Don't Leave Her Alone by Desirée de Fez, Lizzie Davis (Hardcover) (PREORDER)

Fiction - Horror - Hispanic and Latino - Literary 

RELEASE DATE: 10/13/2026 (WILL SHIP DIRECTLY FROM OUR SUPPLIER'S WAREHOUSE)

Translated from the Spanish by: Lizzie Davis

THE SPANISH BESTSELLER

"Full of tenderness and delirium, moving between suburban realism and fairy tale." —Mariana Enríquez

An alternative Nightbitch set in Barcelona for fans of Fever Dream, following three mothers who are linked by the tentacles that live inside of them.

Alba has always clung to her mother Carmen: to run errands, or simply validate every anxiety she’s had. Yet, nothing can silence the fears Alba refuses to confront. They simmer, then burst, but never quite erupt, and each time Carmen is by her side. Meanwhile, Alba’s sister Diana struggles herself, balancing the demands of motherhood and work, but cannot remember the last time Carmen tended to her.

Two days before Christmas, Alba drags Carmen to the mall. There, she runs into "the widows." The pair approach Alba, put an evil eye on her. Her nose starts to bleed, which is how Alba knows. Then, on Christmas Eve, Alba disappears. And Diana and Carmen collapse from the pain in their bellies, where a deep gash splits their purging stomachs. As the tensions the three women have long held in explode, they're finally forced to confront the terror that connects them.

Haunting, cinematic, and strikingly visceral, Don't Leave Her Alone is an incisive exploration of motherhood through a surreal "awakening" that interrogates women's struggle for autonomy and identity, and ultimately forces the question: what does it take to finally be able to break free?

AUTHOR BIO: 

Desirée de Fez is one of Europe's foremost experts in fantasy and horror literature and film. Over the past fifteen years, she has worked with some of the world's most significant independent film production companies and has advised Spanish, Latin American, and American producers and directors. Desirée is also a film critic, specializing in fantasy and horror cinema, and works as a programmer for an international film festival. Don't Leave Her Alone is her debut novel.

TRANSLATOR BIO: 

Lizzie Davis is a writer, an editor, and a translator from Spanish and Italian. Her recent translations include Juan Cárdenas's The Devil of the Provinces (longlisted for the 2023 National Book Award for Translated Literature) and Ornamental (finalist for the 2021 PEN Translation Prize), as well as work by Valeria Luiselli, Daniela Tarazona, Begoña Gómez Urzaiz, and Elena Medel.

"An eldritch Pedro Almodovar nightmare, charting those liminal terrors found beyond the boundaries of the human body, where flesh itself is not safe." —Clay McLeod Chapman, author of Devil Inside and Ghost Eaters

"Compelling to the point of hypnotic, a tender and visceral study of mothers, daughters and sisters that recalls the best of King, Enriquez and Almodóvar, but which is ultimately uniquely its own. A gem." -- Virginia Feito, author of Victorian Psycho