Publication Date: April 22, 2025
One night, Jess, a struggling actress, finds a five-year-old runaway hiding in the bushes outside her apartment. After a violent, bloody encounter with the boy’s father, she and the boy find themselves running for their lives.
As they attempt to evade the boy’s increasingly desperate father, Jess slowly comes to a horrifying understanding of the butchery that follows them—the boy can turn his every fear into reality.
And when the wolf finally comes home, no one will be spared.
The discovery of a young boy outside her apartment launches a series of horrifying events for a woman already caught up in emotional turmoil of her own.
Author Nat Cassidy serves up a harrowing tale in When the Wolf Comes Home. While he provides readers with a tongue-in-cheek content warning, he probably should have added not to read the book while alone at night.
The key premise centers around fear and how we handle it. For Jess, life is delivering all sorts of emotionally charged moments, whether it is her acting career that is practically on life support or her worry that she has been infected with something awful after a work accident. The recent loss of her absentee father consumes her inner dialog.
Thanks to the story’s opening, readers get a preview of an unnamed father and son caught up in a strange series of hair-raising events. It doesn’t matter how many times you insist monsters aren’t real because the story will drag you back in.
With a trail of bloody destruction left behind, Jess and the little boy seek safety from his father. However, this is one very unique daddy for an equally unique little boy.
When the Wolf Comes Home packs horror and gore into an intensely powerful and riveting tale.
NAT CASSIDY writes horror for the page, stage, and screen. His acclaimed novels, including Mary: An Awakening of Terror and Nestlings, have been featured in best-of lists from Esquire, Harper’s Bazaar, NPR, the Chicago Review of Books, the NY Public Library, and more, and he was named one of the “writers shaping horror’s next golden age” by Esquire. His award-winning horror plays have been produced throughout New York City and across the United States. He won the NY Innovative Theatre Award for his one-man show about H. P. Lovecraft, another for his play about Caligula, and was commissioned by the Kennedy Center to write the libretto for a short opera (about the end of the world, of course). You’ve also likely seen Nat on your TV, playing various Bad Guys of the Week on shows such as Law & Order: SVU, Blue Bloods, Bull, Quantico, FBI, and many others … but that’s a topic for a different bio. He lives in New York City with his wife.
