The low, low woods /

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

From New York Times bestselling author Carmen Maria Machado ( Her Body And Other Parties, In The Dream House ) comes a story so horrifying you won't dare to forget!

There's something in the woods...

Shudder-to-Think, Pennsylvania, has been on fire for years. The woods are full of rabbits with human eyes, a deer woman who stalks hungry girls, and swaths of skinless men. And the people of Shudder-to-Think? Well, they're not doing so well either.

When El and Octavia wake up in a movie theater with no memory of the last few hours of their lives, the two teenage dirtbags embark on a horrifying journey to uncover the truth about the strange town that they call home.

From critically acclaimed writer Carmen Maria Machado ( Her Body and Other Parties ) comes The Low, Low Woods , from the smash-hit lineup of the Hill House Comics library. Featuring stunning artwork by Dani ( Lucifer ), this volume collects The Low, Low Woods #1-6.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

Machado (In the Dream House) makes her graphic novel debut with a gloriously unnerving tale of monsters, sinkholes, witches, and yearning teenage dreams. Shudder-to-Think is a town where men died "hacking up pieces of lung or crushed beneath ten tons of rock" in the mines and women lost their memories, or just went missing, regularly. That's what happened to El and Vee, two best friends who at some point in the 1990s wake up in a movie theater with no recollection of the film and decide to investigate the mystery behind that gap in time and the strange happenings around the community. As they dig deeper, they realize Shudder-to-Think's cruelties and erasures--and the grotesque creatures in its woods--share a nefarious connection. As it happens, in this place where a fire has burned for years underground, humans can be the worst monsters. Within the horror plot lives a touching tale of friendship, choices, grief, and empowering rage, with a female-centered queer and diverse cast of characters. Machado also offers a rare look at magic as karma: "Magic is, among other things, a metaphor. It's a kind of sacrifice. What I do to others I do to myself," intones one of the mystical, ageless forest dwellers. The eerie, sketchy art by Dani suits the mood: her brooding figures skirt the edge of disappearance. This will surely call out to fans of Machado's searing prose, and it will also hit the spot for comics fans who like their horror heartfelt. (Sept.)

Booklist Review

Written by the much-admired Machado, this collects the first six issues of the second series published by DC's Hill House imprint. Spunky Latina El and levelheaded, dark-skinned Octavia live in an eastern Pennsylvania coal town where strange creatures and occurrences have been popping up for as long as the two teenagers can remember. After they wake up in a theater with muddy shoes and no memories of the movie, they suspect it has something to do with their town's history, and what begins as a monster story slowly evolves into a horrifying cover-up of men's crimes against women in their town. Greek mythology references appear in the backstory (a witch named Circe, magical water from the river Lethe), adding to the tale's intricacy, and Dani's illustrations feel raw and unrefined, with mostly drab colors, evoking a haunting quality. This book starts out as two girls trying to get to the bottom of a mystery, but it ends up a thought-provoking, eerie, and well-timed look at how misogyny and the desire to hide it can be damaging to everyone--and how those affected have the right to choose how to handle their memories. Readers who enjoy the more psychological aspects of horror will want to read this over and over again.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Carmen Maria Machado is the author of the memoir In the Dream House and the short story collection Her Body and Other Parties . She has been a finalist for the National Book Award and the winner of the Bard Fiction Prize, the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, the Brooklyn Public Library Literature Prize, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize. In 2018 the New York Times listed Her Body and Other Parties as a member of "The New Vanguard," one of "15 remarkable books by women that are shaping the way we read and write fiction in the 21st century."

Her essays, fiction, and criticism have appeared in the New Yorker , the New York Times , Granta , Harper's Bazaar , Tin House , VQR , Conjunctions , McSweeney's Quarterly Concern , The Believer , Guernica , Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy , Best American Nonrequired Reading , and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the Guggenheim Foundation, Michener-Copernicus Foundation, Elizabeth George Foundation, CINTAS Foundation, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, and the Millay Colony for the Arts. She is the Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania and lives in Philadelphia with her wife.