Publication Date: June 11, 2024
Meeting the family is scary. Surviving them is a nightmare.
Connie can’t deny she’s nervous about meeting her boyfriend’s family. Spending the weekend at their ritzy woodland summer home, Evan has already given her fair warning that his parents are cold, snobbish, and especially unpleasant toward those outside their usual social circles.
So when Evan’s mother warmly greets them with open arms, Connie is as confused as he is. Evan’s parents are nothing like he described.
They’re so friendly, in fact, Evan himself can hardly believe they’re real.
Then, while helping with dinner, Connie overhears strange noises coming from the basement-what almost sounds like voices calling out for help.
Connie doesn’t realize that once the door is opened, it can’t be closed. Or that once she descends those rickety steps into the darkness below . . . she may never see the light of day again.
A young couple’s “meet the parents” moment descends into a surreal fight for survival in Abe Moss’s fiendishly entertaining horror novel, Morsels.
Evan Caldwell and Connie Jacobsen are in love, so much so that Evan feels it is time to introduce Connie to his family. What could go wrong with a weekend stay at his parents’ wooded and secluded summer home? Steeling himself for his mother’s cold snobbishness and his father’s indifference, Evan is surprised by Janice Caldwell’s warm, affectionate greeting. Perhaps things have changed since he last came home…or perhaps they have changed. And, indeed, they have.
Connie agrees to help Janice with dinner preparations, as Evan goes outside to help his father, Dale, and his brother, Myles, look for rat traps in the shed. When Janice takes a phone call in the other room, Connie hears muted cries for help coming from the basement door in the kitchen. Risking Janice’s disapproval, she decides to check out the sounds and descends into the cellar. What she discovers is unreal and disorienting: members of Evan’s family are bound and gagged on the concrete floor. So, who or what are the people upstairs?
In this clever, tense, and endlessly entertaining story, Moss serves up an original plot that blends themes of fairy tales and folklore into a delicious dish of horror. As Connie realizes that Janice is not the real Janice, Evan also comes to the same conclusion about his father—but not before he is knocked out and Connie is drugged. They wake up on the basement floor along with Evan’s brother and sister-in-law, Myles and Eliza, as well as his parents and Uncle Jeremy. The last family member, Evan’s younger sister Riley, arrives and joins the nightmare captivity.
Moss takes the butterflies of meeting the family and transforms it into a twisted Hansel and Gretel redux. The doppelgangers march the Caldwells and Connie deep into the forest, before caging them in an isolated cabin filled with bloody implements, jars of powdered bones, and a rostrum holding a massive book. The look-alikes can see into their captives’ minds, which they use to sow doubt and mistrust among the already dysfunctional Caldwell family. Connie, however, is an outsider who holds her own secret…one that may prove handy when dealing with the “things” tormenting them.
Along with the physical horror and ghoulish shapeshifting, there is a fleet of feral children who haunt the woods, hungry for whatever the monsters in the cabin will share. Moss weaves together several strands of backstory through three main character points of view: Evan, Connie, and Riley. Family secrets, trauma, and violence are all central themes in the characters’ evolution through the surreal nightmare they do not know how to escape.
Not much more can be said without spoiling this innovative story, but trust and believe that the pages will not stop turning. The pace perspires in its intensity, the sense of doom overwhelming, and the climax a garnish to an overall perfect horror dish—complete with a bonus chapter that leaves a poignant aftertaste.
You’ll want to stick a fork in this one, because Morsels is one of the most original and expertly executed horror stories of the year. 
Abe Moss has been writing horror stories for as long as he can remember, and hopes to never stop. With each book he writes, he hopes to try something a little different. The possibilities are endless and that’s what he really loves about storytelling. He hopes you’ll enjoy his stories, too!
He also writes suspense thrillers as Beau Savage… if you’re into that kind of thing.
