Edenville

Rebelein’s busy debut is part cosmic horror, part waggish satire of creative egos. After Cam P. Marion’s first novel receives middling reviews and so-so sales, the perennially grouchy author—who recently has been afflicted by bizarre nightmares—is invited to become a writer-in-residence at Edenville College in Upstate New York, locally infamous as the site of several mysterious disappearances. Seized by career anxieties due to his book’s reception, Cam jumps at the opportunity, but his girlfriend, Quinn, is suspicious from the get-go. Having grown up in a small town near Edenville, she was immersed in urban legends about the school, and her own college friend, Celeste, vanished years ago, last seen close to where Cam and Quinn would be living. Despite Quinn’s hang-ups, Cam accepts the position, and the couple decamps to Edenville’s creepy campus. Once there, Cam’s nightmares intensify, and horrors linked to multiverses and the area’s copious sunflowers start to reveal themselves. Will he and Quinn be the college’s latest casualties? Rebelein sprinkles his wild and unpredictable narrative with pop culture references and a gleeful smattering of profanity (“The big oak fuck of a desk”), setting his voice apart. Unfortunately, his ideas don’t quite hang together—Rebelein has imagination to spare, but the book eventually crosses over from ambitious to overstuffed. Readers will hope for a more focused sophomore effort. Agent: Claire Harris, P.S. Literary. (Oct.)