Woodworm

by Layla Martinez

2024

Layla Martnez's debut novel with its grisly, mystical vision of justice for an unjust world, announces a terrifying new voice in international horror. The house breathes. The house contains bodies and secrets. The house is visited by ghosts, by angels that line the roof like insects, and by saints that burn the bedsheets with their haloes. It was built by a smalltime hustler as a means of controlling his wife, and even after so many years, their daughter and her granddaughter can't leave. They may be witches or they may just be angry, but when the mysterious disappearance of a young boy draws unwanted attention, the two isolated women, already subjects of public scorn, combine forces with the spirits that haunt them in pursuit of something that resembles justice. This eerie debut novel is class-conscious horror that drags generations of monsters into the sun. This vision of a broken family in our unjust world places power in the hands of the eccentric, the radical, and the desperate.