What the Woods Keep

Advance Reader Copy

Genres

Gothic Mystery, Literary Thriller, Literary Mystery, Suspense Thriller, Rural Suspense, Southern Fiction, Southern Gothic, Coming of Age, and Novels

Trigger Warnings

Death and Violence

Type of Ending

Series

Not part of a series

Author Prefers A Review On

Goodreads, Amazon, or BookBub

Reader Spots Remaining

Number of days to read

Publication Date

Sep 22, 2026

Page Length

228 pages

Available Formats

ePub and PDF

What the Woods Keep

Advance Reader Copy

Blurb

He heard her. He didn't tell. He's spent thirty years telling.

Summer, 1983. Twelve-year-old Clay pulls a battered walkie-talkie from the creek mud. That night, it starts talking.

The voice belongs to Cindy Rhodes—the girl Cutler's Creek decided ran away. She is hurt. She is scared. Her battery is dying. And the man who put her there moves through town in daylight, trusted and untouched.

Clay hears her. And he doesn't tell.

A Southern gothic novel of buried violence and small-town complicity, for readers of William Kent Krueger's Ordinary Grace and Tom Franklin's Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter.

Details

Genres

Gothic Mystery, Literary Thriller, Literary Mystery, Suspense Thriller, Rural Suspense, Southern Fiction, Southern Gothic, Coming of Age, and Novels

Trigger Warnings

Death and Violence

Type of Ending

Series

Not part of a series

Author Prefers A Review On

Goodreads, Amazon, or BookBub

Reader Spots Remaining

Number of days to read

Publication Date

Sep 22, 2026

Page Length

228 pages

Available Formats

ePub and PDF

Author

Malcolm Thomas is a pastor who writes literary horror—not because he likes scaring people, but because horror gives him a way to explore guilt, buried shame, hidden motives, and the truths people are most afraid to say out loud.

He writes atmospheric, psychologically unsettling fiction for readers who want horror that lingers—stories driven less by cheap scares and more by dread, moral tension, and emotional weight.

His debut novel, The Hollow, is set in 1984 Pennsylvania coal country, where a supernatural presence forces people to confront not just what they’ve done, but what they wanted.

Malcolm lives in Ohio with his family.