Thrillers & Suspense
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Daphne: A Novel
Horror has a new name: Daphne. A brutal, enigmatic woman stalks a high school basketball team in a reimagining of the slasher genre by the New York Times bestselling author of Bird Box.
"A superb serial killer novel and a great coming-of-age story."-Gabino Iglesias, author of The Devil Takes You Home
It's the last summer for Kit Lamb: The last summer before college. The last summer with her high school basketball team, and with Dana, her best friend. The last summer before her life begins.
But the night before the big game, one of the players tells a ghost story about Daphne, a girl who went to their school many years ago and died under mysterious circumstances. Some say she was murdered, others that she died by her own hand. And some say that Daphne is a murderer herself. They also say that Daphne is still out there, obsessed with revenge, and will appear to kill again anytime someone thinks about her.
After Kit hears the story, her teammates vanish, one by one, and Kit begins to suspect that the stories about Daphne are real . . . and to fear that her own mind is conjuring the killer. Now it's a race against time as Kit searches for the truth behind the legend and learns to face her own fears-before the summer of her lifetime becomes the last summer of her life.
Mixing a nostalgic coming-of-age story and an instantly iconic female villain with an innovative new vision of classic horror, Daphne is an unforgettable thriller as only Josh Malerman could imagine it.
"A superb serial killer novel and a great coming-of-age story."-Gabino Iglesias, author of The Devil Takes You Home
It's the last summer for Kit Lamb: The last summer before college. The last summer with her high school basketball team, and with Dana, her best friend. The last summer before her life begins.
But the night before the big game, one of the players tells a ghost story about Daphne, a girl who went to their school many years ago and died under mysterious circumstances. Some say she was murdered, others that she died by her own hand. And some say that Daphne is a murderer herself. They also say that Daphne is still out there, obsessed with revenge, and will appear to kill again anytime someone thinks about her.
After Kit hears the story, her teammates vanish, one by one, and Kit begins to suspect that the stories about Daphne are real . . . and to fear that her own mind is conjuring the killer. Now it's a race against time as Kit searches for the truth behind the legend and learns to face her own fears-before the summer of her lifetime becomes the last summer of her life.
Mixing a nostalgic coming-of-age story and an instantly iconic female villain with an innovative new vision of classic horror, Daphne is an unforgettable thriller as only Josh Malerman could imagine it.
Editorial Reviews
"Daphne is a superb serial killer novel and a great coming-of-age story. Josh Malerman delivers one of his best novels yet, and one of the most memorable villains in recent history. This is the literary equivalent of a defibrillator, and the shock will leave you feeling alive and wanting more."-Gabino Iglesias, author of The Devil Takes You Home
"Daphne is somehow both a terrifying serial killer story and a beautiful meditation on the psychic gulf between adolescence and adulthood. It left me sniffing for smoke and jumping at shadows."-Delilah S. Dawson, New York Times bestselling author of The Violence
"This terrifying little book will get you just like Daphne does-first with curiosity, then fascination, and before you know it, you're sucked in deep, and it's too late. You'll be triple-checking the locks and sleeping with all the lights in the house on bright, too afraid to close your eyes."-Peng Shepherd, USA Today bestselling author of The Cartographers
"Welcome to Samhattan, Michigan, a place where Kit's ever-looming anxiety of senior year and the threat of a monstrous ghost stalking her teammates are equally real and terrifying. Daphne is both a new spin on the slasher genre and a deeply rewarding novel about the nature of the horrors inside us."-Gwenda Bond, New York Times bestselling author of Stranger Things: Suspicious Minds
"A swift and fierce novel about collective forgetting, repression, anxiety, and fear-and above all a seemingly unstoppable villain . . . Sleek and scary, it looms larger and larger with every page."-Brian Evenson, author of The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell
"If you don't start your summer with a copy of this-crinkled spine, worn pages, crammed in the back pocket of your jeans-you're doing it all wrong. Daphne will scare the bejesus out of you. This is Malerman at his best."-J. D. Barker,
"Daphne is somehow both a terrifying serial killer story and a beautiful meditation on the psychic gulf between adolescence and adulthood. It left me sniffing for smoke and jumping at shadows."-Delilah S. Dawson, New York Times bestselling author of The Violence
"This terrifying little book will get you just like Daphne does-first with curiosity, then fascination, and before you know it, you're sucked in deep, and it's too late. You'll be triple-checking the locks and sleeping with all the lights in the house on bright, too afraid to close your eyes."-Peng Shepherd, USA Today bestselling author of The Cartographers
"Welcome to Samhattan, Michigan, a place where Kit's ever-looming anxiety of senior year and the threat of a monstrous ghost stalking her teammates are equally real and terrifying. Daphne is both a new spin on the slasher genre and a deeply rewarding novel about the nature of the horrors inside us."-Gwenda Bond, New York Times bestselling author of Stranger Things: Suspicious Minds
"A swift and fierce novel about collective forgetting, repression, anxiety, and fear-and above all a seemingly unstoppable villain . . . Sleek and scary, it looms larger and larger with every page."-Brian Evenson, author of The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell
"If you don't start your summer with a copy of this-crinkled spine, worn pages, crammed in the back pocket of your jeans-you're doing it all wrong. Daphne will scare the bejesus out of you. This is Malerman at his best."-J. D. Barker,
Short Excerpt Teaser
A tie game with summer-league rivals, friends and family in the bleachers, the ball in your hand at the free-throw line, is no time to ask the rim a question. Yet that's what Kit Lamb does. Even as she lifts the ball, elbow in, left hand supporting, even as it seems like nothing could chop her focus, and nothing has yet, not in this game, not even when she made the and-one that led to this moment. A question for the rim:
Will Daphne kill me?
Kit almost laughs as she releases the ball. There's a hitch in the shot to be sure. She's embarrassed of her own question, even if nobody else could've heard.
The ball leaves her fingertips, the gym is haunted-house quiet. But the question remains suspended in her head. And with it, the image of the woman Daphne, Kit's own idea of her, the horrid centerpiece of Natasha Manksa's Samhattan myth; Daphne in denim, Daphne with patches, Daphne the madwoman who smells of smoke and whiskey.
The ball goes through the net.
So, that's a yes. An answer Kit doesn't have time to think about right now.
Chaps inbounds quick from the baseline, but one second is not enough for their star forward to get off a full-court shot.
Samhattan wins.
By one.
Kit is mobbed by her teammates. So many howling voices, so much love. None louder than Dana, who is as sweaty as Kit; Dana, who shot a meager one for eleven but got the steal that led to Kit's game-winning three-point play.
"Legend!" Dana yells. "Legend!"
Kit can't stop smiling. As they lift her up, as friends and schoolmates rush the floor. As music explodes through the gymnasium PA.
Even as she worries too.
Not about the answer the rim gave her. Not about that yes. Not yet.
For Kit Lamb, success never feels entirely true. In moments when she's supposed to be the winner, it's more like she's in a theatrical reproduction of someone else's victory.
"LE-GEND!" the other ballers shout.
She can see the players from Chaps on their knees, yes, heads hanging, yes. But did this really happen? Did she hit the game-winning free throw with one second to play?
"Holy shit," she says, rising up now on the shoulders of her teammates, her best friends. "Holy shit!"
It's all becoming real now. The inviolability of this moment. It's replaying behind her eyes. Or, rather, before them, as if she's home, watching the triumphant sequence on SportsCenter. Who cares if there's less than forty people in the gym?
Who cares about absolutely anything else in the entire world?
"Legend!" Dana shouts again. Her visage: ardent mirth. Other girls pick up the shout. Even the parents holler. Kit's own looked happily stunned. They even look a little younger. Coach Wanda steps before them and nods Kit's way just as she's interrupted: she's gotta shake the hand of Chaps's head coach. Wanda stresses this all the time: sportsmanship. No matter how much it hurts. But Kit is impressed her coach acknowledged decorum when it feels this good.
Who can think of anything else?
The lights look particularly bright in the rafters. The gym feels like a mecca. A heaven. Nirvana. Kit has arrived somewhere. No, she doesn't think this means she'll be playing in the WNBA (though the vision does cross her mind; Betnijah Laney seeing this shot, Sue Bird winking); rather, she's fantasized about this exact scenario a hundred thousand times, as Coach Wanda made the girls shoot free throws after every practice, at their most tired, at their worst, like they would be in a game. The place Kit has arrived is not a location but a goal: she is living a fantasy, and the fantasy is no longer that.
This is true. Every bit of it.
But . . .
. . . is the answer the rim gave her also true?
Will Daphne kill me?
Yes.
And so maybe it's not so improbable, after all, thinking of something else.
"LEGEND!"
Everybody is saying it, in rhythm, a chant. Le-gend. As if Kit Lamb at the free-throw line will one day be immortalized in stained glass high up the brick walls of the Samhattan High School gymnasium. The communal word echoes off the ceiling, curls out those open windows, circles Kit's head like cartoon birds in a dream.
LE-GEND
LE-GEND
Like the legend of Daphne, told to the ballers last night, in the dark of Dana's living room. Almost the entire team slept there to ensure nobody would stay up too late before the big game, yet wasn't it Natasha's story of the Woman Who Could Not Be Killed, the lumbering seven-foot colossus in denim, wasn't it that very story that kept Kit up all night, eyeing the darkness, thinking the very question she would eventually ask the rim at the free-throw line toni...
Will Daphne kill me?
Kit almost laughs as she releases the ball. There's a hitch in the shot to be sure. She's embarrassed of her own question, even if nobody else could've heard.
The ball leaves her fingertips, the gym is haunted-house quiet. But the question remains suspended in her head. And with it, the image of the woman Daphne, Kit's own idea of her, the horrid centerpiece of Natasha Manksa's Samhattan myth; Daphne in denim, Daphne with patches, Daphne the madwoman who smells of smoke and whiskey.
The ball goes through the net.
So, that's a yes. An answer Kit doesn't have time to think about right now.
Chaps inbounds quick from the baseline, but one second is not enough for their star forward to get off a full-court shot.
Samhattan wins.
By one.
Kit is mobbed by her teammates. So many howling voices, so much love. None louder than Dana, who is as sweaty as Kit; Dana, who shot a meager one for eleven but got the steal that led to Kit's game-winning three-point play.
"Legend!" Dana yells. "Legend!"
Kit can't stop smiling. As they lift her up, as friends and schoolmates rush the floor. As music explodes through the gymnasium PA.
Even as she worries too.
Not about the answer the rim gave her. Not about that yes. Not yet.
For Kit Lamb, success never feels entirely true. In moments when she's supposed to be the winner, it's more like she's in a theatrical reproduction of someone else's victory.
"LE-GEND!" the other ballers shout.
She can see the players from Chaps on their knees, yes, heads hanging, yes. But did this really happen? Did she hit the game-winning free throw with one second to play?
"Holy shit," she says, rising up now on the shoulders of her teammates, her best friends. "Holy shit!"
It's all becoming real now. The inviolability of this moment. It's replaying behind her eyes. Or, rather, before them, as if she's home, watching the triumphant sequence on SportsCenter. Who cares if there's less than forty people in the gym?
Who cares about absolutely anything else in the entire world?
"Legend!" Dana shouts again. Her visage: ardent mirth. Other girls pick up the shout. Even the parents holler. Kit's own looked happily stunned. They even look a little younger. Coach Wanda steps before them and nods Kit's way just as she's interrupted: she's gotta shake the hand of Chaps's head coach. Wanda stresses this all the time: sportsmanship. No matter how much it hurts. But Kit is impressed her coach acknowledged decorum when it feels this good.
Who can think of anything else?
The lights look particularly bright in the rafters. The gym feels like a mecca. A heaven. Nirvana. Kit has arrived somewhere. No, she doesn't think this means she'll be playing in the WNBA (though the vision does cross her mind; Betnijah Laney seeing this shot, Sue Bird winking); rather, she's fantasized about this exact scenario a hundred thousand times, as Coach Wanda made the girls shoot free throws after every practice, at their most tired, at their worst, like they would be in a game. The place Kit has arrived is not a location but a goal: she is living a fantasy, and the fantasy is no longer that.
This is true. Every bit of it.
But . . .
. . . is the answer the rim gave her also true?
Will Daphne kill me?
Yes.
And so maybe it's not so improbable, after all, thinking of something else.
"LEGEND!"
Everybody is saying it, in rhythm, a chant. Le-gend. As if Kit Lamb at the free-throw line will one day be immortalized in stained glass high up the brick walls of the Samhattan High School gymnasium. The communal word echoes off the ceiling, curls out those open windows, circles Kit's head like cartoon birds in a dream.
LE-GEND
LE-GEND
Like the legend of Daphne, told to the ballers last night, in the dark of Dana's living room. Almost the entire team slept there to ensure nobody would stay up too late before the big game, yet wasn't it Natasha's story of the Woman Who Could Not Be Killed, the lumbering seven-foot colossus in denim, wasn't it that very story that kept Kit up all night, eyeing the darkness, thinking the very question she would eventually ask the rim at the free-throw line toni...
