Christina Rosso
Christina Rosso (she/they) is a queer, disabled writer and bookstore owner based outside Philadelphia with her bearded husband and rescue pups. She is the author of CREOLE CONJURE and SHE IS A BEAST. Her debut novel, THE LAST SHEAF, is forthcoming from Blackstone Publishing. She is the co-owner of A Novel Idea on Passyunk, an independent bookstore and event space, named one of the best bookstores in the region by The Philadelphia Inquirer. When she isn’t writing or working at the bookstore, she reads tarot and casts spells under the full moon. Learn more at christina-rosso.com.
The Last Sheaf
The Lost Village meets Midsommar in this queer folk horror novel about a grieving woman who travels to the Catskills, only to stumble into a cult in the woods and the arms of an ancient harvest deity known as the Corn Mother.
Grief is a monster, or at least that’s what Corinne’s therapist always says. It’s only been three months since the cliff jumping accident that killed her twin, and Corinne doesn’t know if she’ll ever stop grieving her sister.
When she receives a reminder to pay the second half of the deposit for the Catskills cabin she and Jamie booked for their 25th birthday, Corinne’s impulse is to cancel the trip and hide in her row home with her dog and her grief. But she knows Jamie would want her to still go on this trip.
Determined to make her sister proud, Corinne and Monroe travel to the Catskills. During a hike, they stumble out of the woods and into the labyrinth of a cornfield. A young woman leads them out and into her village, Rye. The town is self-sustaining and Puritan-like, with a mysterious faith that worships a harvest deity called the Corn Mother.
Corinne is invited to Rye’s three-day harvest festival in honor of the Corn Mother. She’s told that on the third day, the Corn Maiden will be crowned. At first, she doesn’t plan to go, but then she begins to hear a spectral voice. The more she hears it, the more she’s convinced it’s Jamie. And even though unsettling things are happening around Corinne, like Monroe disappearing to only reappear minutes later, or the scary stories spun by the handsome owner of the Airbnb, Shelly, Corinne can’t help but be intrigued by this harvest deity and these people. Corinne thinks the residents of Rye might be the key to getting her birthday wish: getting Jamie back. Mystery mingles with seduction as Corinne wanders deeper into the woods of folklore and fervor, her grasp on herself loosening and reassembling until she is reborn into something wholly mythic.
Publication
US: Blackstone Publishing
Release date: Fall 2027
