Plus, receive recommendations and exclusive offers on all of your favorite books and authors from Simon & Schuster.
Table of Contents
About The Book
A “paranoid, self-annihilating” (Gretchen Felker-Martin, author of Manhunt and Cuckoo) horror debut following a woman who seeks refuge at an all-trans girl commune only to discover that demons haunt her fellow comrades—and she's their next prey!
Herculine’s narrator has demons. Sure, her life includes several hallmarks of the typical trans girl sob story—conversion therapy, a string of shitty low-paying jobs, and even shittier exes—but she also regularly debates sleep paralysis demons that turn to mist soon after she wakes and carries vials of holy oil in her purse. Nothing, though, prepares her for the new malevolent force stalking her through the streets of New York City, more powerful than any she’s ever encountered. Desperate to escape this ancient evil, she flees to rural Indiana, where her ex-girlfriend started an all-trans girl commune in the middle of the woods.
The secluded camp, named after 19th-century intersex memoirist Herculine Barbin, is a scrappy operation, but the shared sense of community among the girls is a welcome balm to the narrator’s growing isolation and paranoia. Still, something isn’t quite right at Herculine. Girls stop talking as soon as she enters the room, everyone seems to share a common secret, and the books lining the walls of the library harbor strange cryptograms. Soon what once looked like an escape becomes a trap all its own.
While trying to untangle the commune’s many mysteries, the narrator contends with disemboweled pigs, cultlike psychosexual rituals, and the horrors of communal breakfast. And before long, she discovers that her demons have followed her. And this time, they won’t be letting her go.
Herculine’s narrator has demons. Sure, her life includes several hallmarks of the typical trans girl sob story—conversion therapy, a string of shitty low-paying jobs, and even shittier exes—but she also regularly debates sleep paralysis demons that turn to mist soon after she wakes and carries vials of holy oil in her purse. Nothing, though, prepares her for the new malevolent force stalking her through the streets of New York City, more powerful than any she’s ever encountered. Desperate to escape this ancient evil, she flees to rural Indiana, where her ex-girlfriend started an all-trans girl commune in the middle of the woods.
The secluded camp, named after 19th-century intersex memoirist Herculine Barbin, is a scrappy operation, but the shared sense of community among the girls is a welcome balm to the narrator’s growing isolation and paranoia. Still, something isn’t quite right at Herculine. Girls stop talking as soon as she enters the room, everyone seems to share a common secret, and the books lining the walls of the library harbor strange cryptograms. Soon what once looked like an escape becomes a trap all its own.
While trying to untangle the commune’s many mysteries, the narrator contends with disemboweled pigs, cultlike psychosexual rituals, and the horrors of communal breakfast. And before long, she discovers that her demons have followed her. And this time, they won’t be letting her go.
Product Details
- Publisher: S&S/Saga Press (October 7, 2025)
- Length: 272 pages
- ISBN13: 9781668087862
Browse Related Books
Raves and Reviews
"Truly wonderful. While the world falls apart, reading horror is like anti-venom, a small offering of poison to counteract a greater poison that seeks to destroy you.”
—Lilly Wachowski, co-creator of The Matrix and Sense8
"Visceral and hypnotic, a novel with stars in its guts. It takes place both in the wilderness and in the new future we are trying to build."
—Patricia Lockwood, author of Priestdaddy and No One Is Talking About This
"Wildly surprising, slyly funny, and in all ways an excellent novel. Whether or not you’ve ever made a compact with a demon for the thing you wanted most, Grace Byron’s Herculine is the real deal."
—Kelly Link, author of The Book of Love
"Byron's debut is a haunting portrait of disaffected, dysfunctional adulthood and the human devastation left behind by fundamentalist Christian upbringing. On its face, Herculine is an almost prototypical novel about a young trans woman trying to make it in New York, but with each new nasty revelation, Byron pulls you deeper into a world of paranoid, self-annihilating horror."
—Gretchen Felker-Martin, author of Manhunt and Cuckoo
"Grace Byron's literally unforgettable Herculine pulses with surprise, intelligence, and tension. Here we have a novel of the mind and heart alike, a trans horror story of marooning and discovery that can make the reader both shudder and laugh out loud, and the arrival of a major new voice."
—Sarah Thankam Mathews, author of All This Could Be Different
"Provocative and poetic. Herculine evokes the tradition of grungy queer lit, decked out with infernal style and slick with the poison of isolation."
—Hailey Piper, author of A Game in Yellow
“Like Byron herself, Herculine’s protagonist, an aspiring writer who looks up to the Hot Freelance Girls (her nickname for the trans women writers who enjoyed a brief window of upward mobility back in the Buzzfeed and Jezebel days, when Representation Mattered), lives in the shadow of the now-defunct Topside Press literary scene, of which Torrey [Peters] is perhaps the best-known member. Though it deals in demons rather than vaccines, Herculine shares with Infect [Your Friends and Loved Ones] cult dynamics contrasted with the sad suspicion that T4T isn’t the nostrum that some would have us believe.”
—Davey Davis, author of X
"Note perfect, not a line or scene out of place. Nothing belabored or overstated. Atmospherically dense and absorbing. Very funny. Hot. Terrifying, powerful."
—Anahid Nersessian, author of Keat's Odes: A Lover's Discourse
Resources and Downloads
High Resolution Images
- Book Cover Image (jpg): Herculine Hardcover 9781668087862
