> Skip to content
[]
  • Published: 16 February 2027
  • ISBN: 9781645662228
  • Imprint: Kensington
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 368
  • RRP: $65.00
Categories:

Dark Waves

A Great Lakes Gothic



Escaping foster care, two sisters encounter the natural—and supernatural—entities of the North American Great Lakes on an otherworldly quest homeward to the matriarchal commune where they were raised in this Gothic eco-horror novel for fans of Catriona Ward, T. Kingfisher, Kay Chronister, and Vincent Tirado.

The Great Lakes: Huron. Ontario. Michigan. Erie. Superior. Their waters teem with life. Humans have taken advantage of their natural resources for generations. After being poached, polluted, and poisoned for centuries, they have survived, forced to coexist with the toxicity that has tainted them. Thousands of sailors have lost their lives to shipwrecks on the lakes. In the winter, the lakes are at their most angry, and their most powerful. Shipwrecking storms and ravenous vampire fish are just the beginning.

Amidst this setting, teenage sisters Sylvie and Marie-Ève George run away from their foster home and stow away on a Great Lakes bulk freighter, kicking off a supernatural odyssey. The girls grew up isolated from society, on a secluded island on the St. Lawrence River. But after the government removes them from their mother’s care, Sylvie and Marie-Ève will do anything to get back home, including journeying 1,500 miles across the lakes. They face dangerous smugglers, foul-mouthed sailors, a matriarchal cult of witches—and the everpresent threat of the lakes.

Nature remembers, and it doesn’t forgive. Mr. Martin Williams, an industrialist with investment in every part of the lakes, has employed the George family for generations. His crimes against the Great Lakes are never forgotten, and trickle down through his bloodline. His choices ripple outward through time all the way to Sylvie and Marie-Ève.

About the haunting journey to find family and a place to call home, Allison Mick’s Dark Waves is a supernatural adventure combining the social commentary of Octavia Butler and the multigenerational family drama of T. Kingfisher’s The Twisted Ones.

  • Published: 16 February 2027
  • ISBN: 9781645662228
  • Imprint: Kensington
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 368
  • RRP: $65.00
Categories:

Also by Allison Mick

See all

Praise for Dark Waves

Praise for Allison Mick

“A haunting and beautiful gothic tale of sisterhood, survival, and the things that lurk beneath the waters of the Great Lakes. Without a doubt, Allison Mick is an author to watch.” —Gwendolyn Kiste, award-winning author of The Haunting of Velkwood and Everything Looks Better in Red

“Come for the Great Lakes, stay for the witches, shipwrecks, supernatural horrors, and mounting suspicion that maybe you should have stayed on shore. The Great Lakes are already unsettling enough without supernatural horrors lurking beneath the surface. Dark Waves somehow makes them even spookier.” —Geo Rutherford, New York Times bestselling author of Spooky Lakes: 25 Strange and Mysterious Lakes that Dot Our Planet

“Mick writes the Great Lakes as five cold hearts pulsating under the ice, and the ships that cross them as invaders with rot already in the hull. Green things come up through the eyes of men. Girls survive what nobody should survive and keep walking anyway. Dark Waves is a haunting written in fresh water, and it left my soul wet but hungry for more.” —Leopoldo Goût, award-winning artist, filmmaker, and author of Rooted and Piñata

“The lakes are eternal. Mick knows these unforgiving depths and brings their brutal history to life on every page. Dark Waves speaks the language of these haunted shores–gnarled, bent, and beautiful. A horrific offering to powers beyond our understanding.” —Andrew F. Sullivan, author of The Marigold and The Handyman Method

“An arresting gothic tale that unfolds under the weight of ghastly history, social injustice, and jaw-dropping secrets, Dark Waves is a land and water odyssey with both unforgettable realist horror and terrifying supernatural hauntings. The backdrop of the Great Lakes is anything but tranquil, as the fierce George sisters navigate these bodies of water that never give up their dead.” —Tamika Thompson, author of The Curse of Hester Gardens

“Completely insane. Dark Waves combines folklore, Canadian history, and seemingly real science to produce a story whose scope pendulums between large scale geography to intimate sisterhood to a haunted house that's always wet. And here I thought Canada was mostly chill.” —Alex Gonzalez, author of rekt and The Man of Wind and Moss

“A propulsive ecohorror novel that will gently curl its tendrils around readers’ fingers and never let go.” —Booklist, STARRED REVIEW on Humboldt Cut

“A brisk and beguilingly strange novel that reimagines genre tropes and asks heady questions about sorrow, vengeance and healing. But most of all, it’s really entertaining.” —San Francisco Chronicle on Humboldt Cut

“Humboldt Cut casts revelatory light on those shadow histories; it conveys a more inclusive narrative of place—the stretch of the unchecked press of the frontier movement, the blood sunk deep in its soil.” —Alta Journal on Humboldt Cut

“Mick balances horror and humor brilliantly in this bold novel that asks big questions about our relationship to the natural world. You will never see forests the same way again after reading it.” —T. L. Huchu, USA Today bestselling author on Humboldt Cut

“A wild ride through grief, humor, and horror, all rooted in the majestic redwoods. Allison Mick’s voice is fresh and fearless, and this debut feels like sitting around a campfire where the stories are visceral and engrossing, making you glad there’s no clock to tell you it’s way past your bedtime.” —Jeremy Bates, nationally bestselling author of The No-End House on Humboldt Cut

“Allison Mick is the queen of eco-horror, and this novel will put you through the ringer.” —Richard Thomas, Bram Stoker, Shirley Jackson, and Thriller Award finalist on Humboldt Cut

“A terrifying, lyrical masterpiece of ecology and ecohorror.” —Gretchen McNeil, author of They Fear Not Men in the Woods and #murdertrending on Humboldt Cut

“A sensory experience that will make you forget where you are, Humboldt Cut gets under the skin and stays there.” —Neena Viel, author of Listen to Your Sister on Humboldt Cut

“Both a love letter to national forests and a cautionary warning, Mick meticulously blends mysticism and elemental horror with laugh out loud humor. You’ll never look at those redwoods the same way again.” —Veronica G. Henry, best-selling author of The Canopy Keepers on Humboldt Cut