The Salt Grows Heavy

A sensuous and strange horror novella full of creeping dread and delicious gore, twisting mermaid myths into something sharp, dangerous, and hungry, for fans of Christina Henry, Carmen Maria Machado and Eric LaRocca.

After the murder of her husband and the fall of his empire, a mermaid and her plague doctor companion escape into the wilderness. Deep in the woods, they stumble across a village where children hunt each other for sport, sacrificing one of their own at the behest of three surgeons they call "the saints." These saints play god with their magic, harvesting the best bits of the children for themselves and piecing the sacrifices back together again.

To save the children from their fates, the plague doctor must confront their past, and the mermaid must embrace the darkest parts of her true nature.




Genre: Horror

"A brutal and deadly romp whose language is as sharp and glittery as a scalpel made of ice. Strange and compelling, The Salt Grows Heavy is unlike anything else out there, a dark spell with needle-like teeth." - Brian Evenson

"Cassandra Khaw's writing is never more lyrical than when they're describing the knife in your heart. The bones of a fairy tale sunk deep in a charnel house of descriptive prose, an elegant confection with a blood-soaked core. I devoured it in one sitting." - T Kingfisher

"Cassandra Khaw's steely prose is matched only by the inventiveness of their imagination. The Salt Grows Heavy demonstrates their continuing mastery of the novella form with a story Angela Carter would be jealous to have written." - John Langan

"A feverishly gory, grotesquely beautiful and baroque fairy-tale-meets-love-sonnet. Cassandra Khaw's imagination is limitless." - Paul Tremblay

"Khaw uses poetically beautiful words to tear open your chest and gnaw on your ribs in this needle-sharp novella." - Kaaron Warren