Needlemouth
A Novel
Will be published approx. on 20. October 2026
Book
Hardback
288 pages
978-1-6680-8951-4 (ISBN)
Description
From the award-winning author of Bestiary, three cousins are forced to complete an impossible and violent task set by a vengeful demon.
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One night, a starved figure with a mouth the size of a needle-tip appears at Cindy’s bedside. She is hunger-afflicted, a demon with no descendants to feed from: she is Needlemouth. Part vampire, part hungry ghost, Needlemouth forces the girls into a grim task to end a man’s life.
Cindy, Yangyang, and Mindy are plunged in and out of the demon realm, where they are called to break out of the indifference and numbness of their claustrophobic worlds, and where they are met with the most rageful and resistant parts of themselves. In a quest to satisfy the demon’s hunger, they unravel their shared grief and reckon with the cyclical violence that shaped their family. For readers of Akwaeke Emezi and Carmen Maria Machado, K-Ming Chang has crafted a reimagined coming of age novel that asks: what does it mean to become the monster instead of slaying it?
>
One night, a starved figure with a mouth the size of a needle-tip appears at Cindy’s bedside. She is hunger-afflicted, a demon with no descendants to feed from: she is Needlemouth. Part vampire, part hungry ghost, Needlemouth forces the girls into a grim task to end a man’s life.
Cindy, Yangyang, and Mindy are plunged in and out of the demon realm, where they are called to break out of the indifference and numbness of their claustrophobic worlds, and where they are met with the most rageful and resistant parts of themselves. In a quest to satisfy the demon’s hunger, they unravel their shared grief and reckon with the cyclical violence that shaped their family. For readers of Akwaeke Emezi and Carmen Maria Machado, K-Ming Chang has crafted a reimagined coming of age novel that asks: what does it mean to become the monster instead of slaying it?
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K-Ming Chang is a Lambda Literary Award winner, a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree, and an O. Henry Prize winner. She is the author of Bestiary, Gods of Want, Organ Meats, and a novella titled Cecilia. She has been longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, and the Otherwise Award.