Crypt of the Moon Spider

Ballingrud (The Strange) offers a pulpy genre-bender that reads like Ken Kesey by way of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Among the dark and mysterious forests of the moon, ambitious doctor Cull meets a tribe of priests who revere the Moon Spiders that once ruled the lunar caves. The silk from these massive, psychic spiders can be used to replace human brain tissue. Soon Cull’s Barrowfield Home for Treatment of the Melancholy is seeing patients recover from incurable conditions, the rotten parts of their brains scooped out and woven over with spiderwebs. Veronica Brinkley, troubled with depression and intrusive thoughts, wants to be able to return to her husband as a whole and happy woman, and whatever Cull needs to do to her brain to heal her, she’s ready. But in the crypts below the Barrowfield Home, the priests have dark plans, and the doctor’s own plans are just as sinister—and Veronica is just the person they’ve been waiting for. Unhesitatingly violent and wildly fantastical, Ballingrud’s fever dream of a novel will reward daring readers with something they haven’t seen before. (Aug.)