The Library at Hellebore

Reviews / Votes

SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

This is punk rock, eldritch god, carnage-fueled battle royale dark academia. The Library at Hellebore is more metal than I'll ever be and too cool for most of you.
--OLIVIE BLAKE, New York Times bestselling author of The Atlas Six

Wonderfully inventive and thoroughly engrossing. Khaw takes dark academia to a terrifying new level.
--KELLEY ARMSTRONG, #1 New York Times bestselling author

As rich and gruesome as a fresh-plucked heart, as sharp as a broken bone, The Library at Hellebore is a perfect horror novel by one of my favorite writers. It's a book that draws a line between the monsters and the monstrous, and reminds us who to root for-and what it costs.
--ALIX E. HARROW, New York Times bestselling author of Starling House

A kaleidoscopic spectacle of gothic surreality and absurdity. It is Ai Jiang, exploring the numbing exhaustion of loss, along with the seductive pleasures of death.
--AI JIANG, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Linghun

A gorgeous, gory shuddering heart of a book! Khaw's prose and storytelling remain god-tier.
-KATEE ROBERT, New York Times bestselling author

A horrifying tale with lush and gorgeous prose you can sink your teeth into.
--MONIKA KIM, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Eyes Are the Best Part

A joyfully gory spin on the magical school.
--KENDARE BLAKE, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Anna Dressed in Blood

Devilishly entertaining, thrillingly structured, and full of unexpected blows to the heart.
--NAT CASSIDY, author of When the Wolf Comes Home

Pure, bloody darkness beautifully lit up with fury, sacrifice, and revenge.
--PREMEE MOHAMED, Nebula Award-winning author of The Butcher of the Forest

Putting the dark' in dark academia...a thrilling cocktail of body horror, surreal humor and riveting mystery.
--GENOVEVA DIMOVA, author of Foul Days

Dark academia in a twisted, deadly class of its own. In space, no one can hear you scream. At Hellebore-shh!
-the librarian will consume you before you even open your mouth.
--SOFIA AJRAM, author of Coup de Gr'ce

A succulent, gory, ambrosial fever dream of a tale with prose as luscious as an overripe peach and characters as hard and twisted yet hopeful as the juice-drenched pit torn out with greedy fingers.
--DELILAH S. DAWSON, New York Times bestselling author of Bloom

Frighteningly good! The Library at Hellebore reminds us that revenge is a dish best served cold, alongside a pound of quivering flesh for good measure.
--P. DJ>>LO CLARK, author of The Dead Cat Tail Assassins

Grotesque and compelling, this is a work of horror genius.
--Ginger Nuts of Horror

If body horror and dark academia were to have a book baby, it would be The Library at Hellebore.
--Grimdark Magazine



PRAISE FOR THE SALT GROWS HEAVY

Devastatingly effective...a folklore-infused world that feels wholly unique. Expertly blending a gothic atmosphere with elements of splatterpunk, this brilliant novella is not to be missed.
- Publishers Weekly, STARRED review

With this brilliantly constructed tale that consciously takes on a well-known story and violently breaks it open to reveal a heartfelt core, Khaw cements their status as a must-read author.
- Library Journal, STARRED review

A feverishly gory, grotesquely beautiful and baroque fairy-tale-meets-love-sonnet. Cassandra Khaw's imagination is limitless.
- Paul Tremblay, author of The Cabin at the End of the World and A Head Full of Ghosts

Cassandra Khaw's writing is never more lyrical than when they're describing the knife in your heart. The bones of a fairy tale sunk deep in a charnel house of descriptive prose, an elegant confection with a blood-soaked core. I devoured it in one sitting.
- T. Kingfisher, multi-award winning author of What Moves the Dead and Nettle & Bone

Short but action-packed, unctuous, and deliciously creepy, a mash-up of Angela Carter's dark fairytale retellings and the poetic love story core of This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal el-Mohtar and Max Gladstone (2019).
- Booklist

Khaw uses poetically beautiful words to tear open your chest and gnaw on your ribs in this needle-sharp novella.
- Kaaron Warren, author of Slights and The Grief Hole

Cassandra Khaw's writing is immaculate, with every word carefully chosen for maximum impact. The Salt Grows Heavy is a truly mesmerizing story and one of the finest works of horror and dark fantasy I have ever read, dripping with a gruesome and disquieting passion.
- Grimdark Magazine

Cassandra Khaw's steely prose is matched only by the inventiveness of their imagination. The Salt Grows Heavy demonstrates their continuing mastery of the novella form with a story Angela Carter would be jealous to have written.
- John Langan, author of Corpsemouth and Other Autobiographies

A brutal and deadly romp whose language is as sharp and glittery as a scalpel made of ice. Strange and compelling, The Salt Grows Heavy is unlike anything else out there, a dark spell with needle-like teeth.
- Brian Evenson, author of The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell and Song for the Unraveling of the World

PRAISE FOR NOTHING BUT BLACKENED TEETH

Brutally delicious! Khaw is a master of teasing your senses, and then terrorizing them!
-N.K. Jemisin, New York Times bestselling author of The Fifth Season

[A] beautifully crafted ghost story ... Superbly atmospheric, beautifully controlled, the plot unreels like a slow, toxic drip as comeuppances are well and truly got.
-The Daily Mail

This is a glorious poem, a slow-motion collapse leading to the inevitable haunting. It is beautiful and it is brutal and it is heartbroken. Absolutely recommended.
-Seanan McGuire, New York Times bestselling author of Every Heart a Doorway

Imagine chucking House on Haunted Hill, Japanese folklore, Clive Barker, and Kathy Acker into a literary blender. Nothing But Blackened Teeth reads like the ghost-punk noir you never knew you needed. It's sharp, playful, and nasty as hell.
-Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts and Survivor Song

Khaw's tale seems to come at you straight, setting up your story expectations, but then twists the knife at the last minute, leaving you reeling, but wanting more.
-Richard Kadrey, New York Times bestselling author of the Sandman Slim series

Khaw's got a sterling premise, enduring lore, and the fresh talent to voice it.
-Josh Malerman, New York Times bestselling author of Bird Box

Delicate and disgusting...Each page holds an image more finely drawn and disturbing than the last.
-T. Kingfisher, author of The Twisted Ones

This book burns and crackles and slithers, its prose as beautiful and deadly as its horror. Cassandra Khaw is a master of the terrifying tale.
-Sam J Miller, Nebula-Award-winning author of Blackfish City

Reading Cassandra Khaw is akin to watching a nightmare ballet, full of beauty and elegance, pain and fragility, and breathless terror. Nothing but Blackened Teeth is mesmerizing. Don't miss it!
-Christopher Golden, New York Times bestselling author of Ararat and Red Hands

Khaw is a prose wizard who has quickly become an auto-buy for me. This story of a wedding at a malevolent manor is as unexpected and delightful as her poetic approach to horror, and I loved every sharp, delicious twist of it.
-Kevin Hearne, New York Times bestselling author of the Iron Druid Chronicles

This is Hill House for this century, this is Belasco House with people we've known since third grade, and it's got a smile so wicked you might just have to grin along with it. I know I did.
-Stephen Graham Jones, author of The Only Good Indians

Compelling and decadent. Highly recommended.
-Eric LaRocca, author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke

Khaw is always compulsively readable. This was a wonderful haunted-house story, modern characterizations in compelling tension with a lyrically beautiful ancient Japanese residence.
-Kij Johnson, winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards

What with poisonous relationships, parasite houses, and ghost brides, Nothing But Blackened Teeth is a really bad idea for a wedding, and a really great idea for a nightmare-on-the-page. This book is so magnificently rotten it writhes with literary maggots, and deserves a place of honor among its peers in horror.
-C. S. E. Cooney, World Fantasy Award-winning author of Bone Swans: Stories

A deft and creepy haunted house story, written in a lyrical style that heightens the disorienting, phantasmagoric nature of the tale. Nothing But Blackened Teeth is the kind of story you lose sleep over.
-Brian Evenson, author of Song for the Unraveling of the World

A glorious truffle of horror at its finest in the style of Rin Chupeco's The Suffering...Add in the ghostly residents who don't have any time for mortal nonsense, the most beautiful prose I've read this year, and the most excellent breaking of the 4th wall, and you have a masterpiece on your hands.
-Lizy Coale, Copperfish Books, FL

Every page absolutely oozes dread....If you like books about groups of awful people getting what's coming to them, or Japanese horror, this is going to absolutely tickle your fancy.
-Elliot Soulen, Book Shop of Fort Collins, CO

Disturbingly interesting... [The] atmosphere was heavy, suffocating almost, saturated in Japanese myth (and lots of blood!). A unique, self-aware spin on the classic haunted house trope that put me right in the mood for fall.
-Leah Atlee, Bright Side Bookshop, AZ

Ticks every box for a good horror yarn.
-The Book Lover's Boudoir Review

The story is chilling in a way that I absolutely loved, and I wanted to keep on going because I was enjoying it so much.
-Trans-Scribe Review

Cassandra Khaw's weaving of myth and folklore into the narrative was extremely effective and spine-chilling.
-Muse's Book Journal

A perfectly chilling and original haunted house story to keep you company as we head into spooky season.
-The Dust Lounge Review

It has the surreal, horrifying feel of the worst nightmare and kept my Kindle glued to my hands.
-CriminOlly Review

This story has opened its mouth wide, and devoured me as much as I consumed it.
-Rachel Read It Review

A truly wonderful piece of horror storytelling with a great blend of psychological and bloody horror.
-Run Along the Shelves Review