El Cuchy is Real and is coming on 9/24/2013

Adam Mansbach, #1 New York Times bestseller of the pop culture phenomenon Go the Fuck to Sleep and this winter’s critically acclaimed novel Rage is Back, uses his “real talent, maybe crazy talent” (New York Times Book Review) to prove himself the master of all literary media as he turns to the world of genre. Mansbach couples raw, evocative language and imagery with fast-paced, edge-of-your seat plotting to create THE DEAD RUN (on sale from Harper Voyager 9/24/2013), a terrifying supernatural thriller set in the US/Mexican borderlands.

El Cucuy is real.

Not just the boogeyman mothers warn their children about, El Cucuy was a man transformed after a gruesome act of violence into a ruthless, sinister being. His power has waned, though, over many years, and he desperately seeks to restore it through his son. In order to do this, a righteous messenger must carry a horrific package across the desert, a place filled with the not-quite-dead bodies of the missing girls.



Cucuy chooses Jesse Galvan, a man unjustly imprisoned in Mexico, for the deadly task, and Jesse accepts this devil’s bargain in hopes of being allowed to reunite with his estranged daughter. He must struggle through the desert across the border with an escort of fellow prisoners, half determined to protect him, half determined to murder him, while dodging vicious otherworldly threats. The farther he goes into the desert, the more the contents of the package begin to change him in unimaginable ways.



Sherry Richards, only recently free from a maniacal cult run by an enthralling madman, finds herself once again in the leader’s clutches. But escaping a second time is the easy part. Now she must make her own dangerous journey through the desert, and coming out alive seems less likely by the hour.



Police chief Bob Nichols runs a two-bit station with few resources at his disposal. When he learns of Sherry’s kidnapping, he and psychologist Ruth Cantwell embark on a desperate mission to retrieve the young girl before she becomes another one of the sacrifices in Cucuy’s quest for power.



As girls go missing on both sides of the border, these three lives intertwine through the evil will of El Cucuy. Under Mansbach’s expert pen, THE DEAD RUN delivers what Library Journal calls “a wild high-speed ride across centuries and cultures, over water and sand” that will keep readers terrified and captivated until the very last page.