Chalk Man, The Hiding Place, The Other People, The Burning Girls, A Sliver of Darkness, and The Drift

Chalk Man

Dust jacket illustration by David Palumbo.

“Want to read somehting good? You won't find it on the front besstseller table at your bookstore, but it's new, and will be there. The Chalk Man, by C. J. Tudor. If you like my stuff, you'll like this.”  -—Stephen King

It’s 1986 in the small town of Anderbury in England, and 12-year-old Eddie and his group of friends—Fat Gav, Metal Mickey, Hoppo, and Nicky—are just normal kids, the kind who get into minor trouble by accident, out of boredom. When a new teacher, Mr. Halloran, gives Eddie the idea of using an unwanted birthday gift of a tub of chalks as a way for his friends to leave each other messages around town in their own secret code, all is fun and games. That is, until a chalk drawing leads them straight to a dismembered body in the woods. 

Thirty years later, in 2016, Eddie is all grown up and a teacher himself when an envelope containing a chalk drawing of a stick figure shows up at his house. He’s in no hurry to revisit the horrors of the past, but it seems all his friends got the same letter. Mickey insists he knows who really murdered the girl whose body was found so long ago. And when a new body appears, there is no choice except to confront the past if Eddie wants to stay alive.

Alternating between the past and the present, C. J. Tudor’s The Chalk Man is a riveting novel of suspense that reads like a cross between Stephen King and Michael Marshall Smith, and introduces an incredibly compelling new voice.

The Subterranean Press limited edition includes an exclusive introduction by the author, as well as an alternate, never-before-published ending.

The Hiding Place

Dust jacket illustration by Francois Vaillancourt.

About the Book:

Joe was just a teenager when his kid sister Annie went missing. He’d been hanging out with a troubled group of friends in his hometown of Arnhill, exploring a supposedly haunted abandoned mine when she disappeared for 48 hours. But the thing is, Annie came back--she just wasn’t the same girl. And his sister was only one of the group’s casualties. 

Joe left Arnhill with no desire to return. But somehow, he always knew he’d be back. When he receives a mysterious message that implies what happened to his sister may be happening again, he bluffs his way into a teaching job at the local high school and begins to investigate. The first lead? A recent-murder suicide in which a mother brutally killed her young son and wrote three chilling words in blood on the wall: Not my son.

A riveting follow-up to her acclaimed debut The Chalk Man, C.J. Tudor’s The Hiding Place (published as The Taking of Annie Thorne in the U.K.) is a story in which letting old secrets stay buried results in mind-bending, pulse-pounding thrills.

The Subterranean Press edition will feature an original introduction by the author, as well as an alternate ending. 

The Other People

Dust jacket and full-color end sheets by François Vallancourt.

About the Book:

“The worst that can happen only ever happens to other people.”

Gabe Forman is late coming home from work, stuck in traffic behind a crappy car covered with bumper stickers. It’s only an annoyance, until the day turns into his worst nightmare. He sees a little girl’s face in the back window, crying “Daddy.” He’d know her anywhere, it’s his five-year-old daughter, Izzy.

But Gabe loses the car and, convinced he can’t have seen what he thought he did, decides to call home to let his wife know he’s late. The police answer. His wife and daughter are dead.

Most people would give up hope, but Gabe refuses. Three years later, he continues the search for a daughter he’s convinced is still alive with the help of a mysterious man he knows only as the Samaritan. And then he discovers a tantalizing clue--a sinister group who call themselves The Other People. They know suffering. They know loss. They think maybe you should too…

With The Other People, a breathtakingly strange, gripping third novel that explores the consequences of loss and revenge, C.J. Tudor cements her place as one of the most exciting new voices in horror.

The Subterranean Press edition of The Other People will include an exclusive original introduction by the author.

The Burning Girls

Dust jacket illustration by Jeffrey Alan Love.

About the Book:

The seemingly picturesque small town of Chapel Croft holds a dark history, filled with secrets. Some are old--the Sussex Martyrs, villagers burned at the stake in the 1500s, including two young girls said to still haunt the chapel. Doll-like effigies made of twigs are burnt each year in their remembrance. Then there are two teenage best friends who went missing decades ago, never to be found, Merry and Joy. And, most recently, the suicide of the vicar inside the church. 

It’s that most recent tragedy that brings Reverend Jack Brooks and her teenage daughter Flo to Chapel Croft. Assigned as the new town vicar, Jack has her own secrets, and if she’d hoped to escape them here, she quickly learns that won’t be easy. She’s met by a young girl covered in blood and a suspicious, judgmental community. Flo receives an uneasy welcome of her own, making a single friend, a boy who is the target of the town bullies. In Chapel Croft, secrets have a way of coming to light in a blaze that may burn them all. 

Acclaimed author C.J. Tudor’s fourth novel, The Burning Girls, may be her most masterful yet. In her gripping exploration of trauma and truth, she unveils revelations about humanity that are both surprising and profound. 

A Sliver of Darkness

Dust jacket art by Jeffrey Alan Love.

Appropriately enough, the signed limited edition of C. J. Tudor’s much-praised debut collection, A Sliver of Darkness, will be published this autumn.

About the Book

Time slips. Doomsday scenarios. Killer butterflies.

These eleven twisted tales of the macabre from the bestselling author of The Chalk Man and The Burning Girls are your perfect companions on a dark night…if you’re brave enough.

Join a group of survivors who wash up on a deserted island only to make a horrifying discovery.

Meet a cold-hearted killer who befriends a strange young girl at a motorway service station. But can a leopard ever change her spots?

Enter a block of flats with the most monstrous of occupants and accompany a ruthless estate agent on a house sale that goes apocalyptically wrong.

In “Final Course” the world has descended into darkness, but a group of old friends make time for one last dinner party.

“Runaway Blues” tells a tale of thwarted love, revenge, and something very nasty stowed in a hat box.

And “I’m Not Ted” sees a case of mistaken identity result in hellish consequences.

Welcome to A Sliver of Darkness, which Publishers Weekly says “provides plenty of subtle chills,” while Booklist, in a starred review, says “it’s what Tudor does with her material that makes the stories special. None of them go where we think they will go; there’s always some twist, some change in direction, that makes us sit up in surprise (or shock).”

The Drift

Dust jacket illustration by François Vaillancourt.

We're thrilled to announce The Drift, C. J. Tudor's acclaimed apocalyptic thriller.

An overturned coach full of students.
Not all of them will survive.
A stranded cable car full of strangers.
One of them is a killer.
A remote chalet full of friends.
Soon they’ll be enemies.

While being evacuated from a secluded boarding school during a snowstorm, Hannah’s coach careers off the road, trapping her with a handful of survivors. If they can’t find a way out in time, the snow will bury them, but someone doesn’t want the students to escape.

Meg wakes up in a cable car stranded high above snowy mountains, with five strangers and no memory of how they got on board. They’re heading to a place known only as “The Retreat,” but as the temperature drops and tensions rise, Meg realizes they won’t all make it there alive.

Carter lives and works in a remote ski chalet with a mismatched bunch of companions. As their generator wavers in the storm, it risks releasing something lurking in the chalet's depths—and their fragile bonds will be tested when the power fails for good.

The terrors faced by Hannah, Meg, and Carter are each one part of the puzzle. What connects them is an even greater horror—one that threatens to consume all of humanity.

Limited: 300 signed numbered hardcover copies

Lettered: 26 signed leatherbound copies, housed in a custom traycase