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Lone Women
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  • Published: 25 August 2026
  • ISBN: 9781804998663
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 304
  • RRP: $28.00
Categories:

Lone Women

Formats & editions
Paperback
25 Aug 2026
EBook
14 May 2026
Audiobook
14 May 2026
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Blue skies, empty land—and enough wide-open space to hide a horrifying secret. A woman with a past, a mysterious trunk, a town on the edge of nowhere. This is an unforgettable horror western, from an award-winning author.

A Horror Western from award-winning author Victor LaValle which blends shimmering prose, an unforgettable cast of adventurers who find horror and sisterhood in a brutal landscape, and a portrait of early-twentieth-century America like you’ve never seen.

Blue skies, rolling plains – and enough wide-open space to hide a horrifying secret.

Montana, 1915. When the US government offers Americans free land to those who can tame it, Adelaide Henry leaps at the chance. She’s fleeing from California and the family home that was left behind in flames. With no choice but to run, Adelaide becomes a ‘lone woman’, a female homesteader staking her claim on the unforgiving Montana soil.

Yet, no matter how far she goes, Adelaide’s past is not so easily left behind. With her is an enormous steamer trunk that must stay closed at all times, and a secret inside that destroyed her family.

But secrets cannot be stay locked up forever, and it isn’t long before her fellow homesteaders notice what Adelaide has desperately tried to hide – wherever she and her deadly cargo go, tragedy and terror follow. The American West is lonely and brutal, and that which Adelaide has tried so hard to escape may be the only thing that will help her survive.
  • Published: 25 August 2026
  • ISBN: 9781804998663
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 304
  • RRP: $28.00
Categories:

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Praise for Lone Women

A counter to the typical homesteading narrative, this moody and masterful western fires on all cylinders. Readers are sure to be impressed.

Publishers Weekly

Highly recommended for historical fiction readers just as much as die-hard horror fans.

Vulture

Expect richness, surprise and beauty from this visionary new rendering of the historic American West.

Salon

A corrective to the founding myth of America, a book filled with bloodshed and pain, but always holding out for the hope of a happy ending.

Esquire

The combination of LaValle’s agile prose, the velocity of the narrative and the pleasure of upended expectations makes this book almost impossible to put down...deftly weaves history, horror, suspense and the perspectives of those rarely recorded in the West.

New York Times

Infused with creeping dread and chilling horror...it's an excellent novel that blurs genres and looks at early-20th-century America from a perspective that's been ignored for far too long.

NPR

Victor LaValle is an outstanding storyteller known for his gripping narratives and the elegant flair he brings to speculative fiction. In Lone Women...he mixes these elements with historical fiction and commentary on racial tensions in 1915 Montana to deliver his best novel yet.

Gabino Iglesias, author of The Devil Takes You Home

Holy hell this is an entertaining and unexpected story... I highly recommend this book to horror fans who enjoy horror sub-genre fusion, strong female protagonists, and short, buzzy chapters that keep you glued to the pages.

Sadie Hartmann, award-winning author of 101 Horror Books to Read Before You're Murdered

Horror readers should be well-acquainted with the works of Victor LaValle.

This is Horror

Wow! The story, the unexpected setting, the reveal—just wow. Victor LaValle has a method of storytelling where he pulls you into an otherwise ordinary world, with only hints of the horror lurking beneath. But once that horror reveals itself, there’s no going back—and you’re eager for more. This tale of a young Black woman on the run, who ends up in Montana in the early 1900s, and the secret she drags along with her, is engrossing and chilling from start to end.

P. Djèlí Clark, author of Ring Shout