Book cover for Cottonmouth by Kealan Patrick Burke
2025 Released
166 Pages
2-3 Hours
Ebook Unavailable
Audiobook Unavailable
Hardback Unavailable
Independently PublishedISBN 9798286867134
Available for the first time in paperback and digital. A thrilling prequel to Kealan Patrick Burke's southern gothic horror novel Kin, COTTONMOUTH is set in the aftermath of the Great Depression in Tennessee, a time of religious fervor and charlatanism, of thieves, murderers, and moonshiners.

Here you'll meet Horseshoe Collins, a traveler on a vengeful search for the father who abandoned him; Billy Wray, a snake-handling Pentecostal preacher bringing the promise of salvation to rural communities paralyzed by fear of the Devil; and Jonah Merrill, a child grieving the loss of his beloved father and tormented by his mother's wrath.

With the threat of a second World War looming on the horizon, destiny will bring these three people together and set innocent young Jonah on the path to his eventual fate and a new name: Papa-In-Gray, the patriarch of the dreaded Merrill family whose horrific exploits were first introduced to the world in KIN.

Kealan Patrick Burke

Hailed by Booklist as "one of the most clever and original talents in contemporary horror," Kealan Patrick Burke was born and raised in Ireland. Since then, he has written numerous novels, among them the popular southern gothic Kin, and over two hundred short stories and novellas, many of which are in various stages of development for film/TV. In 2005, Burke won the Bram Stoker Award for his coming-of-age novella The Turtle Boy, the first book in the acclaimed Timmy Quinn series. 

More recently, he wrote the screenplays for Sour Candy (based on his novella), and the remake of the iconic horror film The Changeling (1980), for the original film's producer, Joel B. Michaels. He also adapted Sour Candy as a graphic novel for John Carpenter's Night Terrors.

He lives in Ohio with a Scooby Doo lookalike rescue named Red.

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