The Lesser Dead

The New York Times bestselling author of Between Two Fires stakes a bloody claim on vampire mythology in this chilling horror novel....

New York City in 1978 is a dirty, dangerous place to live. And die. Joey Peacock knows this as well as anybody—he's spent the last forty years as an adolescent vampire, perfecting the routine he now enjoys: womanizing in punk clubs and discotheques, feeding by night, and sleeping by day with others of his kind in the macabre labyrinth under the city’s sidewalks.

The subways are his playground and his highway, shuttling him throughout Manhattan to bleed the unsuspecting in the Sheep Meadow of Central Park or in the backseats of Checker cabs, or even those in their own apartments who are too hypnotized by sitcoms to notice him opening their windows. It’s almost too easy.

Until one night he sees them hunting on his beloved subway. The children with the merry eyes. Vampires, like him…or not like him. Whatever they are, whatever their appearance means, the undead in the tunnels of Manhattan are not as safe as they once were.

And neither are the rest of us.

WINNER OF THE AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION’S BEST HORROR NOVEL OF THE YEAR

Christopher Buehlman is the winner of the 2007 Bridport prize for poetry and the author of five horror novels including Those Across the River (best novel nominee, 2012 World Fantasy Awards), medieval apocalypse fable Between Two Fires, chilling vampire tale The Lesser Dead (Named best horror novel of 2015 by the American Library Association), and goblin war fantasy The Blacktongue Thief. A native Floridian, the author currently lives in Ohio with a wife he doesn’t deserve and a snow-shoveling regimen he probably does.