From Shirley Jackson Award winner and author of A Hawk in the Woods, Carrie-Edmund Laben comes Smoke Season, a novel in the tradition of Arthur Machen. Look for Smoke Season coming this Summer to independent booksellers in the US and Canada, and many online retailers. Copies with signed bookplates are available for preorder direct from Word Horde.
Twenty-something Justin Erasmus doesn’t know how he ended up in the mountains of Missoula, Montana on a commune with Adrian, his hookup from the other night. What he does know is that Adrian might help him find his estranged sister, Helen, since he and the other members of the group are devoted followers of her from afar, by way of her podcast and certain mysterious other communications. Justin himself only has hazy memories of Helen from when they were kids; he remembers her locked in a dog cage in his family’s living room and how, as though she were made of smoke, she reached her arms out to him through the bars before being sent away. A voice is telling him he needs to find her again.
But as his feelings for Adrian grow and the commune starts to feel more like home, Justin discovers he’s not the only person trying to find Helen. A shadowy government organization called The Aversion Project with a mysterious magic of their own are bent on eradicating Helen: her magic, her free thinking, her free-love community and free-living movement in favor of a more rigid, orderly, heteronormative world–and soon they’re knocking on their door… and invading their dreams. If Justin is going to find his sister and remain with his beloved new community, he’ll first have to deal with the ominous figures haunting his sister and found family.
Cover Art & Design by Matthew Revert
Pub Date: June 30, 2026
Format: Trade Paperback
ISBN-13: 978-1-956252-12-5
Format: eBook
ISBN-13: 978-1-939905-81-9
Reviews
“Wild, genre-bending […] those drawn in by the thrilling premise and unexpected plot twists will be entertained.” —Publishers Weekly
“Completely unlike other novels, Smoke Season takes the reader on a trippy journey […] For fans of cosmic mysteries and conspiracy theories.” —Booklist
“A mystery that begins with the hazy memory of a forgotten sibling in a cage, spirals outward, entwining dark conspiracy with visions of utopia. Mesmerizing and unlike anything else you’ve read, Smoke Season will challenge your notions of what Weird and political fiction can achieve.” —Paul Tremblay, NYT bestselling author of Horror Movie and Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep
“In Carrie-Edmund Laben’s Smoke Season, the sublime, cosmic vision of Arthur Machen’s “The Great God Pan” collides with the paranoid plots and counterplots of Thomas Pynchon at his most gonzo. A young man searches from Buffalo to Missoula for a lost relative he remembers only in fragments of childhood memory. Along the way, he discovers that she sits at the center of an anarchist collective whose members possess unusual talents and abilities. He also discovers that she is an object of extreme interest for a secret group within the American military. In addition, there is a podcast whose broadcasts are oddly specific to each member of the audience. And a massive superfund site. And connections to apartheid-era South Africa. There is sex, a sea serpent, and a suspicious cat or two. Expect forest fires, murder, and divine manifestation. As with their previous novel, A Hawk in the Woods, Laben takes the foundational material of cosmic horror and brings it into the twenty-first century with wit and invention.” —John Langan, author of Lost in the Dark and Other Excursions
“Justin is on a quest to find his missing half-sister, Helen. He is armed only with a traumatic memory, and a psychic tether that pulls him to a nature commune where Helen’s voice, and power, hold a community together in common purpose—to find acceptance, love, friendship and, the strength to face down a malevolent conspiracy together. Exploring themes of freedom, oppression, queerness, chosen family, and the fluidity of reality, Smoke Season casts a potent, and Weird, spell.” —Pamela M. Durgin, author of Desert Radio