the power of connection.”
—Jolie Toomajan, editor of Aseptic and Faintly Sadistic
"Elizabeth Broadbent combines a steamy love story with important observations about desperation, fear, and acceptance. Ink Vine, with its elements of dark fantasy and botanical horror, reminded me of True Blood!"
—Christi Nogle, author of the Bram Stoker Award winning first novel Beulah
Release Weekend
Top New Release, LGBT+ Horror
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ABOUT INK VINE
Emmy's mother tells her: Stay out of the swamp. Deep in its cypress-forest, Emmy meets a green-eyed stranger offering love, comfort, understanding—everything the world isn't willing to give. But there's something strange about Zara. Something about her secrets . . .
Lower Congaree calls Emmy a whore. It doesn’t help that she’s a stripper. It doesn’t help that she’s one of those Joiner girls, trailer trash, destined for welfare or the chicken plant. Worst of all, she likes girls better than guys, and in a town like Lower Congaree, bi girls are smart enough to keep their mouths shut.
Emmy can stay with her family, play by the crooked rules of Lower Congaree, and accept her fate, or she can follow that half-hidden trail into the heart of the swamp. In that place of tangling moss and rioting vines, Zara’s offering something Emmy wants. Its pay may be more than she wants to pay.
ABOUT UNDERTAKER BOOKS
At Undertaker Books, our mission is to provide publishing services to indie authors worldwide, spotlighting new and unique voices within the realm of horror fiction. We strive to offer a seamless publishing journey from submission to publication while providing valuable feedback every step of the way.
We believe in collaboration between authors, publishers, editors, and designers to bring diverse voices to the forefront of the horror genre. Our passion lies in creating a long-lasting partnership with authors by focusing on the “less is more” concept: quality releases, not the quantity of them.
Undertaker Books is not limited to any specific theme or subgenre. Instead, we are dedicated to innovative storytelling and embracing the myriad voices that contribute to horror literature. To our readers, we hope to bring you stories you’ll take to your grave.
WATCH THE BOOK TRAILER
Watch the Book Trailer for Ink Vine
Ninety-Eight Sabers
coming November 29th from Undertaker Books
PREORDER NOW for only $14.99 and get the ebook FREE when you order direct from UNDERTAKER BOOKS
The Royal Tenenbaums meets The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch on a South Carolina plantation.
Problematic? Absolutely.
Family secrets. High strangeness. Reality TV.
The Trenholm clan helped found Lower Congaree, South Carolina. Their land is cursed. Their abusive patriarch has croaked. Only heirs who attend the funeral will inherit.
But when Truluck Trenholm suffered his eventually-fatal stroke, oldest son Ash turned the haunted plantation into an enormously successful reality show—with all the attendant ethical issues of profiting off its legacy. Forced to tolerate the intrusion of California producers, grip guys, and cameras, toting a ton of childhood trauma, Ash’s brother and cousins have plenty of animosity for each other, along with a strong aversion to the paranormal shenanigans of their childhood home. But when Truluck’s funeral goes pear-shaped and the cousins are cut out of his will, Hollywood producers offer the deal of a lifetime: they’ll turn the Trenholms into witchy Kardashians with a Southern drawl.
If the cousins walk away, they’ll lose everything. But the farm’s high strangeness keeps getting stranger. Something’s happening on Cypress Bend. And filming might make it worse...
Combining the literary tradition of William Faulkner, Michael McDowell, and Octavia Butler with the shimmered lunacy of John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Elizabeth Broadbent’s Ninety-Eight Sabers is a Southern Gothic novel about a family determined to stick together as history threatens to tear them apart. This is a book that asks how we live with the past—and how we accept our responsibility for it in the present.
Announcing a four-book deal
with Undertaker Books!
"The real Southern horror is not some othered monster. It lives in our history, ancestral and personal."
"The folks at Undertaker Books were so happy with Elizabeth Broadbent’s debut—Southern Gothic novella Ink Vine—that they couldn’t stop with just one Broadbent banger. Nor could they stop at two, nor at three, nor at…
That’s right. Undertaker Books is over the moon to announce a FOUR-BOOK deal with Elizabeth Broadbent, with scheduled releases happening into 2026. Titles include Ninety-Eight Sabers, The Swamp Child, Bluefeather, and a not-yet-titled young adult novella.
It’s a big commitment on both sides, but as Editor-in-Chief Rebecca Cuthbert puts it, 'We’re all in. Elizabeth Broadbent is the real deal—she writes beautiful, creepy, socially-relevant stories with prose that is nothing short of delicious. These are books people need to read.'"
Read my Latest Substack Posts
A speculative fiction author and journalist, Elizabeth Broadbent lives in the second-snarkiest city in the South, a wickedly haunted horror hotspot, though her heart is buried somewhere in South Carolina's swamps. After obtaining an MFA in creative writing from the University of South Carolina, she quit a PhD program in composition and rhetoric to stay home and play with words. Her life bears an uncomfortable resemblance to Malcolm in the Middle. Read more about her here. You can also check out her books, horror, sci-fi, poetry, and essays.
