This New Dark

This New Dark, by Chase Dearinger

True Grit meets Twin Peaks in this genre-bending debut novel by Chase Dearinger. This New Dark explores the haunted, broken hills of Eastern Oklahoma, where over the course of just two cold days in November, the residents of Seven Suns will each face their own kind of weird. There’s Wyatt, a dope-growing Muscogee whose obsession with a black cougar that shouldn’t exist begins to uproot his life. The teenager who lives with him—Randy—is outraged at the world, confused about his sexuality, and haunted by the bones of his mother. And there’s Esther—a dutiful, God-fearing court bailiff who finds herself thrust into the position of county sheriff, forced to find the missing girl whose disappearance sets everything in motion. Inexorably bringing them all together is a nameless cowboy junky who may or may not be some ancient shape-shifting evil. All of them must overcome this new dark while dealing with the violent undercurrents of family, religion, addiction, and death.

Chase Dearinger is an Oklahoma native who now lives in Kansas with his wife and two daughters. His fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in magazines around the country, including Bayou, The Southampton Review, Short Story America, and Heavy Feather Review. He currently serves as the Chief Editor of Emerald City, a quarterly online fiction magazine, and directs the Cow Creek Chapbook Prize, an annual poetry chapbook contest. He is a professor of creative writing and literature at Pittsburg State University. This New Dark is his first novel.

Praise for This New Dark:

“Chase Dearinger has penned a damn fine debut that cuts straight through to the heart of the American Mid-South. This New Dark is part rural crime, part psychological horror, and wholly entertaining.”

—Eli Cranor, winner of the Edgar Award; author of
Ozark Dogs and Don’t Know Tough

“Through a transmogrified Oklahoma replete with outlaw legends, dope dealers, and shapeshifters, Chase Dearinger takes readers on a heart-stopping, unputdownable journey. This New Dark is part Southern Gothic, part speculative horror: rich and dark and terrifying, and so exquisitely written.”

—Rilla Askew, author of The Mercy Seat and Fire in Beulah

“In This New Dark, Chase Dearinger plunges us into the troubled town of Seven Suns, Oklahoma, exposing both the supernatural rot that has settled in its center and the more ordinary horrors of poverty, abandonment, and the rough road leading to self-acceptance. As Randy, Wyatt, and Esther battle demons inherited, imaginary, and all-too real, they must find ways to rise above their self-imposed limitations and painful pasts. Like the works of Stephen King that Randy devours, Dearinger offers up more than heinous, original monsters and generous spatters of gore (though both can be found in these pages) in order to plumb the guarded hearts, outsized ambitions, and festering hurts of an entire community. Seven Suns drew me into its dingy bars, weedy fields, and lush, dripping wild spaces, and even further into treacherous, alien realms that pulse at the edges of our understanding. With this terrifying, gritty, and impressive debut, Dearinger secures his place among the modern masters of contemporary horror.”

—Katie Cortese, author of Make Way for Her
and Other Stories and Girl Power and Other
Short-Short Stories

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Details:

• Trim size: 5.5" x 8.5"
• Publication date: February 20, 2024
• ISBN: 978-1-960215-10-9
• 284 pages

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