The Loving Dead

Kate and Michael are roommates living in the Oakland hills, working at the same Trader Joes supermarket. A night of drunken revelry changes their lives forever, but not in the way that anyone would expect. A slow-spreading plague of zombie-ism breaks out at their house party, spreading amongst their circle of friends, and simultaneously through the Bay Area. This zombie plague — an STD of sorts — is spread through sex and kissing, turning its victims into mindless, horny, voracious killers. Thrust into extremes by this slow- motion tragedy, Kate and Michael are forced to confront the choices they’ve made in their lives, and their fears of commitment, while trying to stay alive and reunite in the one place in the Bay Area that’s likely to be safe and secure from the zombie hoards: Alcatraz.

Skyhorse Publishing, under our Night Shade and Talos imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of titles for readers interested in science fiction (space opera, time travel, hard SF, alien invasion, near-future dystopia), fantasy (grimdark, sword and sorcery, contemporary urban fantasy, steampunk, alternative history), and horror (zombies, vampires, and the occult and supernatural), and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller, a national bestseller, or a Hugo or Nebula award-winner, we are committed to publishing quality books from a diverse group of authors.

Amelia Beamer works as an editor and reviewer for Locus: The Magazine of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Field. She has won several literary awards and has published fiction, poetry, and scholarship in a number of venues. Her first novel The Loving Dead, with zombies and a Zeppelin, will be published in July 2010 from Night Shade Books, and has been called, "a zombie novel like none other" by Peter Straub, "really kind of hot, in a very creepy way," by Christopher Moore, and "appallingly vivid and unrelentingly suspenseful" by Tim Powers.