Ten Sleep - by Nicholas Belardes (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

On a cursed cattle drive through modern-day Wyoming, a young Mexican American woman is stalked by savage creatures, undead beasts, and ancient evils in this weird Western horror for readers of Nick Cutter's Little Heaven, Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy, and Sundial by Catriona Ward.

"Up in the high lonesome country, it's not just the cattle and the work that are challenging--here there be monsters, too." --STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES

When Greta Molina's old friend, Tiller, offered her the job, a 10-day cattle drive across the Wyoming prairie to the ranching town of Ten Sleep, it sounded like a well-paid break. A few long days on an ATV with 320 cows and calves, alongside two guys she's known since college, will give her time to sort out the mess in her head.

What Greta doesn't know is the legacy of murder and rot that runs deep into the rocks of this land. As each night passes on the prairie, the trio faces mounting supernatural dangers: a ghost train of the damned, wild animals walking alongside dead ones--and evidence of a gigantic creature in the skies, one that's supposedly been extinct for eons. And Tiller may be hiding even darker secrets the further they go. Safety is only ten sleeps away, but Greta soon realizes that may be too long for all of them to survive.

Review Quotes

Praise for Ten Sleep

"Open these pages and fall into a cattle drive up in the high lonesome country, where it's not just the cattle and the work that are challenging--here there be monsters, too." --Stephen Graham Jones, best-selling author of The Only Good Indians

"Nicholas Belardes's Ten Sleep is a masterful work bringing together deep, ancient magic with a gut churning dread of the haunted spaces of the American west. Rendered in elegant prose and with vivid characters, Ten Sleep is tense, atmospheric, and nightmare-inducing. Highly recommended." --Richard Kadrey, New York Times bestselling author of the Sandman Slim series

"A haunting and atmospheric tale of old wounds and ancient creatures that blurs the lines between past and present. A deliciously unsettling journey into the unknown." --Tim Waggoner, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Lord of the Feast

"Haunting, unsettling, and birthed from an all too real historical context, TEN SLEEP is a brilliantly grisly trek through the death and darkness of the American West and a stern reminder that Mother Nature (or Canyon) is not to be messed with." --Markus Redmond, Hollywood screenwriter, actor and author of Blood Slaves

"Ten Sleep is a story suited to be told and read in the belly of a valley by the low light of a fire or on a porch in the evening when the sun is bleeding out. This western and naturalistic multi-perspective novel tackles themes of ecology through memories held within the broken and dead bodies that remain, and is perfect for fans of slow burn, haunting histories that unravel like hidden taxidermy stitches." --Ai Jiang, Bram Stoker- and Nebula-Award winning author of Linghun

"Like Belardes's previous novel, The Deading, Ten Sleep is a claws-out ecologic horror novel, a nightmare of our own making. This time around we find ourselves in the West, on a modern-day cattle drive through a territory where time is not so easily corralled. This novel is violent, terrifying, and at times stunning beautiful. Greta Molina and her journey will linger in my dreams for a long time." --Nathan Ballingrud, author of The Strange and North American Lake Monsters

"Nicholas Belardes' Ten Sleep is a feverish blend of ecological horror and Weird West. Bloody, nightmarish, and compelling." --Lucy A. Snyder, author of Sister, Maiden, Monster

"A masterfully written slow burning eco-horror full of rich, gory details and a cast that is unique to the wild west. Grim and twisted like Mother-Canyon, Ten Sleep will keep the reader sleepless to its thrilling conclusion." --Abigail F. Taylor, author of Maryneal, 1962

About the Author

Nicholas Belardes's fiction combines elements of literary fantastic, fantasy, eco-horror, and science fiction. His obsession with nature, history, and the world's ongoing climate disasters, blended with a daily birdwatching habit, fills his prose with not just warblers and flycatchers but also other obscurities from the natural world. He earned his MFA at University of California Riverside's Palm Desert Low Residency where he received the Founder's Award. The Deading is his debut horror novel. He lives on the Central California coast. You can find him online at nicholasbelardes.com.