The Dead of Summer

La Sala (Beholder) fuses body- and eco-horror into a propulsive paranormal thriller. Queer, musically inclined teen Ollie Veltman has spent the past year away from his hometown on the island of Anchor’s Mercy, having accompanied his mother to her cancer treatments. The time spent on the mainland drove a wedge between Ollie and his best friends Bash and Elisa, and made applying to college and attending conservatory auditions seem unfathomable. What begins as an uneasy homecoming—complete with tentative reconnections with his buds and a new flirtation with visitor Sam—spirals into surreal terror when Ollie’s mother vanishes and his aunt attacks him while in a fugue state. The island is then quickly overrun by Weepers, twisted, infected beings both human and pelagic whose origins may be tied to a decades-old chemical spill. As the island goes into lockdown, Ollie and his friends fight to survive, uncovering chilling secrets that threaten both their own lives and their community’s future. Journal entries from varying characters further enrich Ollie’s cutting narration, while post-lockdown interviews with island residents add a sense of foreboding to this intense offering that meditates on the resilience of found family and the cost of unethical experimentation as well as institutional secrecy and corruption. Ollie reads as white. Ages 14–up. Agent: Peter Knapp, Park, Fine & Brower Literary. (Sept.)