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Digital Audiobook
Quaint Folk by Bitter Karella

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Quaint Folk

Narrator
Eva Kaminsky
Publisher
Little, Brown Book Group
Publish Date
6 October 2026
Run Time
9 hours 49 minutes
Format
Audiobook

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What to expect

The Wicker Man meets The Twisted Ones in Bitter Karella's Quaint Folk-a queer folk horror novel that peels back the idyllic veneer of a perfectly quaint island town to reveal the rot beneath.

From the outside, it looks like Jessica has the perfect life. She's a stay-at-home mom, married to a man with a respectable job, raising a son they adore. Her family is as wholesome as all-American pie. But deep down, Jessica knows there's something wrong with her; she knows she can't escape her past.

When her husband's job has them move abroad, Jessica thinks this is her chance for a fresh start. On the remote island of Hasenhurst, the modern world can't get in. The people there grow their own herbs, make their own jam, and mind their own business. They believe in folk tales and the power of dreams. They tell visitors, we're a quaint, quiet people. The right sort of family would do well here. Jessica is determined to be the right kind of person for a family-and a life-like this. But as she tries to befriend the townsfolk and learn their ways, she soon realizes that beneath the town's cosy idyll, something sickly-sweet and rotten lays buried...

'To experience Bitter Karella's cheerfully unhinged fiction is to surrender to a spectacularly fierce and uncompromising literary force. Quaint Folk astonished me with its charming, mythical weirdness threaded with genuine moments of pure tenderness. A bold, potent brew of all the best elements of folk and queer horror'
Eric LaRocca, author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke

Critics Review

  • Quaint Folk remakes The Wicker Man with Todd Haynes behind the camera, a heaving Hieronymus Bosch acid trip that skins the idyllic flesh off the folk horror subgenre and paints the reader's face in its blood

    Clay McLeod Chapman, author of Devil Inside

User Reviews

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Details

Author
Bitter Karella
Narrator
Eva Kaminsky
Duration
9 hours 49 minutes
Release Date
6 October 2026
ISBN
9781405565875
Format
Audiobook
Publisher
Little, Brown Book Group
Genre
Horror, ghost stories and supernatural fiction

Synopsis

The Wicker Man meets The Twisted Ones in Bitter Karella's Quaint Folk-a queer folk horror novel that peels back the idyllic veneer of a perfectly quaint island town to reveal the rot beneath. From the outside, it looks like Jessica has the perfect life. She's a stay-at-home mom, married to a man with a respectable job, raising a son they adore. Her family is as wholesome as all-American pie. But deep down, Jessica knows there's something wrong with her; she knows she can't escape her past.When her husband's job has them move abroad, Jessica thinks this is her chance for a fresh start. On the remote island of Hasenhurst, the modern world can't get in. The people there grow their own herbs, make their own jam, and mind their own business. They believe in folk tales and the power of dreams. They tell visitors, we're a quaint, quiet people. The right sort of family would do well here. Jessica is determined to be the right kind of person for a family-and a life-like this. But as she tries to befriend the townsfolk and learn their ways, she soon realizes that beneath the town's cosy idyll, something sickly-sweet and rotten lays buried...'To experience Bitter Karella's cheerfully unhinged fiction is to surrender to a spectacularly fierce and uncompromising literary force. Quaint Folk astonished me with its charming, mythical weirdness threaded with genuine moments of pure tenderness. A bold, potent brew of all the best elements of folk and queer horror'Eric LaRocca, author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke

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