ELIZABETH BROADBENT
Ink Vine
Undertaker Books, 2024
Sometimes, you just pick your poison and pray.
Stay the hell out of the swamp — the backwater town of Lower Congaree recites it like an eleventh commandment. But when exotic dancer Emmy Joiner sneaks under the dark tree-canopy behind her family trailer, she meets mysterious, tattooed Zara, the first girl she dares to kiss.
But the small-town South hates a woman who dares to dance instead of plucking chickens for minimum wage, and as Emmy’s life falls apart, her relationship with Zara grows more tangled and bizarre. Zara’s offering something beautiful. But while Emmy’s slowly strangling, its price may be more than she’s willing to pay.
Shifting between the green-bright cypress cathedral and the dreamland of a dance club, Broadbent’s unforgettably-voiced debut confronts the brutal realities of poverty in the South, with a sapphic tale both sultry and sinister, gritty and gothic.
Ninety-Eight Sabers
Undertaker Books, 2024
The sprawling Nesmith clan helped found Lower Congaree, South Carolina. Problem: they’re slightly nuts. Second problem: their land is cursed, or something. Third, fourth, fifth problems: Their father/uncle was abusive; he’s dead; and only heirs who attend the funeral will inherit.
But when Truluck Nesmith suffered his eventually-fatal stroke, his oldest son Ash turned the haunted plantation wedding destination, which supports and employs their vast clan of cousins, into the site of an enormously successful reality show. Ash’s brother Sullivan and cousins Rhys and Olivia aren’t happy about it. But Rhys has student loans to pay. Sullivan and Olivia want recompense for their childhood. And their fifth cousin Henry was never supposed to come to Cypress Bend, much less stick around.
Forced to tolerate the gross intrusion of California producers, grip guys, and cameras, toting a metric ton of childhood trauma, the cousins have plenty of animosity for each other, along with a strong aversion for the paranormal shenanigans of their childhood home. But when the funeral goes fucktangular and the cousins are cut out of the will, Sullivan, Rhys, and Olivia are offered the deal of a lifetime. To take it, they’ll have to become the witchy Kardashians with a Southern drawl. They hate it. But as weird tumbles into weirder, they’ll have to come together as a family. Or else.
Blood Cypress
Raw Dog Screaming Press, 2025
No one cares when Lila Carson’s ten-year-old brother Beau disappears. He can’t speak. He throws tantrums. He’s a useless Carson, one of those kids in a broken-shuttered house that lost its glory when his father died. When the sheriff and his good ol’ boy deputies show up to investigate, they eye up Lila and call her twin brother Quentin names. A closeted bisexual girl in the South, she’s terrified.
Lower Congaree recites it like an eleventh commandment: Don’t go in that swamp. But as the long night drags on, it’s clear Beau disappeared behind those ancient trees. The sheriff’s deputies won’t risk going back there.
Lila might not have a choice.