Walk into the woods. Dive into the water. Make a wish. Meet your fate. Bram Stoker Award-winning author Sarah Read returns with a new collection of cautions and disturbances across 18 grim tales. Prepare to inherit stories of fossil-haunted houses, of doorways to the afterlife.

In the woods, learn of vengeful wolves and women. In the water, discover shipwrecks stuck in time. Find Devonian monsters and islands where your father loved to fish--and where your future hangs in the balance.

"Each story is original, terrifying, and compelling, but when Read pits what readers think is coming against the extremely sinister tone at the heart of each tale, it is as if she is stabbing their tender spots with a knife, twisting it, and leaving it to dangle long after the last
page is turned."

Booklist

"After a dose of Root Rot, you won't look at mirrors, folklore, or Grandma the same way ever again. Sarah Read's take on horror ratchets up the old midnight fears until their heads twist around like Satan's own parliament of owls."

Laird Barron, author of The Wind Began to Howl

¿¿¿"Root and Rot & Other Grim Tales by Sarah Read is a spine-tingling walk through a wooded lane at twilight, all shadows and angles and deepening disquiet, with just enough hope-light to keep you moving forward. Only the path always takes an unexpected turn with Read, who bewitches and bedevils even the most ordinary moments, revealing her pinch-me perceptiveness even as she beguiles us with her prose. A truly startling collection of dark tales from one of the sharpest storytellers of our time."

Lee Murray, five-time Bram Stoker Award®-winning author of Grotesque: Monster Stories.