Publishers Weekly
08/26/2019
The residents of a tiny, isolated town in the Australian outback are haunted by a malevolent force in this wonderfully taut novel, which is laced from start to finish with creeping dread. Every evening as the sun sets, the streets of Nebulah fill with a strange mist that swirls with terrible visions of the dead and dying. Only locked doors and windows keep the mist at bay until dawn comes—and those who linger outside are murdered, their bodies never found, their forms added to the specters in the mist come dark the next day. Aging former cop Pete is one of the last stubborn holdouts in what has become a ghost town, with most residents either disappeared into the mist or fled to safer climes. Despite strict habits of vigilance—being indoors by dark, locking doors and windows, and clustering together at night—the survivors’ numbers are rapidly whittled down by suicide, surrender, and slip-ups until only Pete and his closest friend, retired schoolteacher Milly, remain. Murphy deploys sharp, fluent prose and a skillful command of atmospheric terror to tell a story that gets at the heart of real horror: the very human emotions of regret, loneliness, despair, yearning for home, and having nowhere to go. Readers who appreciate subtle horror grounded in human failings will appreciate the buildup and maintenance of tension through this book, as well as the fateful ending, which successfully drives home that same vulnerable humanity. (Oct.)
From the Publisher
A similar energy and frantic dread as that found in Josh Malerman’s Bird Box...A solid new entry into the horror scene filled with anxiety and dread.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Soon will appeal to Stephen King fans thanks to the picture Murphy paints of a small town left behind to rot in isolation. Readers will be glued to their seats.”
—Booklist
“This debut work, that’s also the winner of the Aurealis Best Horror 2017, is beautifully written, has a clever plot and is filled with interesting characters. This poetic creation by Lois Murphy deserves the attention of horror and literary novels and is a perfect read for fans of Jeff Vandermeer, Joe Hill, Josh Malerman, and Richard Matheson.”
—Mystery Tribune
Kirkus Reviews
2019-07-28
A tiny Australian town is beset by a nightly horror-filled mist in Murphy's debut.
The town of Nebulah was a small but bustling town until nine months ago, on the winter solstice, when the mist appeared. Now the population has dwindled to six, the last remaining stragglers who have nowhere to go coming together in the evenings to keep each other safe. Pete was once a police officer and relies on that experience to help keep everyone together and in contact with the nearest town as his group slowly whittles itself to nothing. When a young girl and self-proclaimed psychic shows up at his door one night, sheltering with him from the storm of nightmares outside, she implores him to leave town before the coming solstice, or it will be the end. Her words ring in his ears as he spends the coming months trying to figure out how to convince the last remaining townspeople to leave with him. With a similar energy and frantic dread as that found in Josh Malerman's Bird Box, Murphy has constructed a world in which the idea of a town plagued by an actual calamity that is somehow ignored by the outside world is completely believable. To complicate the question of why the residents don't just leave, Murphy subtly builds a secondary monster in the state benefits system that traps these lower-income townspeople in place without the money to rescue themselves. The juxtaposition of the legitimate terror in the town and the residents' cool treatment from the rest of the country, emphasized by a scene of Pete visiting his estranged daughter, only adds to the uneasiness of the book. The seductive monsters are almost more inviting than the outside world.
A solid new entry into the horror scene filled with anxiety and dread.
