What Stalks Among Us

After ditching an end-of-year field trip to explore rural Indiana back roads, high school seniors and queer best friends Sadie and Logan stumble across an impossibly large, unseasonal corn maze. Initially excited by their find, the pair enter the maze, only to find themselves trapped. There, doors inexplicably appear and disappear, rooms loop in on themselves, bizarre apparent reenactments detail the worst days of the duo's lives, and corpses emerge—the grisly remnants of other trapped unfortunates as well as their own seeming body doubles. As Sadie and Logan uncover layer after layer of their increasingly horrifying reality, the two race to solve the mystery of their entrapment before the maze swallows them for good. Via Sadie’s insightful first-person narration, Hollowell (A Dark and Starless Forest) skillfully entwines atmospheric prose bursting with 2010s pop-culture references, and disturbing scenes of body horror with sensitive explorations of neurodivergence, misogyny, internalized anti-fat bias, and emotional abuse. Sadie and Logan’s friendship serves as a strong and passionate anchor, giving heft to both the physical and interpersonal stakes of this twisted ma(i)ze of surreal psychological horror. Sadie is white; Logan reads as East Asian. Ages 13–up. Agent: Thao Le, Sandra Dijkstra Literary. (Sept.)