Curdle Creek: A Novel

by Yvonne Battle-Felton

Overview

Winner of a Shirley Jackson Award

For fans of “The Lottery” and The Hunger Games, this novel set in a small town with a sinister tradition is chilling in the best possible way.

“Curdle Creek is a thoughtful, sinister tour-de-force.”
―Tananarive Due, L.A. Times Book Prize-winning author of The Reformatory

Welcome to Curdle Creek, a place just dying to make you feel at home.

Osira, a forty-five-year-old widow, is an obedient follower of the strict conventions of the remote all-Black town that’s stuck in the past and governed by ominous rituals including a one in, one out population policy. Though she’s always been considered blessed, her luck changes when her grown children run off to parts unknown, she comes in second to last in the Running of the Widows, and her father flees after his name is called in the annual Moving On ceremony.

Forced to jump into a well in a test of allegiance, Osira finds herself transported first back in time, and then into another realm where she must answer for crimes committed by Curdle Creek. Exile forces her to jump realms again, landing Osira even farther away from home, in rural England. Safe there as long as she sticks to the rules, she quickly learns there are consequences for every kindness. Each jump could lead Osira anywhere, but will she ever find a place to call home?

Curdle Creek is an American Gothic in the tradition of Shirley Jackson that offers a mash-up of the surreal and literary horror that will appeal to fans of Ring Shout, The Salt Grows Heavy,and Lovecraft Country. Yvonne Battle-Felton’s propulsive tale is layered and eerie and quite unlike anything else.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250361998
Publisher:	Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	08/25/2026
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.38(w) x 8.25(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Yvonne Battle-Felton was born in Pennsylvania and raised in New Jersey before moving to Maryland. She currently lives in Yorkshire, England with her family. Yvonne holds an MA in writing from Johns Hopkins University and a PhD in creative writing from Lancaster University. She is an associate teaching professor and the academic director of creative writing at the University of Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education. Her debut novel, Remembered, won a Northern Writers’ Award, and was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize.

Editorial Reviews

Fiction Finalist for the 2025 Zora Awards
Named one of the New York Times’ “21 New Books Coming in October”
Named one of People’s “Must-Read Books of Fall 2024”
Named one of The Root’s “October 2024 Books By Black Authors We Can't Wait to Read”
Named one of Essence’s “Top 20 Book Picks For Fall 2024”
Named one of Book Riot’s “New Horror for October Because It’s The Most Wonderful Time of the Year”
Named one of Reactor’s “All the New Horror, Romantasy, and Other SFF Crossover Books Arriving in October 2024”
Named one of Gizmodo’s “October’s New Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror Releases Are Here to Haunt Your Bookshelf”

“With tight dialogue, elegant writing and a startling ending, this is a wonderful novel about the worst monsters of all: people.”
—Gabino Iglesias, The New York Times Book Review

“Funny and terrifying.”
—Caroline Leavitt, People

“Battle-Felton skillfully incorporates a lyrical flow in her writing that fuses together time travel, historical trauma, and alternative universe with great ease. Curdle Creek is a definite must read!”
—Essence

“Battle-Felton skillfully weaves an allegory about the intersection of racism, paranoia, and cultlike authority masquerading as tradition and safety. It's stunningly disturbing.”
—Leslie Gray Streeter, Johns Hopkins Magazine

“Mind-bending...The debt to Shirley Jackson’s ‘The Lottery’ is obvious, but Battle-Felton is drawing from a deeper well of influences, including Toni Morrison’s lyricism, the time-travel elements of Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred and the alternative universe of Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad. . . . Battle-Felton imagines this world exceedingly well. And she never loses sight of the novel’s central theme: how the need for communities to protect themselves unleashes its own anxieties and traumas.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“While it obviously owes a lot to ‘The Lottery’ and would appeal to Jackson’s fans, the strong world-building and genre-bending action would also make it a good fit for readers who enjoyed Matt Ruff’s Lovecraft Country (2016), Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad (2016), or P. Djèlí Clark’s Ring Shout (2022).”
—Booklist

“This novel is perfect for fans of Shirley Jackson’s classic ‘The Lottery.’”
—Emily Martin, Book Riot

“Curdle Creek is a thoughtful, sinister tour-de-force. Yvonne Battle-Felton writes so convincingly that the reader is forced to ponder what unthinkable choices we mask behind our own quest for belonging, and what wrongs we must answer for.”
—Tananarive Due, Los Angeles Times Book Prize-winning author of The Reformatory

“The nightmarish and allegorical Curdle Creek is a gorgeously written, surrealist folktale that goes bone deep. Compelling, thought-provoking, thrilling, haunting, Yvonne Battle-Felton’s Curdle Creek is simply a marvel.”
—Paul Tremblay, bestselling author of The Cabin at the End of the World and Horror Movie

“Tautly written, utterly gripping, Yvonne Battle-Felton's novel invites the reader into a world of mystery and mythology. Ultimately, Curdle Creek is about perseverance and hope, about remembering the past while boldly embracing the future and about posing the eternal question: how and where can a Black person simply be?”
—Carolyn Ferrell, author of Dear Miss Metropolitan

From the Publisher

★ 2024-08-30
A woman plans her escape from a Black enclave in this mind-bending allegory.

Curdle Creek, the setting of Battle-Felton’s second novel, has a population of 201 and is determined to stay small. Founded in 1864 as a refuge from lynching and disease for free Blacks, it’s established a series of odd rituals to run smoothly. Some are relatively benign, like a Running of the Widows, where women engage in a cutthroat race for available men; others, like the Moving On, are collective murders of residents in the name of population control and (the legend goes) fruitful harvests. But Osira Turner, the novel’s middle-aged narrator, is bristling against Curdle Creek’s ceremonies, having lost the Running of the Widows and learned her father has been selected for the Moving On. The debt to Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” is obvious, but Battle-Felton is drawing from a deeper well of influences, including Toni Morrison’s lyricism, the time-travel elements of Octavia E. Butler’sKindred and the alternative universe of Colson Whitehead’sThe Underground Railroad. Osira’s investigations into the roots of Curdle Creek’s ceremonies unlock a series of surprising, sometimes hallucinatory plot turns—the mysterious death of one of the town elders, a well that’s a portal into the town’s history—but Battle-Felton imagines this world exceedingly well. And she never loses sight of the novel’s central theme: how the need for communities to protect themselves unleashes its own anxieties and traumas. “Our ways are what save us—protecting usfrom them and from beinglike them,” Osira notes. But the death, loss, ghosts, and trials (literal and figurative) that she faces suggest that no amount of structure and doctrine can fully protect a community. The novel’s somber tone is firmly gothic, but it’s also richly open to interpretation.

Sharp speculative fiction, casting a skeptical eye on insular communities of all sorts.

Kirkus Reviews