“With a bittersweet ending that explores the joys and fears of old age, this story, much like the work of Nick Cutter and Grady Hendrix, is a pitch-perfect blend of horror and heart.”
—Library Journal, starred
★ Library Journal, starred review
Jerry Campbell just wants to be left alone. Grief-stricken over the death of his wife Abigail, the elderly widower and recent retiree is desperate for a change of scenery. When his realtor suggests a new home in Fairview Acres, a retirement community in the Poconos, Jerry figures it will be a nice place to spend the rest of his days in solitude.
Until he moves in.
Weird neighbors. Nightly block parties. Strange noises across his rooftop at all hours. Worst of all is Arthur Peterson, chairman of the Fairview Acres Community Association, who seems obsessed with coaxing Jerry into participating in these neighborhood activities.
At first, Jerry shrugs off the incidents and eccentricities, telling himself he doesn’t want to be the guy who complains about everything—but that all changes one evening when Katherine Dunnally appears on his doorstep with an ominous warning: “You need to leave. The worms…they dance at nightfall…”
His neighbors all say Katherine suffers from a form of dementia called Sundowner’s Syndrome, but as the weeks progress and the strangeness mounts, Jerry begins to suspect there is something else going on in his neighborhood. Something that has to do with the huge stone in the community park…
Heartfelt and unsettling, Todd Keisling’s latest novel, The Sundowner’s Dance, propels readers through a terrifying exploration of grief, dementia, and perhaps the greatest horror of all: growing old.
“Todd Keisling is already a mainstay of modern horror, and this book proves why. A wildly original and unsettling tale, The Sundowner’s Dance is an unforgettable journey of grief, cosmic horror, and making the most of the time we’ve got left. Pick up a copy of this book immediately.”
—Gwendolyn Kiste, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Reluctant Immortals and The Haunting of Velkwood
“Todd Keisling’s The Sundowner’s Dance is a harrowing work of cosmic horror that masterfully inhabits a dark territory somewhere between John Langan and Bentley Little. Highly recommended.”
—Brian Keene
“Reading The Sundowner’s Dance is a bit like casting a spell to ward off existential dread despite the greatest terrors of the novel evoking this very thing; the beauty and hopefulness at the core of the story refuse to be stamped out by either the wrath of an alien invader or the ravages of age. It’s Todd Keisling at his absolute finest: dark, unflinching, visceral, and innovative. His pitch-perfect prose and masterful storytelling will leave you, quite literally, breathless.”
—Christa Carmen, Bram Stoker Award-winning and Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author of The Daughters of Block Island
“With bizarre neighbors, horrific happenings, and a mysterious meteorite at the epicenter, Keisling delivers a masterful tale about aging and loss. The Sundowners Dance burrows deep, worms its way into the soul, and drags us through the cosmic void of grief.”
—Red Lagoe, author of Bloodstains by Gaslight and In Excess of Dark
Todd Keisling is a writer and designer of the horrific and strange. His books include Devil’s Creek, a 2020 Bram Stoker Award finalist for Superior Achievement in a Novel, Scanlines, The Final Reconciliation, and most recently, Cold, Black & Infinite: Stories of the Horrific & Strange. A pair of his earlier works were recipients of the University of Kentucky’s Oswald Research & Creativity Prize for Creative Writing (2002 and 2005), and his second novel, The Liminal Man, was an Indie Book Award finalist in Horror & Suspense (2013). He lives in Pennsylvania with his family.
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