Ten Sleep - Paperback

by Nicholas Belardes (Author)

On a cursed cattle drive through modern-day Wyoming, a young Mexican American woman is stalked by savage creatures, undead beasts, and ancient evils in this weird Western horror for readers of Nick Cutter's Little Heaven, Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy, and Sundial by Catriona Ward.

"Up in the high lonesome country, it's not just the cattle and the work that are challenging--here there be monsters, too." --STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES

When Greta Molina's old friend, Tiller, offered her the job, a 10-day cattle drive across the Wyoming prairie to the ranching town of Ten Sleep, it sounded like a well-paid break. A few long days on an ATV with 320 cows and calves, alongside two guys she's known since college, will give her time to sort out the mess in her head.

What Greta doesn't know is the legacy of murder and rot that runs deep into the rocks of this land. As each night passes on the prairie, the trio faces mounting supernatural dangers: a ghost train of the damned, wild animals walking alongside dead ones--and evidence of a gigantic creature in the skies, one that's supposedly been extinct for eons. And Tiller may be hiding even darker secrets the further they go. Safety is only ten sleeps away, but Greta soon realizes that may be too long for all of them to survive.

Author Biography

Nicholas Belardes's fiction combines elements of literary fantastic, fantasy, eco-horror, and science fiction. His obsession with nature, history, and the world's ongoing climate disasters, blended with a daily birdwatching habit, fills his prose with not just warblers and flycatchers but also other obscurities from the natural world. He earned his MFA at University of California Riverside's Palm Desert Low Residency where he received the Founder's Award. The Deading is his debut horror novel. He lives on the Central California coast. You can find him online at nicholasbelardes.com.