Publication Date: July 21, 2026
From New York Times bestselling author Christopher Golden comes a high concept horror novel about a man trying to protect his dead mother’s body from the evil that is hunting them.
Maggie Wise will take your eyes.
When Malcolm was growing up, the local kids made up that chant about his mother, claiming she was a witch. He and his siblings did their best to ignore it. Now, Maggie is dying, and those same siblings have left Malcolm and his sister-in-law Violet to hold a vigil at her bedside.
But they’re not as alone as they think they are. A dark figure waits and watches from beneath the willow tree across the street. Hundreds of miles away, an ancient evil stirs in its burrow under a farmer’s cornfield. Across the country, other buried things begin to dream in anticipation of Maggie’s demise. On her deathbed, the old woman elicits a promise from Malcolm, her youngest child―when she dies, he and Violet must return her body to her birthplace in Shediak, Maine.
From the moment she takes her last breath, before her remains are even loaded aboard the baggage car of the Imperial Limited, there are forces trying to stop Malcolm from fulfilling that promise. Violence erupts on the train, evil preys on its passengers, and once the sun goes down, those long-buried things are coming to make Maggie Wise pay for her past. God help anyone who stands in their way.
Demonic creatures awaken deep beneath the earth after the witch who cursed them dies, and her son only has two nights to transport her body a thousand miles to Maine for burial before hell is unleashed in Christopher Golden’s nail-biting Carry Me to My Grave.
Malcolm Wise always knew his mother, Maggie, was a witch. Growing up, he and his siblings—big brother and sister, Elias and Jennie—heard the playground taunts of neighborhood children, “Maggie Wise will take your eyes.” As Maggie lies dying in Elkhart, Indiana, in 1956, it is only Malcolm and his sister-in-law, Violet, who care for the old woman in her last moments. But a secret is about to turn their world upside down when Maggie informs Malcolm what he must do when her heart stops beating: “You’ll have two nights. I’ve got to be in Shediak by the second sunrise, or it’ll all be for nothing.”
Shediak, Maine, is one thousand miles away. Outside, across the street, a raven-masked man keeps watch and warns Malcolm not to be around “for what happens next.” When she passes, Malcolm and Violet agree to make the trip together to bury Maggie in her hometown. But there is an ancient evil ripping itself out of the earth, seeking Maggie’s body to break the curse she cast on them an exceptionally long time ago. Taking a variety of repulsive forms and smells, these things also have an insatiable hunger for living blood. The race is on…
With breakneck pacing, morbid grotesqueries, and a deft portrayal of dysfunctional family dynamics, Golden delivers a ripe, rewarding horror tale that never lets up until the final page. From the creepy train cars of the Imperial Limited—where Malcolm and Violet travel with Maggie’s crated body—to the stolen automobiles they use to stay one step ahead of the pursuing monsters, they begin to unravel the otherworldly secrets Maggie kept from them. At the same time, they acknowledge their forbidden love for one another. Golden uses these family tensions to profound effect, especially when Elias—Malcolm’s brother and Violet’s long-absent, degenerate husband—arrives at the train station to help fulfill Maggie’s wishes.
Golden’s ability to create innovative monstrosities known as the Morák, led by the fearsome Root, is on full, gory display. Get ready for some stomach-churning scenes in this novel, folks. But the authentic and two-dimensional protagonists ably balance the gore. Malcolm’s feelings of guilt for falling in love with his brother’s wife function as a counterpoint to Elias’s own feelings of failure in life as a no-good gambling vagabond who left Violet at home with Malcolm and Maggie years ago. Violet is a staunch heroine who confronts the mind-bending horrors with clarity and purpose. And Jennie is a delightful third wheel who helps the two understand the nature of the evil relentlessly following them.
Chapters alternate viewpoints between two of Root’s newest “recruits” who still have a bit of humanity left, with the Wise trio as they close in on the Maine border. While the novel’s unusual beginning seems a bit farfetched, Golden soon has the reader in the palm of his hand with the plot’s kinetic energy. As this race of humans and monsters barrels toward a riveting finish, the pages cannot turn fast enough. Horror lovers, rejoice! You have just found your next to-read novel.
Carry Me to My Grave is top-tier horror, inhabited by ancient curses, unspeakable evil, and everyday family trauma—and it promises one hell of a eulogy.
CHRISTOPHER GOLDEN is the New York Times bestselling author of such novels as Ararat, Red Hands, Snowblind, Wildwood Road, The Boys Are Back in Town, The Ferryman, Strangewood, and Of Saints and Shadows. Golden co-created (with Mike Mignola) the comic book universe known as The Outerverse, featuring such characters as Baltimore, Joe Golem, and Lady Baltimore. As an editor, he has worked on the short story anthologies Hex Life, Seize the Night, and The New Dead, among others, and has also written and co-written comic books, video games, screenplays, a BBC radio play, and the online animated series Ghosts of Albion (with Amber Benson). A frequent speaker at conferences, schools, and libraries, Golden is also co-host of the podcast Defenders Dialogue, and the founder of the Merrimack Valley Halloween Book Festival. The winner of the Bram Stoker Award for best novel in 2017 for Ararat, Golden has been nominated ten times in eight different categories, winning twice. He has also been nominated multiple times for the Shirley Jackson Award, sharing a win in 2020 with James A. Moore for the anthology The Twisted Book of Shadows.
Golden was born and raised in Massachusetts, where he still lives with his family. His original novels have been published in more than fourteen languages in countries around the world.
