Stay the hell out of the swamp — the backwater town of Lower Congaree recites it like an eleventh commandment.
Lower Congaree is a backwater of a backwater, a poverty-stricken South Carolina town where nail salons come and go, but the Marine recruitment center never closes. Swamp surrounds it, and strangeness stretches back as far as anyone can remember.
For the first time, Undertaker Books has collected Elizabeth Broadbent’s intertwined Southern Gothic stories, including her linked novella, Ink Vine. Swamp witches and standing stones, battered mansions and shoeless patriarchs, strip clubs and roadside diners—Lower Congaree blossoms with the otherworldly, the bizarre, the outcast and the outside of time.
Ink Vine
“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
When exotic dancer Emmy Joiner escapes to the swamp, she meets beautiful, long-legged 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. As Emmy’s life falls apart, her relationship with Zara grows more tangled and bizarre. Zara’s offering something beautiful. Its price may be more than Emmy’s willing to pay.
Imadjinn Award Finalist, Best Horror Novel, 2025
Haunted Book Club Awards, Best Novella, 2024
Praise for Ink Vine and Ink Vine and Other Swamp Stories
"This is an excellent example of a writing style referred to as Southern Gothic, which blends many themes together that don’t always work well. Poverty and social order weaves like vines with horror and dark humours that sneak up on a reader. Choosing quotes for the review was especially difficult, because the language is beautiful throughout."
"You might find it odd that in a horror collection, I’ve used the words ‘lovely’ and ‘beautiful’ so often, but that’s the power of Elizabeth Broadbent’s writing. I don’t know if I’ve ever read another author whose work sinks its hooks into my heart so much. Her exploration and handling of certain themes is simply masterful and brings new angles and perspectives to the particular horrors she delves into. Easily one of the most skilled, yet underrated writers I’ve ever read, and I’ll never stop talking about her. Simply wonderful."
"Broadbent’s prose has that nasty-sweet rhythm where a sentence can be tender, funny, and vile in the same breath. She’s great at close first-person heat, the kind that makes you feel sweat in your armpits and hear cicadas grinding their teeth. She also understands escalation. These stories don’t just “get spooky,” they get personal, then bodily, then spiritual, then irreversible. Even the shorter pieces have a clean spine and a sharp final shove. When she wants to go lyrical, she does, but she’s not precious about it. She’ll give you beauty, then immediately smear it with mud and blood, because that is the point."
"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
"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 give 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 Toomajin, editor of Aseptic and Faintly Sadistic
"Ink Vine will draw you in and reward you with strange beauty, stark and gentle at once. Like a swamp. There are dangers here, but also great rewards, if one is brave enough. I, for one, am looking forward to reading more from Elizabeth Broadbent and warmly recommend this enthralling novella."
Victoria Lilly, The Lesbian Review
"Broadbent paints the words into a gorgeous setting where she places her broken characters within, a juxtaposition between a dying town and the vibrant but dangerous swamp she’s been warned about all her life. She knows this world well and the dark fantasy/horror that comes to life between the covers seethes with life, conflict, and dark threads that threaten to pull Emmy’s world into the depths. Recommended reading and a fine new author to watch."
David Sims, Cemetery Dance