Old Soul by Susan Barker (Hardcover) (PREORDER)

Fiction - Horror - Literary - Historical - 20th Century - Thrillers - Suspense

RELEASE DATE: 1/28/2025 (WILL SHIP DIRECTLY FROM OUR SUPPLIER'S WAREHOUSE AND ARRIVE 1-2 DAYS AFTER THE RELEASE DATE)

The Historian meets Under the Skin in this searingly provocative literary horror novel about one woman’s determination to stay alive at any terrifying cost.

In Osaka, two strangers, Jake and Mariko, miss a flight, and over dinner, discover they've both brutally lost loved ones whose paths crossed with the same beguiling woman no one has seen since.

Following traces this mysterious person left behind, Jake travels from country to country gathering chilling testimonies from others who encountered her across the decades—a trail of shattered souls that eventually leads him to Theo, a dying sculptor in rural New Mexico, who knows the woman better than anyone—and might just hold the key to who, or what, she is.

Part horror, part western, part thriller, Old Soul is a fearlessly bold and genre-defying tale about predation, morality and free will, and one man’s quest to bring a centuries-long chain of human devastation to an end.

AUTHOR BIO: 

Susan Barker is the author of four books. Her third novel, The Incarnations, was a New York Times Editors' Choice and Notable Book, a Kirkus Reviews' Top Ten Book of the Year, and was shortlisted for the Kirkus Prize for Fiction. An excerpt from Old Soul won a Northern Writers' Award for Fiction in 2020, as well as funding from Arts Council England and The Society of Authors. Susan currently lives in Manchester, where she is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University.

"[A] sweeping work of literary horror. . . The slow-burning tension and lush, atmospheric prose build a creeping sense of dread that lingers long after the final page. Fans of both the deeply personal speculative horror of Carmen Maria Machado and the subtle, character-driven mystery of Haruki Murakami will be enthralled." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"This horror novel about a mysterious woman who leaves death in her wake had me flipping the pages until I knew all the answers. . . Creepy as hell." -- Book Riot

"Susan Barker's Old Soul beguiles, terrifies, and utterly seduces you as swiftly and slyly as the mysterious woman at its center. It's at once a thriller, a postmodern mystery, and an existential horror tale, but perhaps most deeply it speaks to our current moment: the drift and terrors of loneliness, the risks of intimacy and a piercing nostalgia that never lets us go." -Megan Abbott, author of El Dorado Drive

" Old Soul is perfect read for the chilly depths of winter: a clever, spooky metaphysical mystery that spans continents--and even planets. Susan Barker's novel kept me guessing until the end. You'll never look at Venus quite the same way again." --Chloe Benjamin, author of The Immortalists

" Old Soul is like nothing else I've ever read...I loved how it made me feel: like I'd woken up after a long sleep to see for the first time how terrifying and strange the contemporary world has become. This is 21st century horror: the kind of story you tell around a campfire as the lights of civilization begin flicker out around you; a global, intelligent, and ambitious archetypal nightmare." --Kristen Roupenian, author of You Know You Want This

"Smart, taut, and twisty, Susan Barker's Old Soul deftly delivers the chills." -- Karen Joy Fowler, author of Booth