Crone
by Keith Rosson
First print run signed by the author with block-sprayed edges
Keith Rosson, the author Stephen King hails as “exciting, suspenseful, [and] horrifying,” is set to return with a new novel that promises to be his most haunting work to date. For fans eagerly awaiting his next foray into the macabre, Crone is poised to deliver a devastating punch of gritty noir and supernatural terror. Slated for release on September 22, 2026, via Black Crow Books in the UK and Random House in the US.
Crone marks a significant moment for horror readers who appreciate literary depth with their dread. Here at Ginger Nuts of Horror, we’ve been following Rosson’s career with the keen interest of dedicated genre fans, and this announcement feels like the culmination of themes he’s been masterfully building for years.
Building on the momentum of his recent successes, Rosson has cemented his reputation as a vital voice in modern horror. His 2024 novel, Fever House, which King described as written at a “flurry-of-punches pace,” took the genre by storm with its unique blend of criminal underworld chaos and apocalyptic dread. In our deep-dive review of the duology, we called Fever House and its sequel The Devil By Name “a brutal kind of magic,” noting how Rosson makes you “stare directly into the howling, unnatural void… and then, impossibly, he makes you feel for the shattered people staring back from the edge”.
However, it was his most recent release, Coffin Moon, that truly set the stage for the emotional intensity of Crone. Praised as “mind-blowingly good” by Stephen King and “the best modern vampire story ever,” Coffin Moon proved Rosson’s mastery of taking classic horror tropes and grounding them in raw, human grief.
Our review hailed it as “a gripping descent into darkness,” a novel that “confirms Keith Rosson’s place among the most interesting voices in contemporary dark fiction” by grounding its supernatural elements in “emotionally authentic characters and historical specificity”. We explored how the vampire, John Varley, became a symbol of inescapable violence, making the story “as much about trauma and grief as it is about vengeance and bloodshed”. This exploration of trauma’s lingering echo is a thread we’ve seen evolve directly from the “shattered people” of the Fever House duology.
We even went so far as to place Coffin Moon in the pantheon of great vampire reinventions, comparing it to Brian Lumley’s Necroscope series. In that feature, we argued that both authors understand “the vampire’s fundamental adaptability,” using the monster as a canvas to project our deepest fears, for Lumley, the Cold War’s external threat; for Rosson, the “internal and societal rot: the lingering trauma of war, the cycles of violence, and the brutal economy of crime”.
For collectors and devoted fans, the release of Crone continues the exciting tradition of exclusive physical media from Black Crow Books. Mirroring the successful release of Coffin Moon, the first print run of Crone will feature a coveted signed edition with stunning block-sprayed edges. These limited editions have become highly sought after, transforming the reading experience into a tangible work of art that reflects the dark beauty of Rosson’s prose. Securing a copy via blackcrowbooks.co.uk is essential for fans looking to own a piece of horror history.
In Crone, Rosson pivots from vampires to explore a different kind of darkness, but the thematic core remains. The narrative follows Eli Lamp, an ex-detective and ex-addict whose life shattered a decade ago when his daughter, Hannah, vanished. Now indebted to a local drug gang as an enforcer, Eli lives on the fringes of society until a brutal murder thrusts him back into the orbit of his daughter’s past.
As Eli and Avery Bryant dig deeper, they uncover a conspiracy linking the current tragedy to the buried sorrows of Eli’s past, stretching “the realm of possibility” into terrifying supernatural territory. It is a story that asks how far a broken man will go when given a chance at redemption, and what happens when the darkness he finds is not just human, but ancient and unknowable.
With Crone, Keith Rosson continues to carve his unique claim on modern horror, and Ginger Nuts of Horror will be there, as always, to stare into the void with him.
A haunting, fearsome story of a father searching for his missing daughter and finding darkness—both human and not—at every turn, from the author of the ‘exciting, suspenseful, horrifying’ (Stephen King) Fever House Praise for Coffin Moon, A Waterstones Book of the Year
‘Mind-blowingly good. . . Best modern vampire story ever’ – Stephen King
‘Keith Rosson is slowly, surely, unstoppably carving his claim on modern horror—Patton Oswalt
‘Grabs you by the throat and doesn’t relent’—Cassandra Khaw
‘This book will leave its mark’—Paul Tremblay
‘Man, Keith Rosson’s Coffin Moon is so fucking good. I wish I had written it. This thing rips’—Joe Hill
Eli Lamp is a broken man. An ex-detective, ex-addict, and long-grieving father whose daughter, Hannah, disappeared a decade before, Eli decimated his old life investigating her abduction and is now indebted to the Crooked Wheel, a local drug gang, as an enforcer. He lives in a rundown trailer at the edge of the woods, where he keeps Hannah’s room in pristine condition and tries to make it through one day at a time.
But when the son of the Crooked Wheel’s boss is found viciously murdered in a crime scene that doesn’t seem to add up, Eli receives a new order: Find out who the killer is and your debt to the Wheel is clear forever.
This pursuit brings him into the orbit of Avery Bryant, Hannah’s best friend and the last person to see her before she went missing. Soon, Eli and Avery are entwined in a hunt for answers that spans decades, stretches the realm of possibility, and brings churning to the surface a conspiracy link ing not only these current tragedies, but the buried sorrows of Eli’s past.
Keith Rosson is the author of the critically acclaimed Fever House duology, Coffin Moon, and novels Smoke City, Road Seven, and The Mercy of the Tide, as well as the Shirley Jackson Award-winning story collection Folk Songs for Trauma Surgeons. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his family. IG: IG: @rossonkeith; BLUESKY: @keithrosson.bsky.social; TIKTOK: @keithrosson
Cover art/design @aarushimenon.dsgn
Agents @janklownesbit @janklownesbituk
Comms @blackcrow_pr #HorrorHypeTeam
First UK print run will be signed by the author, with block sprayed edges.
Pre-order from @waterstones
https://www.waterstones.com/book/crone/9781805530183
22 Sept 2026, HB £19.99 & ebook. Exclusive HB via blackcrowbooks.co.uk
@blackcrow_pr | www.blackcrowpr.com | @blackcrow_bks
MORE PRAISE FOR COFFIN MOON
‘Sinks its teeth in deep and shows no mercy’— Josh Winning
‘When I thought I’d read every kind of vampire novel, here comes Keith Rosson’—Jason Rekulak
‘One of the must-read, visceral, unforgettable horror experiences of the year’ ‘I loved every second of it’ —FanFiAddict
‘One of the darkest and most challenging vampire books. . . done so well’ —SFBook
‘If Jim Thompson or George V Higgins had written a vampire novel. . .a dark delight—Irish Times
‘Among the most interesting voices in contemporary dark fiction’ —Ginger Nuts of Horror
‘As gnarly as gristle and with a grip like rigor mortis’ —Irish Daily Mail
‘A page-turner sure to help you prep for spooky season’ —USA Today
‘Fantastic’ A Vulture Best Horror of 2025
A Paste Magazine Most Anticipated Horror Book of Fall
‘Brilliant. . . an edge of the seat thrill ride’ —Starred review, Publishers Weekly
‘A blood-soaked and bittersweet masterpiece’ —Starred review, Library Journal
PRAISE FOR THE FEVER HOUSE DUOLOGY
‘Pulp Fiction meets a punk-rock Da Vinci Code . . . awesomely blood-soaked’ —C.J. Tudor
‘Read this duology as one single grand, mutating epic’ —Esquire
A WALL STREET JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR (Fever House)
An ESQUIRE and PASTE MAGAZINE and PARADE BEST HORROR OF 2024 (The Devil by Name)
‘Exciting, suspenseful, horrifying’ —Stephen King
‘Literary horror at its finest’ —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
‘Impulsive and tremendously exciting’—The New York Times
‘A thrill-a-minute joyride’—Library Journal
‘Fever House is like being electrocuted with an awesome story and sharp, snapping prose’—Chuck Wendig
‘Exactly the face-shredding follow-up to Fever House you were hoping for’ —Nat Cassidy
‘A punk rock prince of darkness remapping The Stand for our modern times’ —Clay McLeod Chapman
‘There are very few writers as consistently daring, imaginative, and unexpected as Rosson’ —Nick Cutter
‘So rock and roll. Rosson remains the king of cool’ —CJ Leede
‘Extraordinary. . .Keith Rosson is a master’ — Richard Price
‘The top tier of apocalyptic novels’ —Wendy N. Wagner
‘The tension is wire-tight—I couldn’t put the book down’—The Wall Street Journal
‘[A] whirlwind mystery . . . that hurls [Rosson’s] genre-slashing ambition into the stratosphere’ —NPR
‘Keeps the stakes high until the very last sentence’ —San Francisco Chronicle
‘An epic nightmare of a book’ —Kelly Link
‘The unsettling darkness of Joe Hill meets the cryptic mystery of The X-Files’ —Delilah S. Dawson
‘[A] nasty, fun-to-read indulgence’ —Kirkus Reviews
‘Fever House is awesome. . . . Great writing . . . also scary as Hell!’ —Robert R. McCammon
‘Rock and roll, horror, and noir in a blender. . . A bullet of a wild ride straight to Hell’ —Alma Katsu
‘Feels so real I had to check the headlines to make sure it was a novel’ —Elizabeth Hand
‘Devilishly relentless’ —Hailey Piper
‘The most ferocious, terrifying zombie novel since The Living Dead’ —Philip Fracassi
‘The most metal novel of all time’ —Brian Castleberry
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